Some People Call It A One Night Stand

This is very true. I'd say, eight out of ten times. So take heed, young women.

".....The way chemicals are released in the brain during intercourse is very different in men and women. In women, oxytocin is released. It's a chemical that makes women want to nurture their young and stay close. Men get a huge jolt of testosterone, which suppresses oxytocin, and that's nature's way of saying "leave the nest and go sire offspring somewhere else." So when women think they can have sex and walk away just like guys do, they're having to suppress thousands of years of evolution that tells them to cuddle, stay in bed, and look forward to tomorrow. When they get up and walk out, they feel depressed and don't know why."


((Song: "Save A Prayer" from Duran Duran. Lyrics here:
http://www.geocities.com/ladyxanax13/Lyrics/SaveAPrayer.html))

I Can't Say, Baby, Where I'll Be In A Year

I had my job interview.

I think it went quite well and I hope to hear from them in the coming weeks. I'd say more, but there is so much swirling about in my head that I'm afraid it would be the virtual equivalent of diarrhea. So I keep it short and simple.

I was reading something today that was rather apropos, so I'll quote the relevant parts from Steph's blog, Greek Tragedy (see my sidebar):

"You can be as open as you want to be, but if you aren't taking risks, if you aren't extending yourself maybe beyond your natural comfort level, it's really not much you're doing. You're doing safe. What you know. And that's not growing. It's living on a treadmill......And the only bit of advice I can offer is, try to see your life as an adventure. Imagine that you'll be married in less than a year. What do you want for you right now, knowing that soon your life will never be the same? Will you ever have the chance to travel alone? I know it sounds scary or lonesome, but really, you live this life only once. Why wouldn't you dare to do something that scares you a little? What is it that you think you might miss about your life right now, as it is? Do more of it. Because chances are, that's exactly what will happen. I'm not sure it's ever exactly as we planned. Thank God."

Yes. I have been experiencing flashes of mortifying fear. I am so entrenched in a comfort zone, more entrenched than I think I fully realized. The prospect of this job -- of moving, of changing, of doing things I'd convinced myself were not mine to do ever because that was someone else's life I was dreaming about! -- the prospects have terrified me. It's made me want to retreat or to freeze like a deer in a headlight. To swing out again and knock myself down so no one else can.

My best friend and I were talking the other day and I told her I felt like I needed conformation that this job was best for me, that I was doing the "right thing" by pursuing something that I "selfishly" wanted. She told me, "The hardest thing you will experience or try to get through is not being able to turn around and ask him for permission."

I nearly gasped with the truth of it. I've had my husband as my rock for so long that he was my yardstick. My measurement of the validity of many -- if not virtually all -- of my thoughts and judgements on the things around me. "So what do you think?" was my phrase of choice. I would listen, absorb, trust his wisdom and in the knowledge that whatever he said to me it was because he loved me. And he did, and does.....of that I have no doubt. We are not at odds, he and I. Not at the core of things. But I did not realize how much of my own autonomy that I was giving away in the process. I want that back now. So yes, it is not a phrase I need to ask of him anymore even though he'd be happy to give it to me. I need to begin to listen to my own reason, wisdom and knowledge and learn to trust my own internal compass.

That is what I most desire.....and fear the most. Isn't it funny how those two feelings are like the heads and tails of any coin?


((Song: "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith. Lyrics here:
http://www.aerosmith-lyrics.com/Toys_WalkThisWay.html))

Where Is The Life That I Recognize?

I read Under The Palms blog today (find the link to her blog on my sidebar) and was struck by how it reflected much of what I have been thinking and feeling the last four or five years especially.

I have a job interview coming up that could mean a significant shift in my life. If I get this job then it requires me to relocate to one of the cities in which they have offices. One of those is the city of my birth, a city I never thought I would ever live in again. This city is an 18-hr drive from where I currently reside.

That means -- if I get this -- that I would have two weeks to pack up seventeen years of shared "stuff" and move out of my house. Find a new place to stay in the new city. File for divorce. Leave my child behind with her father and see her on the weekends and/or fly her up to spend weekends with me. To be a weekend parent. To leave my friends and my family behind. To leave so much.....

I'm terrified. I want it, yes. I want this for a while, not forever -- for a few years at most, until I gain more experience and can find employment more suited to me and to maintain my lifestyle. I am guilty as hell at leaving my husband behind to shake up his life like this. I know he doesn't truly understand and he will never be able to no matter how much I explain. He knows a lot of it, but knowing it -- hearing it -- and "grokking" it are two different things. I simply cannot impart my perspective to him. Thus, he is left feeling confused, abandoned, unloved. God, I hope he knows that through everything, he was never unloved. I just hope he can also realize that love alone just wasn't enough.

And what of my daughter? What am I doing this to her for? For what might be......what.....a midlife thing? Are my issues worth tearing her family apart? What kind of fucking mother am I if I can't wait for another five years? I don't know! GOD I DON'T KNOW! But I have waited, this should have been done when she was five or six, I can't wait any more, and she'll be okay, I am not giving her enough credit, or me. I can still make sure she knows I love her. Can't I? So many things I think, back and forth, back and forth, until I feel unbalanced and nearly insane. Do I choose me? Do I choose them? What is ~right~ here?

I know also if I were a man then the prospect of leaving my child would be a necessary evil and it could be justified and laid aside. But I am a mother - a badbadbadbad mother for leaving her child! Deep down I feel bad. But this is a choice, and I am scared to death that my daughter will resent me in the future for choosing me over her. Just this morning I told her that I might be leaving if I get the job and though she said "I'm all right with it," I could tell she wasn't. I wanted to bend my head and cry until there were no more tears left.

Can I do this? Can I?


((Song: "Ordinary World" by Duran Duran. Lyrics here:
http://www.geocities.com/ladyxanax13/Lyrics/OrdinaryWorld.html))

You Know You'll Always Be My Little Girl

Something my daughter said to me this morning made me stop and blink a few times, impressed by her insight and wisdom even though she is only 14. I share it here because I don't want to forget.

We were talking about her friends, her life, her thoughts about some of her friends, some of the things that happen in their lives and her feelings about those events. She'd shared with me some of her more private musings about them and during the course of the conversation she said, "You know, Mom, I really like [her], she's one of my best friends. But really, sometimes her need for attention is more important than her need for honesty. So sometimes I don't know if everything she says is real or just overdramatized."

I told her I was impressed by her insight. I also let her know that many adults do not come to those sorts of realizations about their friends -- or themselves -- until much later in their lives, if at all.

She's not sure about who she is yet. She has issues with her sexuality and with her desire to be a male instead of a female. She's upset at the hand that fate gave her, giving her a female's body when she does think much like a male. She's blunt, she's generally not empathic, she hides her emotions and thoughts -- preferring to think them through internally rather than explore them out loud -- and she's impatient with the drama and manipulation that exists in the female teenage world. I'm not sure if these things she feels now are permanent or temporary but I am aware that she is old enough to know what she feels sexually. No doubt part of it is that she is curious and will be experimental in many aspects of her life until she finds the hats that will fit her best. I am supportive of her and loving towards her no matter what she does or what she becomes. I've told her so many times.

I do know one thing, though -- she's going to become an incredible woman. But she'll always be my little girl.

((Song: "My Little Girl" by Tim McGraw. Lyrics here:
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/mcgraw-tim/my-little-girl-16952.html))

Something To Remember

I want to post this in it's (pretty much) entirety and give credit to the author. It might not be a profound statement objectively speaking since it is fairly commonsensical, but it struck a deep chord within me.

So, props go out to Gneiss Guy, who happens to be a genuine, loving, thoughtful soul and an incredible writer. Find him at http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=gneiss_guy


"You can indeed choose how you write your history, or how you write your present situation. I have always lived in a fantasy world, creating my reality to suit me....

"...you choose how you view your past and that I had chosen a decidedly negative view of my own. You remember that view – failure, no fun, screwed up many a time. I still spend a lot of time slipping back there. It’s a familiar place and I gravitate towards it. However...has pushed me to look at things in a different life and I’ve largely rewritten my history or at least how I fared in it...

"Conversations with a good friend have also taught me this – if you like the person you are today, then you can’t be too hard on the path you took because it’s the only way that could get you where you are. I think that’s a really good way to look at your life. Any mistakes that you’ve made or opportunities you’ve missed out on suddenly become stepping stones that you took to get to today.

"There can a downside to this kind of thinking. I spent decades telling myself someday I would be the person I thought I should be. I could conjure an image up in my head and I could make myself believe it would come true. I was riding centuries and writing books and had close friends and was rolling in money and having wild sex. It didn’t come true and it never could have. I think that fantasy life held me back for a long time and it set standards that I could never meet. I was never destined to be a thin, popular, wildly successful stud and seeing New Year after New Year come in without becoming that person drove me deeper and deeper into myself and I labeled myself a failure. It’s hard to see yourself as a failure and then take the baby steps that lead to real change.

"I guess after thinking about it for days, I still don’t know what I’m trying to say. Maybe it’s this -- you can rewrite your past to suit you, but you have to work hard to write your future."

Indeed.