The Unwanted

Last night I was enjoying a Girl's Night Out with Betty, Sunshine, and Katie.  As is typical with a Girl's Night Out, there was the usual raucous laughter, high fives, compliments on accessories, and, of course, conversations of men.  Betty is a particularly pensive woman, Sunshine is true to her hippie-name and casts an aura of bohemian artfulness over everything she meanders by, and Katie is the girl with the perpetual smile who has a sort of stereotypical doe-eyed innocence.  Last night, Betty's somber mood began to cloud over the G&T's and the Ugandan R &B-esque music thumping overhead.  Betty was celebrating her 43rd birthday. 

I'm not sure if Betty's final conversation starter ended the evening or if it was already walking toward the door and putting its coat on, but we all fumbled awkwardly to find a serious tone, a vast departure from our obnoxious giggles only a moment before, as she began to tell us that it was just before her 42nd birthday that she lost her virginity.  She told the tale of deciding once and for all that she wouldn't die unwanted.  She went to a local bar she frequented often, met up with a man she occasionally enjoyed a conversation with, and proceeded to his home to "end all of the unwantedness."  The "lucky" patron of that night's lottery was ignorant of his role in her life.  When she bled he expressed shock.  She blamed it on Aunt Flo.  She spoke of going home and spending a week in a deep depression, grieving the end of hope... there is no such thing as Prince Charming; there is no God who has "someone special waiting just for her." There is, for her, only the truth that she is unwanted and sex is meaningless.

I can hear the pious running to add their two-cents worth; to defend their God.  Even among the Orthodox there is a certain attitude of "bear your cross."  As I sat listening to Betty, wishing I had a much larger glass of gin and tonic, I bemused the fact that so many want to believe that Betty's cross to bear is somehow fated to her since her birth... her "unwantedness" is designed by God for her salvation.  I can't help but notice, however, that God's salvation design belongs to a statistically significant number with a direct positive correlation to culture's damnation of the caste of undesirables.  In that regard it seems that our culture is particularly godly, I suppose, so in-line as it is with God's will.  That's a very sanctifying way of alleviating our guilt for Betty's unwantedness.  The wanted can wear their martyr's crowns and claim they, too, are bearing their cross, and the unwanted can disappear into the nothingness that is the lack of community; the lack of personhood. 

I am angry at Betty's story.  To be honest, I am angry at you, the wanted.  I am angry at the lies you tell Betty, and more importantly, I am enraged at the lies you tell yourself. 

I don't have a good conclusion to this post.  I don't even have a humbled perspective reflecting the profound lesson to be learned.  I have only Betty's story and my anger.  May God have mercy.