Expat Dating Mom

I was sitting in an office in another country yesterday, meeting colleagues for a workshop. It was a rare opportunity to gossip—the kind we don’t often get anymore with work-from-home.

“Do you know why Roger left?”

My colleague was taking the bait. A rare occasion to power trip is to discreetly demonstrate you know more than the other person because you’re SUPERIOR. You are meant to know secrets and show them off, but never “gossip,” because that is somehow filthy. To gossip is to fail the trust of our superiors.

The secret? He won a million in a lottery. I don’t even know why he was still working. My colleague eventually broke; everyone likes to gossip, even those who have sworn their soul to the matrix.

It made me think. I don’t partake in the lottery. But the fastest way to not win is to never buy a ticket.

My colleagues were not impressed with my cliché. But I went home and instantly agreed on a date with that Hinge guy. I had sworn off Hinge. Why do I need anyone anyway? Such a waste of time. But… you won’t win the lottery if you don’t buy the ticket, right? So let’s gamble one more time and see the lousy return for the precious little time I’ve got. I bought a cute outfit, too. I want to feel sexy. Certainly nothing in my closet fits.

Lately, I’ve been fielding questions from people I used to know. “May I ask a personal question? Are you ever going to find someone? Or have you given up on men completely?”

I don’t know how to answer that. This person sees me as I was 20 years ago, when it was easy. They forget they aren’t in their prime either; they’re just happy to live the comfy life where “the wife” fixes all the warmth and charm while they just show up and play.

Then there was the Christmas waffle. In my family, we split the waffle and make wishes for each other. A family member said to me: “I wish for you that you finally find love.”

As if I have not found it before. I have found it and lost it many times. But this wish hangs over me like an unfulfilled obligation to the world. To finally be “normal.” To finally be “complete.”

In my country of origin, you are only complete when you bond with a guy. He is worshipped like a golden calf, regardless of how shitty or unworthy he is. A woman (especially with kids) needs this proverbial man to validate her decisions. Once you don’t have one, your life decisions are suddenly doubted by a “committee” of well-wishers.

“I don’t know if you should be selling your flat. And what does your ex-husband think about it?”

You don’t know? I don’t know either. Usually, people make a decision and then wait and see—men or women alike. All I know is my ex-husband hasn’t lived in this house for five years. He didn’t hang the curtains or make the repairs. It wasn’t his money spent and he didn’t move the furniture to make space for my kids. He is happily living off rentals while the kids live in a tiny room that also houses his wardrobe.

And you still want to ask him questions regarding my life?

I’ve recently been catching up on cinema from 2015 to 2020—years I missed because I was raising young kids and living with someone who didn’t appreciate movies. I watched Tully and realized: she isn’t crazy. Then I watched the second season of Fargo.

There is a brilliant scene where Kirsten Dunst’s character, Peggy, goes into an existential rant in the back of a police car. The carnage of gang warfare is over; there is blood everywhere, and her husband is dead. The whole mess started because she accidentally ran a man over and just… kept going.

As she’s being driven away, she breaks down over the impossible expectations of being a woman in the late 70s:

“It’s a lie, okay, that you can do it all, be a wife and a mother and this self-made career woman, like there’s 37 hours in a day. And then when you can’t, they say it’s you, you’re faulty, like… like… like you’re inferior somehow. And, like… like, if you could just get your act together, until you’re half mad with…”

The policeman driving the car interrupts her: “Peggy, people are dead.”

It resonated. It’s the ultimate patriarchal summary. You try to explain the bone-deep exhaustion of keeping things alive and thriving, and they shut you down with a single sentence taken from their destructive games of death. I, for one, am tired of the war and the power plays. These “heroes” create completely unnecessary messes around the world and then expect their “heroism” in “sorting it out” to trump everything else.

They are the ones who should be interrupted.