The Wages of Feminism

This is interesting.  Mostly because it's the reality for all too many people out there.  And a slightly lesser version of this for careerist women who get married late, hurry and scramble out a few kids before their fertility is gone, and yet still focus more on their jobs than their families is something that I've seen first hand all too often too.  Speaking of, as I did last post, lies that many of us accept uncritically.  How many times have you seen this lie plastered all over every media we consume?  The adventurous life in the big city!  Home and family at a young age?  Trite! Boring! Foolish!

Or is it?

Anyway, it really needs no further comment.

I feel like a ghost. I’m a 35-year-old woman, and I have nothing to show for it. My 20s and early 30s have been a twisting crisscross of moves all over the West Coast, a couple of brief stints abroad, multiple jobs in a mediocre role with no real upward track. I was also the poster child for serial monogamy. My most hopeful and longest lasting relationship (three and a half years, whoopee) ended two years ago. We moved to a new town (my fourth new city), created a home together, and then nose-dived into a traumatic breakup that launched me to my fifth and current city and who-knows-what-number job.

For all these years of quick changes and rash decisions, which I once rationalized as adventurous, exploratory, and living an “original life,” I have nothing to show for it. I have no wealth, and I’m now saddled with enough debt from all of my moves, poor decisions, and lack of career drive that I may never be able to retire. I have no career milestones and don’t care for my line of work all that much anyway, but now it’s my lifeline, as I only have enough savings to buy a hotel room for two nights. I have no family nearby, no long-term relationship built on years of mutual growth and shared experiences, no children. While I make friends easily, I’ve left most of my friends behind in each city I’ve moved from while they’ve continued to grow deep roots: marriages, homeownership, career growth, community, families, children. I have a few close girlfriends, for which I am grateful, but life keeps getting busier and our conversations are now months apart. Most of my nights are spent alone with my cat (cue the cliché).

I used to consider myself creative — a good writer, poetic, passionate, curious. Now, after many years of demanding yet uninspiring jobs, multiple heartbreaks, move after move, financial woes, I’m quite frankly exhausted. I can barely remember to buy dish soap let alone contemplate humanity or be inspired by Anaïs Nin’s diaries. Honestly, I find artists offensive because I’m jealous and don’t understand how I landed this far away from myself.

Also, within the past year I’ve had a breast-cancer scare and required surgery on my uterus due to a fertility issue. On top of that, I’m 35 and every gyno and women’s-health website this side of the Mississippi is telling me my fertility is dropping faster than a piano falling out of the sky. Now I’m looking into freezing my eggs, adding to my never-ending financial burden, in hopes of possibly making something of this haunted house and having a family someday with a no-named man.

I’m trying. I am. I’m dating. I’m working out and working hard. Listening to music I enjoy and loving my cat. Calling my mom. Yet I truly feel like a ghost. No one knows who I am or where I’ve been. I haven’t kept a friend, lover, or foe around long enough to give anyone a chance. What’s the point? I don’t care for my job. I’m not building toward anything, and I don’t have the time or money to really invest in what I care about anyway at this point. On top of that, society is telling me my value as a woman is fading fast, my wrinkles require Botox (reference said poor finances), all the while my manager is asking for me to finish “that report by Monday.” Why bother?

My apathy is coming out in weird ways. I’m drinking too much, and when I do see my friends on occasion, I end up getting drunk and angry or sad or both and pushing them away. And with men I date, I feel pressure to make something of the relationship too soon (move in, get married, “I have to have kids in a couple of years”; fun times!). All the while still trying to be the sexpot 25-year-old I thought I was until what seemed like a moment ago.

I used to think I was the one who had it all figured out. Adventurous life in the city! Traveling the world! Making memories! Now I feel incredibly hollow. And foolish. How can I make a future for myself that I can get excited about out of these wasted years?  What reserves or identity can I draw from when I feel like I’ve accrued nothing up to this point with my life choices?

UPDATE: I said it needs no further comment, and it doesn't.  But I saw a comment on it that I thought was great.  This is a bit part of what I've dubbed "bratty princess syndrome", but I should add that this malady is not, of course, limited to women.  It's just that our society has particularly encouraged it lately among women moreso than among men.

As a recovering individualistic libertarian, I now see that each of us is born to play a role in a larger play, each of us is a thread in a larger tapestry. We have relatively limited latitude regarding where our life takes us, and quite literally the only thing we can do of value is to make of ourselves the best version of "us" we are offered, which takes WORK. No wonder things are as messed up as they are, given that our materialist narcissism tells people that the WORLD is obligated to conform to our wishes, and we are under no obligation whatsoever to present the WORLD the best version of ourselves. Ours is what society looks like without humility before something greater than ourselves. Ours is what a society looks like when people have bought the false idea that Mankind is God. 

UPDATE: And another one.  This is maybe too deterministic, i.e., it's not hard to find exceptions that worked out, but that doesn't invalidate the vast, vast majority of non-exceptions that conform exactly to this pattern, or the vast majority of people who have ignored this pattern and had heartache of one type or another because of it.  And no, repentance doesn't mean that the consequences of poor decisions go away.  Spiritually they may.  Eternally they may.  But some decisions are with us for the rest of our lives, no matter how successfully we repent.

There is no going back. Stages of Life are DETERMINED. It is a delusion (sold on every ad) that one can displace life-stages to later ages.

• Socialization: Birth to 16/17.

• Courtship: perhaps as early as 16, up as late as mid 20's. 

• Marriage: late-teens (for girls), to maybe mid-to-late 20's. 

• Family production (kids): Within a year or two of marriage. 

• Nurture young kids: 20's & mid 30's. 

• Survive adolescents: Mid 30's through 40's. 

• Empty Nest with mate: 50-plus. 

• Grandkids: mid-50's on.

80% of the comments I read written by unhappy people come from those who have displaced these stages to later years, or they lost the gamble on pair-bonding by marrying someone full of deal-breakers (and their lives are detonated as a result.) There are no do-overs. There's no going back. The game won't be replayed. This is why "getting it right" the first time is crucial...but no one wants to admit this because it puts so many people in a "you're screwed" situation. Leftism means never having to hear that decisions you made are irreversible. 

The social structure that once helped young people find good mates while keeping them from stupidly embedding their own deal-breakers in adolescence is gone. Kids are being raised by the permanent adolescents intentionally created by a materialist, consumer-driven society. It's a huge Lord-of-the-Flies problem of permanent kids raising kids (facepalm.) 

UPDATE: Of course, reading the journals of Anais Nin and thinking that there's inspiration to be found there (other than feeling inspired to avoid that life at all costs) is a huge part of the problem.  Although this anonymous woman is able to draw a connection between her actions and decisions and the consequences, she's obviously not willing to disavow the ideology that led her to make those terrible decisions in the first place.