What would I do differently?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately for some reason.  What would I do differently in my life if I knew I were never going to get married? And you know, having thought about it for a while, here's what I've got:

1. I would stop looking.  I would de-activate the online profile thing, I would stop glancing at the left hand of every cute man who's roughly my age that I meet.  I would simply stop caring.  This big lurking question would be answered, and I would have to think about other things, but not about that any more. 

2. I would cut my hair.  I have had short(ish) hair most of my life, and about four years ago, I decided to grow it out.   It's been long(ish) ever since.  Several years ago, though, a male friend of mine made the kind of remark in passing that has stuck with me.  As a throwaway comment, he quipped, "if you'd always had long hair, you would have been married years ago!"  It was profoundly hurtful, implying not only that my primary value as a woman is in the way men (particularly him) think of my appearance, but also that the solution to something that has been hard--being single for almost all of my adult life--could easily have been mine had I only followed this one totally obvious piece of advice.  I'm not consciously keeping my hair long because I think he was right, but I wonder how much those words are rattling around in the back of my head.

I don't think I'm ready to stop looking--although I should probably stop doing the ring scan--but I may get a dramatic haircut anyway. 

Moving on

I had a tough time in graduate school.  Many (most?) people do, so I am certainly not unique in that.  It was, however, nearly always grueling and very often traumatic.  I felt like I was the worst version of myself: the most neurotic, anxious, tightly-wound, unhappy, irritable person I could be.  But now, miraculously, I find myself in a vibrant small city, with kind colleagues and interesting students, with a paycheck and dental insurance.  I feel the surfeit of anxiety and anger and cynicism and defensiveness beginning to wash away.  And that---stay with me through the apparent non sequitur here---is in large part why I was so excited about The Dates. They seemed somehow emblematic of this new life, of new possibilities and opportunities, of potential.

Making a glass of wine emblematic of a major life change assigns it enormous weight, so I'm trying simply to note this feeling and do the next thing: grade the papers, find a place to jog, begin to meet people at my new church, reply to emails, go on another date... all without freaking out too much.  

Update: Actual Dates

So the first one was fine: nice conversation, nice guy.  It was friendly and collegial.  Sitting on a dock on a river watching the sunset while engaging in a little pleasant chatter with a beer in hand is a nice way to spend the evening. 


The second one was...

Well...

The second one was the way I imagine first dates should go.

This is even though I was late [&@£$ one-way streets and poorly marked parking garages in new cities!!] and overdressed [Miss Manners would say it's better to be overdressed than underdressed, and my friend A. would firmly insist that there's no such thing as overdressed].  There was a glass of good wine and a stroll around the historic downtown of the city and a few art galleries.  He was a good conversationalist, kind, funny, interesting, and well-mannered.  I found him delightful.  It was a lovely evening.   

So now I am trying to remember that you can't know much about a person in half-a-dozen emails and one evening.  I am trying to remember that a lovely evening is simultaneously both no small thing and a very small thing indeed.  I am trying not to check my phone compulsively to see if he has called.  

Not Not-A-Dates

Stop the presses.  I went on A Real Date last night (pint on a deck overlooking the river) and am going on another one tonight (swanky cocktail bar downtown).  If you're counting, that's two real dates in thirty-six hours, approximately the same number that I went on in four years in my previous town.

I continue to feel as though I am leading somebody else's life, not my own.

Settling in

So the antique mirror is above the fireplace.  A huge bouquet of flowers, courtesy of Best Friend O. is overflowing from a vase on the dining room table.  My grandmother's silver tea set is on the cabinet, and my great-grandmother's tea cups are inside.  The bookshelf is up, anchored to the wall, and filled with all the fiction (alphabetized by author), poetry (ditto), and miscellaneous art books, atlases of foreign countries, and crumbling antique foreign-language grammar books.  None of the plants, dug up in haste from my perennial herb garden and dumped unceremoniously into an assortment of pots, have yet died on the balcony.  The keys are in the little bowl I made as a small child on a table by the door, the good sheets are on the bed, and the cat is lounging on the desk, draping his paws over the edge.

In short, we are settling in. 

And part of that settling in means looking around and imagining a new life in a new place.

So there's the overwhelming task, overwhelming even to an extrovert like myself, of saying yes to every. single. invitation, even when it means you end up at a departmental party, looking lost, trying desperately to find some nice cheerful soul who will introduce you around so you can talk to somebody.

There's the trip to the grocery store that takes twice as long as it should, because you have to walk the entire length of the store three times before you find the bread. 

There's the church-hopping.  Best part of church hopping?  Getting to sing one of my favorite hymns four weeks in a row at four different churches.  Worst part?  Sheepishly raising hand during the "Are-there-any-newcomers-here?-please-raise-your-hand" announcement at one church, and the being completely ignored by those around me.  Awesome.

I don't feel lonely yet.  I'm recovering from a stressful summer and I am, frankly, still tired, so I've been sleeping in my spare time.  But can imagine that some time soon I may be lonely, in part because everyone is married here.  Now, I'm sure that's not true.  It can't possibly be true.  But in almost a month in new town at new job, I can't think of one person I've met who's single.  Not the co-workers, not my boss, not the new postdoc, not the IT folks, not the people I've talked to at the churches, not my TA.  Not one. 

But at the same time, I'm more relaxed in my single state than I've been in a while.  Firing up that old online dating profile to see if anything new floats to the surface in a new town several years since the last attempt has reminded me that what I've got on my own is no bad thing.  For instance, I was matched with a man who had a self-disclosed preference for a girl with "nice eyebrows."  I have no idea what that even means, and must confess that I giggled.  I mean, who on earth thinks that, much less writes it down for other people to read?  And the bigger issue still is that I promptly thought "are my eyebrows nice?" and actually thought about this later that night when I was brushing my teeth.  I looked in the mirror and evaluated my eyebrows because some stranger on the internet said he like nice eyebrows.  That's clearly a stop on the train line to CrazyTown.  So I just need to remember that being single, even if it is the extreme minority, is frankly more appealing than assessing eyebrows.

An update

Since my last post, I have finished my dissertation, moved to a new city, and started a new job.  E had already finished her PhD, but she also moved to a new city and started a new job.

So the béguinage has been full of boxes, the stress of trying to find the grocery store, eager anticipation of the actual arrival of that first paycheck, and a little bit of looking around thinking, "what have I done?"

Posting will resume at a slightly more reasonable rate soon, I hope. 

Quotidian happenings

These things happened today:

• I got called Mrs. Lastname twice by strangers.
• I ran into an ex-boyfriend.  [Most of the men I know -- including ex-boyfriends -- are really wonderful guys and I am very fond of them.  But there are exceptions every once in a while, and this one is an exception.  Ugh.]
• I stopped at a local sandwich place for lunch and was asked, "are you two paying together?" I said no -- I had no idea who the guy in line behind me was -- and the cashier said, very loudly, "You're here ALL ALONE?!?" Because no woman could ever walk into a chain sandwich restaurant and say yes, she's dining in.  
• I was in a 45-minute meeting with one other woman and a man.  The man -- who was not originally supposed to be attending the meeting -- interrupted me and the other woman again and again and again.  I got three uninterrupted comments in.  She got two.  The meeting was supposed to be between the two of us, and we got a total of five sentences.

Not one of these things on its own is a big deal, but the weight of all of it together (especially the meeting!) took a lot out of me today. 

Coping

In a day or so, I'm off to my third funeral in six weeks.  So there's that.

There's also no job and an unfinished dissertation.  I've had a tough semester with students, the worst winter on record in about a century, and damage to my car that means when I drive down the road, I sound like I want to be part of a biker gang... in my '99 Camry. 

These are pretty dark days, friends.

And so I find myself, more than usual, adjusting expectations and simply trying to cope.  And this is what coping looks like these days:

1. Weekly phone calls with dear friends on opposite coasts.  Even if we only talk for 10 minutes, these calls are lifelines.
2. Attempting to eat reasonable food.  This takes so much effort during seasons like this;  going through the grocery store, finding something healthy/fast/affordable to prepare/cook/eat feels like an overwhelming task.  But so help me, I am trying to avoid eating Hagen-Dasz out of the carton... or when I do, to at least be sure I've had kale for dinner first.   
3. Lacing up the running shoes and heading out the door.  I'm not much of a runner.  I'm very, very slow.  But most days, I give myself permission to be glad that I simply made it out the door.  The thwap, thwap, thwap of my shoes on the pavement is reassuring somehow, and I find that my mind is always clearer after I run.
4. Praying.  "Lord, have mercy," is about all I've got these days.  But turning my thoughts there seems to help.
5. Periodic appointments with a very good therapist.  She's smart, she's funny, she says things like, "it is amazing that you are going through all this stress and not developing psychological disorders," which make me feel better.  I am working to keep myself together, and it's so helpful to have suggestions for how to do that and encouragement that it seems to be effective.

Other thoughts or suggestions for favorite coping strategies? 

Aspirations

Today, I aspire to a job in an environment in which a comment on my attire is not the standard way to open a conversation.


The first conversation I had this morning went like this: 

Me: "Good morning, [Professor X]."

Prof X, disapproving: "Hello, Lauren.  You look very school-marm-ish today."

Me, cheerfully: "Oh!  In a good way, I hope!"

Prof X, doubtfully: "Well I don't know... I'm really not sure about those shoes."


For Pete's sake. 

The note I never wanted to write

I have a tendency, I fear, to blog only when I'm riled up about something, or upset about something.  This probably gives the impression that things are worse than they are, when in fact so much of life simply consists of putting one foot in front of the other and simply doing one's work, with perhaps a little irritation that requires blogging thrown in on the side.  But every once in a while, the floor drops out.

I mentioned R a few months ago.  Pancreatic cancer is doing what pancreatic cancer does, and today my colleagues and I found out that she's been admitted to hospice.  We were asked to write her notes.

I don't want to.

I don't want to say goodbye to a young woman, a bright woman, a marvelous teacher, a tenacious and fierce scholar, a wise and gracious mentor.

I don't want to write a note.  Simply saying "thank you" seems totally inadequate, and I can't figure how I could possibly say goodbye.  

But not writing a note is a thousand times worse than writing a note.  And of course, I see the irrelevancy of saying that I don't want to do it; what I want to do or don't want to do has exactly no bearing on reality.  None.

Nine years ago, I lost another mentor, another kind, ferociously intelligent, savvy woman.  The world is immeasurably poorer for her loss, and I think of her often.  She died in the springtime.  I have a vivid memory of walking to the train on my morning commute when she was ill, passing through a grim development of Communist-inspired apartment blocks, thinking in time with every clack of my heels on the sidewalk, "I don't want to.  I don't want to."  There was an enormous old cherry tree in the middle of the buildings, and its blooms were the most audaciously beautiful thing I had ever seen, this bright splash of life and beauty in the middle of the grimness.  I was struck by the sheer nerve of the thing to bloom, to have so much gratuitous beauty, when someone I loved was suffering and dying.  But yet there it was, waving branches and spilling blossoms like the living thing it was.  When I think of her now, I think of the tree.  I didn't want to do any of it--the grief, the loss, the pain, the beauty, the polite conversations at a funeral--but not doing it would have been a worse choice.

And so much of life seems to be doing what we don't want to do.

I'm going to write a note.

What a small town

I'm sitting in the common area of our library, waiting for a student, and up walks a librarian I know a little bit from my teaching.  He's a nice guy: in the two conversations we've had, he's been friendly and helpful. 

So I say hello, he sits down, we're chatting about my class, and then he says, "I was looking up your class, and I saw your photo on the department website, and I realized why you looked familiar.  You were one of my matches on [online dating site] about three years ago!"

I restrain myself from going into hysterics, but only barely.  "Wow!" I gasp.  "What a small town!" 

And then I ask him if we corresponded through said dating site.  "Well, I wrote you," he says, "but I don't think you ever wrote me back." 

Zing!

A Date or Not-A-Date

I went on a very nice Not-A-Date recently.  That is, I spent a chunk of time one-on-one with a straight, attractive, single man whose company I enjoy doing reasonably Date-Like things.(1)

As a side note, how, you may ask, do I know it was Not-A-Date?

Because he did not ask me.

These days, I really do think it is that simple.  I didn't always.  I have spent lots of time trying to interpret and re-interpret behavior.  I am also a committed egalitarian, and I do not believe that All Men are one way and All Women are another.  But increasingly, I am becoming enamoured of letting the guy make the move, and here's why: if they really like you, they will ask you out.  The pulling petals off of daisies disappear, the angels sing, and everything is clear.  There may be plenty of room for ambiguity in human relationships, but I do not think it is here.  Want to know if he likes you?  Here's what you do: ask yourself, "Self, has he asked you out on a date?"  If the answer is "yes," then he does.  If it is "no," then he does not.(2)

Anyway, we know this nice day was Not-A-Date because he did not ask me to go on a date.  And that's fine with me.  I was not expecting a date.  He is my friend, and I like spending time with him, and we were doing things I wanted to do anyway.

But some time later, I find myself a little bothered by the whole thing.  First, it did look awfully like a date, and while I'm not going to spend a lot of time worried about the thoughts of random passers-by, I am going to note that when I mentioned it in passing to a couple of good friends, each of them asked, "Wait, was that a date?"  "No," I said, "he didn't ask me." "Well, it sounds like a date," both retorted.  So appearances were, at least to my female friends, a little suspicious.

Second, I've been down this path before.  Most of the women of my acquaintance have been.  In fact, between the two of us here at the Béguinage, this story arc has happened with a good half-dozen men.  Here's how the story usually goes:  guy and girl are friends.  They enjoy each others' company.  They spend some time together.  They go on some Not-A-Dates.  They have lots of fun.  Then the guy meets another girl and the friendship dissolves overnight, leaving the girl to wonder what happened.

There are variations on this narrative.  Sometimes the girl falls in love with the guy in that process of spending time together and going on Not-A-Dates, and then is heartbroken when the guy tells her -- or doesn't tell her!! -- that he's seeing somebody.  Most times, she doesn't fall in love with him, but she still tortures herself by wondering what the new girlfriend has that she doesn't.  Sometimes, the guy intentionally asks the girl on Actual Dates for some time before confessing that he isn't really ready to date anybody, as though dating were some sort of arctic adventure that required outfitting a year in advance instead of what they had, in fact, been doing.  And it is this messiness that I want to avoid.  I don't want to be a placeholder, the cardboard cutout girlfriend until somebody cuter, somebody who's really girlfriend potential, comes along.  And I don't like losing my friends when they fall for somebody.

So I don't know what, if anything, to do.  I can refuse to go on Not-A-Dates, but that's not a great solution, because I like my friends. Deciding not to spend time with them on principle because they're men is obnoxious.  I can keep doing what I'm doing, and try to be at peace with the inevitable replacement.  Or I can abandon friends, dating, and social interaction altogether and just write my dissertation...

Thoughts?  Advice?  Suggestions?



Yes, I am footnoting my blog posts.  Too long in academia, friends.  Too, too long.

(1.)  Not kissing.  Kissing is usually a pretty good indication that you're on An Actual Date instead of Not-A-Date.  

(2.)  This is where I give the obligatory reminder that a date, even An Actual Date, is neither a declaration of undying love nor a marriage proposal.  It is only a date.  This has been a public service announcement. 

On insomnia

One of the major consequences of graduate school has been an inability to sleep through the night.  I shouldn't blame it all on academia, I suppose; my parents are first-class insomniacs, so it's probably just as much inherited as not. 

When I lie awake in the middle of the night, this is what I think about.  It's like Wheel of Fortune; you spin the wheel, and any one of these things might come up:

1. My dissertation.  So much to do, so little time, and the more I work on it the less I understand.

2. The job market.   Ayeeeeeeeeee!  It was a good year in my field; there were about ten jobs.  I know about ten people who were on the market this year for those ten jobs.  So you can imagine how that goes.

3. The crush of the moment, if there is one.  There isn't now, and hasn't been for a while (1. and 2. above are pretty all-consuming), although there is always Richard Armitage...

4. Or, less melodiously and more worryingly, ex-boyfriends.   I wonder if my romantic life had flowered, bolted, and run to seed at age 27 and if it's all been an exercise in futility since then.  Sometimes that prospect fills me with despair, and sometimes I simply feel relieved. I wonder how I spent so long -- and really, any amount of time is too long -- with men who saw me as a commodity, and I wonder if I took the man who saw me as a person for granted.

5. Sweet Zak.  I miss him every single day, and it is hard work to remind myself that I did not cause the suffering that preceded his death. 

6. My church.  Should I stay or should I go?

7. My friends: the old and dear friend who is trying to fight her way through the thorns of an abusive relationship; the friend who is living with a debilitating disease with extraordinary grace; and the friends who are holding their precious six month-old baby as her life slips away.  When the wheel stops here, I get up and pace the house.

8.  What I should blog about.  Sometimes I simply lie in bed composing beautiful blog posts... that I never actually write, which is partly why you, our dear reader(s), have been neglected for so long... although see also points 1 and 2 above.  Anyway, I figured that this time I might as well actually get up and write it all down. 

So there you go.  If you're ever awake at 2am and want somebody to talk to, give me a call.  I'll be up.

Single Person Moment of Triumph

I picked out the six-foot Christmas tree, loaded it into the truck, unloaded it, sawed the end off in eight inches of snow, put it in the stand, straightened it, caught it as it was falling, straightened it again, and put the lights on ALL BY MYSELF. 

Some Christmas present...

One of my mentors--a kind, savvy, and ferociously-intelligent academic--was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Say a prayer for R and her family if you think of it. 

Heh heh

From my favorite cartoonist.

That's about where we are today, folks.  Although Wendy's got a great conversation going on the question "is singleness a choice?" over here.

Travel and Gratitude

It’s hard to know what to say about this trip without giving too many specific identifying details.  But let’s just say that despite the irritations of the gender theatre that characterized the beginning of the trip, it’s been good to get out and do my own thing for the past few weeks. I have not traveled particularly frequently or widely, but I have traveled enough to know that being in a new place can released me from the daily burden of work and laundry and work and dishes and work and paying bills and work.  It wasn’t that I didn’t work, but that the work itself took such a different shape than the normal routine of the grind.  Traveling alone can be an isolating and lonely experience, to be sure, but I was, for the overwhelming majority of the time, thrilled to be on my own doing my own thing. 

So here, in no particular order, are some of the Best Things of the past few weeks:

·      Pausing, taking a deep breath, and plunging directly into my fear of driving in that particular place by renting a car and putting 700 miles on it in three days. At the end of every day, I was deeply grateful that the car and I and all the people and cars in our path were all intact.

·      Seeing old friends: people who have known me since I was ten years old, teammates from my intermural sports team during my undergrad, people from my first round of graduate school, colleagues from my current graduate program, the other half of our virtual béguinage.

·      Having little conversations with strangers: the elderly man across from me at the cathedral café who comes to the cathedral with his free bus pass every few weeks for a day out and a hot lunch, a furniture restorer who plied me with tea and showed me one of the most extraordinary objects I have ever seen, a security guard with a penchant for archaeology who put Roman coins in my hands, and multiple B&B owners.

·      Experiencing the cultural life of some big cities: a few meals at fabulous restaurants, last-minute tickets to an award-winning play, a first-rate (free!) concert followed by buskers who were every bit as good.  And part of that whole cultural experience was…

·      …Drinking in museum exhibits slowly, at my own pace, taking time to see what I wanted to see and skipping the stuff I didn’t, and then buying catalogues.  Seeing museums this way feels like luxury of the most extravagant sort. I had been to quite a few of the stops on my itinerary before, so I was released from the guilt that comes of trying to see everything and not succeeding.

·      Just breathing the air in some remarkably beautiful places, like this:

 I have never traveled for any extended period of time with a Significant Other, so I don’t really have any basis for comparison, but I found myself feeling profoundly grateful for my freedom and autonomy… and grateful that I was feeling grateful.

The Béguinage Goes To A Small Island

Friends, we are here:

and are having a wonderful time.

We are hoping to blog more consistently on our return, and have had the brilliant idea that YOU could write some guest posts.  If you're interested, leave us a comment and let us know.  Also, if there's a particular issue on which you'd like our marvelous insight, let us know that as well.  :)

Wish you all were here with us!

L & E

Heartbreak

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care. (Matt 10:29)

 
I said goodbye to my best friend yesterday. I will always remember his sweet horsey breath on my cheek, his gentleness with small children, and the delight we both felt when we cantered through the woods. He was smart, kind, loyal, and sensitive; I was enormously blessed to call him my friend, and just being in his presence always filled me with joy and peace. Godspeed, dear Zak.

O God, you created all that is, and you love all that you have made: we come to you this day with grief and in thanksgiving. We grieve the death of our beloved Zak, who has been our companion on the way, and we thank you for the gift of his presence among us as a sign of the richness of your creation and the generosity of your love, through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Good news at the Béguinage!

E's got a one-year job, L's got funding.  Hallelujah!  Pass the cheap champagne.