zeptember

Ever since starting the scanning job and the optometrist’s assistant job, then losing the scanning job, I have been in a depressive funk.

I’ve been feeling like I’ve not accomplished anything. I’ll be 35 this year. I haven’t risen to management in a Fortune 500 corporation. I haven’t squeezed out any children. I haven’t even gotten married (though I am in an unbelievably healthy and robust six-year relationship).

But these are things that women in this society are trained for these days. My mom was trained to be a hardworking secretary until she could find someone to marry her so she could quit in order to get married in her early twenties, then shit out a litter of kids and be a homemaker.
My mom was too wild a child for homemaking, and shacked up with a biker dude, but still eventually succumbed and squeezed out a couple of kids, before divorcing and living the single parent life.

I was too wild a child to cower to the corporate mentality. I tried it for years, but had to walk away in near-mental-breakdown, lest I be forcibly carried out in a strait-jacket. But I didn’t get married and have kids. So I’m still the rebel. I’ve persisted where my mother caved.

But still, psychological conditioning is psychological conditioning, and so I find myself this year really being beat down emotionally by the feeling that I have somehow failed at womanhood.
It’s different from the biological clock. It’s acknowledging that there IS no biological clock, and feeling extraordinarily guilty for having no clock ticking yet.

Granted, my grandma didn’t pop out my dad until she was forty years old. But she would have bred earlier had she been allowed to leave the sight of her preacherman father, and had she not had to take care of her parents during the Great Depression. It wasn’t by choice that she delayed breeding. Her aunt on the other hand…she might have been a rebel. She was married and had a huge house, but they never had any kids. Though, given the day and age, perhaps she or her husband was barren or sterile, and they never told anybody about it. Perhaps even great aunt Dolly would have bred, too, given the chance.

But given the chance twice now in the past fifteen years, I didn’t wanna. Given the choice again, I wouldn’t wanna.

I’ve always been a late bloomer….I mean, REALLY late compared to my peers. We’re talking emotionally-stunted-late in how long it takes me to get to places my peers have been at for as much as a decade before me.

I found myself searching out old classmates to see how they’re doing in life. I realised today that what I’ve actually been doing is comparing their lives to mine, to see how far behind I am in growing up.

Hell, I didn’t even fully face the fact that I am aging until earlier this year, when some woman laughed at me in the fitting room when I answered her call to a “young lady” trying on a bra.
There had been signs, though. I’d seen an episode of Absolutely Fabulous, where Patsy and Edina, clearly well past their 20’s, went to a Marilyn Manson concert and tried to be all young, hip and cool. It was embarrassing to watch them all dressed up like twenty-somethings, trying to relate and be young, when the wrinkles on their faces and their awkward postures gave them blatantly away.

I identified with it, after seeing a photo of me from a music festival last year, whereby I looked really bad…old… grandma in goth gear. Instead of aging gracefully in gothic fashion, I was still trying to be the young and hip goth darling. And it showed. Badly.

Then an acquaintance of mine ranted in his journal, asking why thirty- and forty-somethings feel the need to continue dressing like teenaged skateboarders, because it looks really retarded.

Again, I saw myself, and took inventory of all the tee shirts and jeans I have. I noticed I had no dress clothes. Nothing flattering for someone in her thirties. I was going to work in a corporate setting at that time dressed like a fucking teenaged skater.

So.

It’s time for change. Change has come to me and tapped me on the shoulder. And when I did not listen, it smacked me around. Now I listen, and change, in many ways. I am sad to have to change, but I know it is for the best to avoid further embarrassment through bad financial decisions, bad hair days and horrible fashion.

Hm. Looking back through the years though, even in high school I couldn’t dress or style myself to save my life. Sure, I lived in poverty, but I could have learned to sew my own clothes like Andie did in the movie Pretty In Pink, for example. I chalk it up to having a sort of programmer mindset, whereby I am blissfully unaware of how disheveled and slovenly I look.

So it’s time. Some of the changes I have to make are as follows:

• Reread all my books on how to survive on a lean salary, or with no salary at all, and seek out more literature. Begin putting knowledge into practice while also figuring out how to make my genealogy research and writing my full time career, paying or not.
• Seek support from people like me who do not wish to breed, so I can stop feeling so guilty about not breeding.
• Learn how to clothe and style myself like a graceful thirty-something who adores the gothic subculture. This will require asking for shopping trips with a few girlies my age that I know, who are goth-fashion-smart. I’ve gotten their help before - keep at it until I learn on my own what to look for!

*sigh*
Do I feel better now?

Sorta. I mean, there are resources out there for me. I’m not alone and all that. And I must say, my sister has been SO good to me through all of this. She’s been showering me with praise and pride, and telling me that I’m just fine, and that I am a success just by the very fact that I uprooted myself and successfully forged a way for myself in a land over 2000 miles from everything I’d ever known.

So, I know I can be strong. I know I can get through this. I know it’s hard to see it when I’m in the thick of it. I need to read and reread my list of accomplishments, and begin adding to the list again.

And now I need to get off my ass and do something productive.