Friday, September 16, 2011

Compromise

I've written about my engagement, now I write about the reactions to my engagement, and much like how different people react to different news differently, the pendulum continues to swing wildly sometimes. Out of control, a bit.
It's a ring on my finger, but people notice it. Big time. Mike has no such 'evidence' so to speak--he merely has to tell his people, and they know, and it's all good, and for a man at the age of forty-four, it's still ok that he's getting married now, that he is making the decision to do this now.

For my people, I'm still dealing with alot of shock and awe, I won't lie. Some of it is a bit disconcerting to me. And, truth be told, I have to get this off my chest; hurtful.

I know, I know the people in my office mean well and mean nothing but good cheer when opening some champagne yesterday and putting some baby booties in front of me as a joke.
But my smile was pasted on.
I know that my boss did not mean things the way they sounded when he asked me, very gravely Tuesday morning, if my engagement meant that I had reversed my earlier 'decision' not to have children.
It hurt.
It still hurts, and with the stress of being back at work this week after two weeks vacation, of dealing with being on 'cloud nine' so to speak after so many months of despair and pain surrounding my father's recurrence of cancer and subsequent death, I am my own pendulum, swinging wildly between happiness and despair, between rage at people's insensitivity and compassion at their attempts at kindness.
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me this week when I am getting married, I'd be spending the lot on a new pair of running shoes, a running watch, and could probably spring for my own Olympic-grade coach.
My closest girlfriends L. and T. know these types of questions and tell me to just enjoy this time and not worry about The Date. I am going away with them this weekend, and I look forward to spilling some of these comments out for them to dissect, analzye, and come up with answers for.
My sister was suitably outraged at my boss's question.

So of course, it took these few days for this to kind of 'settle' in my brain, and only a bit more time for it to start to flutter into my chest, once again 'creating a worry'.
It brought me back to words, and the things we say, to each other, to ourselves, and as my friend A. and I muse--once you let words out, you own them, you can't take them back, and they live on in the other person's head, swirling about, creating worry and doubt, sadness and sometimes fear, and anxiety.
What if I wasn't childless by choice? What if (hell, I don't know, I'll never know) I couldn't actually have children? How would those comments feel then?

I still do things in my own time, a late bloomer, even in this business of getting married. I don't really want the white-dress-my-day type of wedding, because that is not the type of girl I am. That's just me, that's all. I just don't like feeling that my choices are 'weird'. I just don't want to have kids. I've never wanted to, I still don't want to, and that's just me. That's all.

I listen to my Louise Hay cd, I pray in the middle of the night, I lie awake and analyze my own dreams, and then I quiet my spirit and try to be still.

I'm just saying that sometimes we don't make it easy on each other, that's for sure.

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