Friday, June 6, 2008

Pre-Calculus Blows

I believe, perhaps...more than likely...I have entered into the acceptance stage of my grief. I am no longer operating under the impression that this isn't actually happening to me...I am also no longer operating under the impression that this is the worst thing that has or will ever happen to me. I am trying...I am taking my life back because it is the only thing I can do...really.

Driving...despite being quite a pain...is easier now because, for some reason, I've stopped obsessing about the people that constantly tail gate me. I used to go crazy about that...now...I just ignore it...even though I'm probably being tailgated for driving like a grandma.

I am inundated...by myself...with books to read. I occasionally get hit on in bookstores by strange, reclusive guys hyped up on coffee at 9 p.m, and I try to hide my desperate search for an exit. I got chatted up in the reference section the other day at Border's. So ladies...GO!

Yesterday evening I was tooling around in Barnes and Noble when I came across this book called Lady In Waiting. I remember this book from college and Bible studies. I think it's no secret that I believe in God. I was raised in the church, but I do not, currently, find a connection within organized religion. Goodness knows there is a great deal being taught and thought that is as far from who God is as George Bush is from being someone that would be coming over to my place for dinner. Anyway..This book had a caption at the bottom below a picture of this girl that was, I guess, supposed to be...contemplating? Waiting?...anyway...it read, "Becoming God's best while waiting for Mr. Right."

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I'm pausing....for effect...................................................................
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Okay. I just want to focus on one part of this statement....and how reading it...suddenly made everything clear to me. "While waiting for Mr. Right..." As if life...LIFE...is waiting. This is the rhetoric that I used to cling to...it was a huge part of that idea of the way things are supposed to be...what my purpose in life is...the life formula in which the correct variables equal the way life is supposed to be. Except...the variables don't always work...in fact...life is rarely mathematical...and NEVER waiting. WAITING? It's a tough thing when you have to learn that life is not waiting, but instead...living. I lived under the pretense that I was being prepared for something...that I was preparing...for, I don't know...the big life math test? I know now, that I started living the moment I was born. All the falling down and messing up, that wasn't learning...that was living. LIVING. And the truth is...sometimes the living...is all we get.

Now let's talk about Mr Right.....and who might that be? What might that be...and why the hell should I be waiting for him? What will he do for me? Is he going to save me? Is he going to confirm my beliefs? Is he going to make me feel pretty? The more important question is...is he going to give me a job? Mr. Right is a figment of every girl's imagination. I doubt that, if I get married, I'll ever think of him as Mr. Right. The term implies that there is this one special person for everyone...a soul mate.......and that soul mate will be your partner....you know...for love and sex and babies and things....well....this is nonsense. bollocks. insanity. My soul mate is possibly my best friend...and I don't have sex with her (however, I do make jokes about having sex with her) (Also...Mr. Pants is my other soul mate...or he might as well be). Mr Right is another one of those variables that just doesn't fit into the reality equation.

Nobody teaches you when you're growing up that your life purpose is not to get married and have kids. Nobody teaches you that you might have to be able to take care of yourself. Nobody teaches you to make decisions based on what you need rather than what someone else needs. Nobody teaches you to make decisions. Become a better, holier person + Mr Right = you'll be the best wife ever = happiness. As a believer, I cannot believe in a god that didn't create me to be capable of making my own way in this world, in a god that narrowed life down to a simple equation. I think the writers of the aforementioned book have a different idea of God than I do.

Well...I'll never be the best wife ever. I probably won't even be a good one...if I am one. And with my own hands...I will never be holy. It's time to teach women to make decisions, to decide what they want to do with their lives, to use the tools they've been given to succeed and to stop trying to be...and preparing to be. It's time to teach women that they are. No more waiting. No more wishing. It's time for Deciding. Fighting. Believing in ourselves. It's time to be. Time for living....finally.

I have never been good at math.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

This hits very close to where I have been lately. It brought tears to my eye. Seriously, lets be feminists.

carolinelovesyoumore said...

I LOVE YOU

Anonymous said...

I hate Christian dating books because they actually eliminate God from the picture. Books about pre-calculus are probably more helpful, in a "study of math demonstrates cohesion of the universe", sort of way.