the truth will set you free, but it will piss a lot of people off

Forgive me Gloria Steinem, but right  now all I really want a man, on a great big horse, to ride up and rescue me.

I'm sorry, but sometimes this life gets to heavy to carry by myself and I regress from my fiercely independent "Sisters are Doing it for Themselves" self, and daydream about someone sweeping in and taking care of me. Someone who would, as Maurice Sendak says in "Where the Wild Things Are", "love me best of all".

I feel a bit like a spoiled princess stomping her tiny foot (for me it would sensibly sized foot in stylish, but sensible shoes, no glass slippers here), but I really want to be someone's, anyone's -- okay, scratch ANYone's -- first choice. I'm not perfect, but I have tried to be mindful and compassionate in my relationships with family and friends.  I am sometimes successful, and sometimes I crash and burn quite spectacularly, but I do really try to stay compassionate in my intentions and have my words and actions come from there. This is sometimes difficult, because I want to feel sorry for myself, I want to be the victim, so I don't have to take personal responsibility for aspects of my life and of myself that I don't like. Yes, it stings when people react unkindly, but I can only be responsible for myself - I HATE that. ..... Okay, I only hate that sometimes, when I'm stressed and I'm tired and I would LOVE to blame other people. Ultimately that doesn't work well for me. They say resentment is like drinking poison in the hope it will harm the other person. It doesn't, it just eats you alive until you're the bitter mean spirited person that you were resentful of.  I know other's actions are a reflection of themselves, as mine are a reflection of me, I know this in my head. In my heart I sometimes feel like an unloved child, or on days that I'm really feeling sorry for myself, I feel unlovable. 


So where does this leave poor me? Still without a man to rescue me. I've tried dating. It was nothing short of disastrous each and every time. One date, "Barry" who seemed wonderful online, was spewing political rants with in minutes of my sitting down (and I do mean spewing, bits of saliva and all), but at least he paid for my soda water (I'm even a cheap date...), "Chuck" and I met at a Starbucks, and after he physically got up stood with his back to me while ordering his coffee, to make it crystal clear that he would not be buying me a coffee, we sat down chatted about how marvelous he was, how great his car was (it actually was a very nice little Audi), and when next week would I have an open afternoon to have sex with him. What I thought was a get to know you, he thought was a booty call arrangement. Should I be flattered that after talking with me for 15minutes he thought I was okay to have sex with? Anyway, if I'm going to put out, I at the very least require a meal, with dessert and coffee.

Okay, so men are not exactly queuing up to ask me out, much less show up on horseback; perhaps there's a protocol here that I'm not following. I've had 3 men tell me that they had lusted after me - one of them after he'd been married to someone he met on line to for about a year. So perhaps I'm looking for a Sugar Daddy on a horse? That sounds eewwie.

And here's where I start shoulding myself to death. I should have spoken up earlier in my marriage, maybe we could have started working on things 14years ago when it started to go wrong instead of pretending everything was fine. I should have left my husband and never moved here. I should have firmly, and compassionately stood up for myself countless times with countless people. I should have done a lot of things. I should have known better? I tried. Really I did. All I ever wanted to do was to make for my children a home like my cousins grew up in. My mom's sister had three kids, and was married to one of the best men I've know in my life. I loved having such a wonderful extended family. I look at them now, and they've been through some rough times - my Uncle dying 20years before we thought he should being the hardest - but they are still the loving, close happy family I watched growing up. So with my own kids I thought, if I couldn't have that growing up, I can at least give it to my family. It was a plan. I married a nice guy, I had three kids, stopped working before the second was born so I could be a full time mother to them. Then I tried to put down roots somewhere - my cousins grew up in only one house, on a street where every neighbour knew each other, where they could bike to school. There was a problem, with no job to hold me anywhere I had no say in where we moved when my husband got transferred, which was a lot. Still I kept trying to make that  life that existed only in my head.

So here I am. No family except my kids. All my extended family in another country, and while my Aunt and my cousins are friendly to me, I'm not their family, they don't invite me to holiday dinners or family celebrations. We have made ourselves a village here, and my kids have many stunt parents, mentors, and friends who support and love us, and we love them. I still long for my own family, for the extended family holiday dinners, for cousins for my kids to have and horse around with. It's nice here, but it's lonely too.

Honestly I don't really want a man to come in a rescue me. I know that if one should try to, I would most likely mock him, steal his horse and ride off. 


Maybe I just want a horse, and a plan of escape.

Or maybe just the horse, I'll figure out the escape route as I go.

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice --

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do --

determined to save

the only life you could save.