On the day of Simone de Beauvoir’s Birthday…

On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself – on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger. In the meantime, love represents in its most touching form the curse that lies heavily upon woman confined in the feminine universe, woman mutilated, insufficient unto herself.” — Simone de Beauvoir

I have been thinking a lot about marriage over the last little while. I’m now 28 (2 years to thirty) and my FB feed is full of engagements, pregnancies and the purchasing of puppies. I have discovered that although I am very attracted to the idea of marriage, and don’t really fear coming home to my life day after day the way I have crafted it, I do somewhat fear marriage. It’s hard to describe without feeling like I am somehow condemning my partner or my choices. It’s hardly a matter of anyone else, mostly about how I would feel in my own skin if I was to marry.

I know the Simone de Beauvoir was born and active as a feminist beginning many many years ago, and to borrow from her in this context may or may not be relevant in terms of rights and roles within a marraige, but it seems to highlight my base fears. I fear the dependency I can’t help but  perceive in marriage, I fear the finality, I fear the constraints of a marriage, although I know that this isn’t necessarily what comes from marriage. Why would our relationship change into something constraining… I’m not sure where these ideas come from, but I am so incredibly caught up in being my own person I really find it challenging to align myself to anyone at all. And the strange thing is that I don’t plan on going anywhere or changing anything about my life. I am grateful for all my blessings: I guess I might just be scared of change…. and women don’t always talk about that. We’re supposed to be gracefully keen, have planned our weddings since we were babies, and I’ve just never been like that. I don’t feel comfortable declaring this out loud, but I think it’s important to say. It frightens me to make myself vulnerable to one person so openly. One might say I don’t trust in this enough… that is possible.

I remember a good while ago first discussing the idea of marriage with my father, and even then I remember seeing marriage as like an ending, an ending of youth and the closure of a chapter of life. He said to me, no no, you’ve got it all wrong, marriage isn’t an ending but a beginning….

Kitty Pryde on Danny Brown: love it.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-this-whole-danny-brown-oral-sex-thing

K, I’m not gonna take too much time on this but

1. She’s a redhead, so I have to be on her side no matter what.

2. She sticks up for the idea that sexual contact without permission is inappropriate regardless of what sex assaults the other. Which can only be the only truth: otherwise we begin allowing permissions in sexual assault and we cannot afford to allow those boundaries to begin sliding.

3. She engages with the idea of slut-shaming and slut walks, which I think is a totally interesting facet of female sexuality and female interactions/loyalty. I urge you to think carefully about these attitudes towards ‘sluts’ and empowerment through slutdom. It’s pretty tricky to wrap your mind around. I struggle with my bottom lines and true beliefs around these ideas.

Car maintenance.

Spending money on your car completely sucks. There’s no way around it. As I get older, I realize what an expense it must have been for my parents to drive me around everywhere. Again, a reason why I am not cut out to be a parent just yet. I hate spending money to get MYSELF around, let alone little not-able-to-converse-with-me till they’re grownups…

Not to say I’m not grateful for my vehicle, I am, and I would be in shit if I didn’t mention how grateful I am for DP’s help with getting me around, cause I am. However, regardless of what car it will ever be, I still won’t want to pay to maintain it.

Does it help if the guy helping me has two little nose rings? Yes, adorable.
Did I kind of enjoy all the men shouting and speaking code like we were in some top-secret spy headquarters? Yes.
Do strange men underneath my vehicle peering up at my undersides turn me on? A little.
Do I recognize why it’s called Mr. Lube now? Perhaps.
That still doesn’t change the fact that I paid over $1000 over the last two weeks on car-things I didn’t understand, only to continue using an object in exactly the same manner that it was used prior to the expenditure. No bells, no whistles, no ribbons or bows, just the same damn dirty truck I love to death, nothing more, nothing less.

Oh the joys of being a grownup. My credit card has charges for the dentist, for the truck, for groceries, and for prescriptions. Oh, the life we lead!

Single in the City.

I’m single. 3 years to thirty and single. I’m also the golden girl, which Laine spoke of in a previous post. She’s asked me to provide the single perspective on her blog since she’s already shacked up with Dutiful Provider, aka DP. Although apprehensive to expose all when it comes to my dating life, I felt it was my duty to share my path of self-discovery and, hopefully, in the process make you feel better about your romantic adventures. Because, let’s be honest folks, I’ve had some doozies.

If you’re in the same dinghy as me, you know that being single in your late 20’s can be slightly overwhelming at times. Your friends are rapidly coupling up around you, your feed is overwhelmed with engagement photos and you just found out your ex is now a proud new papa. Meanwhile, you’re sifting through the catalogue of douchery on a dating website and wondering if maybe you’re just destined to be…dum, dum, dum…alone. Which granted, might not be such a bad thing, but at this age can leave you in a state of panic.

Well, I’m here to tell you to take a deep breath, stop creeping through a high school acquaintance’s wedding pics and realize that, you are in fact, not alone. There are many of us doing and feeling the exact same things. We’re at a point of change in our lives and dynamics are shifting. Our early twenties were spent searching for ‘Mr. Right Now’ and, as time passes and we mature, the now slowly begins to fade.

So, join me as I lay it all out on the table. The horrific dates, the bad decisions and hopefully, the occasional gem that restores our faith in the opposite sex.

My first experiment: speed dating. Which, thanks to my golden girl, I can now justify as field research. Stay tuned.