April showers
So it's April already. Crap. Life is just flying by. But darn if I dont' feel like I'm making the most of it.
Things that have been contributing to the time-whizzing-by feeling:
- Rehearsals for the Vagina Monologues (April 11. Holy crap!)
- Working on the collages for Art-O-Matic
- Work = Zoo
- Therapy has been interesting lately. My issues around my knees have lifted so much that we contemplating ceasing my appointments, but instead decided to examine other things. The biggest piece of food for thought that I got was surrounding my lack of desire to have children, and where that comes from... While I've never quite been keen on kids, I would like to make sure, before I'm no longer reproductively viable, that my non-want of kids is analyzed and either deconstructed or proven appropriate for me. After a few sessions, this is what I have to say about it.After a few sessions, this is what I have to say about it:
I've never really strongly identified with my gender as a "woman". I realized that this might be out of the ordinary one day when Tim and I were watching an episode of SVU that discussed some murderous transsexual who killed the person who was threatening to block their sex reassignment surgery. Now clearly, most people don't identfy that strongly with their gender, but a particular line in the show made me think: "Imagine if you were to wake up tomorrow in the wrong body"
I said to Tim: "You know, if I woke up tomorrow as a dude, I think you'd probably have a bigger problem adjusting than I would." I am by no means saying that I believe I should be a man -- more that I don't really feel attached to either gender as a defining aspect of my identity.
So I brought this up to my therapist, and we looked at it within the framework of what having children means. What I was finally able to define for myself was this: I am, by nature, fairly gender neutral. Bearing children feels to me like a markedly feminine act, and would thus pull my identiy out of the neutral space that I feel comfortable in and into the strongly feminine, which in and of itself just feels weird. When you couple that with the fact that I did not see any strongly feminine role models whose situations appealed to me during childhood, the idea of being pulled towards the feminine pole doesn't just feels weird, it feels harmful.
The next steps are changing my mind about having children equating to unhappiness, so that I can actually make the decision of whether or not to have them in a neutral, more comfortable space.
- I'm starting a joint restaurant review blog with some friends to give us an excuse to eat. It does seem this year of the ox has a lot of creative endeavors in store.