I'm at low ebb. The lowest of low tides. I have nothing, nothing going on. I've been reading a lot of blogs focused on dating and relationships and sex and the interplay of stereotypes and expectation in each and all of these things and thinking about the interplay of all those stereotypes and expectations with both sexual ideas and loving ideals and the ways we conduct relationships.
But I don't have any conclusions from any of that.
At a certain point, reading something like The A(n)nals of Online Dating crosses a line from funny to abusive, and as a friend of mine said about It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: "You can only watch people be assholes to each other for so long." In the end, somewhere between nine and eleven pages in, I only end up feeling sorry for these people, these people that have no idea how to get what they want. Or even, that don't know what they want. It's heartbreaking. And I want to take each of them by the shoulders and give them a gentle shake and tell them to get it together, that life is full of disappointments, and that the only real guarantor of happiness is a long perspective.
I was talking about perspective this weekend, too, trying to sort out at what point altering your perspective on an emotional reaction become rationalization instead of healthy adjustment. Or, more accurately, I was trying to make a case for pure feeling that just wasn't happening. No matter how true I feel a rush of joy or a rush of sadness, it is just a perspective, and there's nothing sacred about anything.
I'm not as smart as I think I am.
Two weeks ago, I became completely embroiled in Susannah Breslin's Letters From Johns, for surprisingly similar reasons. There is enough there to disgust me, to turn my stomach and make me doubt the goodness of men in general, but there's also enough vulnerability, thinly veiled, and enough genuine confusion to make me want to do something. There's enough yearning and searching there, among those johns, to make me think that someone ought to be taking them by the hand and putting them on a different path. Maybe that's what the working girls are doing. Maybe that's what the working girls are hindering. It's hard to say. Sex is so fraught with terror.
Isn't it sad we're all so terrified of something that ought to be simple and uncomplicated and full of love? Or at least, trust.
But there I go again, wanting that pure emotional experience. That doesn't exist. It's all a matter of perspective. I speak from my perspective, and it is distinct and defined and I can try and adjust and that may change my emotional reaction. Maybe I don't want to change my reaction. Maybe I like compassion. It's a form of power, after all. All that caring.
What I mean to say is, I'm at low ebb. I have a thousand thoughts and there's a thread somewhere but I can't grasp it and I can't pull it and I can't spotlight it and make it easy to follow. I have nothing to say because I have everything to say. I can't bring any clarity to anything.
So I try and be oblique. You should see the backlog of half-started and absolutely atrocious poetry I've got catalogued. "Weave me a crown of ruby-colored leaves, and I will keep you against the winter..."
I don't know how I'm going to get through the winter.
Showing posts with label death of fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death of fantasy. Show all posts
Monday, December 5, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
Identity
I think I'm having an identiy crisis.
Or, I was. Maybe I still am? It's hard to tell. I'm certainly more than usually interested in certain questions that are often thought to be beastly and/or immature to expend mental energy on.
But here's what I've learned in the last four days:
I don't have to live up to anyone's expectations or ideas of good.
I mean, that should be self-evident, right? And when I say I've learned this, I don't really mean I'm ready to implement it. I will certainly still be chasing external validation for years to come.
But... when I don't get that support, that pat on the head, that "Well done!" murmured into my hair while someone wraps arms around me and holds me close, maybe I'll remember this, right now, and remember also that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. If I'm satisfied, then it's enough. Maybe I'll remember. Probably it'll take "learning" this several more times before that happens.
Which brings me to the question that I'm now wrestling with.
Am I satisfied?
No.
Why not?
I don't know. I can't separate my dissatisfaction with the ways in which I am perceived and receieved and judged and held to account from any internal dissatisfaction that may (or may not) be festering. Part of me wants to lay whatever nagging sense of "not doing good enough" I have lurking in my breast right at the feet of other people. But, that would be too easy.
We are each of us responsible for ourselves. We're responsible, ultimately, for finding our own happiness, for living our own lives, for coming to our own fulfillment. To push that task onto someone else is the height of selfishness. So, laying any dissatisfaction with my life and the things I do on someone else's shoulders, anyone else's shoulder's, is not a thing I am comfortable doing. I don't want to be that person that is selfishly putting their burdens on another.
Some part of me feels that people who love you should willingly shoulder some of that burden for you, though. Some part of me feels that loving someone is the act of attempting to ease burdens, without being asked. Pay attention, recognize need, help. That's how love behaves. Isn't it? That's how love should behave. That's how we who love should behave. But by that measure, there are strangers out there that love me more than the people I say "I love you" too, and strangers that I love more than those, since there are strangers I am more capable (and sometimes more willing) to help than my loved ones.
Perhaps it's true that familiarity breeds contempt. We can't help but start to take for granted that which we feel entitled to by virtue of some concept of love. And once we start to take actions of love for granted, they no longer seem like acts of love; they become merely what we are due, and we demand ever-greater feats of validation, of proof, of love and sacrifice to continue believing that we are loved.
It's a neverending spiral, moving up or down as you see it, positive or negative, up to the blissful heights of heavenly perfection in which we have obliterated a self for another and they have done the same and we have essentially swapped care of ourselves, or down to the depths of hellish despair where nothing is ever good enough, where nothing we give nor nothing we ever receive manages to prove that we still love.
But if familiarity breeds contempt and there's no way around it, then there's no hope for any long-term relationship. We should all wander the earth as half-strangers, helping when we think we are needed, being helped by those that think we need it, and allowing the connection to fizzle out as soon as whatever it is has passed. We should never try to develop or deepen our relationships. We should be forever generous, loving strangers to each other.
How depressing.
I don't want to live in a world of strangers! Even generous, loving ones.
So how do we continually prove that we love, and continually accept that we are loved, without starting to trod that spiralling path that leads to utter disaffection or complete loss of self? How do we tread water and still get where we want to go?
I don't know.
I would like to know, though. I would like to know how to be happy for praise, hungry for it even, without trying to curry it. I would like to know how to not feel guilty when I can't help someone that something in me whispers I ought to know how to help. I would like to not be contemptuous of the familiar comforts that were once new and fresh and perfectly capable of lifting me up.
Perhaps I haven't resolved the identity crisis yet. Perhaps if there's a solid enough sense of self, of purpose, of skill and craft and art and love, of ideas, these aren't questions that need to be asked or pondered.
So. Am I satisfied? No. And it is my responsibility to change that. But it would be good to be loved, anyway. While I do that.
Or, I was. Maybe I still am? It's hard to tell. I'm certainly more than usually interested in certain questions that are often thought to be beastly and/or immature to expend mental energy on.
But here's what I've learned in the last four days:
I don't have to live up to anyone's expectations or ideas of good.
I mean, that should be self-evident, right? And when I say I've learned this, I don't really mean I'm ready to implement it. I will certainly still be chasing external validation for years to come.
But... when I don't get that support, that pat on the head, that "Well done!" murmured into my hair while someone wraps arms around me and holds me close, maybe I'll remember this, right now, and remember also that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. If I'm satisfied, then it's enough. Maybe I'll remember. Probably it'll take "learning" this several more times before that happens.
Which brings me to the question that I'm now wrestling with.
Am I satisfied?
No.
Why not?
I don't know. I can't separate my dissatisfaction with the ways in which I am perceived and receieved and judged and held to account from any internal dissatisfaction that may (or may not) be festering. Part of me wants to lay whatever nagging sense of "not doing good enough" I have lurking in my breast right at the feet of other people. But, that would be too easy.
We are each of us responsible for ourselves. We're responsible, ultimately, for finding our own happiness, for living our own lives, for coming to our own fulfillment. To push that task onto someone else is the height of selfishness. So, laying any dissatisfaction with my life and the things I do on someone else's shoulders, anyone else's shoulder's, is not a thing I am comfortable doing. I don't want to be that person that is selfishly putting their burdens on another.
Some part of me feels that people who love you should willingly shoulder some of that burden for you, though. Some part of me feels that loving someone is the act of attempting to ease burdens, without being asked. Pay attention, recognize need, help. That's how love behaves. Isn't it? That's how love should behave. That's how we who love should behave. But by that measure, there are strangers out there that love me more than the people I say "I love you" too, and strangers that I love more than those, since there are strangers I am more capable (and sometimes more willing) to help than my loved ones.
Perhaps it's true that familiarity breeds contempt. We can't help but start to take for granted that which we feel entitled to by virtue of some concept of love. And once we start to take actions of love for granted, they no longer seem like acts of love; they become merely what we are due, and we demand ever-greater feats of validation, of proof, of love and sacrifice to continue believing that we are loved.
It's a neverending spiral, moving up or down as you see it, positive or negative, up to the blissful heights of heavenly perfection in which we have obliterated a self for another and they have done the same and we have essentially swapped care of ourselves, or down to the depths of hellish despair where nothing is ever good enough, where nothing we give nor nothing we ever receive manages to prove that we still love.
But if familiarity breeds contempt and there's no way around it, then there's no hope for any long-term relationship. We should all wander the earth as half-strangers, helping when we think we are needed, being helped by those that think we need it, and allowing the connection to fizzle out as soon as whatever it is has passed. We should never try to develop or deepen our relationships. We should be forever generous, loving strangers to each other.
How depressing.
I don't want to live in a world of strangers! Even generous, loving ones.
So how do we continually prove that we love, and continually accept that we are loved, without starting to trod that spiralling path that leads to utter disaffection or complete loss of self? How do we tread water and still get where we want to go?
I don't know.
I would like to know, though. I would like to know how to be happy for praise, hungry for it even, without trying to curry it. I would like to know how to not feel guilty when I can't help someone that something in me whispers I ought to know how to help. I would like to not be contemptuous of the familiar comforts that were once new and fresh and perfectly capable of lifting me up.
Perhaps I haven't resolved the identity crisis yet. Perhaps if there's a solid enough sense of self, of purpose, of skill and craft and art and love, of ideas, these aren't questions that need to be asked or pondered.
So. Am I satisfied? No. And it is my responsibility to change that. But it would be good to be loved, anyway. While I do that.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Aging
I think being old has snuck up on me, and then jumped me in a dark alley and forever left its mark on my life.
I'm 27. True fact. I've traveled the world, been married and divorced, given birth, been abandoned. Now I've got a job and a 401(k) and I drop my daughter at kindergarten every morning on my way into the office. She takes dance classes on Saturday. I schedule phone calls with my best friends. I shop online because it's easier. I have a cocktail or a beer after work. I'm in bed, asleep, by 10:30 most nights.
This is what old people life is like, isn't it?
I mean, I could still go out on Wednesday nights if I wanted to, but getting five hours of sleep and being slightly drunk when I wake up is hardly worth it when all that's going to happen is I'm going to go to a bar (alone), sit there (alone) and then go home (alone). Plus, I'll probably end up spending more money than I ought to, considering I really want to figure out a way to rationalize the purchase of a ridiculously expensive dress that I have nowhere to wear, and it's really hard to do that when you just dropped $25 on craft cocktails.
So basically, it's not worth it to go out and be wild and crazy and young. I don't want to go out unless I have guaranteed sparkling conversation. Which means plans made in advance, and I am so horrible at asking people to do things and most of the time it doesn't work out anyway. So why bother? I can watch Netflix in bed or write about theater events I haven't seen or read 10,000 word articles about Dominionism instead.
I'm old, guys. I'm a fuddy-duddy. A spinster.
It won't be long until my jowls start to sag and my tits are around my knees and I wear support stockings and complain about my knees. (Actually, I already have some serious wrinkles and I am more apt to complain about my cartilage-less hips. For real. They hurt.)
I'm old. It's pretty terrifying. I'm shallow, and so being old also means no longer being pretty, and that's really, really scary. I honestly don't know if my self-esteem will be able to handle the blow of no longer being looked at by men.
But it also means that nothing I accomplish between now and my death will be as notable as it might have been. I am not a prodigy. I am not a wunderkind. Even if I manage to publish a book or write for the New York Times or really just about anything that I might want to do, it won't be the kind of show-stopping accomplishment that it would have been if I'd done it young. Somewhere in my head, I wanted to be Tavi Gevinson, and now I have to deal with the fact that I'm not. I'm not that great. Even if I manage to accomplish great things eventually, I'll not be great-great, just normal-great.
Nothing will ever come ahead of schedule. Now I'm stuck in the local lanes, slogging my way through all that detritus.
I'm old. I'm scared. I guess this is growing up.
I'm 27. True fact. I've traveled the world, been married and divorced, given birth, been abandoned. Now I've got a job and a 401(k) and I drop my daughter at kindergarten every morning on my way into the office. She takes dance classes on Saturday. I schedule phone calls with my best friends. I shop online because it's easier. I have a cocktail or a beer after work. I'm in bed, asleep, by 10:30 most nights.
This is what old people life is like, isn't it?
I mean, I could still go out on Wednesday nights if I wanted to, but getting five hours of sleep and being slightly drunk when I wake up is hardly worth it when all that's going to happen is I'm going to go to a bar (alone), sit there (alone) and then go home (alone). Plus, I'll probably end up spending more money than I ought to, considering I really want to figure out a way to rationalize the purchase of a ridiculously expensive dress that I have nowhere to wear, and it's really hard to do that when you just dropped $25 on craft cocktails.
So basically, it's not worth it to go out and be wild and crazy and young. I don't want to go out unless I have guaranteed sparkling conversation. Which means plans made in advance, and I am so horrible at asking people to do things and most of the time it doesn't work out anyway. So why bother? I can watch Netflix in bed or write about theater events I haven't seen or read 10,000 word articles about Dominionism instead.
I'm old, guys. I'm a fuddy-duddy. A spinster.
It won't be long until my jowls start to sag and my tits are around my knees and I wear support stockings and complain about my knees. (Actually, I already have some serious wrinkles and I am more apt to complain about my cartilage-less hips. For real. They hurt.)
I'm old. It's pretty terrifying. I'm shallow, and so being old also means no longer being pretty, and that's really, really scary. I honestly don't know if my self-esteem will be able to handle the blow of no longer being looked at by men.
But it also means that nothing I accomplish between now and my death will be as notable as it might have been. I am not a prodigy. I am not a wunderkind. Even if I manage to publish a book or write for the New York Times or really just about anything that I might want to do, it won't be the kind of show-stopping accomplishment that it would have been if I'd done it young. Somewhere in my head, I wanted to be Tavi Gevinson, and now I have to deal with the fact that I'm not. I'm not that great. Even if I manage to accomplish great things eventually, I'll not be great-great, just normal-great.
Nothing will ever come ahead of schedule. Now I'm stuck in the local lanes, slogging my way through all that detritus.
I'm old. I'm scared. I guess this is growing up.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Don't Settle, or, There's Enough Happiness To Go Around
Today, a friend of mine dug up a three-and-a-half-year-old piece from the Atlantic called "Marry Him!: The Case for Mr. Good Enough." I have a vague recollection of there being some kind of stir around it back in 2008, but in the early part of 2008 I was heavily pregnant and also completely in love, so I wasn't really paying much attention to tomes with dating or marriage advice.
Today, a single mama with a case of the lonelies, I read through the whole thing. Actually, I've read through the whole thing three times now (my boss really loves me today, guys) because the first time was full of so much emotional reaction that I had to read it a second time to get a rational read on it, and the second time was so full of incredulity at the terrible analytic capacity and also the extreme sense of over-privilege on display that I had to read it a third time to make sure I wasn't emotionally over-reacting again.
It's HORRIFYING. Really, truly horrifying.
The basic premise of the piece is that if you're looking to create a stable family unit, you don't need grand passion in your choice of partner. And on its face, that's a true and valid statement. A stable family unit is not the primary goal of most people out there looking for a life partner, though. The author takes issue with this fact, reflecting on her own dating experiences and those of her friends, and finally coming to the conclusion that a stable family unit is the goal that everyone OUGHT to have. Those that have made the trade off of passion for stability and complain about it now are lucky to have made the choices they did, and the author can't believe that it took her own self so long to figure out what she ought to want.
And that's where everything she says just breaks down and becomes the kind of drivel that I hate to read but can't stop myself from compulsively looking at.
Moral prescriptives about what people ought to want are always fraught with logical inconsistencies and mental acrobatics. Ms. Gottlieb is no exception. She starts with the realization that she's not happy. She then constructs an argument for why she'd be happier if she'd made other choices earlier in her life. The whole thing is the study of an acute case of Frost syndrome, in which "the road less traveled" is held up as some sort of saving grace.
But some of the ways in which she attempts to justify her position are interesting to me, a single mother in my 20s (rather than my 40s) who is also single, and also gets powerful lonely on occasion. The subtext of many of the most offensive statements in the piece make it clear that I am not the target audience for this piece. And I can't help but feel that perhaps if I could infuse some of my own perspective into Ms. Gottlieb's thought processes, I might be able to help her out a bit.
For starters, what is a stable family unit? Why is a stable family unit irrevocably and for all time a man, a woman, and two point three children living in a house with a white picket fence and a rose garden and a dog? On paper, I'm a single mother, but I live in a house with my parents (both my biological parents, in their 25th year of marriage), my biological child (concieved in a foreign country and born out of wedlock and with no legal father) and the two adult children of my oldest sister, who is actually my half sister (the product of my father's first marriage). No dog, no white picket fence. We're pretty stable, despite the tensions that sometimes erupt. I would even go so far as to call us a stable family unit. And my daughter certainly gets the advantage of all that stability and also all that attention.
The idea that two married, hetero-sexual people raising a child is the only thing that qualifies as a stable family unit is tied to the statistics about the children of single parents (specifically single mothers) that exist out there, and I'll be the first to admit that such statistics sound dismal. But I have always questioned those statistics, and not just because statistics can be manipulated to show just about anything. No, I've never been fully convinced that the relationship between single-parent households and under performance at school or behavior problems wasn't completely spurious. Because here's a little secret: most single-parent households are also POOR.
Yeah, shocking, I know. But true. And poverty carries it with a whole host of issues that might affect things like school performance and behavior a whole lot more than not having a daddy. Like, hunger. It's really hard to concentrate when you're hungry. Also, malnutrition in infants can and does lead to diminished mental capacity, period. And I've never seen a study that controlled completely for the variables that come with poverty when trumpeting the ills of single parenthood.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Gottlieb doesn't have to worry about poverty. So I think she can probably settle down a little on the desire to find a husband so that she can create a stable family unit. I'm pretty sure she can do that just fine on her own. Isn't that empowering?
But I don't really think that this woman wants to find a husband so desperately so that she can create a stable family unit. I think she's lonely.
And hey, I have a lot of sympathy for that condition. I suffer from it myself.
But here's what I don't get: she also acknowledges that most of her married friends are ALSO LONELY. SO, she's single and lonely, and her married friends are married and lonely, and it's better to be married and lonely because it's easier to manage kids when you've got a partner to help you out.
SO, a stable family unit is not actually one that's best for the kids, it's the one that minimizes stress on the parents. And sure, as someone that has a lot of help with her daughter in the form of the very non-traditional stable family unit I enjoy, I'll be the first to say that help with kids is a godsend. But again I say unto you: Help with kids doesn't come only in the form of a husband that watches them while you eat lunch and takes the trash out. (Seriously, these are her desired traits in a mate.) You've got lots of single parent friends, you imply. Why don't you all get together and crowd-source the kid watching while you go on dates and have lives?
Because the thing this woman says that offends me the most is this: "With my nonworking life consumed by thoughts of potty training and playdates, I’ve become a far less interesting person than the one who went on hiking adventures and performed at comedy clubs."
Why don't you still do some of those things? You can. I promise.
You don't give up your life to have a child. You don't have to, and the kid will be a better person for you being an interesting, complete, well-rounded person than they will by you being a slave to them. They will be a better person even if they spend a weekend at "Auntie Em's" house now and again, or spend a week with Grandma while you go to Colombia. Really, I promise. It's not child abuse to get away from your kid now and again.
The rest of Gottlieb's dating advice, and exhortations to settle, spring from a complete misunderstanding of the difference between "lust" and "romance." Yeah, that biker that runs guns in his spare time probably gets your motor running in a way that the mild-mannered accountant with allergies to everything under the sun doesn't. But your choice is not dichotomous. Life is not black and white. And the lust you feel for the biker is not "romance." It's ADRENALINE.
Romance comes in a whole host of unexpected packages. For that matter, lust comes in a whole host of unexpected packages. And while you may not fall in love with everyone you fall in lust with, to go from that to the idea that you don't need any sexual attraction to your partner is a leap of logic that I can't even really quite follow. Yes, it's a cliche that long-married people don't have a lot of sex, but to turn that into the support for the argument that marrying someone you never want to have sex with is a good idea is just a little... off. To put it mildly.
So Gottlieb takes her own loneliness, her own frustrations with her (self-chosen, I must say) single parenthood, and turns that into a prescriptive for women everywhere. Marry a man so you don't do what I did? Settle for a man that's good enough so you don't choose to go to a sperm bank so you can have kids? Settle for Mr. Right Now so that you can be lonely with someone later on? I don't really get it.
Here's a better idea: be happy. Stop comparing your life to the lives of your friends and appreciate your life for what it is. Has it ever occured to you that you and everyone you know are unhappy because you're all desperately trying to impress each other instead of enjoying yourselves? Stop competing for happiness, because happiness isn't a pie that the world will run out of. There is more than enough happiness for everyone, more and much more than enough to go around, and you can be happy and they can be happy and I can be happy and we can all be happy. Even if we're lonely sometimes, even if it's hard sometimes, we can be happy. And if we took the road less traveled, there would still be dark places and you, Ms. Gottlieb, would have written a piece called, "Don't Marry Him!: The Case For Holding Out For Mr. Right."
Some people are never happy, and I'm sorry for that. But playing to the insecurities of single women, and exhorting young women to "settle" simply to avoid a fate that in your case actually looks pretty rosy from where I sit, is a pretty awful thing to do. Your life is wonderful. Deal with it.
Today, a single mama with a case of the lonelies, I read through the whole thing. Actually, I've read through the whole thing three times now (my boss really loves me today, guys) because the first time was full of so much emotional reaction that I had to read it a second time to get a rational read on it, and the second time was so full of incredulity at the terrible analytic capacity and also the extreme sense of over-privilege on display that I had to read it a third time to make sure I wasn't emotionally over-reacting again.
It's HORRIFYING. Really, truly horrifying.
The basic premise of the piece is that if you're looking to create a stable family unit, you don't need grand passion in your choice of partner. And on its face, that's a true and valid statement. A stable family unit is not the primary goal of most people out there looking for a life partner, though. The author takes issue with this fact, reflecting on her own dating experiences and those of her friends, and finally coming to the conclusion that a stable family unit is the goal that everyone OUGHT to have. Those that have made the trade off of passion for stability and complain about it now are lucky to have made the choices they did, and the author can't believe that it took her own self so long to figure out what she ought to want.
And that's where everything she says just breaks down and becomes the kind of drivel that I hate to read but can't stop myself from compulsively looking at.
Moral prescriptives about what people ought to want are always fraught with logical inconsistencies and mental acrobatics. Ms. Gottlieb is no exception. She starts with the realization that she's not happy. She then constructs an argument for why she'd be happier if she'd made other choices earlier in her life. The whole thing is the study of an acute case of Frost syndrome, in which "the road less traveled" is held up as some sort of saving grace.
But some of the ways in which she attempts to justify her position are interesting to me, a single mother in my 20s (rather than my 40s) who is also single, and also gets powerful lonely on occasion. The subtext of many of the most offensive statements in the piece make it clear that I am not the target audience for this piece. And I can't help but feel that perhaps if I could infuse some of my own perspective into Ms. Gottlieb's thought processes, I might be able to help her out a bit.
For starters, what is a stable family unit? Why is a stable family unit irrevocably and for all time a man, a woman, and two point three children living in a house with a white picket fence and a rose garden and a dog? On paper, I'm a single mother, but I live in a house with my parents (both my biological parents, in their 25th year of marriage), my biological child (concieved in a foreign country and born out of wedlock and with no legal father) and the two adult children of my oldest sister, who is actually my half sister (the product of my father's first marriage). No dog, no white picket fence. We're pretty stable, despite the tensions that sometimes erupt. I would even go so far as to call us a stable family unit. And my daughter certainly gets the advantage of all that stability and also all that attention.
The idea that two married, hetero-sexual people raising a child is the only thing that qualifies as a stable family unit is tied to the statistics about the children of single parents (specifically single mothers) that exist out there, and I'll be the first to admit that such statistics sound dismal. But I have always questioned those statistics, and not just because statistics can be manipulated to show just about anything. No, I've never been fully convinced that the relationship between single-parent households and under performance at school or behavior problems wasn't completely spurious. Because here's a little secret: most single-parent households are also POOR.
Yeah, shocking, I know. But true. And poverty carries it with a whole host of issues that might affect things like school performance and behavior a whole lot more than not having a daddy. Like, hunger. It's really hard to concentrate when you're hungry. Also, malnutrition in infants can and does lead to diminished mental capacity, period. And I've never seen a study that controlled completely for the variables that come with poverty when trumpeting the ills of single parenthood.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Gottlieb doesn't have to worry about poverty. So I think she can probably settle down a little on the desire to find a husband so that she can create a stable family unit. I'm pretty sure she can do that just fine on her own. Isn't that empowering?
But I don't really think that this woman wants to find a husband so desperately so that she can create a stable family unit. I think she's lonely.
And hey, I have a lot of sympathy for that condition. I suffer from it myself.
But here's what I don't get: she also acknowledges that most of her married friends are ALSO LONELY. SO, she's single and lonely, and her married friends are married and lonely, and it's better to be married and lonely because it's easier to manage kids when you've got a partner to help you out.
SO, a stable family unit is not actually one that's best for the kids, it's the one that minimizes stress on the parents. And sure, as someone that has a lot of help with her daughter in the form of the very non-traditional stable family unit I enjoy, I'll be the first to say that help with kids is a godsend. But again I say unto you: Help with kids doesn't come only in the form of a husband that watches them while you eat lunch and takes the trash out. (Seriously, these are her desired traits in a mate.) You've got lots of single parent friends, you imply. Why don't you all get together and crowd-source the kid watching while you go on dates and have lives?
Because the thing this woman says that offends me the most is this: "With my nonworking life consumed by thoughts of potty training and playdates, I’ve become a far less interesting person than the one who went on hiking adventures and performed at comedy clubs."
Why don't you still do some of those things? You can. I promise.
You don't give up your life to have a child. You don't have to, and the kid will be a better person for you being an interesting, complete, well-rounded person than they will by you being a slave to them. They will be a better person even if they spend a weekend at "Auntie Em's" house now and again, or spend a week with Grandma while you go to Colombia. Really, I promise. It's not child abuse to get away from your kid now and again.
The rest of Gottlieb's dating advice, and exhortations to settle, spring from a complete misunderstanding of the difference between "lust" and "romance." Yeah, that biker that runs guns in his spare time probably gets your motor running in a way that the mild-mannered accountant with allergies to everything under the sun doesn't. But your choice is not dichotomous. Life is not black and white. And the lust you feel for the biker is not "romance." It's ADRENALINE.
Romance comes in a whole host of unexpected packages. For that matter, lust comes in a whole host of unexpected packages. And while you may not fall in love with everyone you fall in lust with, to go from that to the idea that you don't need any sexual attraction to your partner is a leap of logic that I can't even really quite follow. Yes, it's a cliche that long-married people don't have a lot of sex, but to turn that into the support for the argument that marrying someone you never want to have sex with is a good idea is just a little... off. To put it mildly.
So Gottlieb takes her own loneliness, her own frustrations with her (self-chosen, I must say) single parenthood, and turns that into a prescriptive for women everywhere. Marry a man so you don't do what I did? Settle for a man that's good enough so you don't choose to go to a sperm bank so you can have kids? Settle for Mr. Right Now so that you can be lonely with someone later on? I don't really get it.
Here's a better idea: be happy. Stop comparing your life to the lives of your friends and appreciate your life for what it is. Has it ever occured to you that you and everyone you know are unhappy because you're all desperately trying to impress each other instead of enjoying yourselves? Stop competing for happiness, because happiness isn't a pie that the world will run out of. There is more than enough happiness for everyone, more and much more than enough to go around, and you can be happy and they can be happy and I can be happy and we can all be happy. Even if we're lonely sometimes, even if it's hard sometimes, we can be happy. And if we took the road less traveled, there would still be dark places and you, Ms. Gottlieb, would have written a piece called, "Don't Marry Him!: The Case For Holding Out For Mr. Right."
Some people are never happy, and I'm sorry for that. But playing to the insecurities of single women, and exhorting young women to "settle" simply to avoid a fate that in your case actually looks pretty rosy from where I sit, is a pretty awful thing to do. Your life is wonderful. Deal with it.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
I Will Never Be A (Paid) Writer
This is a sad realization for me. Actually, it's a downright heart-shattering, soul-crushing revelation, but I guess it's time to face facts. I won't cry forever, I promise, just for the next ten years.
And the facts are, I will probably never get paid for anything I write. And no one will ever read it, apart from you few, dear, darling readers. (I love you. Don't ever leave me. No really: DON'T. Please.)
See, generally short-form publishing falls into two broad categories these days. Ponderous and heavily-researched tracts, and essays of emotional vulnerability humored up with liberal doses flippancy.
I don't have the discipline for research. Honestly. I just don't. I had a good run in college, and I'm sure that if you managed to find a professor that remembered me at all, they'd remember my stellar research papers because I always had interesting theses and I can actually construct a proper sentence and every once in a while I was able to make dry, dull, academia not make you want to slit your wrists through the judicious use of peppy adjectives and anecdotes.
(I am still pretty proud of some of the papers I wrote in college. "America shouldn't seek global hegemony because it is MORALLY INCONSISTENT WITH AMERICA'S VALUES" is one of my best works EVER.)
But, my papers would never be described as well-researched or well-annotated. I did the bare minimum in that regard, because I just don't like research.
Also, I never graduated college, so the idea that anyone would pay me to write academia is pretty funny.
On the other end of the spectrum, there is perhaps more promise! I mean, I do personal essays like no one's business. I can write about my life forever because I am just that narcissistic, and also because I have fully bought into the maxim that you must "write what you know" and really the only thing I know is my life. Everything else is mere theoretical knowledge, and that's not really knowledge so much as conjecture, since theory is grounded in naught but conjecture.
But then there's that "funny" requirement that is increasingly being satisfied by a display of flippancy that I just don't have. I'm not flippant. I am not ironic. I am intensely, terribly, vulnerably EARNEST. I'm like a puppy that just wants to be loved. (But I don't pee on the floor. I have a toddler that refuses to get potty-trained to handle that for me.)
I'm not funny. And I'm especially not funny when I'm displaying vulnerability because the last thing I want is for people to LAUGH at my EXISTENTIAL PAIN. Seriously. Who wants to have someone laugh in their face when they're crying? (On the inside, guys. I don't cry in front of people. I'm British that way.)
SO... that's that. No more dreams of a daily byline on Thought Catalog or hellogiggles. No more wistful longings that Salon would hire me to take over Broadsheet since Tracy Clark-Flory went back to being a full-time sex writer. (Added bonus of the Salon daydream: the idea that Alex Pareene would become my bestie. That man is ACTUALLY FUNNY, and about politics no less. Also, he smokes. It would be so great to have a bestie that smokes so I didn't feel so guilty about my still-occasional habit.)
I mean, I can keep plugging away on this collection of short stories that's clogging up my hard drive (and I WILL) and sketching out the outline of a novel, but no one's going to publish it unless my name already means something and my name will never mean anything because I'm a bad researcher and I'm not funny.
Life's a bitch.
(xo!)
And the facts are, I will probably never get paid for anything I write. And no one will ever read it, apart from you few, dear, darling readers. (I love you. Don't ever leave me. No really: DON'T. Please.)
See, generally short-form publishing falls into two broad categories these days. Ponderous and heavily-researched tracts, and essays of emotional vulnerability humored up with liberal doses flippancy.
I don't have the discipline for research. Honestly. I just don't. I had a good run in college, and I'm sure that if you managed to find a professor that remembered me at all, they'd remember my stellar research papers because I always had interesting theses and I can actually construct a proper sentence and every once in a while I was able to make dry, dull, academia not make you want to slit your wrists through the judicious use of peppy adjectives and anecdotes.
(I am still pretty proud of some of the papers I wrote in college. "America shouldn't seek global hegemony because it is MORALLY INCONSISTENT WITH AMERICA'S VALUES" is one of my best works EVER.)
But, my papers would never be described as well-researched or well-annotated. I did the bare minimum in that regard, because I just don't like research.
Also, I never graduated college, so the idea that anyone would pay me to write academia is pretty funny.
On the other end of the spectrum, there is perhaps more promise! I mean, I do personal essays like no one's business. I can write about my life forever because I am just that narcissistic, and also because I have fully bought into the maxim that you must "write what you know" and really the only thing I know is my life. Everything else is mere theoretical knowledge, and that's not really knowledge so much as conjecture, since theory is grounded in naught but conjecture.
But then there's that "funny" requirement that is increasingly being satisfied by a display of flippancy that I just don't have. I'm not flippant. I am not ironic. I am intensely, terribly, vulnerably EARNEST. I'm like a puppy that just wants to be loved. (But I don't pee on the floor. I have a toddler that refuses to get potty-trained to handle that for me.)
I'm not funny. And I'm especially not funny when I'm displaying vulnerability because the last thing I want is for people to LAUGH at my EXISTENTIAL PAIN. Seriously. Who wants to have someone laugh in their face when they're crying? (On the inside, guys. I don't cry in front of people. I'm British that way.)
SO... that's that. No more dreams of a daily byline on Thought Catalog or hellogiggles. No more wistful longings that Salon would hire me to take over Broadsheet since Tracy Clark-Flory went back to being a full-time sex writer. (Added bonus of the Salon daydream: the idea that Alex Pareene would become my bestie. That man is ACTUALLY FUNNY, and about politics no less. Also, he smokes. It would be so great to have a bestie that smokes so I didn't feel so guilty about my still-occasional habit.)
I mean, I can keep plugging away on this collection of short stories that's clogging up my hard drive (and I WILL) and sketching out the outline of a novel, but no one's going to publish it unless my name already means something and my name will never mean anything because I'm a bad researcher and I'm not funny.
Life's a bitch.
(xo!)
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