Dependapotamus. I heard the term pretty early in in my marriage to my military husband. Stuck in Guam with very little contact home, completely dependent on a man I had only known for a year and a half over Skype, never having lived on my own before… hearing a term that completely encapsulated who I was and what I did was horrifying. I didn’t work. I had no car, developed a crippling case of social anxiety, and no desire to leave the house without this stranger I married. I had no kids, which made my status even lower in the eyes of every responsible human on the planet. I literally stayed home all day everyday with nothing to do but eat, tidy, process the occasional basket of laundry… eventually we got a dog and I worked on training him but there were still many hours in the day lost to binging tv shows and worrying.
My husband said it with such ease… casually mocking this hypothetical Hippopotamus-sized leech on society with his buddy, never once stopping to consider that I, his wife, the woman he promised to honor and cherish forever… not only fit the criteria perfectly, but couldn’t escape the weight of guilt the label carried with it. I was this person. I still am. I didn’t want to be someone worthy of being mocked. I didn’t want to be a fat, selfish, lazy blight on society. When I tried to bring my insecurity, my fear, my disgust that this is how the world must see me… when I tried to say all this to my husband, he half-heartedly tried to reassure me that I was most certainly NOT a dependapotamus. But still… the guilt remained.
It wasn’t until a few weeks ago, when I was visiting my sister for my birthday, that I finally felt free from the burden of this rank. I casually dropped the term in front of my sisters, self-mocking, but drenched with insecurity, they were both horrified. My younger sister said, “What a horrible word! You are NOT a dependapotamus. But you know what? No one ever called that is.” This struck me cold. I realized that she was right. No woman married to a military man, stuck at home in some foreign place, far from family and friends, possibly raising children, DESERVED to be called that horrible name. Here I was, terrified of being lumped in with some disgusting hippo-like creature, mooching of the hard-working, upstanding military men… when they probably all felt the exact same way. Normal women. Married and struggling to feel worthy. Riddled with insecurities. I am not better than them. I am not different. Because we are all supporting our men. Cleaning houses. Raising children. Doing the invisible work of stay-at-home mothers and homemakers.
I am not a dependapotamus. But I identify with every other woman who has ever worried that she was one. And if I am a dependapotamus, than my husband is too because he depends on me just as much as I depend on him.
