Cat Fight

There is another woman in my family with whom I have a really hard time. We have some similarities.  We are the two women over 25 who are single.  We are both JDs.  We are both on the plump side.

I seem to be more 'succesful' than her in a variety of ways.  I'm 30 years younger, but have a much more prestigious job.  She works primarily as a paralegal, which is, I think, difficult for her.  We both started to try and lose weight, but I lost 60 pounds and she lost 10.  Things like that make it, I think, quite hard for me around me.  She is constantly putting me down and marginalizing me.  This is extreme enough that I have stopped going to some of the functions if I know she'll be there.

It turns out she has been really mad at me for the last several years, because when my dad had cancer and I took care of him, she felt cut out of his life.  And in all honesty, she was.  She blames me.

I find this sad.  It seems like women compete for male attention.  I did my very, very best to take care of my dad.  Chemotherapy was really hard for my dad.  Hard enough he questioned whether or not he wanted to finish it. And my dad at that time had to cut a lot out of his life, just as he was having cancer cut out of his body.  I don't really remember what happened, but I think my dad asked me to tell this woman he didn't have the energy to see her and I did.

It seems like this is a pattern.  The women are too scared to confront the men, so we blame the other women over it.  I don't really know what to do.  I can't really talk to this woman about what happened without probably creating a fight with my dad.  I don't actually really want a relationship with her, but my family wants me to stop skipping events (which is nice).

Neurotic Intimacy

I really ought to be falling for Nate.  I really, really should.

He is sweet and sexy.  He has called me beautiful more times then probably all the other men I've dated. Combined.  He thinks I'm a great cook.  He thinks I'm a good housekeeper (so clearly he is somewhat smitten with me).  He says I should be a model because I'm more beautiful than any of the models.  My body likes him too.  And then he leaves and that's fine.  I'll see him again, but I'm not smitten.  I have moments of smittenness (smitteness?  How does one spell that?) but it isn't lasting.

Nate seems way too normal for me to fall in love with.  Until he adopted his daughter, I would never have considered him dating material.  He seemed shallow and materialistic.  Since then, he has changed tremendously.  But he has changed mostly in his actions.  He isn't neurotic.

Nate seems to be (and I don't know if this is true) the only African American man I've ever met who has never felt like he has been left out of anything for any reason.  I'm sure he has encountered racism in our society, but he seems to have never experienced racism that bothered him.  He seems so very confident in who he is.  Life is easy and his is happy.  I am not very confident in who I am.  Life hasn't been easy.  I am happy much of the time, but it has been through a ton of introspection.  That sense of not-fitting-in is so core to who I am.  I've never felt like I had an opening to discuss that with Nate.  And as a result, not only do I feel like I'm a generic woman to Nate; I feel like Nate is a generic man to me.

I don't think that intimacy should necessarily be based on being neurotic.  But I'm beginning to think it is for me.

I keep wishing Bobby would change.  Intellectually, I resent the way Bobby treated me.  I feel like I was a pretty butterfly he could collect to observe.  Even his wanting to be friends, after he kissed and kissed and kissed me.  After he told me to think of him whenever I played with myself (and I did).  After he made me start to fall for him, and then said "I never led you on."  (Yeah. Right.)  And yet.  I could talk with Bobby about things that mattered to me.  Nate really likes me, but I can't help but feel like I'm just a generic girl.  Bobby doesn't really like me, but he and I, well we could talk about our souls.

I keep hoping I'll start to fall for Nate.  We haven't slept together yet (although we've done just about everything but sleep together).  We'll probably sleep together soon.  Maybe I'll start to fall for him at that point.

I wonder if I can fall in love with anyone who isn't neurotic.  Even as I think I'd be happier with someone who found life easier.

The Taming of the Shrew

So, I got to celebrate my birthday properly, giving black Friday a new meaning.

Sometimes, it feels like there is a little animal in my heart or soul.  Sometimes it feels like a bird, beating her wings against a cage, or a little shrew, running around, desperate for direction.

When a man, say Nate, grabs my hair and whispers in my ear, my soul calms.  It is like this giant sigh of recognition of where I am, and I breathe deeper and the tension of all my life just melts.

Nate and I were fooling around, and he grabbed my hair and I whispered: "I need to be tamed."  And he said "I will tame you. Do you need to be broken?" And I said "NO!" And then asked, later, when we weren't fooling around, if 'breaking' was something that he wanted and he enthusiastically proclaimed that he was not looking for someone to break.

Last night, he read his daughter to sleep with The Little Prince." When I woke up this morning, this was waiting in my e-mail. 

What does that mean-- 'tame'?""It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties.""'To establish ties'?""Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..."   

This taming thing has promise

 Wow.  Did I melt!!!  How absolutely lovely!  How well he understood what it meant to me.

And I realized, we've started to establish ties.

Black Friday

I couldn't bring myself to go shopping today.  Mostly because I hate it and add in that many crowds and I hate it even more   But I had friends going and it made me think about the transactional nature of Christmas and presents.

Nate keeps wanting to take me shopping; he wants to buy me shoes.  I keep saying "I have enough shoes; but if there is something you fantasize about me wearing, I'll wear whatever you like."  And he isn't taking me up on it as something for him.  He keeps saying "women love shoes; let me buy you a pair you'll like."  I've told him my feet are an odd size, so I pretty much only buy my shoes off the internet.  I've told him I have more shoes than I'll wear in the next decade.  I've told him I don't need him to buy me things.  But it is odd to me.

The irony, of course, is that there is a pair of shoes I really, really want.  And, of course, I want the pedals and cleats that match them.  I doubt, however, that he would include biking cleats in his desire to buy me a pair of shoes.

He keeps wanting to buy me something that women supposedly want, rather than what I want, which is to talk about introspective stuff. To read Joan Didion's new book and talk about it.  To fly to Massachusetts and volunteer for Elisabeth Warren.  To go see The Artist and be enraptured (I hope--I haven't seen it yet).  To talk about things besides sex and small talk.

It's funny.  I'm giving Nate a Christmas gift that is very similar to the one that I gave Bobby for his birthday (although even better, because I'm giving his daughter a matching one from 'Santa').  I tend to give pretty similar gifts: something I make myself, monogrammed.

Bobby seemed to really appreciate the one I gave him.  He seemed to understand why it was a lovely gift.  He thought I was talented.

I'm kind of scared Nate won't understand the gift well enough; I think he would be just as happy with monogrammed cuff links.  And then I wonder if I should give him something else, so I'm not comparing him to Bobby.

I don't think I could love someone whom I only give store bought gifts to.  Some store-bought gifts are fine; I always buy my mom Aveda hand lotion because she loves it and while she could afford to buy it, she never would.  I love Crabtree and Evelyn's "Evelyn Rose" bubble bath and I only use maybe 2 bottles a year because it is expensive; my dad gave me a bottle once and that was so thoughtful. So many store-bought gifts are fine.  They just need to be thoughtful and combined with home-made things.

I have these cousins I kind of despise and when I have to give them a gift, it comes from Tiffany's.  I must be the only person in the world that thinks that a Tiffany's present is a huge put-down.  But to me, it is a way of saying: "you are shallow and easily bought.  The name on the box is really all that matters to you.  Here is our commercial transaction."  They are very, very, very rich; perhaps they look down on me for shopping at such a low-class store, but I've noticed they always do what I want when I give them a Tiffany's gift.  When our grandfather was sick in the hospital and they didn't visit, I sent them a Tiffany's gift from him and they were visiting the next week.  My father was shocked I bothered to send them an expensive gift from Grandpa; and even more chocked they visited.  They are easily bought. And I think it meant something to him that they visited.  It was worth $500 to me for him to see all his grand-kids one last time before he died.  Tiffany's is what you buy for people who won't visit their dying grandfather unless you bribe them.

I'm sure Nate will appreciate my non-Tiffany's gift.  I hope so!  But I feel like it will be a generic appreciation of a nice gift. I might as well go to Tiffany's.  I don't think he's appreciate one or the other any more or less.

Breaking up (with dad) is hard (or impossible) to do

So, I'm still trying to figure out the dad-situation.

I'm writing him a long e-mail that basically has an ultimatum at the end:  shut the fuck up about being 'genuine' and balance that with kindness, or else I don't want to have much of a relationship with you.

I'm saying it nicer than that.  But it is incredibly scary.

I've been talking with the family-shrink about this and she said "why don't you say what you want instead of what you don't want"  and I couldn't say what I want to him, because what I want from him seems so unlikely.  And I'm not going to give him an ultimatum for what I want, but I will set boundaries for what is not acceptable.

But what I want from him:  I want him to cherish me.  I want him to take my feelings into account and try not to hurt me.

And that makes me cry because it doesn't seem like such a crazy thing for a girl to want from her daddy.  Or even a woman to want from her dad.  And yet, it seems crazy.

Wanting Cherishing

I am having real issues with my dad.  It seems I'm not the only one.  (My parents are using the D word, which they haven't for 20 years.  And what is scary is before I was on the side of 'work it out,' this time I'm on the side of 'how the hell did mom put up with this for so long?') But I realized when talking with the family shrink (of course my family has a resident shrink that is our go-to person when my parents are having trouble with each other or the kids are having problems with on of our parents) that my standards for my dad are so very low.  The shrink wanted me to phrase what I wanted from my dad, rather than what I didn't want.  And I was like, 'well, what I want may not be realistic and I'm not going to cut down on relatedness to my dad because he won't give me what I want.'  But he had me work on what I wanted:  my dad to have kindness and empathy for me and to cherish me.  Yup.  That's the big thing this girl would like more than anything else: her dad to cherish her.  And I don't think he will.  He is too busy being 'genuine' (and he tries to make it sound like he is a better person than other people for being 'genuine') to worry about being kind.  He is genuinely an asshole right now.

Nate cherishes me, but he is so fucking busy!  I found myself cutting back on seeing other people (even though we have neither slept together, nor had a conversation about not seeing other people) and now I'm really wondering if I can have a relationship where I get to see someone once a week and have text messages in between but not even phone calls.

There are 2 men who are pursuing (does anyone else spell that as persue and then have spell check change that to peruse?  Oy--I'm too tired to be blogging) me pretty hard, and I'm kind of exhausted by each one.  I e-mailed both (whom I've avoided contacting for several days) and said "I'm just too overwhelmed to meet right now" and they both got "no you're not" and I'm like Annie Oakley (Yes I am!).

I keep trying to sleep and keep getting woken up by my angst around my dad.  I keep wishing I could say the thing that would make him decide he genuinely wants his family in his life and he will want to be aware of their needs too.

Birthday, Part 2.

So, I'm a little embarrassed, but my best friend and I flew to NYC for the weekend for my birthday, because I wanted to see Hugh Jackman.

Jackman was amazing.  Funny, sexy, charismatic, charming, with a great voice.  He does it all effortlessly (and even does his own tap-dancing).

And it made me sad.  Made me sad that a highlight of my birthday is seeing someone else perform.  I would rather have had someone to spank me.

That said, Nate and I have been seeing more and more of each other.  Maybe we'll celebrate my birthday next week.