Wanted: A Wife

Em and I parted ways this evening. We hadn’t been together very long, or even seeing each other in any kind of “this is my girlfriend” capacity, but I did like her enough that I told my parents she existed. We had a lovely catch-up dinner (hadn’t seen each other in three weeks - now there’s a tip-off), and parted ways really simply, with kindness and care for each other. Ironically, we were both going the same way on the subway, which did not happen once in the short weeks we were romantically linked.

I said after my last break-up that I needed to be alone for a while, I wanted to experience what that was like. And I do. We also broke up because I have a not-so-sneaking suspicion that the pendulum of my sexuality has swung very deeply into the heart of Ladytown, and it's about damn time I allowed myself to explore that. So I'm doing that, too. It's been a fight - sometimes I feel disingenuous to myself, but I know that if I don't take the time to do it, I'll regret it later.

It struck me as I walked home over the icy sidewalks of my less-than-stellar neighborhood that perhaps the reason I’ve never been alone is my ease of independence. I prefer challenging environments and being partnered, to me, is much more of a challenge. I’m good at selfish and self care; I’m bad at taking a partner’s feelings into account - I either go too far, or not far enough, and it’s a daily crapshoot as to which. I know being single doesn’t always encourage me to grow as a person. It does encourage my creativity, but I often don’t take advantage of that extra time. When I do, I’m holed up and unreachable in a way my friends find frustrating.

I’ve been in search of my other half since college. It’s always at least in the back of my mind. I have been ready to build a life with someone else, and I have had ample opportunities and many not-so-false, but less than stellar, starts. Maybe I’m not ready to get married - I absolutely do not feel like sharing my bedroom with somebody else (maybe that’s because it’s so small?) - but I am ready to know the person I want to walk into the future with.

It doesn’t matter how firm the logic inside of me says that love is something you build with your hands, I believe that when I meet my wife, I will Have Met My Wife. There will be some inescapable magic there. She will be inescapably human, and our bond wholly sacred. I don’t expect it to be easy, I know we’ll fight because being partnered doesn’t come easy to me.

I see glimpses of her in other women, I saw pieces of her in Em.

It takes me a long, long time to open up all the way and love somebody with the intensity a long, loving relationship deserves. The last person to crack me open that far was Grace, and it took me until last year (two years after her wedding to another person!) to realize I had been in love with her the whole time. It still took her a year to pull me apart and set herself in my bones. This is why I don’t like dating - who is going to have the patience for that?

I hate dating. I find it exhausting. I always have. It feels inorganic and forced. I don't really like going out in public all the time, I prefer quiet intimacy. (Plus, nobody ever messages me and I am always pursuant. I loathe pursuit. I am too shy and awkward for that shit - if you want me, come and claim me, or whatever.) I really liked dating my friends in college, and I wish I had more single friends now so I could date them instead. It can be so easy to fall in love someone you already care for. If only I wanted a husband.

I am frightened that I will meet my wife, and she won’t be able to wait. She won’t have the patience I require, she won’t have enough love left to give me. There will be too much sex in the beginning, and not enough heart. I need the heart. Grace was the most organic relationship/friendship I was ever in; we started with poetry camp, spent three months of long lonely winters sending letters across oceans, and grew together through a lot of post-college bullshit. We relied on each other and the only thing we were (and are, frankly) afraid of is life without the other. We never had the pressure of a romantic relationship, because we never said we were in one.

I think about my friend Anna, who walked out on her boyfriend, saying “It’s been a year, you either love me or you don’t.” He spent three weeks drinking scotch and crying in his cups until he showed up on her doorstep and said he loved her. He said he knew he’d made a mistake the second his door closed behind her, it just took him that long to find the courage to ask her home. They’ve been together for almost five years now. Will that be me?

Is it already?

Two Weeks

It's been a strange two weeks.

Ten days ago, I was excitedly getting ready for a first date, with a cute guy I'd met online. I felt nervous, a little nauseous even, but I'd been feeling under the weather all week. I brushed it off as pre-date jitters and got on my bike to meet him in the city. We met in the park, and left our bikes outside a cafe as we strolled around, talking music, movies, work, and about our friends and families. The time flew by, and as I raced home on my bike, I couldn't wait to see him again. I couldn't stop smiling, and, for the first time in almost a year, I had butterflies.

* * *

Later, as I sat in my home office typing an email, I started to suspect the butterflies had given way to PMS. As I fidgeted in my chair trying to find a comfortable position, I thought back to my earlier nausea, and how I'd been feeling a little off all week. Was I coming down with something? Or was it just the monthly trials of womanhood? My period should be starting any day now, right? I glanced at the calendar, counting back the weeks. I counted again.

I'm late.

* * *

It's 4 p.m. The pharmacy doesn't close until 7 p.m., but I have a team meeting via video conference at 5 p.m. For the next hour I sit there, a slow panic rising, as I try to trace back over the last four, five, six weeks.

    Before my vacation. That guy I'd been seeing. The condom that broke.

    But he'd realized right away; he didn't finish inside me. I know the chances of being pregnant are slim to none, but my periods have always come like clockwork. If I am pregnant, that's when it happened.

    I log in to the video conferencing suite, smiling at my colleagues. Working remotely, we rarely all see each other, and under normal circumstances I'd welcome the chance to see everyone's faces. But all I can think about is peeing on a stick.

* * *

I've always been a list-maker. To-do lists, shopping lists, packing lists . . . living a life as unpredictable as mine equipped me with not only the desire for order, but the ability to soothe any anxieties or upheaval with lists.

    My eyes are glazing over as my colleagues nod along to what our boss is saying. I pull my notebook towards me, the same notebook I'm writing this in now, and flip it open, drawing a line down the middle of the blank page. At the top of the left column, I write PROS, on the right, CONS. 

    Forever linked to a guy I don't want to date, I wrote in the right-hand column. I knew from my brief time in childcare how hard co-parenting was when you loved someone, and how impossible it could be when you didn't share any of the common values and beliefs child development depends on. I knew I didn't want to raise a baby with someone I didn't want to be with.

    In the left column, without thinking about why, I write But it's a baby, reminding myself of the famous List in Friends, when Ross realizes that though Julie was a great woman, she wasn't the right woman for him, because she wasn't Rachel (or, you know. Rachem. Oh, typos and the trouble they cause!)

    Costs a lot of money, under CONS. Then, under PROS, but I make a lot of money. A new category is drawn up at the bottom of the page: QUESTIONS.

    How would work and having a baby . . . work? I ask myself. Back up to the CONS: mom isn't here, and I don't want to raise children in the UK. Another PRO: My friends here are wonderful mothers, and would be an incredible support system. Also: I can make really good baby food, a nod, I think, to my general sense of feeling better prepared for family life after my time in childcare. I have no illusions about knowing everything I need to, but I know I have a better idea than many single women my age.

    Last question: How would having a baby affect my application for immigration to the US?

* * *

 

Finally, my team meeting is over. I grab my phone, keys and jacket, pull my shoes on, and race downstairs, pushing my bike out the door. I weave through the dark streets to the pharmacy and pull up outside. Deep breath.

    Silently cursing the condoms as I walk past them, I scan the shelves, looking at the many options in front of me. Some boxes have three tests, others only two. Some come with ovulation tests, or tell you how far along you are. I figure this isn't the time for thriftiness, and grab the box of three, the most highly recommended - and most expensive - brand, and turn in the direction of the check-outs. Waiting in line, I see a basket of caramel-filled chocolate eggs, and (thinking they'd probably help no matter what the results of the test are) I grab three.

    The young guy at the register picks up the box, turning it over in his hands.

    "These don't have security tags, do they? Don't want them setting off the alarms."

    "No," I say evenly. "Because that would be embarrassing."

    He looks up, mortified, and I smirk at him, letting him know I'm just busting his chops. I don't want to be a cliché, I want to be the woman who can buy a pregnancy test as if it's no big deal, a big joke.

    He bags the test and chocolate and I walk out, stuffing one of the eggs in my mouth whole. If I'm about to give up drinking, my body's going to have to get used to me mainlining chocolate as a coping mechanism.

* * *

I'd heard people say those three minutes can be some of the longest minutes we experience as women. I plugged my iPod into my stereo and hit play. At the end of this song, I'll go back into the bathroom and check, I tell myself. Another chocolate egg disappears.

* * *

There it is, then.

    Not Pregnant.

    The instructions say to take another test in three days if I still haven't gotten my period. I tidy the box away, throw out the stick, wash my hands. I make a cup of tea, and take it upstairs with the last chocolate egg, sitting back down at my desk, where my PROS and CONS list still sits.

    I smile, breathe, flip the page, and start a new list for tomorrow. FRIDAY TO-DO LIST....

* * *

 3 days later and still nothing.

    It's Sunday morning. I've pretty much forgotten Thursday's events; I'd been on another date with the cutie from the park, seen a great live concert, made plans for a weeknight dinner date. I'm getting dressed for a long walk on the beach, packing a picnic, pulling my walking boots on. I'm enjoying the weekend, with last week's drama far from my mind.

    As the pebbles crunch and shift beneath my feet and the wind whips my scarf about my head, my thoughts drift back to the moment I walked back into the bathroom. In that moment, I knew which outcome would disappoint me, and it was right there, glaring at me from the sink.

    All the logic and reasoning I had couldn't take away the sadness that softly washed over me when I saw the single blue line. Not even a hint of that second line that would have turned my life upside down. No lists could tell me how I felt better than that fleeting, painfully authentic moment.

    I was relieved, of course I was. I was glad I didn't have to think about the money, whether I'd need to move, the conversation I'd need to have with the guy. I was glad I didn't have to call him and turn his life upside down too, or figure out how to raise a child with someone I didn't want to be with.

    But when I looked inside myself, I saw how much I'd wanted the test to read positive. And now . . . now I had to find a way to un-see it.

    By the time I get home that evening, my period has started. Again, expecting relief, I am hit with another wave of sadness. No excitement, no thanking God for my freedom. Just a gaping 'what if?' in my apparently empty womb.

* * *

I spend the next week focusing on other things. I work, I flirt with the guy, go on two more dates. I start to really like him. We share so many core values, appreciate similar things in life, want the same things out of life. He has a great smile, and although there are no big fireworks, I am definitely attracted to him. I've learned to value the fireworks much less in recent years, and our compatibility speaks to me much louder than sexual chemistry. There's definitely something between us, though I know he's not in a place where he wants a serious relationship, so I try to move slowly, hoping I don't scare him off.

    It doesn't make a difference. After only ten days, he tells me as I'm walking through the park where we first met that he doesn't feel the necessary spark, or perhaps just isn't ready to date at all. "Still broken" he says. Either way, it's over. I cry, just a handful of tears that were as surprised to find themselves on my cheeks as I was to feel them there.

    I look out at the river, gazing at the blue skies, thankful for such a beautiful day when the forecast said rain. I wrap my scarf around my neck a little tighter, dig my hands deeper into my pockets, and walk away.

Goodbye, Baklava

I know we never met frequently, Baklava, but I cherished our moments.  I will miss you.

I'm hypoglycemic.  Over the last year, it's come to the point where I can't eat more than a quarter portion of an average piece of cake without feeling very nauseous.  I gave away my Christmas candy and I don't even put sugar in tea anymore.  For the most part, I don't mind.  I've never been very big on sweet foods, they were always a sometimes treat.

What I hadn't considered was baklava.  It's already in small pieces.  It has nuts in it.  It should be ok to have just a tiny bit.  Baklava has always been one of my favorites for occasions.

Alas.

I've been very ill lately and my roommate kindly brought home a piece of baklava for when I feel better. Today, I'm feeling much better and thought I'd have a little bit of it.  One. Single. Bite. And I'm nauseous.  I put the rest of the pastry carefully back into it's little box.

I would still rather give up sweets entirely rather than take insulin injections.

Goodbye, baklava.  I will remember you fondly.

Why The West Has Won

There was a year in my life when I had money to almost-burn. My rent was less than a quarter of my take-home pay. I had thousands of dollars in the bank (to pay taxes with, and also to you know, save); I took spontaneous trips, bought multiple plane tickets for multiple people, and drank wine that cost more than $20 a bottle on the regular. It was a fine year.

 But bear with me, for this is a story about being miserably poor and finding compassion.

 I’ve never been poor per se, as in I’ve never systemically suffered from poverty. But I have been broker than a joker. When I was living in Seattle at the Space Capsule, I was making $9 an hour, at 37.5 hours per week. That was the poorest time in my life. Rent took almost half my paycheck, utilities and attempting to repay debts took more, and I regularly nabbed soup or pickles or whatever from my roommate (thanks and apologies, Elly) after he opened his red pepper bisques. Having never been so poor, I was too ashamed to ask if he minded sharing his groceries - he never inquired, but I’m sure he noticed how fast the soup went. He started buying extras during his weekly shops.

 I almost never knew what I was going to be eating for dinner - it was probably going to be pasta with sauce, and it was definitely not going to have much green in it. I subsisted mostly on bruised apples or strawberries, and candy from the chocolatier I worked at. I got a nasty UTI that turned into a kidney infection - I had no insurance and no money for OTC drugs anyway. I bought garlic cloves and ginger root from the Asian grocery across the street, made and drank medicinal tea for about five days. I missed four days of work. I tried to go back on days five and six, but I was too weak to do anything but work the register, and I had no money for food, so I was back to eating candy. The last thing you should do when you are recovering from a kidney infection is eat candy. My body has never fully recovered - I get UTIs at the drop of a hat, and I'm waiting for my kidneys to give up the ghost.

 Could I have called my parents for money for antibiotics? Sure, but I was already calling them once a month to tide me over until payday. I was ashamed of myself, having come out west so young, and then failing so miserably in my adolescent independence. I had already lost all financial aid by almost failing out of college my first two semesters (that’s another story!), so I just… didn’t want to disappoint them further. I wanted to fight for myself. I wanted to be an American bootstrapper, rise up out of poverty like some miracle financial phoenix. 

 It’s only looking back as an adult, after interacting with friends of friends who still buy into boots that I realize I had no bootstraps. Bootstraps are a myth. It is true that you can rise out of poverty with hard work and perseverance, but the equation to do so has a dozen factors: your race, parent’s class, education level, among many other things. A lot of those factors are affected by the other factors - If you grew up in poverty, you are more likely to have been educated in poverty-stricken school district, and therefore less likely to have gone to college. (More on that here: https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/the-bootstrap-myth/)

 Anyway, moving away from bootstraps and systemic oppression of the poor, I wanted to tell you a story about choice, compassion, and needs.

 I had about $3.60 in my bank account, and $2.50 in my pocket. I wouldn’t get paid for a week. Johannes (my rabbit) was out of food. A small bag of his regular food at Petco was $2.99+tax. the cheapest in town. The nearest Petco was in the U-District, about six miles away from my apartment in the International District. Bus fare was $1.25… you see where this is going. I had just enough to get there, buy rabbit food, and come home. I figured I’d subsist off of apples and half-rotten strawberries during the day at work, and cigarettes I bummed from Keevey to stave off the hunger pangs.

 Upon arrival, I found there were out of the size of bag I had been planning to buy. The next size up was about $5.00, I think, and I had luck before running my debit card through as credit and begging my credit union to withdraw their overdraft fee (which they always did, because credit unions are the shit). The checkout guy was young, maybe 25, and he messed something up on the register, or couldn’t cancel out of the debit screen once he’d hit it. I was stuck, and my account was effectively frozen.I tried to explain, he asked if I had any cash… I told him, “Only my bus fare to get home. I live in the ID.” He wouldn’t have been able to make such a steep discount on his register anyway. I tried not to cry as I turned away from him and started towards the door. He put his hand on my shoulder to stop me,

 “Wait, don’t go anywhere.”

 He picked up the 10 pound bag of food I was trying to buy, and went to the back room. I stood, fretting, wondering if he was going to call the manager, if they were going to yell at me or ask me if I had been stealing. He emerged, an aeon later, with an clear garbage bag full of rabbit food.

 “This one broke in the back, so we can’t use it. We’re going to throw it out, but I think you should take it. It didn’t touch the floor or anything.” He handed me the unwieldy bag, more rabbit food than I had ever bought at one time, more food than I had ever bought for myself at a time (college and post-college = eating piecemeal, literally.) “Just don’t tell anyone.”

 I’d been keeping rabbits as pets for ten years at that point. You can’t just “break” a feed bag. They’re pretty sturdy and it takes scissors to open them on the regular.

 This young man stole for me, from his own place of work, and risked potentially everything he had for no discernable reason - maybe for pity, or because he thought I was pretty and sad, but the reason behind it doesn’t matter because Johannes ate that night and many nights after.

 And I started keeping all the bruised apples we couldn’t use in a box for the homeless guy who walked by our shop every other night.

 Always pay it forward. The more people you pay it forward to, the more people they will, and the faster the world becomes a kinder place.

Happy New Year, friends. I love you all.

We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve

Though this was originally written as my annual Facebook note reflecting on the year, I thought this would be a good place to share it too.

What a year.

My mind struggles to grasp the year in its entirety: there has been so much change and growth that it's hard for me to step back and really see what this year has brought.

Let's think about where I was at the end of 2012: in Amsterdam, reaching for my independent self as I prepared to transition yet again, from Italy to London, one au pair job to another. In the months leading up to that trip, I had been dumped, discovered the power of Don Miguel Ruiz and, through his words, found my own power and sense of self, which I had freely given to those I had loved for too many years.

I made commitments to myself for 2013, the content of which were not as important, I found, as the act of committing to myself instead of others. I found comfort and strength in my promises, not because I kept them in the ways I'd initially set out to, but because of their greater underlying principle: that 2013 was going to be the year I put myself first, and stopped diminishing who I was through compromises made in, and for, relationships that did not serve me in the same ways I was willing to serve them.

No more would I, Jade Forester, serial monogamist and Queen of the Rebound, get myself into a codependent, dysfunctional relationship. No more would I choose saving others above saving myself.

2013 has been the year I learned how to save me - from myself, mostly, but also from those who would seek to de-rail the progress I'd made at the end of 2012. By the end of last year, I'd thought the thoughts and was talking the talk. In 2013 I walked the walk.

As with every path I've started down in my life, it didn't go quite according to plan - I didn't completely swear off dating, or sex, and whether that was the right choice is of course moot at this point. The goal was the find out who I am when I'm not being defined by my relationships with men. Not only to find out who I am, but to figure out if I even liked that person - and if not, take positive steps towards becoming the woman I want to be, a woman I can respect and love more than I loved being in love or planning my future. I had to start living in the present and be happy doing so.

Though I wouldn't be so arrogant as to sit back at this point and say "I'm done," as if a person's growth is something that is ever complete, I can say that I achieved my goals for 2013. I found out who I am when I'm not busy being a girlfriend. I found out that I'm pretty awesome on my own, and that I have the most amazing family around me - and I mean not only those that I'm related to, but those who came into my life along the way, and stayed. I found out that I don't need to go looking for love; I am surrounded by so much I can hardly breathe, I am so overwhelmed with gratitude at the blessings I have been given.

I realized I didn't know myself well enough in the past to have patience with those who fell short of my high expectations, or the clarity to realize the depth and breadth of the ways I contributed to others' unhappiness. I am working towards being more self-aware and to change old habits and assumptions, and am quietly optimistic about the future.

I have never been so humbled by any year as I have this one, though I'm sure many of my closest can think of others that my have been more outwardly momentous. But the journey from child to adult isn't always greatest in the milestone moments: the distance between student and graduate, or Maine and the UK, was not so great as the miles I travelled within myself this year, as I searched to discover and redefine who I am and what I want.

I am exhausted, yes, but exhilarated. I have never felt so ready to take on whatever life throws at me. Never have I had so much to be thankful for, or as many reasons to smile throughout my day. Never have I felt so fully my capacity for good, or my strength for change, or my ability to achieve my goals.

I don't have any resolutions as I move into 2014 beyond this: keep it up, Jade. Remind yourself of how far you've come, and what you are capable of when you open your eyes, your mind, your heart, to what you need.

Show yourself every day that are worthy of love - and that means loving yourself. Remember Stephen Chbosky's words from The Perks of Being a Wallflower: 'We accept the love we think we deserve.'

Show those who support you how much they mean to you whenever you have the opportunity to do so. Remember how much they've done for you, and don't forget it or take them for granted. Remember how it felt when you withdrew yourself from them, and don't let it happen again!

Open yourself up to falling in love again, even if it doesn't look or feel like it used to. If you don't want the next relationship to end like all the others, you probably don't want it starting like all the others. Take your time. Breathe. Hold on to yourself without holding yourself back.

Remember the four agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don't take anything personally
3. Don't make assumptions
4. Always do your best

Miss Communication

This is the 2-3am angry post.

I'd like to know what is so hard about communicating.  Please, do tell.

See, I seem to have this problem.  I speak my mind and tell people when I want or need something.  When I invite an acquaintance out, I say " I would like to take you to this place at this time on such and such day".

Yet, I never seem to have the same language used with me.  A man approaches me to ask for a date.  He asks where I would like to go, and makes absolutely no mention of date or time.  I have to think up some place that he might like.  Then go through and suggest days that might work.  Just who is doing the asking?

I'm tired of this.  Every time I think someone is asking me on a date, I end up doing all the work.  Do your part.  You want to spend time with me, spend ten seconds coming up with an idea about it.  You're laziness ensures that I will not be spending time on you.

Addendum - I have been informed that what I am describing is "confidence".  My reply was that, from anecdotal experience, there are no confident men.  There are inept men and there are creepers on the train who *really* want to get you a coffee.

Non Sequitur

About two months ago I was very ill and sitting at home in my dogs-toasting-marshmallows flannel pj's and reading articles/watching youtube as a break from all of the naps.  As I sat there, feeling a bit blobbish wrapped in a blanket, and sipping tea for my sinus infection, I came across the "Blurred Lines" video and controversy.  As I watched the video, an inescapable descriptor for the women in the video dawned on me.

"Sex Kitten".

I thought for a minute about all the connotations of this as the artist sang and the women bounced.  I looked down at my dogs-toasting-marshmallows flannel pajamas,

"Fuck that.  I am NOT a sex kitten,"  Said I to my computer. "I am a SEX LION".
I sneezecoughed into a tissue.
"HEAR ME ROAR".