I was dreaming when I wrote this...

...so forgive me if it goes too far.

There's something I've been wanting to write about here for a long time, but I've been afraid it would be too revealing and possibly cast me in a negative light. However, at the continual urging of a particular reader to be more forthcoming with my thoughts, I've decided to go ahead and just say it straightforwardly. I'll try not to get too emo, ok?

I have a confession to make: I want to get married. Depending on who you are and where/how you're situated, that may or may not seem like an incredibly personally revelatory statement to make. Yet I assure you that for me it is. In the time and place where I grew up, a girl was not supposed to aspire to marriage. You were supposed to want to become a successful career woman with great clothes and lots of boyfriends, kind of like a real-life version of Barbie. (The fact that I've come pretty close to that ideal, mostly while actively trying not to, does give me a certain feeling of accomplishment in retrospect. However, it doesn't make me want to end this happy state by getting married any less.)

When I got to UND, it was even worse. Most of UND at that time was still ruled by 60's radicals, and most of the female professors were hardcore feminists. I've since learned that in most places, hardcore feminists of that academic stripe believe that women should only love other women and not marry men. However, at UND the ideal was a little different. I tend to disbelieve people who say that harshness of landscape begets harshness of character, but in this case it may actually be true. You see, the UND ideal was for a woman to be some sort of superachieving robot with no romantic connections whatsoever. To be, as Sara Teasdale put it, "self-complete as a flower or a stone."

So in my heart of hearts, it still seems an incredible social faux pas to admit that I want to get married. But yet, I suppose if I don't do so, no man will ever realize I'm not the self-confident, self-composed, self-complete career girl that I try to present myself as. You can consider this post as my declaration. (By the way, my request for proposals still stands.)