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MARRIAGE ISN’T ALL THAT

I can only draw one conclusion for people who hound others to get married; and it is that they have never been lucky enough to be happy.

 

Their lives have been so full of misery; so much that they believe happiness can only be got with another person yoked to them by the government.

 

Otherwise, they would know being happy, being fulfilled, having beautiful meaningful companionships; all have absolutely nothing to do with entering the marriage institution.

 

Married folks who are happy would only wish others well while they, y’know, enjoy their own happiness in peace.

 

I remember I had just clocked 24 and this aunty wanted to use me to sublime. You see, she had grown really old and had never found someone to marry. She erroneously thought happiness could never be achieved alone and then started projecting heavily on me. I was just 24 and she asked me to be “toning it down” on the media especially my Facebook page, so I would find a man to settle down with.

 

That she’s a member of a leftist organization even made it worse and more shameful.

 

I would expect women exposed to leftist ideas to at least be freer than their ignorant counterparts but I’ve realized they still have to deal with magnificent consciously-targeted sexism even from within the left circles and they might even be more mentally caged and miserable than women who stay very far away from those leftist organizations.

 

She got married indeed, but it didn’t even last up to a year. The kind of a person she was shouldn’t even have any business with getting married. Some of us are simply not made for that. 

 

Now she started that “tone it down” nonsense right over the phone. She wasn’t subtle at all. She knew I had just suffered a breakup and she called me to rub it in, and asked me to go look for an older man to marry.

 

When I saw her running around like a headless chicken on the media, and heavily lying on the “self love” which was comical at first and pathetic later on, I wanted to pay her back in her own coin and laugh in her face.

But I didn’t and just silently removed her because that desperation for a partner was just too much.

 

Marriage will be the death of many women; physically, mentally, revolutionarily even. 

 

Reading about how female leftists were either successfully or unsuccessfully sabotaged and deactivated through romance only made it more disgusting to me, and strengthened my resolve to never enter any structure that would make it possible for anybody to OWN me, especially a man. Self ownership forms the basis of how anyone’s quality of life would be. It would be a downward spiral if you ever give that autonomy up. You can love people and have them love you without possession. It is the purest form of love. And it is rare. All these nonsense is just not it.

 

It’s the miserable ones who want others to join in their misery, or partake in the self-inflicted “sacrifices for the greater good” that try to sink their teeth into you. I’ve never seen someone who’s happy be on my neck to get married. Happy people, whether single or married, will never think of doing that.

 

And I reiterate it once again as I’ve always been doing that humans are naturally selfish. If marriage is indeed an abundance of milk and honey, nobody would be hawking the idea of marriage THIS much. They would want to keep it to themselves.

 

Now I would never do the very thing I condemn; force people to not get married. Or think they’re fools and stuff like that. Maybe I’ve been doing that in the past but I will consciously refrain from doing that henceforth.

 

I don’t have that right, nobody has that right.

 

Resisting the status quo doesn’t automatically translate to using the same method to resist that status quo.

 

The status quo is forcing everyone to get married.

 

The resistance to that isn’t going about shouting that people should not marry.

 

I can only keep making my points against the institution itself and the ideas behind it. I can only live my life for others to see and perhaps, someone would go “yeah, I think I’m gonna try that too.”

 

I believe people would always learn their lessons.

 

And I believe that people would always make the best choices for themselves.

 

It is impossible to assume you love someone more than they love themselves, and then act based on that.

 

That’s not love anymore; that’s ownership. That it is always confused with love is really sad.

 

People are already trying out different variations of marriage outside of the traditional patriarchal tenets.

 

It’s progress.

 

Very soon, marriage will become totally extinct. 

 

And until we get there, please face your life.

 

And stop being a miserable bastid who forces others to do what everyone else is doing.

 

It’s not cool at all.

 

Written by Sisí Afrika.

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