Now that you’re a few years down the road, you realize that you may have really screwed the pooch as far as career advancement and cocktail chatter are concerned. (“What year did you graduate?” “I…went to (name of school) until 1997.”) But it’s okay! You can finish your education as an adult.
Even after we became used to being constantly sneered at and belittled and insulted and demeaned, we were shocked every time he really crossed the line. I used to fantasize that he would die in a car accident, and daydream about how happy we would be if we heard that he wasn’t coming back through that front door.
I know the conventional wisdom on this, that you find love when you stop looking, and get pregnant when you begin adoption proceedings, and lose weight when you learn to love the crappy body you have. That if you write down the name of your greatest fear and burn it in a smoldering fire spiked with sage, you will be free.
You think you know the lyrics, but you don’t, and also you don’t have the breath to spit them out even if you did. It’s way too fast, which is why it’s unintelligible to begin with.
So, you’re in your 30s, you’re a straight woman, and you’re single. You’re out there looking for a nice, mature man, one who longs to put his hand on your knee under the bar on Saturday night and lay his head in your lap to watch HBO dramas on Sunday while soup bubbles on the stove. One who has a job and a healthy relationship with his mother. One with a cute butt.
Don’t think about how much of your identity is tied up with being the go-to person, the old hand. There will be other copy machines to conquer, other institutional lore to assimilate, other crazy people to learn how to flatter and manipulate in order to get things done.
I woke up this morning wanting to go home. I want to see wide open skies, and rolling hills, and bathe in the scent of freshly cut grass streaming in through my open car windows, one of the sweetest smells there is…
My overwhelming thought when I saw Walk the Line, the story of Johnny Cash’s career, his self-destructive lifestyle, and how the love of a good woman saved him, was Women like me do not need to see stories like this.
Once parental support ended, my journey into the city’s more… gentrifying, transitional, border (whatever the slightly racist term of art is now)… neighborhoods began. And so did my proclivity for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Over the years I have tried a variety of different diets, with varying levels of success. As usual, I’ve retained only the parts that interest me. I’m on a healthy eating kick right now, so the force of my diet knowledge is extra strong, and I wanted to share the benefits with you.