Silence is not an option. For any of us.

     Dearly beloved: we are gathered here today to mourn Al’s marriageability in a timely manner. Why? Not because her Dad is dead and “no one will ever be him” [Cue: score of Yentl], not because she has “intimacy issues,” or because she and her twenty-something long-term boyfriend in London decided to part ways before they could mutually acquiesce themselves into marriage. Al’s marriage-before-40 likelihood is as faded and impossible as that Hilary sticker you’re still sporting on your car bumper.

I did an interview yesterday with a woman who didn't ask IF I was married, but WHY I was NOT. I took a deep breath and said:

    "Probably because my OKCupid profile says nothing other than 'DEAD FATHER, HAS CAT, PUBLICLY DISCUSSES BOTH ON THE INTERNET. INQUIRE WITHIN.”

… She hung up.

I promptly went through a barrage of emotional responses:

DEFENSIVENESS
ANGER
SADNESS
INSECURITY
ANXIETY
ANGER (AGAIN)
EGOIC INTERNAL MONOLOGUE ABOUT MY LEVEL OF AWESOME!!!
DEFEAT
DESPAIR
INDIFFERENCE.

That entire cycle took about 34 minutes. I repeated it roughly 5 times. After getting a grip I recognized that her totally inappropriate question triggered a crucial issue:

    Why, even if one is a triumph of a female human being, must they be married-with-children to be considered by society a fully-fledged “success?”

I've written about this crisis before, specifically when, earlier this year, I came clean about The Lie of Brian. Brian who, you ask? Why Brian my fake, fabricated, made-up husband. That is correct: the non-existent human I made up out of thin air. The fake husband who is, in his absolutely fake life, a pilot. Good ol' Brian the Pilot. Who does not exist.

*

Hear ye hear ye. Dearest readers, friends, family and total strangers:

    - I do not care that I am un-partnered.
    - I do not particularly want to arbitrarily be coupled off because it’s “time” or “what people do.”
    - I loathe the word “childless” because the word itself implies lack, and prefer the term “child-FREE,” which does not. Moreover, though my inability and desire to not biologically have children is (pardon the expression) inconceivable to you, please don’t regale me with how I will never understand true love or the meaning of life. There are many ways to parent. A multitude of ways to contribute.
    - I enjoy having meaningful, safe sex with people I like a great deal but might not be in a defined relationship with.
    - I vigorously deny that my only possible value as a woman must lie in the perceived carnality of my body, my avoidance of spinsterhood (what is this 1840?), and the number of (male) children I bear.
    - I would rather be single, living my awesome life, than married to the wrong person, living a life I don’t entirely remember why I signed up for.

Look: if any that is your jam, your life purpose, and awakened you to a host of life’s glorious possibilities, great. I’m genuinely happy for you. I want you to have your contentment and feel you have actualized your life purpose. All I humbly ask is that you please believe me when I tell you I have found my own in my own way, and please do not pity me for not sharing your identical source of happiness and contentment. (Okay and also don’t get mad if I appear bored with the posts of your kid labeled #blessed; as bored as I’m sure you are discussing my #booktour.)

But where’s the mute button for Debbie at the JCC who won't stop asking when you’re gonna stop getting married on the Tony Awards, to start focusing on when the “real wedding is?” How can I delete the family friend who passive-aggressively comments on all my posts that she is so glad I “have THIS [refers to epic career highlight she still thinks is equivalent to playing Mrs. Webb in Our Town freshman year].”

I’ll give these judgey people the benefit of the doubt: perhaps it has not occurred to them that the absence of a nuclear family might be a fact, but the myriad of reasons why, are profoundly personal? I also have the capacity to recognize that the public and visible parts of my life (travel, opening nights, elegant [rented!] clothing) might not display the personal sacrifices I (and all artists) make for my art (constant vigilance about one's vocal health that means missing out on talking or many a loud social catch up, serious financial volatility, or missing hugely important life events due to a performance schedule), and understandable, misunderstood envy might indeed be behind this interviewer's heated question.
 Ah well. Not every person is wired for empathy.
I can have patience.
That is, until I can’t.

*

I became allergic to dating somewhere around the summer of 2013, around the time I was dumped by a circus clown the same day I endured Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera. It was also the summer I made my Carnegie Hall debut, was the unceremonious divorce-rebound (then ghosted-until-eternity) of a former high school classmate, and made the live West Side Story recording that earned me a Grammy nomination. 2013 was also the summer I turned 30 (the final night of West Side Story), and the summer I named my sister-in-law’s final baby bump “Charlotte” and realized I’d likely never name my own baby and had absolutely zero emotions about it.

It was a weird summer.

The following year I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease, sang live on BBC at Royal Albert Hall, and adopted a fabulous cat. Man: life sure has its up and downs.

Let me be clear: I’m not humblebragging. I can be a mess just like the next person. Tonight I fell asleep in sweaty audition clothes at 6:40pm watching ‘Miss Fisher’s Mysteries’ for the eighth time, and awoke to the “are you still watching ____?” screen and laughed because LOL of course I am, Netflix. I don’t want to throttle my resume of down your throat to defensively justify my solitary existence, it’s just that I feel I have to in order to get this interview lady—and everyone like her—off my back already.

I’m not Marilla Cuthbert. I’m not Carrie Bradshaw. I’m Alexandra Silber: a real-life woman, authentically endeavoring to do the best I can with my one glorious life in the 21st century. Tell me: when did Glorious Solitude become such an “alternative lifestyle?” Have we as a society remained so staunch in our old world values, that declining to participate in the “you must be married and have babies by 30” myth is still limiting our view of a woman’s potential contribution to the world?


And while it might be easy to blame the Patriarchy and get all uppity on this here high horse (and I'm not saying systemic toxic masculinity isn't a part of the problem) in my experience, the majority of judgment and passive-aggression I personally encounter comes from fellow women. I cannot for the life of me fathom how women attacking other women is productive, or could in any way be viewed as progress. It's far past time to stop merely talking the talk of supporting one another and start walking that walk. Haven't we endured enough as a collective gender?

Sigh.

So what do I do? Well, I guess I’ll just have to get on with my kick-ass, amazing life. My life of spectacular, reveled-in introversion, blissful solitude, poetic quiet balanced with glittering days and nights. A life of service, creativity, travel, meaningful work, and life-affirming relationships with friends, family, and lovers. I guess I’ll just have to settle for writing and publishing books, doing eight shows a week in the theatre, teaching, and singing with internationally renowned orchestras. I guess I’ll have to travel at a moment’s notice or read and write all day in cute Golden Girls Pajamas. And I guess I’ll have to date people I like a lot, really care about, and have (predominantly decent) sex with most of them, until we decide not to do that anymore. What a bummer.

My life is not meaningless. It is not void of love. It is full to bursting of—and with—love and meaning. Just not the love and meaning the Old Testament talks about, that a lot of people judge me for not actualizing in a socially acceptable, howling-mob-determined “timely” manner.

*

So rounding back to the point sometime this century: screw you, interview lady—you can go whine to your heart's content, like the Jewish baby I will likely never be giving birth to because you know what? I don't need that kind of inquisition, Debbie from the JCC of Nowhere. I’m too busy kicking ass to worry why my milkshake brings all the mediocre jokers to the yard, or to split a lunch bill on a Thursday with some lame, 40-something nincompoop who “doesn’t want anything serious.”

I own that I didn’t have to answer with such snark. I could have politely responded rather than reacted. I could have tactfully said in a warm tone of voice “I don’t care to answer that question, thank you.” But I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that because I found the question intrusive as well as deprecating. So yes I answered with an edge because I didn’t so much feel I was speaking up for myself, as I was speaking up for women everywhere.

Simply put: I realized that I was not reactionary because I secretly fear my life is empty, but because I am annoyed as hell that I have to continually explain my life choices to people that assume it must be. People who feel sorry for me against my will.

What answer to your nose-y, judgmental question could possibly have helped you gain consequential insight into my most recent creative endeavor? Why exactly is this relevant? But above all: any of your business?

Do I want to be with someone eventually? Sure. I feel confident that I will be—in my own time and on my own terms, with a healthy, totally available, evolved adult. A true partner who fully sees and values me, and allows me to cherish them in return. I might meet them tomorrow. I might meet them in 20 years. But this nebulous concept of a timeline is okay with me, for not only am I fiercely principled about partnership, but I truly relish my present with all of my beating, passionate heart. I am confident that regardless, the fullness, contribution, legacy, impact, and richness of my life is up to me—and no one else.

But this needs to be an international conversation. We have allowed-away our society to create a world where both inter-sectional feminism and the #MeToo movement exist. Yet we also live in a world of persistent wage disparity, and where female reproductive health rights may legitimately be revoked at any moment. We still hate, doubt, blame and mercilessly shame women privately and publicly. We live in a world where human beings still continue to rip each other to pieces for living differently. I am not the only woman to have come of age in a pop culture that is hostile to women, but as I stand on the shoulders of my predecessors, I recognize that remaining silent and allowing myself to be judged this way is an affront to the progress of all women.

And that is not an option. For any of us.