We’ll Be Feral by the Time You Find Us
For the women who grow wilder with every passing day.
We’re no longer young and naive. We’ve made most of the mistakes we’re going to make in our lives and we don’t care about the ones left to make. They won’t rattle our cage because we already gave up the cage.
Money no longer matters to us. We have what we need and we’ve built a life that doesn’t require us to depend on anyone but ourselves. We know we won’t let us down.
The ideas other people call crazy keep coming. They don’t understand. We buy trucks and RVs. We quit our jobs. We buy plane tickets to far off lands. If we’re going to be alone, we might as well be alone while doing something interesting.
We want tenderness. We want to be cared for. We want to be loved. These things aren’t needs anymore. They’re wants. But, the longer we go without them, the more the want dissipates. We’re finding less and less space in our lives for longing.
We’ve waited for you and you never came. We tried to find you and you eluded us. We’re tired of sitting at home alone so we go forward on our own.
Each day we’re on our own we grow wilder in the same way a field can be overtaken by hundreds of African daisies in one season.
We take off by ourselves for a week or two. We find our ability to evolve. We rise up to take on what we never thought we could. We’ve forged ourselves into the person we are, partly out of desire and partly out of need. By the time you find us, we’ll be feral.
We’re not trying to stop it anymore.
Maybe we already found you and you let us go. Maybe someday you’ll regret that. By the time you think to write to us or finally send us flowers, it won’t matter. We’ll no longer have an address.
We’ve culled the herd of people around us to only the people we feel safe with. The ones who honor us, empower us and respect us. We’ve removed people from our lives that cause harm. By the time you think to call us, we won’t answer.
We wouldn’t necessarily have wanted this life but it’s ours now. The danger we face is that with each year that passes the idea of relinquishing this feral life feels like a threat to us.
Instead of wishing for a tender hand to comfort us, the calm touch of a selfless partner, we fear the strong hand that wants to tame us.
We’ve given up on domesticity. We won’t make good wives now. Not the kind of wife you want. We’ve watched as you’ve moved from woman to woman. The quiet ones. The easy to please ones. The ones just a little bit less strange.
We won’t apologize for our fierce nature. We weren’t born this way. We became this way. We’ve come by it the hard way through years of holding our own because we found others too unreliable to trust with any part of our life. Our trust is not a gift we give freely.
We’re an entire generation of women that have gone by the wayside. Too strong to submit. Too stubborn to settle. We see that feral side in other women. It’s in our eyes. We know our own. We find each other.
We’re not selfish. We’re not unkind. We don’t feel lost. We feel comfortable in our skin. We feel a resolution.
If we’re going to be found, though, it better be soon. We’re not hard to find. We’re right in front of you. Look around. Eyes up. We’re there. All it takes is that calm, steady hand. One gentle touch. The kind that pulls us back but let us stay untamed. That’s where we want to be. We want to be found.
