shout-out to my Shakespeare professor who was one of the most put-together ladies i had ever met

i had her during 2020, so the end of the semester was online due to quarantine. but everyday, in-person or online, she themed her outfits around the play we were studying. and as much as i loved Ms Frizzle, when i say that she themed her outfits i dont mean this professor dressed like Ms Frizzle; if anything, she dressed more like the world's most Ms Frizzle-Like Version Of Miranda Priestley. this woman dressed in silk and carefully draped her blazers and wore pencil skirts or pleated pants with luxury high heels. she had the softest-looking waterfall of white hair i had ever seen on a woman. always had her nails and make-up done to match her outfits. i get the idea of planning outfits around Shakespeare plays seems a bit kitschy, but her wardrobe also screamed classic, wealthy silhouttes. she had a sun outfit for the Romeo & Juliet balcony scene, she wore all black for the mourning scene at the end of Romeo & Juliet; she wore an all white and silver-jewlery outfit to symbolize the moon in what i think was a specific passage of Midsommer's Night Dream and she also wore a green, leaf-print outfit with fairy-inspired jewlery for Midsommer's closing i think. it's been three years since i saw her and i have chronic memory loss (and my memory is all Bullet Points and no visuals, weird, i know), so the details are fuzzy, so i just really remember the overall impression and vibe; but i do have a notebook somewhere in which i wrote down notes in the margins detailing what she wore because i was so amazed at her fashion sense and dedication. like, even if i dont remember specific outfits that well bc of my own neurodivergencies, THAT'S how much i liked her outfits, i recorded them individually to spite my chronic memory loss (...i just need to find my Shakespeare class notebook lmao rip). but yeah, it was all very much what you'd expect a fashionable CEO of interior design or a television network to wear. she knew how to look good and relied on classic looks and silhouttes with that play-themeing. and even though i have been describing her to look severe, esp with that Devil Wears Prada reference, i feel the need to iterate that she's a very giggly, always smiling, squeal-happy, elderly woman with a very "Oh, I might complain about men in a generalized sense to analyze all the men cast in these plays but obviously I do not mean like the men in my class, of course not, you darlings are perfect, you're English majors, of course I do not mean you, you're special" Obviously Joking sense of humor (she made the same jokes about the women in her class tho, dw, her coy "my students are perfect ♡" jokes hit everyone she could aim them at), i loved her. she carried around a purse that was formatted to look like a Complete Works Of Shakespeare book; and for her introduction on our first day, she facetiously cuddled her purse with pursed-kissy lips and announced loud and proud (and with many "I can't take myself seriously" giggles) that she was a single, never-married woman whose closest thing to a romantic partner was The Bard himself

i just keep unintentionally remembering her as i myself spiral, thinking of all my chronic health issues and my combination ADHD-Autism and how my each-labeled-"severe" mental illnesses, my C-PTSD and Anxiety and Depression, means i find it hard to sit next to people sometimes bc their presence just feels so pressuring. like, i just feel stiff with my shoulders high and i am uncomfortable. it's only sometimes, but i still panic that-- what if on top of the flare-up days and the bad brain days and asexuality and caretaking and potential medical debt-- what if i cant even share the couch and need to get up and leave to go sit somewhere in private? doesn't that make me a failure somehow? do i maybe not want romance like i have hungered all my life for? am i too damaged or was i never made for it, or am i only wondering this because i am single? because it is a hypothetical, because i havent met someone yet? or would i be better off with a queer platonic partner, or maybe even no one? would my ideal future be me with no one? i felt so safe and at peace, albeit lonely but never debilitatingly, when i live alone. maybe i just need to meet someone i can feel safe with. maybe that person doesn't exist. maybe im not aromantic, but im just not going to meet any person like that, statistically. i dont think i am aromantic anyway. but would "the worst case scenario" (it isn't the worst, but the unloved parts of my brain likes to act like it is) being single forever really be so bad?

and the past day or so, i then think back to that Shakespeare teacher, who i am pretty sure is aromantic but either doesn't know or care about labels (and i feel like she might be because of her diction towards these men she self-admittingly had "very shallow" attraction to) as she is at least 75+ years old and identifies herself as a cis woman attracted (at least mildly) to men. she told us once that she's gone on plenty of dates, she's had men move in with her, but then she needs her space back because they breathe too loud or something else feels too suffocating, and now she's something-odd years living happily single and alone in her home with all her books and no loudly breathing partner around, and how happy she is with her life. not to mention how reading Shakespeare and teaching about him is all the partnership in her life she openly thinks she will ever need (which, i have my own inner qualms about her choosing Shakespeare of all people, but, sure, she's a Shakespeare professor with a doctorate in his plays, it makes sense she'd joke about hitching to his wagon alone and no Properly Romantic partners, fair, fair, fair enough lmao)

and it is so nice, even as someone socially raised as female (aka. still grew up with the whole "spinster, get married young, anti-aging" rhetoric) but identifies with they/them pronouns, to see a woman in real life be old and never-married and happy. all the women i otherwise know are either single and at my age (and almost all of them plan for marriage, or at least having a lifelong partner, in their future), or are women i grew up knowing that either are still married or were married. i never knew an older woman who was unmarried her whole life long (nor a man, actually? i think??), much less an older genderqueer person. and it's just really lovely to remember that even with the parts of you screaming "UNLOVED UNLOVED UNLOVED" to know there is still a future where, even if no one else has got you, that you yourself do. you can protect your own peace as you get older. and you can still be happy

it doesn't fix me automatically, of course. but it's comforting to have a real-life example like her to hold onto, to remind myself that even of "the worst" happens and i never marry: it's okay. that's a perfectly fine option. i'd be in pretty good company