unvarnished

I know all the reasons not to have a baby. I still want to. I feel guilty about that because part of me—a large part—thinks I would be a crap mom, so what the fuck do I want with that anyway? I still want to try. I feel bad because financially I know I couldn’t give a child everything he or she could want. I still want to try. My heart breaks a little when my friends talk of having children like it’s nothing, an accepted next step of their lives. I will not get to take that step even though I desperately want to. Maybe it’s just biology. Hormones. The oh shit I’m almost thirty and childless phase. But I have always wanted kids. It just becomes more real to me, the older I get, just what I am missing.

The thing he doesn’t understand is that it’s not temporary. I will almost always argue when someone makes these statements to me:

1. You’re beautiful.

2. You mean a lot to me.

3. I love you.

4. You matter.

5. You’re not ugly.

For a while, I think he thought it was cute, endearing even, that I need reassurance from him often. But it’s not too long before the frustration sets in, and I understand. I see that he sees it as me not believing him, as doubting him in some fundamental way. Because he has said it so much and so emphatically, how could any intelligent person disbelieve him?

But I do. Not because it’s him, but because no matter who says something nice to me, I can always find the BUT inside it.

He wants me to explain why I am like this. It makes no sense, he thinks. For years of my adult life, I have combed my psyche for a reason and I can’t find one. All I know is what I feel, not why.

Silver spokes

Chasing asphalt and potholes

Chasing well-kept household driveways

Chasing “civilization”

Chasing money and phantoms like the American dream

Chasing everyone I know, and me

Chasing, chasing…words that purge and bring relief

Catharsis has various guises. One that many, many people recognize is this—writing. Whether it’s fiction or a real heart-wrenching true story, many of our demons make their way to the page. Now I don’t always choose to read those stories. I really like fiction with its often happy endings.

But when someone writes something horrifically true, there are two schools of thought. One school lurks shamefaced at the window of the page, feeling like a peeping tom and wanting to shove the writer into some hardcore therapy sessions. The other school (this is me) believes if it was written for public consumption and the public refuses to read it out of a sense of peering in where they shouldn’t, the writer gets cheated. Having other people read their terrors is sometimes enough to lighten the burden of the writer. If the audience refuses to read, though, the writer is not validated, the story is not told, and the event is left to warp the mind of the person who lived it in the first place.

I try to see the point of view of school #1. As a writer, though, and having been in workshops about others’ writing that is painfully personal, I  can’t.

It might be nice sometimes if we didn’t try so fucking hard to hide perceived weaknesses. I say perceived because the very fact of being human is being weak and pretending it isn’t means behaving abnormally and expecting the same from others.

Occasionally we have days where we just should not be around other people. Whatever the reason, we know that on those days, for some potentially hormonal or possibly fated reason, we take everything the wrong way. We snap at people for nothing and cower in self-flagellation over innocuous and constructive criticisms.

On these days, tears may loom and an hour turns into the length of a day. Friends are avoided for fear of the damage they will incur at close range. We all have fucking weak human days like this.

Well, I say we, but I can’t verify that. I just feel better believing I am not the only one. This is normal. It is society that has falsely decided it is not normal.

I think sometimes we enjoy witnessing another person’s breakdown because we know, I mean really know, what that feels like. And aren’t we something special because when we feel that way, we don’t let it show?

It used to be that I blasted music from my car speakers because isn’t that what “cool” teenagers do?

I grew up and toned it down—mostly. Road music set a mood and evinced emotional states I wanted to get into.

Over the last year or so, music has become not my mood setter or emotional outlet, but rather the way I silence myself. Traveling home from work inevitably leads to a gray review of the day’s events and meetings that highlights what could’ve, should’ve, would’ve gone better if only… And if not a review of work, my thoughts turn inward and pick apart my personal and creative life. And that’s not pretty either.

So I turn on some music and crank it up until I can feel it so loud it seems like it will counteract my heartbeat, and my chest sags with the weight of the noise. Sometimes I turn the volume back down, because yes, music that loud hurts my ears. There’s some real physical pain married to it. But then I start thinking again. So I turn it up. The thought floats through my head that I might damage my hearing in years to come with what I’m doing right now. The silence is worth it to me.

There are different stages of frustration, and as you progress the pain changes from a nudge to a searing, tearing rip.

Stage 1 includes that first moment when something tickles the edge of your mind because something within your control needs changing and you’re not changing it. I don’t even know if the nudge has necessarily begun yet. Things are simmering, more or less.

Stage 2 is when you decide to make a plan to change whatever situation brought on the discontent to begin with. The nudging starts. More and more random moments of time find you creating potential solutions.

At Stage 3 you implement the plan. You feel good that you are working for change but bad too because had you made the right choices to begin with, the plan wouldn’t even be necessary. So there is a bit of guilt that takes away any joy in moving toward change.

Stage 4 is when the plan doesn’t work. You tried to change but can’t. You go back to the drawing board but find no answers. It seems you’re just stuck. The ache sets in. Every bathroom break and lunch break is time to reflect on the fact that change hasn’t happened for you.

Stage 5 is the searing pain, and hopelessness sets in. Nothing has worked. Not Plan A, B, C, or any other letter of the alphabet. You can’t understand why. The situation you want to see changed is no longer the thing you think about between moments of authentic living. It’s what you think about instead of living.

This is frustration as it looks from Stage 5.

I already feel like a weak female because I’ve been in a bike shop with my first bicycle as an adult. That horrible helpless ignorance gets stronger when I try…hmm…no less than three times to fit the bicycle into my car. I try first to put it in the backseat area. Then I try the hatch with the backseats lying down. Then I lay the passenger seat flat as well and try it that way. I’m talking to myself, of course. And getting frustrated. And cursing the fact that my husband is so hands-off (thus I am alone), which in all honesty is generally great.

And then from across the street full of almost rush hour traffic I hear, “Need some help, sweetheart?” I yell back that I don’t think it’s going to work. I want help; I just don’t really figure he can. But he crosses, cigarette in hand, and I push away my wariness of a male stranger.

“Isn’t this a quick release tire?” he asks. Why didn’t I think of taking off the tire? As he leans into the hatch, I am nearly certain I see ash fall into my car. I tell him it’s a new bike and I don’t know. He says he needs a wrench, the name of which I don’t remember ten minutes later. When I walk back in the shop to borrow it, the mechanic shows me how to do it without the wrench. Stranger and I get the tire off and the bike loaded.

I shake his hand and thank him sincerely. I get in and he hovers, just a moment.

“Ma’am I hate to trouble you, but do you have a few dollars?”

I say sure and pass him the five ones I’ve been saving in my wallet. I feel something strange. And hours later I will still be trying to figure out if that is because I felt that I should have offered money before he asked or because I think he should not need money for helping.

I will also be hoping that next time I know enough about my own damn bike not to need help.

My soon-to-be fiance leans in to steal a kiss as I hover in his doorway.Sweet.

My repulsive pity date becomes a leech on my lips in a dark theater. Creepy.

The same thing that could be exciting with one person becomes weird and creepy with someone else. Mostly, I think we consider other people creepy when they come on too strong or are annoyingly persistent. But it’s not always because someone has actually done something creepy; sometimes it’s simply that they’ve made known or acted on some strong feelings that aren’t returned.

I’m trying to remember when I may have done things that were weird or creepy. I don’t think I ever had the guts to.

What I’m getting at is, had I not already been falling for the soon-to-be fiance, that first kiss would have been awkward. The fact that it was more than one kiss would have been weird. But it was just…perfect.

The pity date guy I barely remember except to think how handsy he was and how it was probably my fault for not doing more than trying to pull away from him. Had I been into him, I would remember it far differently.

So my convoluted theory is that things get creepy when people want or try to take more from you than you feel comfortable giving. And then because there is a disconnect between the way you see the relationship and the way the other person sees the relationship, your skin crawls a little bit at the one-way pull of attraction.