Where It Hurts

I wish it didn’t hurt to be this kind of woman, a woman with no home, no job, no man. A woman who loves to love but never needs. A woman armed with only a backpack and her intuition. A woman whose freedom rests completely on her courage to wake up every morning and live each moment authentically, unapologetically, bravely. I wish I could say how blissful this always is, how most of the time it doesn’t hurt, but I spend some days wondering: Who will want this kind of woman? What will a man do with her? Who will wash his clothes, make his dinner, have his babies? Will she ever stay? There are plenty of women in this world willing to submit, settle, satisfy, commit. So sometimes it hurts, mostly in the places where the roots are supposed to grow, roots that should dig deep into the ground, burrowing into a country, a family, a man.

Where do the roots go without the soil, without a home? Everyone tells me this is a choice but is there really an option when every time you settle and try to build a life, it starts to eat at you bit by bit from the inside? So my roots have turned into thick, beautiful, green, and flowering vines that dangle in the air like an intricate chandelier. But do not be fooled. They are like sticky tentacles searching for anyone, any place, to wrap themselves around.

I once spent an entire summer day on my knees breaking and uprooting a garden bed infested with vines. Sweet potato and papaya trees surrounded by hungry weeds. As I hacked at the vines, my hands pulling, breaking, and struggling, I thought: They will come back. They always do.