Road to Happiness

Recently, I was lamenting to a guy friend how my life was unsettled.  With the exception of work/career everything else is not going according to plan.  I have made no friends in my new town (to socialize with outside the hospital), I have no motivation to keep my home clean (this coming from someone with OCD-like personality!), I haven’t been cooking like I used to, which of course means that my diet consists of cookies, candy bar, popsicles and the occasional grilled meats, and I can’t get myself off the couch to exercise which translates into a 15lb weight gain in the past year. I’m too bored to watch TV, too tired to read a book, and am constantly on Facebook. I have a Netflix DVD that has sat on the shelf for at least 5 months now and am yet to put a hold on the account.  At night, I don’t want to go to bed and in the morning I don’t want to wake up.

What kind of life is that?

Well, the suggestion from my friend was that I needed to settle down, marry and have some kids.  For a moment there, my mind went blank.  And then I recovered.  Nooooo!  That is not the answer!  Why do people think that the road to happiness (especially for a woman my age) includes husband and children.  He tried to defend his statement by pointing out that a lot of my girlfriends are engaged or married and that’s why I feel lonely. 

I don’t buy that. A lot of my girlfriends are also single. And least anyone should forget, being single is not a disease and one does not need to find a quick remedy for it. I have always lived in seclusion from my close girlfriends (as well as my sisters) and not being able to see them or talk to them on a daily basis did not stop me from having a healthy, balanced life…sans men.

No.  The diagnosis is that my current surroundings is detrimental to my emotional, mental, and now physical well-being.  And short of packing up my bags today and leaving, I’m just going to have to adapt over the next year or so.  I really do, before I become the next 300lb woman.

The same weekend that this revelation was made to me I had a heart to heart with a Ghanaian friend my age. A newly minted lawyer.  She, it turns out, has thrown the towel in and is DONE with Ghanaian men, and Black men, and actually the whole concept of marriage really.  I agree with her that the shenanigans that she has experienced are totally uncalled for.  Totally uncalled for.  I too have known similar men who feel entitled to us.  How dare we not appreciate that they have a masters degree or higher?  Do we not know that they, the elusive educated Black men, are in limited supply?  Brother, you know what? Me too, I’m special!

The last guy she was with ever so briefly in the past year, whom I have had the displeasure of meeting, had a superiority complex the size of Texas.  He was also a pathological liar insisting to the whole world that my dear friend was crazy in love with him when he was the one who was just plain crazy.  Girlfriend just found his wedding registry…from a month ago, and dude is still insisting that he’s single.  I pity his wife.

I had a similar experience a couple years back. I met a guy (a Ghanaian recently in the US for studies) at a party and he asked for my contact information so I gave him my card.  No, I wasn’t smitten by him, just trying not to be standoffish.  He never called which was just dandy with me. Within the year, I would bump into him at one party or another and he would keep reminding me that I owed him a date. I kept reminding him that he had my number.  It got to the point that a mutual guyfriend whom I have known since college got involved, asking me why I wasn’t giving dude a chance.  That really annoyed me. If dude is interested, he already has my number, he can call me.  How complicated is that?  We are not even talking about me giving him a well rehearsed cold dismissal….which at this point I had resolved was due if he ever did call.  I don’t have time for games. 

So why did I encounter his wedding pictures and tonnes of congratulatory messages on Facebook soon after this encounter?  Dude had a fiancee in Ghana all this time and even after getting married was still hounding me.  Does that sound right to anyone?  How can I not have an attitude (otherwise known as an “Angry Black Woman Syndrome “) over that?  Did he think that he was that precious?  Truly, what kind of women accept this kind of nonsense.  I was so offended and angry at the *friend* who kept pushing him onto me.  Surely he must have known?!  And if he didn’t, shouldn’t he be checking these things out before he makes recommendations?  Or wait, he too doesn’t think that having a girlfriend, fiancee, or wife cancels out a man’s eligibility?

Seriously!