It hadn’t even occurred to me that I could blog. I haven’t blogged in what seems like ages, but it probably more like months.
I flipped through the New York Times and the BBC online, becoming sullen over the oil spill but not wanted to blame Obama for any of it. I felt political but not politically motivated. I creeped through my dad’s photo stream but quickly became bored with the dozens of Chinese women he photographs incessantly. Let’s face it: it’s 4:20 pm on a Friday, I’m burned out and ready to get the hell out of this place.
It’s been non-stop all week, playing catch up from being at a conference basically the entire week before. It took me an entire day to catch up with e-mails and all week to feel like I wasn’t behind. I’m an Aquarius, it’s sort of how we are. Of course it’s not just that. My mom took her work home with every night, mostly in the form of complaints but she would also literally take work home with her. She did transcription, checked voice mails, all manner of things to keep herself caught up at work. She also cooked and cleaned but she didn’t see anything wrong with opening up a can of Dinty Moore beef stew either.
I had to remind my husband that while he may not have grown up around men who cared for children, I didn’t grow up with stay at home mothers, either. My mother made it clear from my young age that I was expected to work outside the home, be successful and fulfilled by a career. I could have a family, but my earliest memories of family was not to have one at all. I recall as a teenager lamenting the baby-process, saying that there were too many kids who needed homes, who was I to deprive them of one by having my own? Of course there is much to be said about the fact that my parents divorced while I was at a formative age: the end of puberty and the beginning of high school. I was a brooding intellectual high school student, too worried that I might be perceived as a typical conceited teen if I thought too much about myself that I thought about everything else. I took the teaching of the Buddha far too literally, attempting to take on as much pain as possible so that others wouldn’t suffer.
No one told me it was philosophy.
I figured it out eventually, only to swing in the exact opposite direction in my twenties and become focused exclusively on myself. Those were beyond a doubt my selfish years. I hurt more people than I should’ve. I made semi-catastrophic mistakes in the world of relationships, ones I’m still recovering from even today. It’s likely a process that continues on and on, well past the point of actually applying any of the lessons learned.
I’ve let myself not write about a lot of things for fear that they might upset someone. I’ve never fully trusted that someone could care enough for me to actually read my words and understand them beyond the jealous rage my blogs have inspired. But the truth will set you free.
Other things set you free, too.
I met a man at this conference. Most women meet men at conferences, it’s not the first time it’s happened to me, either. But in this case, for the first time since I met Anirban, I felt like I was insane about someone. The kind of feeling that lifts you up off your feet, knocks you off balance, squashes all of your self-confidence all while making you feel as though you have the biggest ass in the world. Why this is a nice thing, I don’t know, but it was. I have no desire to rehash the encounter now. In all honesty, I will never see him again, and in the back of my mind I know that is a good thing. He stirred me up far too much for whatever was in store for us to be a good thing.
That, and he failed to mention he’s married.
Of course none of that matters now. I felt awake, though I didn’t realize I was falling asleep, which is almost always the case. And when I woke up, I still had Sagar, I hadn’t crossed any lines. I could see him more clearly. I suppose that is why when we talked a bit about marriage that I let it slip how much I would like to be asked someday. It makes a woman feel as though there is nothing more special than her to be asked. Champion of women’s rights I may be, but romantic I am far more.
He of course, declined. Not on the basis that one might think (we just met, blah blah blah) but on some false equality equasion, which broke my heart. I wasn’t able to explain how much it hurt at the time, probably because I wasn’t wearing any clothing and wasn’t about to get moody with him. I am much better at covering up my physical defects than my emotional ones anyway.
I suppose that brings me right to my point. It’s safe to say that a woman knows if she would marry the man she is dating relatively early in the relationship. I am a firm believer that men figure it out much later than we do, probably because we are active compromisers and tend to be by nature. Having said that, it’s not as if I would run myself to city hall to be married if he had asked me say, yesterday, but I’m not opposed to a seriously long engagement either. Luckily for me however, it’s not a priority.
I just know it will be someday.
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