Get me more Choglet

I want to speak out about the supposed taboos of friendship once and for all.

As a friend, you are expected to be delighted when your friends announce their weddings, their pregnancies, when the kid is born, when the marriage happens. But when you are single, don’t have plans to wed and are not particularly interested in kids – even when you feel all of these – you feel left out of life, you feel like life is passing you by. I wish I had more friends my age who felt this way, who were still looking, you didn’t feel like jumping on to the bandwagon because – middle age. I wish there were avenues in this our society where you could channel your energies as a single woman and have your very different achievements recognised just as much as important milestones as those two above. Like, hitting the 1 lakh mark in salary, yay! Was made manager, yay! Was given a team of people to manage, yay! Took solo trip, has managed to keep ageing parents healthy into their 70s, sterilized X no. of dogs this year, etc.

I am tired of feigning happiness for things that mean nothing to me. It’s like I am looking in at a party which seems interesting but not really, but everybody’s at it, and it seems so happening that it’s only out of intellectual willing that you decide to stay out of it. I survived news of your marriages, now I don’t want to hear about your babies, people! Please take your smug-married things *away* from me. And quit pretending that it’s perfectly fine to expect your single friend to be excited and happy when you tell them about happenings which, by not being a part of, I am setting myself up to be a pariah. Don’t pretend that that isn’t loud, rude, uncouth and unkind.

I *don’t* want to travel with a pregnant friend, I don’t want to be have to take care of her all the time, this is also my only trip of the year, and I deserve to relax too. I’ve also had a hard year.

I wish I could crawl into a hole for a few years and come out after everyone of these smug married people had had their babies.