Expecting, better

One day in this month of Jan that feels like it’s been an entire year I walked past a windowsill with a tumbling pile of books and the only title that my eyes locked in on was ‘expecting better’ I’ve not even bothered to look up this book since, it doesn’t matter, what matters is those two words summing up a feeling I’ve had on the spin cycle inside my head for a while now.

It’s a funny thing to be what at times, feels like the only single white female left alive at 36, and in two months 37. There are times when it feels like you are the island looking back at the mainland, and people swim over occasionally, catch the boat from time to time to visit your seemingly carefree shores. But mostly you are the island and everyone else is over there in the distance, and they go about their lives 2 by 2 by 2. There are many things that come easier as a couple, everything being financially halved for one. Good luck trying to buy a full house in a place you want to live on your ones. Dinners, bills, the mortgage, the weekly food shop, the latest thought on your mind, it’s all devided by half. The load of life, devided by 2 = an easier ride.

Or does it?

and before I go ham on the ‘women’s load’, no two 2’s are the same. Everyone has their strong points and their weak points, everything is compromise, my experience isn’t all experiences an so on and so forth.

Now I’ve got that out the way I can say what I really feel. From the island there are few times where there is someone behind the mirror, showing my my own shit, and therefore it’s very easy to stay on my high horse of ‘do better’.

There is supposedly a male loneliness epidemic but from my horse these men aren’t lonely enough, on dating apps it goes like this, match and don’t speak, match and the say ‘hey’, and disappear into the abyss. Few and far between are the ones who can spark up a conversation that actually leads to a date. Part of my energetic personality type is that I often default to being a mirror. If you’re crying, I’m crying. If the mood is let’s dance then I’m dancing. A fun little thing I’ve been doing recently is matching whatever is said to me on the app, giving back a simple ‘hey’ to their ‘hey’. Mirroring the sub par effort. Tee hee. It works the other way guys, if you’re all in, I’m all in. My point is this, we bring a lot and therefore we want alot.

And I don’t hate men guys, like I have my stuff but it’s deeply not that. I can’t get my head around the disconnect. I want this fantasy life in my head, why don’t you want it as much as do/why are you avoiding a date to the golden ticket of life that is really a movie in my head?

The life I think I want feels like a fantasy, in some part because it’s impossible to imagine the reality of marriage and a home and a baby when there is only me myself and I. And partly because I am an insanely overactive romantic thinker and the story of those things is probably almost definitely better in my head than it ever will be irl. There is nothing I am more precious about than the idea of my water wedding, only telling people I hope won’t steal my idea and spoiler alert, turns out not many other people have a weird fantasy of sort of being baptised in the North Sea on your wedding day in your dress and heavy foundation.

The thing with watching from the sidelines to the lives you want is you start to pick up on all the things you really don’t want. And it puts you in a quite heavy and unforgiving space. And people are just people, going through their things. And I am not perfect. And I try to be the kind lending ear to everyone I hold dear, and no ones is telling their mates about the snuggly morning sex and bacon sarnies they had after in bed on Sunday mornings, I get it. Instead they’re telling you when they’re at their wits end, driving to a hotel to escape or furiously whatsapping that the fucking washing up isn’t done once again.

I get it, we’re all human, we must vent or else we’ll explode.

even the ones who have my women, are cooked for by them, mothered by them, soothed by them, told they are very good boys. I want to scream to the stars about these wonderful wise clever funny sexy raw beautiful women and I want to give some of these men a quick slap.

I know more now than I ever did. And what I know is this, we have to taste the very worst thing on our tongues just to see how sour bitter disgusting it feels. And then most often times we swallow it and move on.

I’ve ran away for the night/I slammed the door in his face and kicked the table over/I could leave him, that is an option/I would leave if I didn’t have this newborn snuggled in my arms/hes driving me up the wall/I don’t feel heard/I can’t ask or say what I want/everything ends in a row/i do everything in the house/I do everything for the baby/he complains that I haven’t said thank you for one simple task/ I just wish, I just wish, I just wish.

There are memes about men taking out the bins and talking about it for the rest of the day until the medal is received. It’s common rhetoric, it’s trope, it’s funny HAHAHA it’s still not good enough for me?

Life on the island doesn’t really involve compromise and I’m an only child and I’m an Aries, really, I mean, good luck hun :)

What I think I would do in these situations, isn’t what I’d do in reality. I’m firey when there isn’t anyone to feel it, faced with real life confrontation I’ve been known to shut down with the best of them. I think we go a bit blind/numb to our own situations sometimes. Months before my break up I was saying out-loud to friends, I just dont think I’m getting what I need here? Give it Christmas and then call it. And then when he did it months later instead of me, I could only eat mouthfuls of plain hotcross buns and spoonfuls of heinz tomato soup for months and when he came back he said you can see your ribcage now and I thought yeh. YOU can. See? What we think we’d do, what we advise from the island, from the sidelines, isn’t always what we end up doing. It’s easy to say a thing, it’s much much harder to do the thing.

I want a wedding but I don’t wanna/don’t have 30k to spend on it. I want a partner to discuss life with/but I don’t ever want to be told what to do. I want someone to take control/I don’t ever want to be out of control. I want financial freedom/I don’t ever want to not have my own money or the secret flee fund. I want a child but I don’t wanna be telling my partner not to drink so the chances are better in 3 months time. I want a wedding/I want to be entirely in charge of it and specifically the music. I want a baby but I don’t wanna be doing nightfeeds by myself for 3 solid years. I want, I want, I want.

And yknow perhaps I’m getting in my own way. Nostalgia has a hold on me sometimes. I had one boyfriend who I really felt saw me. Soothed me before I ever got too hot and sour. Saw through my trying to control things and called me anyway. I went to Peru and he met the love of his life and 5 years later they’re married, and it tastes sour on my tongue. But I know enough now, more than I ever did, to spit it back out.

Recently I’ve been feeling on the brink of something. The energy inside my internal washing machine is changing, on a new cycle and I can really start to feel it in my bones. And the more I think that, the more it feels real, the more I say it out loud and soak it into existence, the more things are happening. And it’s nice, I feel myself softening.

And my point I think is this, even when you think you know, you probably don’t.