tick tock tick tock

Everything happens for a reason. I so try to believe that. Good or bad, there is always a reason for things to happen in life. I'm actually reading a book with that title...'Everything Happens for a Reason'. One of the chapters is talking about fear and how things will happen so we can realize how to overcome our fear. As I was reading this I thought that there really wasn't anything that I feared. I'm not talking about things like snakes or spiders....I would have to admit that I fear them. I'm talking more like fear of not succeeding, fear of dying, fear of being alone. How we overcome these fears is to realize that maybe something in our life happened or will happen that may not be related to our fear but it happened to show that if we can get through those times that seem almost insurmountable and we survived, then what is there to really fear? So true. Funny how things will present themselves in life so we may learn something from them.

See, I was raised to be an educated, career oriented, independent woman. To rely on myself and not depend on anyone to take care of me. My mom instilled this in me from a very early age. The point being that I not depend on a man for my wellfare that way in the event "the S.O.B." up and leaves me with 3 kids I won't have to depend on him for anything (I'd like to add that my parents are still married and just celebrated their 42nd anniversary). Well, hurray to me! I did this. I'm educated, career oriented (for the most part), and independent! I am woman, hear my roar! One problem...I guess I took this a little too far. I failed to get married and produce grandchildren along the way. I'm directly in my mid-thirties and I've recently realized that, yeah...maybe getting married would be cool if I meet the right person. But I don't want to get married for the sake of getting married. I've seen too many couples that just aren't happy. What people do to each other amazes me. How they treat someone that they once loved enough to stand in front of family and friends and proclaim their love to each other and now they can't stand each other. What a betrayal! The cheating, the lying, the hurting. I must admit...this makes me somewhat "gunshy" of a committment that big.

Believe me, I'm certainly not one to say that if the shit is that bad you should stick it out regardless. I wouldn't stay in a relationship if I were miserable. Life is too short to be miserable just because you made a promise for better or worse. I just think that in our society of instant gratification, people jump way too quickly into things without much thought and then jump just as quickly out...because they can and it's easy.

I can't really remember a time when I was growing up that I fantasized about getting married and what the wedding would be like. Whatever.... It actually amazes me that people would drop tens of thousands of dollars on one day when you could take that cash and put it on a down payment for a house. Or something more useful. But whatever floats your boat. And to be quite honest, kids just didn't seem like an option. My maternal instincts seems lacking and babies scared me. I wasn't one to ooh and ahh whenever a new baby showed up. I pretended to be interested when friends showed up with their new bundles of joy but I would freak out if I held one and the damn thing would start to cry. That almost always happened to me. I liked kids that were older because they talked. I liked being silly with them but babies were, well....babies. So this whole adult get married, have babies shit and the biological clock all seemed like, well...bullshit. A desperate attempt for desperate women to cling to someone. I didn't quite get it. I didn't want to cling.

Well, I must admit that in my mid-thirties the thought of having children of my own is much more appealing to me. And maybe this whole biological clock thing isn't such bullshit. It's certainly a feeling within. Something I've never experienced before. I do find myself more drawn to babies. I'd like to think that if it's meant to be then it will happen. I don't feel too old. (I've had some uneducated men mention that I may be too old but what do they really know.) Women can have babies well into their 40's. Although I'd rather not look like a grandma at my kids highschool graduation. Thank God for hair color. But I try to be optimistic about this whole thing...with a slightly healthy, somewhat cynical sense of humor. I realize that I can have a kid by myself, but I'd like to have that kid with someone I love and who wants a family as well. Again...if it's meant to be it will be.

I digress.

Aside from the fact that most people I work with are "couples" and there is this societal pressure to be a "couple". I try to be OK with where I am at this point in my life. I'm very picky when it comes to men. I've been single now for several years. After my last relationship, I wanted nothing more than to be single. I was spent emotionally and had nothing to give. I've dated different guys over the years for a couple of months here and there but nothing I would consider serious. Some I would consider a serious lack of judgement, but we all have our moments. Most were more like a "fix". I just needed that sexual "fix". What I'm looking for is something extraordinary. Someone real. Someone who isn't going to bolt when the going gets tough. Someone I can count on in the good and bad. Someone who makes me laugh, challenges me, supports me in my decisions, debates me, allows me my alone time....everything I want....as I will do the same for him. I think I have so much to give to the right person. I'm simply not willing to settle because of my age or my biological clock. I often wonder if I'm asking too much. Or if what I want exists.

The thing that really gets me...that just hovers over me without fail. My mother. Gotta love my mom for those wonderful lessons she taught me. To be independent and self-sufficient. Yet now...NOW she seems to have lost sight of all that and NOW she takes any opportunity to remind me that she doesn't understand why at my age I'm not married. Since she's retired she has LOTS of free time on her hands...LOTS. And, unfortunately, she has been suffering from ailments that have prevented her from getting around. In her boredom, she will call me several times a week, almost every day and somewhere in that conversation she will sneak in some mention of..."what about so and so, he seems like a nice boy". I love how she continues to refer to people my age or older as "boys". Kinda sick when I think that I just fucked that "boy". Moving along...
Yet she wastes no time in somehow bringing up someone I may have mentioned months ago who she doesn't even know, and how nice that "boy" seems and maybe I should consider marrying him. She has even gone as far as suggesting that one of my best male friends, who happens to like "boys" as well, that maybe I could straighten him out and WE could get married. I've asked her to just drop it. I mean sometimes it is hard to accept that yes, I'm mid-thirty and single with no one on the horizon. But it is what it is and I'm not lowering my standards out of desperation. Or to please her. I try very hard to keep conversation just surface with her. I don't mention anyone to her anymore for that reason. I can't even talk of my friends that she may know because she will ultimately redirect the question to ask if my friend is with someone and bring it around to me and getting married.

My fucking grandmother knitted me an afghan of white to give to me as a wedding gift for Christ sake. Grandma's passed on years ago and that damn blanket is stored at my mom's just collecting dust. Every so often she will mention that she should just give it to me....the sentence trailing off like there is no hope now. Jesus...when did marriage have an experation date? When did I? I realize that parents have these expectations of their kids and when they don't come out the way they had hoped there is a certain element of disappointment. But I lived up to her expectation, DAMMIT! So why NOW all this pressure? It's sad, really. I sometimes think that I wouldn't feel so damn lonely at times if she didn't feel it necessary to remind me of my aloneness!

Don't you just love mothers?

Yet, with all this being said. All this torment she puts me through...frequently. That may very well be one of my fears. The fear that I have so much to give that someone special and never being able to have the opportunity. That I'll be alone. That I'll end up alone. I love my friends and I'm so grateful for them...but there's nothing like that feeling of being with someone you love...without question. It's been so long since I've felt that for someone and part of me may still hold the fear that if I allow myself to feel that deeply for someone again, I'll be disappointed...again.

So my clock may be ticking...quietly. And, yes...I'm still not married, much to my mother's chagrin. I'm trying very hard to still be OK with where I am in life. This is where I am supposed to be. Not society, not the guys at work who continuously mention how surprised they are to know I'm single, not my mother, not even my deceased granmother's afghan lying in state in my mother's closet...nothing is going to make me feel that I am less than because I am not a "couple". I am a single. And that is OK....