We'll die with our options open

I lost one of my best friends a little over a month ago.  She was alive one day and gone the next.

On the surface she and I probably seemed like really unlikely friends.  She was loud and I am quiet, she liked wrestling and I like baseball, she liked heavy metal and hip hop and I like classic and indie rock, she loved horror movies and I refused to even watch them mostly, on movies and TV we may have actually had a few points in common but not many.  People looked at her and I’m sure they thought she was wild, and people look at me and think I’m straight laced and maybe those surface level opinions weren’t far off. Maybe she was a little wild, and maybe I am straight laced.

We had one big thing in common though.  Love.  She loved without question or condition unless or until you gave her a real reason not to and even then…well she might be hurt, she might be angry, she might not want to see you or talk to you, she might not like you very much, but even then she still loved you.  I know that to be true because she told me as much about people who had crossed her.  I love the same way and I loved her more than most.

Lately I feel like everyone is judging me and it makes her absence all the more difficult because she was someone who never judged me and I knew she never would.  She never judged or hated unless someone threw those things at her first and without cause (or at someone she cared about). If she had judged me, or I her, we probably never would have become friends in the first place.  Lately there are things I find myself explaining over and over, things I know she would have understood without explanation.  When I do explain, even if people do seem to understand they also seem to think I’m being disingenuous, that I’m playing games and don’t mean the things I say.  She never would have questioned whether or not I meant the things I say and I never had to with her either. She was honest, and straight forward, and loving and she never hid, or covered up, or pretended to be anything other than who and what she was, and she certainly never apologized for being herself.

I have one last explanation for anyone who needs one. I’ll miss her every day for the rest of my life and that is what breaks my heart.

Sometimes it can be really difficult asking yourself why you do the things you do.  I try to ask myself those hard questions all the time but I’m sure there are still lies I’m telling myself. 

I am really bad at keeping in touch with people.  I’ve talked about it before and it hasn’t changed.  Even when I do try to make a concerted effort to keep in touch with someone I generally do so in a way that doesn’t necessarily invite responses (like e-mailing links to things I think people might like, or like my songs of the day emails).  I’ve asked myself why I am so bad at keeping in touch a million times over the years and unfortunately I fear that knowing the answer has done nothing to improve the behavior.

Some insecurities are so deep-seated that no matter how many times they are refuted you just can’t shake them.  Even knowing what they are and exactly where they come from does nothing to eradicate them.

A few years ago I made a new friend and almost immediately alienated her by not keeping in touch.  We were friends online mostly because we didn’t live in the same city and I would talk to her on message boards for things we were both fans of, but never directly contact her.  If she emailed me, I would respond, obviously, but I never emailed or called her first.  After a few weeks she got super angry with me.  I’m talking ALL CAPS angry.  She told me it was my turn to initiate some sort of contact.  While I think the idea that people take turns that way in friendship is absolutely ridiculous (and I told her so), the sentiment behind that assertion was valid.  I did never initiate contact and I likely never was going to.  Ever.   I told her it’s not something I think I can change about myself and as a result I lost her has a friend.

I honestly believe, no matter what anyone tells me, that people do not want to hear from me.  And I’m not just talking about friends and acquaintances.  Even my immediate family.  I see my brother, and my father, and my mother, when they invite me over or invite me out.  I talk to people when they call me.  I email people when they email me first.  One of the reasons I love Facebook so much is because it allows me to keep up on what my friends and family are doing without actually having to contact them directly, which I truly believe they don’t want me to do.

I know this is irrational.  I know my family loves me.  I know my friends wouldn’t be my friends if they didn’t find my company enjoyable.  Consciously, I know these things, but my subconscious seems to be running this show.  I also know that this behavior often comes off as aloof.  I can see how people might assume when I don’t call or email them that I am the one who doesn’t want to talk to them. 

This isn’t a pity party.  I’m not saying this to fish for compliments.  The truth is, even if everyone who reads this told me they thought I was the most fascinating person on the planet and there is no one they’d rather spend time with, it wouldn’t change anything.  This is an apology.  To my friends and family, especially those I have been out of touch with for months, or years, or decades, I am sorry I never call, or write, or text, or email.  It doesn’t mean I love you any less.

Back in heyday here I used to write about politics a fair amount.  I stopped both because I started writing way less and because I wasn’t sure that politics fit in with my (new-ish) theme.  In reality there may be nothing more fitting for a blog about faith and fear but I wish that weren’t the case.  I wish that politicians didn’t live on fear, but it seems that they do and maybe always will.

Since it is relevant or, well, actually just because I feel like it and last week two of my favorite things got attacked (Planned Parenthood and boys with painted toenails), I’m going to turn my focus on current events again.

Since Stephen Colbert did such a great job smacking down Jon Kyl over his ridiculous lie about Planned Parenthood I probably don’t need to rehash it but do yourself a favor and watch this and this and then go to Twitter and have some fun with the hashtag #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement. 

So, I’m going with door number two: Gender Idenity.  I’m what you might call a little butch for a chick.  If you were inclined to stereotype you might say I’m super butch for a straight chick.  I suppose I have s few decidedly feminine traits, but not a lot.  There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to be a housewife which I guess is kind of traditionally feminine.  And I do like to get pedicures which according to the recent media storm is super girly. 

It’s an odd balance I’ve struck I guess.  My mother is very feminist in some respects and I used to agitate her by saying that I only went to college to meet a man and things of that ilk.  Recently though she’s decided I’m not girly enough and has been trying to get me to be more girly.  I usually just laugh at her attempts.  When I went back to college at age 27, with her chances for grandchildren starting to dwindle, she actually told me that college was a great place to meet someone.  This week she finally acknowledged to me that her focus on femininity is a new thing.  She told me that when I was a kid who loved Tonka trucks and baseball she loved the fact that I was a tomboy and encouraged it.  Of course as a kid I also took dance lessons for 8 years and tried to convince her to let me wear three inch purple suede heals to school in 8th grade.  So for me it’s always been a balance — one foot in both worlds.

Cornell professor Ritch Savin-Williams was quoted in the New York Times saying, “Bullying is less about sexuality than about gender nonconformity” and Dan Savage then addressed the issue on SLOG in the context of his It Gets Better Project.  This week most of the media proceeded to contribute to that problem by completely freaking out over a 5 year old boy with pink toenails (do yourself a favor and watch this Daily Show bit about it). 

I think, and Dr. Peggy Drexler agrees, that it may be easier for girls to be less feminine than for boys to be less masculine (especially in Malaysia), but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for girls (just easier than for boys).

Who gets to decide what it means to be a man or woman?  It’s always defined in relative terms, as compared to others in your culture, and then passed along from one generation to the next until enough people insist on a different definition that it changes.  But then the next generation is still stuck with the definition created by the previous one.  If no one ever told you when you were 5 years old that it’s not okay to paint your toenails because you’re a boy or that it’s not okay to play baseball because you’re a girl you might be able to decide for yourself.

Kids, like the one in the J.Crew ad, have a natural curiosity that we lose as we get older.  Ask a 35 year old man if he’d like to have his toenails painted and he’s likely to have a vastly different reply than the 5 year old in that ad.  My personal journey, my goal,  is to regain that lost curiosity.  To try anything I think for a moment I might enjoy and see for myself what I like and don’t like.  I want to define for myself what it means to be a woman or at very least what it means to be me.

I think my mom’s new focus on my being more girly is based entirely on her wanting grandchildren.  She thinks if I were more girly I’d meet a man and settle down.  But what I’d meet is a man who wants someone girly and that’s not really me.  The It Gets Better Project may be primarily aimed at helping LGBT kids but it’s message can be useful to anyone.  The message is that as you get older and go out in the world and meet more people many of them, or at least some of them, will be like you and you will be able to form a community of people like you and/or people who aren’t like you but who like you just as you are anyway.

There’s a sense amoung non-gender conforming straight people that it might be easier if they were gay.  To find someone I mean.  I’ve avoided this concern somewhat by simply not looking to for someone (to date) but I definitely understand it.  I never in a million years would have expected that there would be someone out there who would both like me just as I am and, in the imortal words of Carole King, make me feel like a natural woman.  Sure there are plenty of people (my friends and family) who like me just as I am but that other piece is tough to find.  It’s out there though.  So, be yourself.  It does get better.

I let Valentine’s Day pass without writing a single thing about love and I feel, ever so slightly, as though I betrayed my belief system.  This Valentine’s Day was no different for me really.  I still took the time to celebrate love in all its forms and to tell everyone in my life that I love them very much.  I guess, since every post I’ve written in the past several months has been about love I sort of felt like I’d said everything I had to say about it.  Maybe I have, but knowing myself I find it hard to believe that I’ll ever have said everything I have to say about any subject.  Also, I went to see Air Supply this past weekend and nothing says love quite like an Air Supply concert.  So I’m going to delve into it again.

I’m big on not categorizing love.  I’ve said many times that there are a nearly infinte number of different types of love or, if not infinite, at least there are potentially as many different types of love as people on the planet squared.  There are, however, a few generally recognized categories that love falls into (platonic, familial, and romantic) and I’m willing to accept them so long as anyone arguing the point will also stipulate the snow flake theory of love (i.e. no two are alike).

A while ago I talked about the yard stick, a man, a friend of mine, who had become my measurement for all the men I met and usually the men I met fell short.  Eventually I met someone who didn’t fall short though, in fact he kind of broke the scale (sorry to mix measurement metaphors).  But it just made me realize that the yard stick was more a measure of myself than the men in my life (or anyone else). 

It’s a study in the platonic ideal of love actually.  Plato believed in a type of love that was completely asexual, that got you closer to yourself and to God (or the Gods I suppose since we’re talking Plato) because it was like a mirror that turned your focus inward.  That’s the true meaning of platonic.  It’s not just friendship, it’s friendship (or love), that helps you understand yourself and the world better.  So, in the truest sense of platonic love, I love him but he’s not the measurement of all men in my world anymore, he never really was.  He’s a mirror I hold up when I want to see myself more clearly.

I’ve also already talked about the idea of the family we make as opposed to the family we are born to.  I have collected many brothers over the years and at least one sister.  I guess I tend to feel more comfortable in the company of men than women.  Men are more straight forward, they say what they mean, they don’t court drama or feel like they have to compete for attention.  I suppose I treasure my close girlfriend(s), my sister(s), all the more for the fact that they break the usual girl mold.  Lately though I’ve added more brothers to this family I’m making and I can’t tell you how great it has been for me to find guys to hang out with again.  Honestly though, I love all my family, the ones I was born with and the ones I chose, without question or condition.

I guess that just leaves romantic love and I’m not sure I can talk about that.  In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day I wrote down all of my thoughts on love in a letter, you might even say a love letter, and mailed it.  So maybe, just maybe, there is this one subject about which I really have said all I have to say.  Maybe.

When I first started writing this blog it was a journey of self exploration. I felt like my life had been on hold for 8 years and as a consequence I didn’t really know myself. I felt like an 18 year old in the body of someone much older. Like I’d never done any of the things that normal kids do to figure out who they are and what they want out of life.

My best friend told me about the line. Some comedian had made a joke about how our generation’s tag line would be “we died with our options open” and it was comforting to me. I felt like maybe my inability to know what I wanted wasn’t circumstantial, or specific to me in any way, but it was the hallmark of an entire generation. So I titled my blog after it.

At first I didn’t write much. I guess I was still kind of stuck. About two years after I started this blog I met a guy who became a really good friend. Pretty shortly after I met him he said something that jump started my voyage of self discovery. He said that true faith conquers fear and it struck a chord with me. I couldn’t have agreed more and since I’ve always felt I had a lot of faith I wondered what was holding me back from exploring the world and finding out what I liked and didn’t like. What was I afraid of? And why couldn’t my faith conquer that fear. That was when I re-named my blog, and also when I really started living my life. I started writing a lot more then about the journey and all sorts of other things.

Recently I haven’t been writing as much and I’m starting to wonder why again. Sure, I’m more decisive than I once was (about some things), but I don’t imagine I’ve learned everything there is to know about myself yet and I feel like I’m still more likely to support the decisions of others if they are sure because I’m so unsure most of the time still.

It was Thanksgiving a couple weeks ago and consequently there was a glut of articles about what gives life meaning, including this onefrom Huffington Post titled “What gives your life meaning?”. So, I started thinking about what gives my life meaning.

In the beginning (by which I mean the beginning of this blog) there was really only one thing that I was certain of (about myself) and that was that the people I love are the most important thing in the world to me. I don’t think that has changed. It is still, primarily, the people I love that give my life meaning. Ironically though I’ve found just as much meaning in what could arguably be called the opposite of people I love.

I value solitude a lot more now than I ever did before. The people I love still give my life meaning, but now independence and freedom give my life meaning too. I had to be alone in order to not immediately try to figure out anyone else but myself.

Even if I didn’t have a predisposition or a quality that makes people seek me out for that kind of thing (analysis and advise), I’d seek them out because It’s always been so much easier to help other people figure out their internal struggles than it is trying to figure out my own. The easiest thing isn’t always (or even often) the most meaningful though.

I suppose there is an ideal balance I’m still looking for. So I’ll keep asking myself what I’m so afraid of, and keep taking those leaps of faith to get past the fear, and then maybe someday I’ll find the balance.

When I was a kid I never gave much thought to my wedding day. My best friend joked about the blind leading the blind when we started talking about plans for her wedding because she’d never given it much thought either. I know, as a girl, it is assumed that I spent my childhood fantasizing about white dresses, and tiered cakes, and diamond rings, but that’s just not the case. I did, through all of my youth, assume that I would get married, but it was the marriage, not the wedding, that I thought about and now I don’t think much about either.

I came across this article about the belief that many people (the article says mainly women) hold that marriage is a necessity. The author wonders if her insitance on marriage is her own desire or a product of cultural indoctrination. I’m inclined to say that it is not organic because, for me at least, it has dwindled as I have become more and more aware of my own desires.

When I was a child I wanted to marry and have children young. I wanted to be a housewife and spend my days baking cookies and doing laundry and driving my kids to dance lessons and t-ball games. For me it might have been more rebellion against what was expected of me (by my feminist, lawyer, mother), but either way it didn’t come from me, it was a reaction.

As I’ve gotten older and learned to distinguish between what I want and what is expected I think less and less about marriage as a necessity. I decided that if I was going to have kids I’d want to be married, otherwise I don’t see the need for it. But then I realized that, as a woman, even if I am going to have kids marriage is still unnecessary for me (mother’s have automatic rights with their biological children) though I can see how the father of those kids might insist on it.

My grandmother passed away a couple weeks ago and her memorial was this past weekend. Looking through her pictures and hearing people remember her life has marriage on my mind again. When my grandfather passed away (11 years ago, 4 months shy of their 50th wedding anniversary), my grandmother told me that in 50 years together they never spent a single night apart. At the time I thought that sounded ideal, but now I’m not so sure. I suppose I still think it sounds ideal to love someone that much, but to never spend a night apart? I don’t know.

My friend who’s getting married in a few months told me that when she was younger not only did she not think about her wedding day but she also didn’t think about her marriage. She said she’s always known that the only reason she would ever get married at all is if someone she loved enough asked her to. That’s kind of the inverse of the conclusion the Huffington Post article comes to. In the article the author asks herself, if she loved someone and he said that he absolutely was committed to her for life he just didn’t believe in marriage, would she really not be able to compromise? She implies that the answer is no, that the truth is, no matter how much she claims marriage is a requirement for her, she would compromise for the right person.

It’s not a new concept for me. I know that no matter what you think you want in a mate, or from your relationship with them, you never can predict what you will really require or what will really be a deal breaker until you are faced with an actual decision. I’ve said as much here on this blog before. So, do I feel like I need, or even want, to get married? No. Would I get married if the right person asked me to? Absolutely.

Love is a big subject for me here because I think of it as a type of faith. It means so many things though that as much as I try I don’t often feel like my words capture the concept very well. So, for the time being I’m going to simplify and just talk about romantic love.

I’d say I’ve been in love, on average, once ever three or so years since hitting puberty and I don’t recall ever being afraid of it, not the feeling anyway, but the circumstances it creates can be terrifying. I think the first time, maybe the first couple of times, I was afraid that my love wouldn’t be returned but then I found that it really didn’t matter. Love is a gift, no matter what. Once it was returned though I found I lost myself completely in it and that was equally terrifying. I thought I might always lose myself in love and never find my way back.

What if I fall in love? What if I fall for someone who never feels the same for me? What if I fall, and get involved in a relationship and it ends badly? What if I get my heart broken so badly that it destroys me and I never let myself take that leap again and I die alone and get eaten by my cats? Is it worth it? Absolutely.

What I have a harder time with is…what if I fall in love and it works out great? Can I look to the future without always being afraid? Can I build a life with someone? Can I be selfish enough to make sure I don’t lose myself without being too selfish to ever share my life with someone?

I know that love, at its best challenges rather than stifling, it makes you explore yourself and find things you might otherwise never have found, it gives rather than taking. I know that, but I am still afraid of losing myself. I guess it’s always going to be a leap of faith. I’d like to think I’m always going to be someone who takes a leap of faith if I’m faced with one. That’s what I’d like to think.

Sometimes things sneak up on you and all the faith in the world doesn’t prepare you. I came across this article today. It’s about a subject close to my heart: women’s reproductive health. It details a recent phenomenon whereby women who live close to the boarder will go to Mexico to get a drug called Misoprostol in the hopes of inducing a miscarriage rather than having to go into a clinic for an abortion. You see, even though abortion is legal it can be difficult to get one for a number of reasons (family, religion, politics, etc) and it can be expensive (unless you live in a state that covers it under Medicaid, but I doubt Texas is such a state) so for many women it’s easier to try to induce a miscarriage.

The article details one case of a woman who was successful at inducing a miscarriage and reading the details was like taking the Tardis back to 1995 for me.

My miscarriage was natural (not self induced). I was 17 at the time so I can’t say that I was looking to have a baby. So, yes, I did think of it as a good thing, but even so it was painful, and bloody, and disturbing. I went to the ER at the insistence of my best friend and the ER doctor ran a pregnancy test and told me that it was negative which meant what I’d experienced couldn’t have been a miscarriage. My primary care doctor refuted that when I followed up with her but all this time I’ve been telling myself that there was a chance that I wasn’t really pregnant at all and hadn’t had a miscarriage even though deep down I know I did.

It wasn’t until I read this article that I really let go of that illusion. The deatails about the pain and the blood and passing it and flushing it down the drain were so real to me it was like it was happening all over again. Well…in my case it happened way earlier on (at about 4 weeks) and it went down the shower drain so there was no flushing involved, but everything else was identical.

I don’t know if I would have kept it or had an abortion if I’d had to make the choice myself and all this time I’ve been thankfull (to a degree) that I didn’t have to but…the fact that people inflict that on themselves because they feel (rightly or wrongly) that they don’t have any other option, well, it fills me with all sorts of negative emotions that I usually try to avoid, including fear (which I believe to be the root of all negative emotions anyway).

It makes me afraid especially for teenagers. When I was 17 I was a mess. I was lonely and angry and desperate for any kind of connection. Not to mention the hormones. Add all that up and it leads to unwanted pregnancy. I know the situation is not unique to me and sometimes I just don’t see a way out. Education about reproductive rights helps (education that includes more than pushing abstinence on those least likely to employ it), but I fear that there will always be a social (read: religious) and political divide. I’ve not yet found the argument that will convince anyone who believes that abortion is murder to come over to my side and I’m pretty good at arguing.

People often equate live music to a religious experience. My father even calls his magazine the house organ of the church of rock and roll. I’ve always been passionate about music so the comparison, of course, isn’t lost on me.

When I was sixteen listening to U2 was my version of prayer. You know that scene in What the #$*! Do We Know where they have various types of clergy members bless water and then they look at it under a microscope and find that the molecules are arranged in different patterns in each sample. Well, at twenty-two I saw the Who in concert and it changed me on in that same way, on a molecular level. There’s nothing in the world like the energy at Who concert when they start into Baba O’Riley. Lately John Darnielle, of the Mountain Goats, has been my personal deity and the energy at one of his shows is something special as well.

So, if music is akin to religion then what is the church of rock and roll? For me, it is the Showbox, in Seattle (the original one, not SoDo). Normally I like to show up early so I can get a place to sit because I like to absorb the music rather than participate (usually). This past week though I went there to see the Hold Steady and was convinced to venture down into the crowd. I hadn’t stood on the main floor there in years and this time I stood right in the middle, directly under the mirror ball and it was a perfect live music experience…transcendent…like being in church.

When I was young I had what can best be described as a coffee habit. I drank on average 5-10 cups of coffee per day and I loved it. It had a sort of delayed effect on me. It would put me to sleep and then kick in a a few hours later. It was actually (ironically) the only thing that helped take the edge off the insomnia I had at the time. If I drank as much coffee as humanly possible right before going to bed I could usually sleep 3-5 hours, if I didn’t drink any coffee I pretty much couldn’t sleep at all.

About 4 months after I turned 18 coffee started having the usual effect on me and I couldn’t keep drinking it because it was keeping me up at night and I had 8:00AM class that quarter. When I quit drinking coffee I also quit smoking because the two activities had become inexorably linked in my mind. Also, coffee masked the taste of cigarettes and without it I didn’t much care for smoking. The coffee had served a purpose (to alleviate my insomnia) but the cigarettes never really did anyway. I’d started smoking because I had heard it calmed the nerves which turned out to be a lie.

Why are coffee and cigarettes on my mind right now. Well, I’ve been having trouble sleeping again lately, I’ve been antsy and nervous…I haven’t felt this way since I was 17 but I think I’ve finally figured out what the cause is. You know the saying, “old enough to know better, but still too young to care”? That’s it, that’s the cause. At 17 I was old enough to know better about a lot of things but still too young to care about any of them. Now there’s pretty much just one thing. One rule, one thing that I promised myself (when I was 17) that I’d never do again. I know better, but I’m finding it really, really hard to care and it’s making me nervous. It’s making me want coffee and cigarettes.