Bearing Everything but Fruit
On Being Almost 32, Never Married, & Childless...
I won't lie to you.
Lately, I have been in agony.
The kind of agony when you love deeply and observe the world with an open, aching heart, you catch the subtle shifts in the room.
You see the unspoken needs, the heavy sighs, the spaces where love is required, and you instinctively rush to fill them.
But then you stand there,
hands empty,
realizing the world does not look at you with that same meticulous care.
You become a devoted witness to everyone else’s life,
while feeling entirely unseen in your own.
It is uniquely exhausting and excruciating to navigate this as a woman today. We are constantly asked, both implicitly and explicitly,
"What do you bring to the table?" as if our inherent worth is a corporate resume waiting to be audited.
You bring your whole, observant, loving self to the world, only to find that the goalposts have moved yet again.
Society demands that we be traditional, yet entirely self sufficient.
But also,
soft, yet bulletproof.
And,
yielding, yet fiercely independent.
Don't forget,
submissive, yet strong.
It feels less like seeking love and more like sitting for an endless, unwinnable interview where your soul is never quite enough, and your value is constantly up for debate.
The cruelest irony in all of this is the yearning. Deep down, I have always craved a traditional life. An equally yolked partner, a shared hearth, quiet devotion, a family to pour this reservoir of love into.
But growing up surrounded by fractured marriages and broken homes turns that beautiful dream into a waking nightmare.
You desperately want it, but marriage and that level of committment and trust becomes your greatest fear.
How do you step willingly into an institution you have only ever seen dismantle the people inside it? When you are hyper observant, you have seen the betrayals and the slow fade of affection. Because of that, placing any real trust in someone outside of your bloodline feels less like a leap of faith and more like signing your own death certificate. To let someone in is to hand them the exact weapon they need to destroy you.
So, you build the walls. You keep yourself safe. But the safety is so incredibly lonely. It is a bone deep, blood sucking, spirit draining exhaustion to carry the entirety of your life without a partner to help shoulder the load.
There is an ancient story from the Apocrypha about Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. When her husband Joachim went into the wilderness to fast for forty days and nights, Anne was left alone, mourning her isolation and her barrenness. She walked into her garden, looked at the birds of the sky and the animals of the earth, and wept. She lamented that she was worse than the beasts, because at least the beasts were fruitful. At least they had something to show for their lowly imprisoned and earthly existence.
There is a continuation to Anne’s story, a supposed "happy ending." As she wept in her garden, an angel appeared to her, promising that her barrenness was over and that the child she would bear would be revered, loved, and celebrated throughout the entire world. Anne rejoiced. She was finally given the very thing she had agonized over, the ultimate validation of her worth and her devotion.
But as those of us who notice everything know, there are rarely pure happy endings when you love deeply. The angel told Anne about the reverence, but the angel did not mention the absolute, earth shattering agony that we know awaited her bloodline. She was not told that her daughter, Mary, would one day stand at the foot of a cross, her heart pierced with unimaginable sorrow as she watched her own son, Jesus, be tortured and killed by the very world he came to love unconditionally and to save. Anne was handed the ultimate gift, and she was also entirely shielded from the devastating cost of it.
Anne's suffering wasn't taken away. It was merely passed onward.
When you have so much love to give, so much to offer a partner and a family, sitting in the silence of an empty, self protective life feels exactly like Anne's lament. You look at a world that seems to effortlessly move forward, bearing the fruits of partnership, love, and companionship, and you wonder why your own soil...
Even when so carefully tended, so rich with love....
Remains painfully bare.
I am tired. It is a profound fatigue that sleep cannot touch. It is exhausting to hold the duality of wanting to be seen and terrified of being known. But if you are reading this and feeling the same unseen ache, know this: your depth, your careful observation, and your immense capacity to love are not flaws. They are a heavy, beautiful burden. And it is okay to sit in the garden for a while and grieve the weight of it.