Spinsters Unite!

I had started a blog on AOL, but that is gone. My treatise remains much the same.

10/16/06

We are the last minority: Never-Married Women with (or without) cats. There is no PAC, "Save the Spinsters" movement or support group for us. We are each on our own. Completely on our own.

There is no character in a movie or on tv that expresses our life experience. Our dreams are the same as anyone's, except for the part where they do not come true. No matter what we've tried. (And some of us have really tried)

SPINSTERS UNITE!

I am convinced there are a lot more of us than we realize. My guess is that we all share a lot in common that is never mentioned in the media, in public, or even in private. We must live with an anachronistic sense of shame in our failure to marry and/or procreate.

How hard it is to distinguish between cultural shame and our own personal sense of loss. How do you grieve not what has happened, but what has not?

How do you watch your friends (and frenemies) get married and have families (and screw up and get divorced and then remarried) while standing on the sidelines as if trying to figure out how to jump in to a double dutch jump rope?

How in the world is it possible that the most unique, difficult and odd folks manage to find someone who shares their very specific worldview and life while we, who are bright, compassionate, articulate and passionate can not come across (randomly or intentionally) someone to share our lives with? (Particularly when we are not asking for someone exactly like us. Just someone who appreciates us and whom we appreciate?)

What is there to do when the Love of Your Life (tm) comes along, goes away and comes back again, but still doesn't reciprocate? How do you find someone to shop with at Costco? How do you explain to the attached what it is like to be eternally unattached?

I am not alone because my standards are too high. Or because I haven't really tried. Look around you at happy couples. How different are their standards? How many of them even had to make an effort of any kind to find someone? Look around you. Everyone else has met someone at work, at school, at a wedding, or even a funeral, at singles events in real life or on line....

I have tried all of those things and more. But there is simply no one for me. Every pot may have its lid, but what about the crepe pans? Tired of being shoved to the back of a dusty cabinet and forgotten, I am here to at least make this invisible life visible.

I won't have a husband, kids or grandkids to show for it. But I will leave behind this record. And of course, the prerequisite cats. (Just 2. I am a spinster, but not a "Cat Lady")