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A post shared by Julia (@julika.illustration) on Feb 4, 2020 at 11:25am PST

There is a paradigm about relating, and it tells us that our life is successful only when we have a relationship.

The success of that relationship is determined by the length of it.

I don’t believe in that paradigm.

I believe success in life is determined by the conscious choices we make—whatever they may be. I see more and more people around me who decide they don’t want to be in a partnership. Society often pities them—they must be lonely and missing something.

This is for those who make this conscious decision of not being in a relationship in the traditional way.

This poem is to tell the world: this is my choice, and I love it!

I have many lovers—but I don’t want a partner.

I am not with a partner
Because I choose it to be so.

I have no desire for tumbling into patterns
Of expectations
To compromise
What I never wanted to compromise.

The “happily ever after”
When walking hand in hand
Is holding on out of fear.

It doesn’t mean
I don’t believe in relating,
Because I do.

It doesn’t mean I don’t desire sensuality
Or a good fuck,
Because I do.

The women in me have needs—
And the men too,
As do all the beings in between.

I want to ravish and be hunted,
Dominate and let go;
I want to be taken
And left alone.

I am consciously unpartnered.
That doesn’t mean
I have no lovers.

Because I have many.

With some I talk,
With others I cuddle
Or go on endless walks.

With others I sleep
(Literally),
and with others I have wild sex.

Some read me poems
Or photograph me naked in the dunes.
Some, I dance with;
Others send me selfies in the mirror with nothing but a towel hanging low on their hips.

I have no partner
Because I choose it to be so.
I choose to live my life uncompromised.

It doesn’t mean
I’ll never have a partner
Or two.

But I’m not waiting.
I’m not impatient.
I’m not substituting anything with something else.

I choose to rewrite the paradigm
That my ancestors created—
That living happily and successfully
Means marriage,
Or at least a relationship that lasts decades.

That’s not my definition of success
Or happiness.

Happiness to me is being free
To choose my truth,
My path,
My ways.

To choose where I compromise,
And where not.

Happiness to me is acknowledging
The freedom that I have,
All the rights others fought for.

I can vote.
I can make money.
I can rent a house.
I can write these words.

And I am grateful
That life has brought me here.

I am carving out my own path,
Rewriting the narrative,
Freeing the path for my daughters—for them to choose their own truth.

I am consciously unpartnered.
I have no partner
Because I choose it to be so.