Choke
When I was younger, it was generally imparted on me that I was somehow broken and needed to strive to be "normal." To fit in. So I worked hard to find stability in myself and my life, and got to a place of profound health and well-being (better than even THEY imagined)...and discovered that a good majority of the people around me, including those who'd insisted I needed to change, were struggling with dysfunction of their own. Basically, I was an outsider when I was unstable--and still felt like an outsider thanks to the reserve of coping and communication skills I'd accumulated. People around me didn't deal with the world the same way I did, and that made me feel like an anomaly.
But I dealt with it. As it turns out, it's much nicer being a misfit for being happy and healthy than it is to be "weird" for being MORE dysfunctional than the dysfunctional people around you. And, my current misfittery isn't externally noticeable, or any real detriment in navigating the murky nuances of society. It's more...a sense that JR and I are a bit on the outskirts, and we're often confused and grasping for answers when we interact with people who communicate and engage in ways we can't relate to. We puzzle over it like two Vulcans trying to assess an alien culture.
(...you know, I can't really talk about this without sounding like a snob or whatever, so I'm just going to acknowledge that possibility and keep plowing forward. I've got shit on my mind and if this journal isn't the place for it, then I don't know what the point of it is.)
Anyway, so we're misfits. But I'm discovering more and more (in the past year, especially) that the trajectory of my life is shooting off in a direction that seems to be shockingly contrary to the "standard" protocol of being a human being, at least in American society. And THIS is weird. It makes me feel weird--not because I'm legitimately weird or particularly concerned about being weird--because the choices I'm making, the choices that make me so happy and fulfilled, the choices that seem so honest and obvious to me, seem to be so completely foreign and unthinkable to a huge chunk of my cultural and peer group.
When we went to the U2 concert, we got caught up in a wave of people pouring towards the stadium. And when we were leaving the concert, the same thing happened in reverse. Except the crowd bottlenecked at a tiny bridge that led to the lightrail station, and we were all left standing shoulder to shoulder in a baa-ing herd (literally, many of the people around me started baa-ing). I've never been so firmly "one of the crowd" in my life. There was no way to escape, nothing to do except trudge quietly forward, or stop when the pool of bodies commanded it. If a bomb had fallen on us at that moment, or a truck had careened wildly in our direction, we all would have been flattened like inconsequential ants on a hill.
In my daily life, it's almost as though I were stuck in that throng of people, but realized it wasn't working for me and there was a more satisfying way for me to independently manage the situation, so I quietly worked my way to the edge of things. Once I got there, I began slinking away so as not to attract attention--and when it became obvious my path was clear, that it was going to work, I began a full on sprint. I could breathe! I could move my arms, move my limbs, fill my lungs, go where I pleased. But as it happened, the crowd behind me kept growing, and growing, and growing, with more and more people joining the mass, until pretty soon it seemed more like I was ESCAPING them, rather than simply making a "different choice." Like the momentum of their unified movement has a gravity of its own.
Here's the brass tacks of it all. One by one, every female blogger on my google reader has done the following in the past couple years: pursued their awesome talents, gotten pregnant, quit their jobs, and (drumroll)--become a stay at home mommy. These were accomplished photographers, marathon runners, fitness junkies, television producers, etc. I check my old facebook account, and it's there too. Girls I went to HS with--they went on to college, got degrees, established careers, got married, got a house in the suburbs, got pregnant, quit their jobs, and are now stay at home mommies. Most of them blog now, too, usually with a tint of desperation. Even on campus, I'll hear girls and women say: "Oh, I'm finishing my degree, but really, all I want to do is be a stay at home mommy." Old female friends of ours who used to be so focused and motivated, now seem fearful of their ambition: "Eh, I'll just have a baby" Like, "Eh, I'll just default."
It wouldn't be so unsettling if it wasn't EVERYFREAKINGWHERE I turn. And the worst part is that most of them seem so resigned and (dare I say it?)...unhappy....either opting to completely lose their individual identities and start reciting the most tired cliches possible, or blearily, wearily discussing how tired and stressed and depressed they are. How their marriages are struggling. How they feel unfulfilled.
And I'm over here like...yay, great. So this is how it is, I guess? This growing gap between me and...I dunno, my gender. Fine, there's always kind of been a disparity there. But in the meantime, it's making me feel like, culturally, the only real expectation of ME (simply for having two x chromosomes) involves my uterus. The uterus I don't want to use. Like it's "cute" if women try to cultivate their talents, it's cute if they get an education, it's cute if they try to have jobs and careers, but at the end of the day, they better choke on it and submit to their real role.
The crowd is swelling behind me, and the bigger it gets, the more desperate I feel to break free.
But I dealt with it. As it turns out, it's much nicer being a misfit for being happy and healthy than it is to be "weird" for being MORE dysfunctional than the dysfunctional people around you. And, my current misfittery isn't externally noticeable, or any real detriment in navigating the murky nuances of society. It's more...a sense that JR and I are a bit on the outskirts, and we're often confused and grasping for answers when we interact with people who communicate and engage in ways we can't relate to. We puzzle over it like two Vulcans trying to assess an alien culture.
(...you know, I can't really talk about this without sounding like a snob or whatever, so I'm just going to acknowledge that possibility and keep plowing forward. I've got shit on my mind and if this journal isn't the place for it, then I don't know what the point of it is.)
Anyway, so we're misfits. But I'm discovering more and more (in the past year, especially) that the trajectory of my life is shooting off in a direction that seems to be shockingly contrary to the "standard" protocol of being a human being, at least in American society. And THIS is weird. It makes me feel weird--not because I'm legitimately weird or particularly concerned about being weird--because the choices I'm making, the choices that make me so happy and fulfilled, the choices that seem so honest and obvious to me, seem to be so completely foreign and unthinkable to a huge chunk of my cultural and peer group.
When we went to the U2 concert, we got caught up in a wave of people pouring towards the stadium. And when we were leaving the concert, the same thing happened in reverse. Except the crowd bottlenecked at a tiny bridge that led to the lightrail station, and we were all left standing shoulder to shoulder in a baa-ing herd (literally, many of the people around me started baa-ing). I've never been so firmly "one of the crowd" in my life. There was no way to escape, nothing to do except trudge quietly forward, or stop when the pool of bodies commanded it. If a bomb had fallen on us at that moment, or a truck had careened wildly in our direction, we all would have been flattened like inconsequential ants on a hill.
In my daily life, it's almost as though I were stuck in that throng of people, but realized it wasn't working for me and there was a more satisfying way for me to independently manage the situation, so I quietly worked my way to the edge of things. Once I got there, I began slinking away so as not to attract attention--and when it became obvious my path was clear, that it was going to work, I began a full on sprint. I could breathe! I could move my arms, move my limbs, fill my lungs, go where I pleased. But as it happened, the crowd behind me kept growing, and growing, and growing, with more and more people joining the mass, until pretty soon it seemed more like I was ESCAPING them, rather than simply making a "different choice." Like the momentum of their unified movement has a gravity of its own.
Here's the brass tacks of it all. One by one, every female blogger on my google reader has done the following in the past couple years: pursued their awesome talents, gotten pregnant, quit their jobs, and (drumroll)--become a stay at home mommy. These were accomplished photographers, marathon runners, fitness junkies, television producers, etc. I check my old facebook account, and it's there too. Girls I went to HS with--they went on to college, got degrees, established careers, got married, got a house in the suburbs, got pregnant, quit their jobs, and are now stay at home mommies. Most of them blog now, too, usually with a tint of desperation. Even on campus, I'll hear girls and women say: "Oh, I'm finishing my degree, but really, all I want to do is be a stay at home mommy." Old female friends of ours who used to be so focused and motivated, now seem fearful of their ambition: "Eh, I'll just have a baby" Like, "Eh, I'll just default."
It wouldn't be so unsettling if it wasn't EVERYFREAKINGWHERE I turn. And the worst part is that most of them seem so resigned and (dare I say it?)...unhappy....either opting to completely lose their individual identities and start reciting the most tired cliches possible, or blearily, wearily discussing how tired and stressed and depressed they are. How their marriages are struggling. How they feel unfulfilled.
And I'm over here like...yay, great. So this is how it is, I guess? This growing gap between me and...I dunno, my gender. Fine, there's always kind of been a disparity there. But in the meantime, it's making me feel like, culturally, the only real expectation of ME (simply for having two x chromosomes) involves my uterus. The uterus I don't want to use. Like it's "cute" if women try to cultivate their talents, it's cute if they get an education, it's cute if they try to have jobs and careers, but at the end of the day, they better choke on it and submit to their real role.
The crowd is swelling behind me, and the bigger it gets, the more desperate I feel to break free.