I have some real friends following me. People I care about and who care about me, this blog is more than just an argument for why you should respect adoptees and their feelings and treat them like real and meaningful people. Yeah, get your smelling-salts out.
I am getting married, I know, I have said that but now it is getting close, only 12 months away.
I love him, I want to, I want to commit myself. I do. This just seems like one more grand opportunity for me to fail though. I don’t have confidence that I am a good gf or wife. I don’t. I feel like he his waiting for the moment that I will want to sit in a suburban house and watch t.v. in the evenings. I mean that hasn’t happened yet, so why would it happen in the future?
Why does that make me feel like a wrong/bad person? I just want to be free to be myself without getting judged in the constrains of a marriage. I am supposed to be something, something I cannot be, conventional. Someone without freedom, someone who disappoints, and I know we all disappoint, that is part of being alive.
I don’t understand domestic life and it is not interesting to me. I don’t understand women who want it so bad that they adopt other people’s children. I don’t like laundry, I don’t like wiping noses, I don’t like suburbia. I want to live an exciting life full of adventure. Maybe I am Captain Hook?
I don’t understand why I am not average. In my first marriage my husband would often reference this song in re: me.
I have touched on this before, he was the only one who mentioned this song, but so many of my xs would mention “Black Coffee in Bed” by Squeeze and another one called, “Free” by let me go google, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htuxb-m4-ng, okay got the name wrong, but it was a long time since I have had men or really boys write me letters about songs. But it makes sense, in a way, I love my freedom. Really, the lyrics sound so much like how I have related to men.
Another sweet memory, my friend D. telling me he never understood me until he heard this song, which I never liked until he told me that:
Yes, that is how it feels to be me, at least what I recognize. Things that suck about being a creative person, you do something brilliant and everyone is all, “see how she sparkles” but day to day living you hear, “Goddammit! what is wrong with you?” I told that to Tomtom recently and he said, “I am so glad you recognize that but I think you may be the only person who does” because he has it too.
But then I am back to my original song, Pale Blue Eyes.
Like I said, my baby-daddy, my husband used to play this to me off his guitar. He loved this song, I do too, is so beautiful, but the lyrics, and yes I am a 12 year old girl in a middle-aged woman’s body.
“Sometimes I feel so happy
sometimes I feel so sad
Sometimes I feel so happy
But mostly you just make me mad
Baby you just make me mad”
That is how marriage feels to me, feels like being accused, being lame, failing to deliver. Being a promise that I can’t keep, just like being adopted did. Just like I failed to deliver in my adopted daughter position, just wanting to leave, just being wanted and just wanting to leave.
Which leaves me feeling so guilty and so sorry, so heart-broken, so disappointing. I am sorry. I am. Sometimes I feel like everyone wants to own me, and I just don’t know how to be owned. I am sorry. I am divided. I am broken apart, lol, makes more room right Buddhists?
Doesn’t have to be that way………x
thanks Von
I gotta admit, it makes me wonder when people ask all the time (in general to young adults) questions that contain the words “When you marry” and then “When you have children”…
Yet having children is supposedly one of the most stressful things in life. AmFam did a post on this a while back and allegedly statistics show that there is a much higher risk of stress with having children than NOT having children.
So why the hell do we insist on everyone’s happiness being about having children?
Makes no sense to me.
That is a good point! People acting like raising children is the be all and end all. There are lots of things you can do with your life and lots of ways to nurture people, you just won’t own those people.
I sometimes hint in life that I don’t necessarily want to become married or have kids, and the reaction is usually something like: “But what will you do with your life? Be an old lady and die alone?”
You would think that saying marriage isn’t the Only Way To Become Happy is the same as saying I Am Dooming Myself To A Life Void Of Happiness Or Success.
Also when I talk about not ever seeing myself with kids, people look at me as if I’ve just grown a horn on top of my head. The concept astonishes them. What? Everyone wants husbands! Everyone wants children!
I’ve also had a few exchanges where I’ve stated quite firmly that I don’t “need” a boyfriend. Immediately I was told “Yes you do!” and “You just haven’t found Mr. Right yet!”
It’s not so much I don’t believe I could *never* find a boyfriend – but the manner in which they tell me “You can’t ever be happy being single. Never ever ever.”
Long comment is long, my apologies.
“But what will you do with your life? Be an old lady and die alone?”
YES! Yes, let’s grow old and travel and curl our hair and still look fabulous and wear tight black sweaters and study French and read books and have loud opinions and dark lipstick. Let’s get involved in all kinds of fun projects and help people and make art. And say fuck all the time and don’t care who is listening, let’s piss off all the people who want to buy other people and bomb other people and lock other people up in massage parlors and make them give happy-endings, because there are no people who don’t have and dreams and feelings and the right to agency.
I love glamorous old-ladies, love them, am working on becoming one and we all die alone. Maybe you should ask them what are they doing spending their whole lives fascinated with their fragile little egos and minutiae? Maybe tell them you have some laundry they can do since they are so into that kind of thing. And guess what, they are going to do that and die alone anyway because that is how the world works.
Oh sweetie, anyone that wants to marry you would hardly expect you to be waiting with a cocktail and slippers at the door.
Ok, well maybe the cocktail……but I’m sure yyou would allow him to make one for himself too.
lol, I know, but with marriage comes all these expectations, it feels like all of a sudden your relationship is part of a much bigger context, idk.
He likes that kind of stuff, he is way more conventional than I am but most people are. Which confounds me.
I know this is weird but a few nights before I was going to get married for the 2nd time–I had told myself I would never get married again–I got cold feet. My family had arrived from Michigan, the carterer had ordered the food, the cake was being baked, etc…and I turned to my beloved and said: I can’t do this.
He looked at me incredulously and said: If it doesn’t work out, we can always get divorced.
Right, I said.
That was 30 years ago. We are still going strong.
Confirmation of my dullness!! I love being a parent (sorry), loved every single snotty-nosed minute of it. But this is just me, something I always wanted because I thought I could be a decent parent. Never do I think of parenting as a yardstick by which to judge others’ desires.
Your idea of old-ladyhood is very appealing