My sister and I met at the Title office this week to sign papers for the selling of our house. I ended up in a small office around a small table with my sister and our very kind, patient and good humored Title Agent . . . with the wrong glasses on my face so I was unable to read fine print easily as I sat in front of thirty pages of the stuff. 🤦♀️😆
I was doing just fine until we got to the marital status page and as she was explaining the document I saw the blank and wrote:
'SINGLE'. Big. Bold. Caps.
SINGLE.
The agent without missing a beat pointed out the boxes I was meant to check and that I was probably going to need to check the first 'unmarried' box.
Oh.
And my sister said, "But she is recently and proudly SINGLE." Joining her in her mouthiness I said, "Yeah! I worked hard for that!" and by this point all three of us are laughing.
I dutifully checked the first 'unmarried' box then crossed out the word 'SINGLE' and initialed it - but I was disappointed in the word choices available.
Unmarried feels like I'm less than, as if I wasn't chosen or wanted or something, as if marriage is the goal I had failed to attain.
'Single' sounds like a personal decision, a choice I made for myself because that is what I wanted for me.
And I wanted it badly.
As I sit under my awning today, the air barely cool and quite still, in my generous adironack chair, listening to the birds who have not quieted really since their party they throw every morning in the dark, hearing too my neighbor playing her piano out her open windows, all of this is what I have chosen for me. This is what I have attained. None of this beauty and peace would have been available had I stayed.
So nope, despite the documents centering marriage with their almost judgy labels,
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