The Butterfly and the Bear

Dirty Little Secret

As a single, childless woman in my thirties, clearly I’ve had to change my idea of what a "traditional" lifestyle is.  I always imagined, in fact assumed, I’d be married and have at least one child by now.  I was the kid who had her wedding planned by the age of 7, had her kids names picked out and knew, just knew that I would be married by at least 24, maybe I’d wait until 25.  In my early 20’s I changed my perception and was not in a rush to get married, even though almost all my friends surprisingly were married within a few years of graduating college.  I liked my independence, I wanted to meet someone who I felt like I could actually spend my life with and not settle, I enjoyed the possibilities ahead of me.  Here I am ten years later feeling a little bit shell shocked.  I sometimes feel like I was waiting at the bus stop along with everyone else, the bus came, everyone got on and I was too absorbed in my book and lo and behold, it left without me!

I just read a quote the other day that struck a chord with me,”The days are long but the years are short”.  Time just has a way of sneaking up on us.  And as my parents often remind me, it only gets more frenetic.  Remember when you were little the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas?  An eternity.  Now a whole season passes and I can’t remember where it went.  There was always time “down the road” to get married, to get in shape, to have children, to do all of the things on my list.  However in the last few years I've started to feel anxious, like daylight is wasting.  Since leaving my job and blogging my list that sense of anxiety has thankfully lessened now that I am making my goals a focus and a priority after putting them on the back burner for way too long.  As I wrote in a previous post I have finally let go of regret, regret over the time that’s passed and the things I haven’t accomplished.  However, recently I have realized I haven’t let go of self pity and envy, regrets nasty little friends.  When I hear someone is pregnant or just had a baby, my usual reaction is happiness for them.  However, recently when I see on facebook or hear through the grapevine that women I knew back in the day who were, how shall I say this, promiscuous, hard partiers, loose canons?  When I hear they are pregnant or have had a child I will admit it, I am jealous and slightly annoyed.  “She was a tramp/drunk/lunatic!”  I’ll think to myself.  "She’s someones Mother now and you STILL aren’t".  Nasty thoughts.  Stinkin’ thinkin’ as my sister would say.  I remember a few years back my friend Missy and I were at a Yankees game gossiping about a friend of ours who was a little wild and who we had lost touch with and Missy wondered if she had children yet and I, incredulous, said, “She was a total crazy whore, I don’t think so.”  To which Missy replied, “Well, whores can be Mom’s too.”  Looking back my naivete and Missy’s response to it makes me chuckle (and at the time it made me look at all my childhood friends mothers in a different light) however, she had a valid point.  Theoretically anyone can be a mother.  It hasn't happened for me yet, but is it really productive for me to feel envious and resentful about other people’s happiness? Of course I know it’s not productive, logically I can talk myself out of it, but truthfully, I am a little resentful and envious.  How can I reconcile the fact that I fancy myself a kind, generous person (or at least I am striving to be) and yet I feel bitterness at others good fortune?  

So, (SIGH), I have to work on this.  I am genuinely thrilled with the fact that I no longer allow myself to indulge in regretful thoughts or wallow in the the what-if’s, however, I can’t accommodate self pity and resentment  either.  It actually isn’t as hard to let go of regret as I thought it would be, especially when I am actively improving upon myself and pursuing things I am passionate about.  Now, self pity and envy, those two shameful bastards are not only difficult to admit to, but hard to shake as well. It felt good to let go of regret, it lifted off me and I let go of a huge weight I’d been carrying around for years.  Self-pity and envy feel like those friends you have that you know are a bad influence on you, but every once and a while it feels good to go down to their level and get a little dirty.  So, while letting go of these two emotions is not on my list, it is a focus and it is part of the process.  I had a lot of hesitation about even writing this post.  It’s not cute to be envious, self pity and jealousy aren’t pretty and they certainly aren’t characteristics I’d like to broadcast to everyone I know.  However, If you want to let in the good, you have to force out the bad. So envy and self pity I'm calling you out, you are no longer my dirty little secret, you get the hell out of here and go join that ratfink regret.  Ha!

Walking, Cursing, and Laughing

Little bear didn't really take a morning nap so I won't be able to post much today.  I did want to check in and post some AWESOME news!  My sister Robin registered for the Avon Breast Cancer Two Day Walk! Wooo-hooo I officially have a PIC, (partner in crime folks) I am so excited!  For those of you that have checked in before you know Robin is a big part of my life, sister, BFF and as a child was OCD and had a brilliant knack for using profanity to make me wet my pants.  I am so thrilled that not only will I not be alone on this journey but I will actually have fun as well!.  I was beyond scared of the walk and, as I had written the other day, was trying really hard to talk myself out of participating.  Hence blogging about it so I couldn't back out.  Now that I will have someone who has metaphorically walked through life with me every step of the way actually complete this walk with me has alleviated a lot of my anxiety and replaced it with excitement.  

I also want to give a shout out to everyone for all their amazing and supportive comments!  I had some trepidation going into this but now feel buoyed by all the positive thoughts and well wishes, thank you so much!  I'm heading to a registration and info meeting in Connecticut next week and once I have registered and have a page set up for donations I'll let you know.  Right now in addition to walking 30 minutes a day with Terrbear I am going to start thinking of team names for us.  "Sistas are doin' it for themselves?" "These sisters are made for walking'?  I'm open to suggestions.  The cornier the better.

I Swear I'm Not A Hippie

Yesterday while my little bear napped I was on CNN.com and on one side was the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and on the other side was a picture of the sink hole in Guatemala.  I couldn’t even bring myself to check in with the live feed showing the oil gushing into the ocean.  It is beyond me how this has been going on for as long as it has and that there were no back up provisional plans in place.  So instead I stare at a picture of the sink hole.  My initial thought was, “That’s not a real picture.  I’m not seeing it right.”  How does that happen?  Do I even want to know how that happens?  Suddenly I was feeling borderline hysterical thinking, "Nowhere is safe!  We are ruining our planet!  Where will our children live?  What sort of life will they have?".  

My hysteria led me to wistfully recalling my childhood and simpler times.  Life was so much easier back then.  The birth of MTV (when they played music) Brit Pop, rubber bracelets,  Atari, Cabbage Patch Kids, fingerless gloves.  We rode our bikes around the neighborhood until our mother’s called us in for dinner, we played outside and built little hiding places in trees and bushes.  My imaginary boyfriend was John Taylor or Simon LeBon, depending on my mood. Sitting on the front porch listening for the magical sound of the Good Humor truck.  At night we played ghost in the graveyard while our parents laughed with each other and reminisced and talked about grownup stuff.  Life was so simple, so much easier.  Right? Then I recalled what an anxious child I was.  Which led me to recalling the Cold War.  I remember some nights going to bed praying the Russians wouldn’t “nuke” us.  I’m not sure I understood what Russians or Nuke were, but I knew to be afraid of them.  I remember AIDS and how misinformation about it spread, and with it came the fear that you could catch it anywhere, the water fountain, holding hands.  I remember one of my fathers coworkers being held hostage at a factory in Manila and suddenly becoming aware that adults could be “kidnapped” too, and that thought frightened me.  If adults couldn’t protect us, who would?  Who was driving this train anyway?  

That very same sentiment often creeps up on me in adulthood.  I am a supposed “grownup” now and I will often ask myself, “Who the hell is in charge here?”.  I will often wonder if perhaps I didn’t have an idealized, naive or even juvenile expectation of what it means to be an adult.  I guess I expected that unlike in the school yard we would treat one another with respect and not bully each other.  That not unlike in the classroom, if we got out of hand there would be people in positions of power and authority to set us right and to punish those who had done us wrong.   Over the last decade my idealism has turned to fear, then anger, now I am slowly reaching the point of disbelief.  Politicians bickering like children, cheating, lying or all of the above.  "Real Housewives" bullying one another on television, people being rewarded for being amoral and self serving (I'm looking at you Paris and Lindsey), corporations cheating the public and not being held accountable. Will someone please do something already?!  In the case of the oil spill I want to rage against the heads of BP, I want to rage against Halliburton, I want to rage against our government for not making safety valves on these sort of rigs mandatory.  However, when it comes to something like a sink hole in South America, or a natural disaster (as opposed to our lovely man made disaster in the Gulf) well, that is when I get really freaked out.  I have no one to rail against.  No large corporation to boycott, no big business to condemn.  To be frank and speak plainly, this sort of disaster  scares the crap out of me.  I want to blame someone!  I want to feel like someone’s error, misjudgment, greed, ANYTHING caused this.  I want a reason and I want assurance it won’t happen where I live.  Right?  Nothing like that would ever happen here, right? RIGHT?!!  

That’s when I have to realize there are things I can control, the oil spill is not one of them.  Sink holes, earthquakes, natural disasters are also not within in my control.  What I can control is my reaction to fear and despair and the world I have created for myself and the people in it.  I can chose not to indulge in negativity.  I can respect, love and nurture the people I care about.  I can help make their lives happier, simpler, and support them emotionally.  I can respect, love and nurture myself by not poisoning my body with toxic food and allowing myself to be sedentary.  I can pray, meditate and focus on being a positive influence on my niece and nephews lives and put out as much kindness and hope as possible.  This I can do.  That and not get gas at BP.  

I just started following Marianne Williamson on Facebook and Twitter and she tweeted this thought regarding the oil spill earlier: 

“Remember: spend a minimum of five minutes each day with your eyes closed, seeing loving thoughts plugging that hole in the ocean. Pray for its repair.”  

Even if you aren’t religious per se, however you pray, whatever higher power you believe in, I think this is an amazing and hugely powerful idea. Just sit, focus, send kindness and love to the people affected and send energy and perseverance to those working for a resolution. 

Say Hello To Number 15

Last Friday I was strolling through town with two of my sisters and Terr-bear when my sister Robin stopped and picked up a brochure, it was for the Avon Breast Cancer Two Day Walk.  It’s a two day walk in October to raise money and awareness for breast cancer.  My curiosity was immediately piqued.  I thought, what better way to ready myself to run a 5K then to walk a marathon for a good cause?  And I could blog about it!  Bonus!  I went home and hopped online and requested they send me info regarding the walk then researched a little online.  That’s when things got a little dicey.

There are so many things wrong with me partaking in something like this.  The first being that you walk 26 miles the first day, 13 the second day.  I have always been the antithesis to athletic.  In gym I was the kid who was always picked last, I know, shocker.  I love to loaf, to me it is an art form.  I enjoy walking but I am an inherently lazy person, I have to make myself move.  Despite being a moderately good tennis player as a child, pretty much any other activity involving physical exertion was not my forte.  So, walking almost 40 miles in two days sends that little chubby girl from gym class into to a fit of anxiety.  As I was reading the blogs of people who have participated in previous years I started to become slightly horrified as they described their "war wounds".  They spoke of blisters, like oozing, gaping blisters.  Black toenails!  Toenails falling off!  As I read I briefly looked down at my shiny pink pedicured nails and thought, I can’t do that to my little piggy’s!  

Then there is the fact that the walk is two days, hence the overnight part. Now, I’m sure you are wondering where do you sleep in between Saturday and Sunday?  You CAMP OUT!  You read that right, you CAMP.  In a tent.  Outside.  On the ground.  So let me get this straight, after walking 26 miles, when I would theoretically want my bed and a hot bath probably more than ever, I am to snuggle up in a tent at a campsite?  I have never camped out, and those who know me are probably laughing right now picturing me even attempting to camp out.  I am irrationally afraid of all things creepy and crawly.  I don’t go to the mailbox without a full face of makeup.  I crave creature comforts and all things cozy.  So the idea of me sans makeup, walking for miles and miles only to then rough it overnight in a tent and then get up and walk another 13 miles, well, that idea is more like a fantasy.  Downright laughable.  Everything about the 2 day walk is out of my comfort zone, both mentally and physically.  I will have to push my body in ways I never have before, I will have to overcome many of my fears and insecurities in the process, I’ll have to let go of vanity, forgo luxury and redefine who I am am.  If I do this, I will no longer be the chubby un-athletic kid from gym class.  I will have to commit to training for it and raise money for it, which would mean pushing aside my shyness and asking people for help.  While I was reading about the bloggers experiences I was all at once getting overwhelmed, scared and in some small part of my mind I was stepping away from the whole idea, telling myself, “Just forget about it, it’s too difficult, you won’t be able to do it.”  I reminded myself I have bad knees, I get overheated easily, I don't have the right shoes!  I was figuratively backing out of the room and slinking away before anyone noticed.  Then I thought, isn’t this EXACTLY what my list is all about?  Being less complacent?  Trying things I haven’t before?  Testing myself and in the process exposing myself to and experiencing new things?  That’s when I made up my mind that my first blog after the weekend would be about the walk.  And I would once again proclaim my intentions into cyberspace so that I can’t just slink quietly away, disappointing myself.  I am going to participate in the Avon two day walk on October 16-17 2010. So I am adding another task to my list, say hello to number 15 folks!  I’m going to raise money and awareness for breast cancer research and then I am going to walk for two days in support of the cause.  And watch out party people, once I get my packet in the mail I’m going to have to start hitting you all up for donations to make my fund raising goal!