“Thirty, Unmarried, and Unapologetically Childfree”
People talk to me like time is chasing me. Questions brought up to me all involve what I am
doing with my life. I am in my 30’s, and apparently that’s supposed to mean something. I
mean I didn’t know the goal of living was to go with everyone’s expectations. And like most
people I used to think that by the time I reached 30, my life would look different from how I
am now. Marriage, children all seemed to be something I looked forward to but here I am,
going 31 and my life does not look like that at all, and more surprisingly, I’m not sure I want
it to. This did not come as a big announcement, but it creeped in my mind in moments
where I started to notice that the life I was brought up in was not something I wanted for
myself.
There seems to be a written script that has these unspoken rules kept by the society that
every woman mostly should follow. By a certain age, we are expected to have found a
husband, gotten married and start having children. It’s something obviously that is
understood to be the ‘right’ way to live and be stable. It’s like they planted the thoughts of
said rules in your mind and if you have your own thoughts and how you want to live your
own life it becomes something bizarre.
And maybe my thoughts and the way I want to live is okay but it wouldn’t matter because
it’s the small comments, muted comparisons that have a way to creep in and keep
reminding me of what I supposedly should be doing. Time, they say, is something you don’t
have but keep losing. And the more I here that, the more I start to wonder is this something
for me, something I should consider…or am I in the right path for me?
The truth is, the more people talk about how it’s important to have your own children, I
have come to realize that I don’t feel that desire anymore. The more I pay attention to
myself and everything I learn in this life, the thought of kids is something that skips me. At
the same time, marriage and love are something I am still open to although it’s not
something I am under pressure to accomplish. What I came to understand though is I
deeply care for the freedom to move in my own pace, to enjoy my time and to live without
the weight of expectations from anyone else.
Even so, this truth does not come without some doubt that lingers in the background. I of
course wonder if I will regret my decisions later in life. I wonder about the future, about
regret, about what I will feel when I can longer have kids. And obviously guilt rises in me
about if I am choosing differently from what I was meant to. But I’m learning that not
having all the answers now does not mean that I am wrong. It only means I am human after
all.
Maybe I will change my mind someday, and maybe I won’t. Maybe I will find love that will
make me shift my decision or not. But for now, I am certain I am happy with my life as it is.
I believe that I don’t need to check any boxes that were kept by the society when I become
an adult. For now, I am trusting myself and that is enough. As the saying goes “you only live
once” and I plan to do so as comfortably, honestly and freely as I can.
The Tanzanian Times 