Recently I turned 30. As I get older I feel more and more pressure from those around me to conceive a child. Most of my friends are married and are moving on to the next step of life, but here I am, still single, with no marriage plans in sight. I also get the feeling that my parents want to see their grandchildren soon. My parents have never directly mentioned the subject, but I can sense it. Despite this sense of urgency I feel to settle down and have children, marriage, let alone childbearing, is still a ways off for me. Because of my age, however, I feel as if I need to start preparing to bare children even though I’m nowhere near ready. I still have so many things that I want to do and accomplish before having a child, but external pressures make me feel as if I need to put those things aside, hurry up and become a mother.
Even if I do decide that without a shadow of a doubt I want to have a child, I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to. Before bringing a child into this world there are certain conditions that must be met in order to give that child a fair shot at life. Finances must be straight, health must be sound, and the couple in question must have a healthy relationship. In the event that I do decide that I want to have children, these three conditions must be met, but looking at my life today, I’m not one hundred percent sure that they will be. These are worries of a 30-year-old single woman.
At this point in my life I feel as if I’m walking alone in a pitch black room. I’m trying to make it to the next room safely before the door to it is sealed shut. I can’t see what’s ahead of me, but I can hear the voices of my friends and family trying to guide me along the ‘right’ path. As time is running out I begin to get more and more anxious. As I get closer to the goal, the voices of the people around me begin to get louder which consequently increases the pressure that I feel. The pressure to have a baby is becoming so intense that it’s beginning to make me miserable.
This performance is a direct representation of my feelings at 30 years old. Running around cluelessly through life trying to satisfy everyone’s needs while also trying to satisfy my own. At a surface level it might appear humorous to see me flailing around trying to figure out what to do and where to go, but underneath that there is a layer of sadness and anxiety that I attempt to hide from the public view. Please help me find my way, please help me find my child.
For the performance of ”Worries of a 30 year old single woman”, I asked an audience member to hide my baby, made of blown glass, somewhere in the room (the glass baby signifies my potential future child that I have yet to conceive) . I asked the audience to tell me where to go to find my baby as I was not able see it with my own eyes due to my vision being intentionally impaired by a helmet that I was wearing (the audience’s voices signify the various societal pressures trying to penetrate my brain).