Got Manalo?

I am a minimalist in every sense of the word. I wasn't always, I've spent more than my fare share of time and money at Chanel. Thousands of dollars on handbags and shoes from Prada to Manalo, because when all else fails if you have those you'll be allright. Ah yes, my years spent chasing external bliss! Engaged to multiple men, but never quite being willing to follow through with the act. The notion that I was somehow incomplete until I was someones wife seemed absurd even as a child. Societal pressures were greatest in my twenties, so I made the attempt several times. By thirty I was being groomed to be the attornys wife, complete with a $30,000 rock and a new sports car. I had come from money as a child, prior to the oil bust my family was one of the wealthiest in the state. But he had been dirt poor as a kid, so money, or rather the acquisition of money, was his god. I kept trying to picture us with children, or after the children were grown and we were alone again, or if some catastrophic event put one of us in a state of utter dependence on the other, or (this was the biggie) what if he found out I had an opinion? So after a three-year-long engagement (during which time I walked my dad out of a life well lived) I traded him, the rock, and the car, for a man who was unemployed, lived with his mother, and gave a shit about what I thought. I still believe marraige to be a publicity stunt. I recall the case worker (double agent) at one point telling me I needed to get married to someone in order to help get my children back. This in a state (Oklahoma) smack dab in the middle of the bible belt where divorce rates are the 2nd highest in the nation. The very religious sectors screaming about the sanctity of marraige, and how same sex unions are an abomination, have a higher divorce rate than Atheists!