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Wandra F. Chenault, MSW

MAMA’S  BEST ADVICE

Okay, so it’s  time for lights out and I’m sitting in bed playing with my phone checking junk mail, sending my children unnecessary texts while I’m  scrolling through my Facebook feed on my laptop and watching  CNN’s Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper via Sling on my iMac. Whew. Yes, I’m doing all this just to avoid being married and miserable. Since it’s well past midnight,  I scroll through my contacts squinching and puckering, wondering who I should call and decide it’s too late and not that serious.  So, I focus on my pastimes until I can turn over- so mentally exhausted-falling asleep will be a cinch.

As I drift off to sleep I think,  “Well, at least I not married and miserable.” As India Aire explains in melody, I love myself unconditionally and sometimes it means for me a ring in my nose, sometimes I paint my toes and sometimes I wear what others may see as unconventional clothes, but I am having fun (just paraphrasing).

It would be nice if my life was like Sex and City but,  there are no date nights in sight, not a current or long-term one. On the other hand,   when I compare my current life to the probabilities and responsibilities of the married life, my freedom to be me always wins over being married and miserable.

I’ve been married, more than once, but never happily married. There were good times during my marriages, but good was never the prevailing adjective. I never cheated in marriage. I think cheating is nonnegotiable, not allowed under any circumstances, ever.  Cheating doesn’t seem capable of making a marriage better. Cheating could only make a marriage inauthentic, my marriages were authentic and when it became too much for me I kept it authentic by bowing out.  

I know that marriage takes voluntary,  unrelenting commitment  to sacrifice your selfish, self-centered ego or a  desire to self-destruct. I have neither ambition.  However, as I mature and realize that some of my pastimes are a little more than follies, I acknowledge that maybe I would be better served by being married and miserable.