09/08/03: Wow, I actually have readers!

It absolutely blows me away when I get responses from people about stuff I've posted here. I can't fathom that people actually read this stuff, let alone then spend yet time crafting well-thought-out replies. My 8/27 post has spawned a lot of discussion, e- and otherwise, so I figured I'd post some more thoughts on the subject.

My 7th grade Social Studies teacher, Mrs. Peterkin, was right when she said, "Above all things, remember this: Human wants are insatiable." No matter what you've got, you always want more or something different. You could be frikkin' Harrison Ford... rich, hot, successful, not particularly dumb... but still not be happy. I wonder what he wishes he had or could do? I bet he wishes he was younger. I bet he wishes he could go to Acme and buy some Low Salt Wheat Thins without being glommed, captured on film and then analyzed for his simple (and what I consider quite tasty) snack choice.

I wonder if people later in their life feel settled.

My friend Matt emailed me a really amazing response to my post, and he basically said that most married people he knows probably feel the same kind of flux that I feel, regardless of the fact that they have established roots, bought a house, started a family, etc. This statement both comforts me and depresses the hell out of me. :-) It makes me think that I'll never feel settled. Maybe that unsettled feeling is what keeps us young and on our toes, and maybe I should just learn to embrace it and stop fighting it so hard. Imagine the things I could accomplish if I freed up those brain cycles and dedicated them to other things. Hmmm!

So this has gotten me thinking a lot about the concept of marriage. On one level, I feel absolutely no pressure to be married. I've proclaimed it since I was a very small child... never wanted to be married, and I sure as hell never wanted kids. I wanted to enjoy my time, being able to spend my hard-earned salary on road trips and train rides through the Alps and travelogues and recording studio time. I want to save for my own retirement and my own care for when I can no longer care for myself, because nobody else was going to provide this for me (no kids, remember?). I've always felt very strong about these convictions, and any time I'd remotely waver, I'd feel like I was selling out some basic elemental tenet of my existence.

Yet........ on Wednesday I took a late lunch and was driving home to nuke up some vittles, and the school buses were dropping kids off from their first day of school. On one corner was this set of parents waiting for their kids, and as their kids jumped off the bus they ran over turbo-like to mom and dad and it was a huge I'm-so-happy-to-see-you-fest. I've never seen such jubilance. Kids skipping, parents smiling and hugging their offspring... I said out loud, "I want that." (Maybe I feel like, for the first time ever, I'm in a safe and magical situation where these thoughts are actually able to surface, instead of being suffocated under some wet blanket of self-preservation?)

But then after I came back from lunch, my cow-orker (ha) Joe, whose wife is due to give birth to their first kid within the next two weeks came over and told me about their baby shower this weekend. He said that he walked into the baby's room last night and short-circuited... he said where nothing had previously existed, there is now a crib, a changing table, diapers aplenty, baby clothes everywhere, a rocking chair, yadda yadda yadda. And it dawned on him... his life will never be the same again. He said, "It never occurred to me that this baby might cry while I'm watching an Eagles game. It never occurred to me that I won't be able to go to the mall, or my folks' house, or to the store or frikkin' anywhere without an extra two bags filled with baby stuff... bottles, formula, diapers, toys, crap." He had this absolutely panicked look on his face. And while I know he was built to be a dad, he was also built to play Quake and drink beer with nobody asking for anything.

I guess it's all a matter of perspective. The proverbial grass is always proverbially greener on the proverbial other side. :-) Everyone's got it better, or so it looks.

Ben Folds apparently was married (and had a kid, which is what makes this story kinda sad as opposed to kinda inspiring) and his wife got this job in California. So they packed up their whole life and moved to California, and Ben brought one box inside their new place and just freaked out... so he sat on the box in this empty apartment for a few hours and then got up and left and drove back east, leaving his life and kid in L.A., just like that. He wrote a song about it, hiding no details. The chorus goes, "Don't change your plans for me / I won't move to L.A. / The leaves are falling back east / and that's where I've gotta stay / All I know is I gotta be where my heart says I gotta be / but destiny is calling and it won't hold and when my time is up, I'm outta here / I love you, goodbye."

I give the guy a shitload of credit for the size of his balls. I worship that. I think, above all things, I want to be thought of as courageous. Sometimes I worry that I do stupid things just to prove to the world how big and strong I am... like moving to Arizona in the first place.

Until I graduated college, I lived under my parents' roof (with the exception of 3 years in a dorm), and when I turned 24 some bit flipped to 1 and I just short-circuited. I felt stifled by my folks (who let me do anything I wanted ever because they completely trusted me), and I knew that because life was so expensive in North Jersey, that I'd be stranded with some stupid roommate for the rest of my life, because I never wanted to be married ever. Roommates (parents, husband or otherwise) weren't an option for me, so I left for Arizona, where I was as far away from f-ing everything that ever annoyed me ever. I didn't know anyone, didn't have a single relative, friend, acquaintance, friend of a friend, nothing out there. Nothing at all. And it was scary, but it was the first thing, the first decision I ever made, where I felt like it was truly 100% my own. And if it sucked, and if I wound up homeless turning tricks for dinner money, so be it. It was my decision, and I was sticking to it.

The week before I left, I visited my old workplace (this law firm I secretaried at for a few years) and one of the lawyers said in this totally patronizing voice, "Arizona, huh? Ahhhh, you'll be back." I never hated anyone more in any moment than I hated him... maybe because I feared he could be right? Or maybe because he was doubting my strength? Or maybe because, innocently, he knew that I'm an east coast chick and the slower, western lifestyle would annoy me.

So for all of you who are hitched, I have these questions:

Do you ever worry that you've settled?
Do you ever worry that you've missed out on other opportunities?
Do you ever wish you had the Bill Gates clause where he gets one free weekend a year to doink his old high school girlfriend, no questions asked?
Do you ever fear you picked the wrong one?
Did you feel pressured into getting married?
Did you feel differently about your spouse after the marriage ceremony was over?
Could you two have reached the level of emotional intimacy you have now if you didn't have rings on your fingers?

I don't know if I'll ever be able to get married, because I think my "what if" fear is too huge.

The possibility... the potential... the "what if"... the "lemme try this and see..." is INTOXICATING. It's like a drug.

Did you ever see Desmond Morris on the Discovery Channel? (Maybe it's TLC, not sure). He analyzes humans as if they were wild animals in the jungle... talking about their "pair bonds" and "mating rituals" and how the female of the species chooses her mate, what body language means in humans, and blah blah blah. It's endlessly fascinating. Anyway, he's got this theory that humans, as a species, aren't meant to have one partner for their entire life. He believes that humans are made to have a few long-term monogamous relationships, but it's societal pressure that makes humans conform to this social law that you marry one person for life, and that divorce isn't such a good thing.

Like, I've had 6-month relationships that I feel were very successful, and I've had 2-year relationships that were a giant waste of my time. They weren't abusive or bad per se, just stupid and pointless. Which isn't to say that I didn't have some kind of genuine regard for the person I was with, but I just knew that I didn't have anything to learn from them. For me, it's all about the learning.

Anyhoo, suffice it to say I know when I'm settling and I know when I'm not. And as soon as I get the feeling that I'm settling (and settling usually just means "this person is swell, but not the right person for me for whatever reason"), I get itchy and bitchy and I want out out out. I don't want to work it out, I don't want to talk through it... I want to leave so I can see what's next. (Which shouldn't be interpreted as "so I can see who is next.")

And how do you deal with that other life that calls?

Is it fair to ignore it?

Do you ignore it?

Do you hope that your partner supports you in it? What if they don't?

Right before my surgery last March, my surgeon made me go see a shrink... he makes all of his patients who have never had prior surgery go to a shrink so they understand that any surgery is risky and could kill you.

Anyhoo, so a few days before my surgery, I wrote letters to all the people in my life who I wanted to say something specific to but never could. I put the letters in a box and told one person (my friend Quaf) where to find the letters along with a copy of my will. If I died during surgery, then his job would be to distribute the letters. I was telling one of my other dearest friends (Mark) about this, and he asked if there was a letter for him in that box. I told him that there was. He asked if he could read it, and I said, "Hell no." And he asked why, and I said that I would never be able to look him in the eye again. And he said, "What does this letter say, that you hate my guts or that I pissed you off?" And I said no, and that some sentiments are too honest and sweet to bear. I didn't know how else to say it. I guess I would just feel too much of a gaywad if he knew how important he was to me and how he has shaped my life. So the letters sit.

It makes you wonder why people get married, really. I don't understand why I have said since birth that I don't ever want to get married... yet lately I feel like I'm itching to settle down. I'm at a total war with myself over this.

I'm in the middle of reading Bridget Jones's Diary, which is a laugh-riot. And what makes it so funny is that Bridget is thinking a lot of the things that I think about. So if it's a common enough sentiment to make it into a book, then surely EVERYONE must be feeling these feelings I'm / we're feeling. So why the societal pressure to get married??