Myspace Blog "In Two Directions Torn"

FAMILY NOTE: This is not about you! :-) This is about the unbelievable pressure I am receiving (I could show you the emails, folks) from my mentors and some of my younger/older friends about this marriage announcement. Though, this tug-of-war is a common occurrence for me, and there have been times on other issues where some family has polarized into one of the groups. But usually, almost ALWAYS, it is those outside the family (those who perhaps know me less well?).

<3 M


It's been an interesting mix of emotions and experiences this week. Heck, this past block of six months. But, I stress this week because I have felt more keenly than before the strange phenomenon consistently at play in my life.

At any given point, I have one group of people pulling me one direction, and another group of people pulling me the other. They are not polite about pulling me. No, they are vehement. Insistent. Their nails gouge my wrists. Sometimes they tug out whole bunches of my hair. The spit sprays from their mouths as they insist that the other party release me.

For example. One party of persons in my life wants me to get married. In fact, can't really be comfortable until I'm married. The other party wants me not to get married. To remain single for an indeterminate space of years.

However, the reason for each group feeling how they do is exactly the same. I need to learn a lesson. I am not fully adult. I cannot and have not learned to be an individual, a person with her own hopes and dreams. One party insists I am not a person until I am married, the other that I am not a person IF I am married.

The problem is, I am a hybrid of hard and soft, and this frankly just upsets people. Ask anyone who knows me well. I am ambitious, competitive (cut-throat, sometimes). I will almost never admit to being wrong. I am stubborn, I am woman, I will roar.

And then I am soft. I want children. I want to hold them when they're sick, stick bandaids on their knees when skinned; I want to raise a family and see it grow. I want a husband with whom to share my life--not to have it taken from me, but to really share it: two individual persons working together in equality, with mutual submission, toward developing a richer life experience. I am compassionate and warm; I want to be held and kissed lightly upon the lips; I want to be told that I am beautiful.

I am both hard and soft, and this reality gets me into trouble. Because one crowd wants me to be completely soft (guess which), and the other wants me to be completely hard (again, you can guess). Neither the soft nor the hard are in any way superior to the other, but nonetheless, I am not wholly one nor the other. The two always seem in conflict with eachother.

But I cannot be other than who and what I am. No one should, in good conscience, ask me to be otherwise. The fact is, when I review my list of life goals, having and raising a family of my own is at the top. It needn't be that way for everyone, but it is for me. Graduate studies also tops that list, as does a successful, fulfilling, vibrant writing career. These are my goals for my life. And I will accomplish these in the best way that I see possible.

Peter is instep with me on the matter. It took him a long, long time to convince me of that fact. Took him a long time to prove that I could trust him and that he would not force me into any box, leastwise the "pastor's wife" box.

Fact is, I never did envision myself getting married before Peter because I never actually thought I would find a man decent enough and whom I could respect enough to marry. Never thought I'd find a man who could not only compliment my goals, but also encourage me to defy all opposition and make those goals happen. Who is willing to sacrifice his own goals out of love to see me accomplish my own. Men have almost always been weak in my eyes, with the exception of a few I've known along the way. But Peter is not weak. He is an equal with me in all respects, from intellect to integrity. And he tells me the same. I am neither his pet nor his owner.

And though at this moment of my life, I am having to learn to rely on another--I have always been rather a rebel and independent, so this lesson comes only with great difficulty--it does not mean I am weak or incapable. People, all people, rely on others at some point in their life, if not at every point. And this is an experience I require in order to be complete, just as much as I require the experience of being independent.

So here's what I need. I need people to stop trying to teach me a lesson and let me live. Let me make mistakes as I make them. Let me be an adult rather than try to teach me as if I were a child. Let go of my bloodied wrists. I love you as much as you love me, which is saying something. And I understood you when you first began to tug--why is it necessary to tear me in two?

I speak to no individual, but to these two groups, consisting of almost every person I love in this world. The people around me always seem to polarize: it's that strange phenomenon that follows me around. I love you, I love you, I love you, but I am not a child and I am not so naive that I can't recognize that I am responsible for my own actions. That never goes away, married or not, educated or not, whether wife, family or friend.

As for the job situation, I have heard from five or six of you that you are concerned I am marrying Peter for the sake of his money, so that he can support me and I can sit around on my butt all day. He is not my sugar-daddy. He and I have chosen to keep us afloat. We do not want to be in a long distance relationship (again!). I am not going home without him, and vice versa. We are in it together. I am not marrying Peter for the sake of finances.

As if marrying him were somehow giving up and just relaxing into a life of quiet dependence! Ha! I am too feisty for that. Ask him. Like my grandpa, I am happiest when I have work to do and a busy schedule and duties and responsibilities.

I send out five or six job applications a day. I go in for interviews. I wait patiently and push for positions, whichever is necessary. However, Boston is a difficult city to get a job in. Everyone has an MA, and there is Just. No. Work. I'm not lazy. I'm not dawdling. I am working hard to get a job, but it is not the Seattle job market, nor the New York job market.

Read the news, folks, on Boston. Sources will agree: jobs are scarce, all around, whether at a tech software company or at Target.

Okay. That's enough for one evening. Sorry for the length of the blog, but had to get it off my chest.