old maid.

"So, do you think you'll be married by 24?"

I've got a curly fry halfway to my mouth, but I halt it and stare at my sister Carla, my mouth still partially open. "Um. You know that's in like 3 months, right?"

"Yeah."

"So, no."

"Yeah, I figured. Both Rita and I got married at 23."

Huh. I think that I was just called an old maid. Nearly twenty-four and still unmarried while my two older sisters had husbands already locked in by my advanced age. Oh, I know she didn't mean it that way, and she'll probably post an irate message in response to this entry (please check below). Due to, I don't know, vestigial childhood bitterness, I have a tendency to take what Carla says the wrong way. I even suspect sometimes that she is a bit oversensitive when it comes to me, too, or maybe I'm just insensitive. Neither would surprise me.

But I've decided not to get upset about this slight, whether it was even meant as a slight or not, because I've become more and more thankful recently that I'm an old maid. I won't say that I've not gone through moments of panic, particularly in the past couple of years when it seemed like every girl I knew had a ring on her finger and a china pattern on her registry. But I've got absolutely no chance in the world of getting married anytime soon, and when the facts stare you in the face like that, they're much easier to accept, no matter how many girly, giggly showers I attend. I don't even have a goldfish, and so I can be as selfish as I want right now. I can figure out what it is that I want and who it is that I am without having to figure out any other people, too. Someday, yeah, I want some attachments, I want to be an old ball and chain, I want to have little mouths to feed. But it hasn't happened yet, and that's okay. I'm not on a set schedule. My life has turned out this way anyway, so I've decided to enjoy it.

My niece, Sophie, is a beautiful little toddler in a family of five children. She's like me when I was little: the concept of not constantly being surrounded by people is not even present in her mind. One day, she asked me, "How many children do you have?"

"I don't have any children."

"But who is your husband?"

"I don't have a husband."

"But, then what do you have?"

"Freedom."