The big 30! That’s what my dear friend calls it. It’s that age - if you are a single lady - that you are harassed with questions like “When are you getting married?”; “I want to come to your wedding, when will it hold?”; ‘Who is the lucky one?’, ‘I want to wear your aso-ebi oh, please where is the one?’.
These are followed by harsher statements like “You should try to settle down; time is not on your side.” ‘Your biological clock is ticking’, ‘You are not getting younger, at your age I was happily married with children’, ‘Stop being picky, just settle down’, ‘Let’s go and see pastor, you need prayers’, and ‘Your missing rib must locate you’.
The list is endless. Everywhere you turn, there seems to be a harsh reminder of your single status; from the worried look on your mother’s face to the pastor’s sermon on Sundays. Everyone has something to say about your marital status.
Your situation is further aggravated if you are the only one still unmarried in your circle of friends. You suddenly feel ostracized from the train, wondering when did you miss it. As if your life is not complicated enough, your younger sister is already hatching plans to settle down.
She constantly regales you with stories of her friends getting married this weekend or the next. You watch with pain when her friends come around and take over the house, chatting and giggling over their boyfriends. And there you are, alone and cranky.
Without warning, you are suddenly caught up in a sea of blind dates. Friends, cousins, siblings try to pair you up with strangers with an impressive CV of a potential husband. They try to tell you the dos and don’ts of dating as if you are going on your first date. Their argument is that you have not been trying hard enough and it’s time to change your game plan.
They expand your social circle, sign you up on dating sites, put up attractive pictures of you on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter backed with an endearing profile. There is no limit to their badgering unless you try to fob them off with excuses.
The men face similar situation but in a subtle manner. Spinsters at this age are under intense pressure from society and family to get married. Even when you’ve developed a thick skin, the constant nagging magically tears you apart. No excuse of career or ‘30s is the new 20s’ can calm you down once the clock starts ticking to your 30th birthday.
The constant badgering elicits a heady mixture of fear and despair. Fear that indeed you have missed your time. Fear that you are the cause of this drastic event shaping your life. You even doubt your thoughts and actions. Perhaps, they are right. You have certainly neglected your love life and will end up single, old and wrinkled. You subconsciously dig up your ex-list, ticking names that at one time held the promise of a happy marital future.
Slowly, the window of despair opens as you wonder when was the last time you went on a date without the help of a friend or relative. When did a man actually ask you out?
It is at this stage that you lose the essence of birthday celebration; the essence of the gift of life. All because society set up a time bomb in your head. Society tells you that you have to marry at this age or that age or you are doomed for life. Why? Why should we live our lives based on these imaginary timelines? Or are they real? Could 30s be such an awful age to be single?
No it isn’t; as long as you have a balance. It’s easy to be defeated by the worries of marriage and child-bearing, but, let’s face it, things don’t usually turn out as planned because life is not only full of surprises but also full of gifts; gifts that we may not deserve.
So why bother your head about what society thinks you should do at this age or not? If you take a good look around you, I’m sure there are a thousand and one things that you will be grateful for. Yes, you are getting old, yes as a lady, your beauty is fading, yes, you are this or that.
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