Hello friends,
Wednesday in the house!
I sound like a rapper, one thing for sure, I didn’t rap my single little ass around the world to get less respect. :0) Not even a rapper deserves that.
Alright, on a more serious note. In the year two thousand, I went off as a single girl (I didn’t consider myself as a twenty-one-year-old woman especially when people thought I still looked eighteen or even sixteen in some cases. I felt like an eighteen-year-old in the body of a twenty-one-year-old). I met my thirty-two-year-old soul sista who goes by the name of Simone in The South African: Roamer a book based on a true story. Simone, in many ways, is still my soul sista till this day. She was the one who made the horrendous garlic/ginger remedy to get my immune system back up in the year two thousand and fourteen. “I still love you even after that, haha!”
Simone is from New Zealand and by this time she knew all too well what it was like to be a single woman travelling around the world. She participated in some great paragliding competitions and joined paragliders in Peru, Greece, Cape Town man… I lost count, but she has pretty much been in places where I can’t even pronounce the name or even the country properly and just like myself Simone was certainly targeted in the workplace, by players (men), in gatherings, in environments (gosh I wished we knew better, then) where women like us i.e. who earned our own money, struggled to make it overseas, lived clean were seen as a threat.
Not only was it hard being around “porsche women,” “educated women,” it was just as hard to make it in a man’s world. Simone was big built and me well, you can see that on my profile ?. Britain and the way the mindset was when the millennium hit was totally different compared to now and its transition through different crisis over the years. In fact, I saw Great Britain through a new lens when I arrived in the UK to settle after nine years (the year 2012). The economic crisis that hit in the year two thousand and eight took away the light from so many souls. I was pretty shocked when I first stepped into the underground. I observed the faces, expressionless, “no choice,” lives. I didn’t want the wonderful memories I had of the times I had in London with some amazing people replaced with doom and gloom.
I remember when Simone gave me the recount of her on the escalators in the underground after going out one night. I wasn’t there in those years, but I really felt it even though she smiled through that recount. I don’t believe it, she was alone (hey ho! Let’s go have fun together and then when it’s time to go home we’ll just leave you to head off alone because you’re a tough girl). I mean the truth is, this is London, this was the mentality years ago, perhaps the Italians arrived and changed it. ?(Italian men even if they’re not dating you usually ensure that the girl reaches home safely). If there’s anyone back then that I saw struggling with self-worth it was my sista Simone for sure (I’m not sure how she saw me). What an incredible soul and how many knocks to have made her so hard.
Both Simone (more Simone) and I have recounts of buying cars. This is so hard for a single woman, whether she is buying a second-hand car or a brand-new car. What are the chances of her finding a woman salesperson when it comes to cars? For me nil, I can talk for Simone too on this one. If there was anything that bothered me the most it was this bit. I got ripped off at buying my first sport’s car and got ripped off selling it too. It’s also what men selling cars to women lookout for. It’s a massive vulnerability and it’s a massive chance to take advantage when there is no male around that asks the intelligent questions or at least looks intelligent even if he knows nothing about cars. Try and ask the questions yourself, and it’s like they’re rolling their eyes back figuratively asking, “What does this woman know about cars? I mean geez, her questions,” but it’s okay for a guy to ask the same questions. By far this is the most difficult thing a woman faces especially when she’s out to buy her independence by means of a car. I am sure it’s not that different when buying a motorbike either.
Here’s another, I have a few friends in Canada, this one friend of mine is extremely good on the technical side, she’s just as good at closing deals, in fact, she was closing deals better than her male colleague. The better she got at something she felt the harder she had to hide at what she was good at. In the end, she’s not working there anymore but she stated that she’d get statements around just sitting and having to look pretty even though she was the one who closed the deal because of her brains. In other words, the statement of her closing the deal wasn’t because she knew what she was talking about, but her male colleague stated she closed it because of her looks. I don’t know, I don’t think any finance manager or IT manager will approve a quarter million-pound/dollar deal over someone looking pretty, absolute rubbish.
Once I was looking for a job in Ibiza/Majorca and one Indian guy from India said he can definitely help me get a job then all of the sudden he asked me in which hotel I was living in and then straight after he asked what my room number was. I was out of that scene like a rocket. Here’s another one, I end up in Madrid, twenty-five years of age, both me and this young British guy decided to stick together because we felt we could trust each other, and so we headed out to look for a job together. My interest was to get any job so that I can better my Spanish, and so we go to this chic part of Madrid to look for a job, the restaurant owner says he will only take me on and he’ll give me the above flat for accommodation. He says to my friend to buzz off (see I was clever in Madrid; this coffee colour skin was getting me into a lot of trouble). I felt stressure. I remember telling the guy, okay just give me fifteen minutes to think about it while I take a walk around the block. I even remember he answered somewhere along the lines of, “What’s there to think about? You got a nice job and a nice place to stay?” I already knew what was going on and my British friend was at the same time whispering to me as we made our way around the corner, “That guy got some other intentions if he is trying to separate us. I am not leaving you alone.” The minute we hit the corner we ran for our lives (alright a little extreme but we were out of there in no time).
I’ve got tons of stories, like the time I was recovering from the whole domestic violence stuff, and trying to find my feet again, I remember the job scene, salaries and getting my just commission paid to me was a sincere struggle being a single woman living abroad with no one to come to your defence, it leaves you in place of defeat already because there’s so much of your individuality and fighter personality that has been damaged.
I’m sure when I go into my third novel you’d be able to pick out the scenes where single women in foreign countries struggle at reaching their goals and the more one moves from girl to women the challenges and stories just become ridiculous.
Here’s another one, what’s wrong with a single woman going on holiday on her own, please stop hitting on her, there’s a reason why she’s come on holiday ALONE!
Lastly, I certainly believe that the mindset men have about single women and even that which married women have about single women needs to change. There are many and in the future, there will continue being many single women who choose to be single by choice they really don’t want anything from married men or men who are already in relationships, in fact, and one should also consider that it could be the other way around, hence why single women are left out of so many gatherings and invitations.
Yours sincerely,
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by purchasing my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to re-evaluate them.
