I feel like I already wrote this.
There is a part one and I haven’t looked at it. I will. But in my continuing stubbornness of doing everything backwards, after I post this.
Today might end up being a two-fer.
Nope, it’s just really long. 1979. My usual is 1000 to 1500.
I promised my therapist I would write 1000 words a day. Fell a little short yesterday if you don’t include emails. And I would bet the farm that is not what she meant. Even if I do some of my better writings in there.
I managed to tap out 900 words in the new book. The 2 main characters have finally gotten together in the same room and I am struggling to make them struggle. They can’t just fall in love and live happily ever after on page 46. In my post-apocalyptic world marriage doesn’t exist, happily ever after sure. But ever after what?
Fucking minutiae and misunderstandings. I wrote a post way back when about that too. Novel Romance. Wherein my early ideas about love were tainted by pages and pages of struggle just to have it all work out at the end. I still do that a bit I guess.
As with rom-coms and romance novels and life in general, there is always some yuck to get through. And I have about 350 pages to go. They will get there.
I am doing this newish thing in real life, wherein I don’t skip over the yuck and just see what I want to see.
I have said ad nauseum to all the women in my life (and in here), when they come to me with man troubles, asking me ‘well what did he mean by that?’
My first query is always “Well what words did he say?”
And my unwavering response is “He meant the words he said, no subtext. Just the words.”
Most women are lucky, we have our own language and a chosen few friends with whom we can be ridiculous, emotional, illogical and just spin like whirling dervishes until we come to rest. We are privy to the luxury of not knowing how we are feeling about something and working through it in a safe place with our friends.
Men, not so much. They are expected to get from problem A to solution B with no stopovers.
And I know, I know, broad generalizations and gender specificity. But for the purpose of this post let’s just say there is an allowance made for women to be emotional and an expectation for men to be logical.
I have also said, repeatedly, if you have a problem and want to vent, find a girlfriend. If you want it solved, start planting logic trees with men. I have a deep-rooted respect for the fundamental differences between the sexes and I genuinely believe we are designed to work harmoniously, but modern society got in the way. We can have this discussion at great length until the end of time some other day.
It would be nice if women decided en mass to be safe spaces for men to explore the emotional illogical sides of themselves. That would be a lovely new normal.
Oh, I just rambled there.
What was I talking about?
Oh ya. Men say what they mean. Most of the time. Boys lie to get you in bed, sure; but men tend to speak true. It is less about gender and more about maturity.
I have gotten into a lot of trouble skipping over the blatantly obvious statements made to me by men because I didn’t want to hear them. And believing the lies of boys because I wanted to.
Sometimes they are both in one body.
Perfect example.
After 11 months or so, I slipped and said the word love to Lumberjack.
His response?
“You aren’t allowed to do that.”
It took about 6 weeks after that statement and an Instagram message from his actual girlfriend to fully disengage from that shell of a relationship. But that simple declaration he made that day made it so easy for me to cease and desist a month and a half later. I already had one foot out the door.
He was a lying boy but that one crystal clear assertion was him acting as an honest man, if that makes sense.
And same as with every other situation ever, it is one thing to kinda already know and another to hear it/read it in its full unadulterated truth.
I have this fun game I play with myself wherein after a relationship dissolves, I decide to make it ‘easier’ on myself and I decide I made the gravity of it up in my head. Like they really weren’t that into me, I just misread the situation.
Have…had. I am trying not to do this anymore. And I will tell you why.
Because, invariably without fucking fail, on some sunny day months or years later, I will be sitting somewhere, minding my own business, rifling through the archives for looking for this thing or that completely unrelated thing and I will stumble on some fucking message from one of my exes and instead of the lump of coal I fooled myself into thinking it was, it’s a fucking diamond.
And then I get to go through the trauma of ‘well I guess I am not crazy after all’. And this flimsy excuse I made for the end of things, falls apart in my hands, and I along with it.
I have to deal with the confrontation of the reality wherein they did actually love me, and they left anyways, and I wasn’t crazy I was just stupid because I didn’t see it coming.
I believed the good and ignored the bad. Then I focused solely on the bad and negated the good.
So, moving forward, I am trying not to do that.
Trying not to bend and fold myself into another person. Trying to take things at face value. Listen to all of the words, not just what I want to hear.
And it’s working.
Besides, I was never the little girl who dreamed of my wedding day.
I find weddings to be a colossal waste of money. Thousands of dollars for what? One day of revelry that never quite goes as planned even with the months of stress and planning expended beforehand, and a 50/50 shot of making it?
And what does ‘making it’ constitute? Forced monogamy? The division of shit if you do opt out?
Is it a financial agreement? The giving up or amalgamation of your last names? I have had my last name for 46 years as of tomorrow, no one can pronounce it and it’s fine. It’s weird, it’s mine and I love it.
What is so exciting and important about marriage?
Back in the caves when women were pregnant or had babies to look after, they needed a provider. Genetics took care of that and traditionally speaking, the firstborn usually favors the father’s looks. Makes them more emotionally compelled to take care of their offspring and the mother of said offspring.
Then women became property, something to be owned, so marriage made sense.
But all of this is outdated.
We don’t need that now. We good. Well, 77 cents to the dollar good. But still.
Monogamy has never been a natural human attribute. We aren’t designed for it. So forcing it is a recipe for disaster. Then there’s the governmental and financial aspects. I don’t need the government in my relationship thanks, nor the bank.
I have had a few men propose to me.
And I can now see it for what it was. They wanted to keep me. One was in love with me, but we were young and dumb, and he was drunk most of the time including when he proposed. One was afraid of being alone, one ran out of other ways to make me stay.
I shudder to think of what my life would be like if I had stayed with any of them. I am no longer the girl they knew and bent a knee for.
And therein lies another reason not to get married, or why marriage kinda sucks.
I am not who I was at 24. I am not who I was at 29 and I am really not who I was when ex hubby proposed 3 times.
Marriage is the only contract we are expected to enter into with no fixed term reassessment period. How can the version of myself I am now, know what I want 10 years from now, or forever?
There needs to be an escape clause written in. Every 7 years one or both are allowed to opt out without consequences.
I know people exist who refuse to evolve, grow and change. Carousel people, round and round and they are happy with that.
Do you boo.
They probably see my life as a curse; or would if they bothered to look at it.
I don’t.
I am happy changing. I get excited about it now. What can I learn today?
Well, what I learned is that love to me, is not paper handcuffs or betting half my shit that I will want to be with someone a decade from now. It never was.
I also accidentally stumbled on the idea that we don’t have enough words in our language to define love and relationships.
I use the words dated, boyfriend and even marriage with boatloads of salt.
I was common law married twice, but I just say ex hubby. The last 6 years I say I ‘dated’ so and so, but there were no technically definable relationships in there, maybe one or two. The rest of the time it was just sex and suppers and some decent conversations. And even then, I might have been ‘theirs’ for a time, but they were never mine, I stopped asking remember?
I never dreamed of being married.
I might someday, decide to change my mind about that.
There will be no paperwork involved and that is a blessing in itself. Handcuffs? Oh yes. Paper ones, no thanks.
Love, to me, is choosing someone over and over. Not out of obligation but freewill.
Not because of who you thought they were or who you want them to be but because of who they are in the here and now.
