Page 8 of In the Net
After filling out a full two pages in my Word document, I run out of steam. Reading back my output, I nod in satisfaction. It’s still two weeks before the essays are due, so I have plenty of time.I only want to put down words that I’m totally confident in. This essay is too important forgood enough.
I have a little while before I have to head out for my first afternoon class of the day. It’s the last thing I actually want to do, but I decide to fill the time by checking in on my … ugh, dating apps.
Opening an app, my eyes zero in on the text of the most recent message I’ve received.
Your hot, it reads.
Alright, you know what? I’m not doing this right now. I exit the app and toss my phone onto my bed next to my desk.
Tilting my head back, I sigh into the air.
I’m not even interested in finding a relationship right now. If I happen to meet the right person and we click organically, great, but I’m just not in the mood to go out and actively look for it.
Right now, I’m happy in my routine. I’m enjoying my classes, working on the competition essay is giving me something to focus my energy on, and the prospect of winning the trip to Paris is giving me something to hope for and look forward to. I like my living arrangement with my new best friend, Scarlett, and two other girls, Maddie and Jasmine, with whom I’m quickly becoming friends.
Why am I pushing myself to look for something I don’t even really want right now?
Just to avoid showing up to my cousin Sofia’s wedding pitifully single compared to all the other girls my age in my extended family who fully buy into the idea that a woman is incomplete if she’s not romantically attached to a man—my own mother chief among those holding that mindset?
Then I remember the last wedding on my mother’s side of the family, ten months ago. Being by myself and having every aunt and female cousin snidely asking when I’m going to “finally find a nice guy.”
I remember the quip from my aunt Brenna about what exactly I’ve been doing in college for two and a half years if I haven’t been able to “lock down a man” in that time, and my mom’s laughter at the question.
Having a plus-one and not using it isn’t exactly fashionable, Mackenzie told me while primly sipping a champagne flute next to me at our table.
Frankly, I don’t care about being judged for the fact that I don’t live my life buying into the belief that “landing a husband” is the be-all and end-all for a woman.
Would I like to find a guy whose goals and values align with my own, fall in love, and live happily ever after? Sure.
But it’s not the ultimate ambition of my life. Right now, I’m focused on my studies, getting my PhD, and launching my academic career. Those are my dreams, and I’m not about to prioritize a relationship with a man over them, something that no one in my family can understand, or even wants to try to understand.
It’s not really the judgment that’s prompted me to brave the choppy waters of dating apps that are awash with fish pictures, shirtless mirror selfies, and grammatically faulty declarations of my hotness.
No, it’s all the not-so-subtle insinuations that the reason I’m perpetually single isn’t because I’m satisfied with the way my life is right now, but because Ican’t“snag a man,” as so many of my family members artlessly put it.
Because I’m incapable.
Because I’m not up to the challenge.
Because I try, and fail.
I’ve always been able to withstand people’s judgment just fine.
But if there’s something I’ve never been able to withstand, it’s a challenge.
When someone tells me Ican’tdo something, that I’mincapableof it, I can’t just let it go. I need to prove them wrong.
It’s how I’ve always been. And after months of people implying that I can’t even find a date to my cousin’s wedding, I’m itching to do just that.
My eyes flit to my phone lying screen-up on the crumpled quilt atop my bed.
I’ll prove them wrong later. I did enough swiping and messaging last night to allow myself a break at least until this evening.
There’s plenty of time until the wedding, after all. Two months still. I’m totally capable of finding an acceptable date in that time.
Despite the fact that my search is off to a rocky start. And the fact that the first date I set up through the apps ended in me getting stood up.
Yeah …
