Dear Society: We Don’t Owe You Children

I am a woman. I am complete. I do know love. And I don’t need children to prove this to anyone.

Sometimes the quest for marital solvency feels like so much work that I’m not even sure I want to deal with it. I wonder if Tinder is worth the effort. It’s like a part-time job just swiping and conversing, and really displaying the full extent of my feminine prowess and womanly wiles is so time-consuming that I don’t always feel like expending that much effort-sapping expertise just to have some unattainable thing I’m not convinced I even fully want.

I’m tired. I’m lazy. I want to go hiking and read books in my pajamas. I want to paint and talk about politics with my friends. Having to sort through all the people just for the sake of finding ‘a new one’ is exhausting, and also I just don’t really care at this point in my life.

Am I going to like, run out? Do I need to sow my oats whilst I still can? Will everyone good get married off? I read a theory on some stupid Buzzfeed-type thing about all the “Prime Contenders” of the marriage pool coupling off by their mid-twenties and then the secondary contenders (i.e., the more undesirables) were the only ones left.

I mean, I don’t want to die alone.