I have a friend

She's a single mother, unemployed, living with her parents. She lives with and looks after her four-year-old son, Hassan, but he's informally "adopted" by her aunt and uncle, who pay for all his needs and take him along on their vacations.

Today I got an SMS from her: This is what life will be like as long as I'm single. I have to buy clothes according to my aunt's taste. Hassan has three sets of baju kurung for Hari Raya and not one of them matches my baju.

You know that silly tradition some Malay families have of dressing every one of their members in the same colour on Hari Raya. It endures, like... well, like silly traditions.

Anyway in my mind I was thinking, you don't pay for your own baju kurungs, which cost hundreds of dollars, much less your son's, so I don't see why you should whine about whether the colours match, but I didn't want to be mean so I asked her why and all that.

Then at night I got another SMS from her: I like my life now but there are times when I wish I was married -- when I go shopping, when I go NTUC and Hari Raya.

I realised all three involved spending money; basically all she wanted a husband for was disposable cash. I don't think it's ever occurred to her that maybe a husband won't be able to sustain her shopping and Hari Raya needs (she spends as much as her mother does, which is as much as my mother does, which is more than most working women do) on his single income.

I realised also that her worldview was probably greatly influenced by her parents' lifestyles: her mother's a housewife and her father pays for everything. I don't think she realises that if she marries a man who's not, like, 45, his salary probably won't be as big as her father's, a man who's worked for 20 years. I don't think she realises how expensive it is to live in Singapore, especially if you're starting out on your own. I don't think she's ever thought about any of these things.

I mean, my father has said I don't have to work if I don't want to, and frankly, I don't want to. I'd rather stay home and do yoga all day, then make myself intelligent by reading good books and The Economist. But I work anyway because I don't want my boyfriend and future husband to die of starvation. I want to help him pay the bills, even if it means having to spend most of my time listening to anodyne speeches and feeling repressed by the government. I also want to pay my parents back for my education and a lifetime of easy living.

Work tires me out so much I have no energy for exercise even on my days off, and I'm getting flabby, and dumb and ignorant and jejune. All because of the incontrovertible love I have for the people around me. I'm such a fucking martyr, no?

On the other hand, my friend's brother pays for her mobile phone bills, her parents pay for her food, her clothes and her shopping, her aunt and uncle pay for her son's upbringing. She's a princess and she doesn't even realise it.

But you know, I'd still rather be tired, stupid, boring, broke me anyway. We martyrs are arrogant like that.