Board Game Philosophy

I have never been good at checkers.

While growing up in Fridley, Minnesota and attending Hayes Elementary school, I had the chance, like all of the students there, to play checkers against the principal. Dr. Switzer looked like a grandpa. He wore gray suits everyday. He smelled strongly of whatever products older gentlemen used to primp--old spice hair pomade, I don't know. He looked sternly at kids misbehaving, and kindly at kids who came to his office to play checkers. But he never let them win. 

I wanted to be the kid that beat Dr. Switzer at checkers. I marched into his office, right to his desk where a strange knick knack of a little green hand that would take coins and put them in a bank sat right next to the checkerboard. I don't think I said more than 10 words the whole time. The game couldn't have lasted more than five minutes. Towards the end, in a panic, I looked at my disappearing pieces. "It ain't-a-gonna be long now," said Dr. Switzer.

I was not to be known as the kid who beat Dr. Switzer at checkers.

I was never good at chess either. 

I remember playing against my dad. I would try so hard to protect my queen. Pawn after pawn I sacrificed thinking I could just somehow outlast the game and keep my queen safe without having to move her at all. I didn't want to risk it so I tried to make her stay put. 

This strategy didn't work in checkers, it didn't work in chess, and I'm starting to believe it doesn't work in life. By protecting the thing we don't want to sacrifice we end up losing it in the end. After the pain of my divorce this past year I wanted to keep my heart safe. I didn't want to put it out there, didn't want to be vulnerable. 

But where would that lead me? If I don't risk it, I end up alone. I may not lose my heart, but I might end up breaking it, or burying it so deep I no longer can access it. 

Hearts are resilient and queens are fearless. Better to send them both onto the battlefield than to make them stay at home.

Soul Mate Material

There are many perks to being a single gal living on her own in this day and age. For instance, there are no battles for the remote; if I want to watch "Sex in the City" despite the static and fuzzy reception, I can. Nor are there disputes over music--I can indulge my bad taste all I want and listen to the album Crash on repeat simply because I am too lazy to pick another cd and no one complains. And to be a single girl with a blog brings even more benefits--I can look up all sorts of ridiculous topics on the internet all in the name of "research" and "material" for my writing.

Yesterday I was stuck on the word soulmate, the concept that haunts and teases the single girl of today's society and causes her to forget about all the perks of living alone. What is a soulmate? Does it exist? Do we meet just one? What chance do any of us have at long term monogamy? Are we chasing a myth? I turned to the internet to see what I could find. 

First, of course, was the sheer volume of postings on the subject. Google told me that I was looking at results 1-10 of about 935,000 postings on "finding a soulmate." There are nearly a million articles on finding a soulmate; apparently I am not the only person indulging in the word. 

More surprising than the number of postings related to finding a soulmate was the content of the material out there. The second listing I found went to a website called soulmatekit.com.  That's right. Soulmate KIT. Like a jewelry kit, or a juggling kit, but for finding your one true love instead. For $397 I could order such a kit and be magically transformed, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. I must admit, there's a certain appeal here, just like with those jewelry parties people are always throwing. You know that it's a waste of money but you find you just can't turn away from the silver pendant that allows you to interchange synthetic stones of different colors.

Not only did this site offer a kit for true love, it offered a soul mate IQ quiz, which I decided to take in the name of "research" (of course).  Nine grueling questions later I learned I was 71.44% ready to meet my soulmate, but that there were still blocks in my life preventing me from meeting that special guy. I thought back to the questions--I did answer no when asked if my home was ready to receive my soulmate because laundry currently litters my bathroom floor. Perhaps a cleaner apartment will bring love to my life?

Next I turned to the ultimate authority on all subjects--Wikipedia. It revealed the standard definition of soulmate--a companion with whom one feels deep friendship, companionship, sexuality, spirituality, and compatibility. It also explained the mythological concept behind it from classical literature. Apparently humans were made originally with four arms, four legs, and two faces, but Zeus, fearing the power of these humans, split them all in half, condemning them all to spend the rest of their lives searching for their missing half. 

I don't know how I feel about this concept. Do I want to spend the rest of my life searching for a missing piece? What about the beautiful pieces I have already found? The friends that glitter and sparkle as a part of the mosaic of my soul? 

I think that is the concept I will choose to believe: my life as a collage of changeable pieces--picking up new colors and designs throughout the years, beautiful and shining... always, always shining.

Mind Games

A funny thing happened to me last week.

I went to the local Italian restaurant a few blocks away with the local characters I run with and encountered, after a few beers, a local waitress who wanted me to kiss her. Male companions were all for this, and before I knew it, amidst half-empty pint glasses and plates of spaghetti, I found myself being peer-pressured to do something.

"What is this, high school?" I asked.

"Oh, c'mon," said the perky brunette waitress, (I'm guessing she was a hockey cheerleader back in the day). "I bet you've never even kissed a girl before."

"Yes, I have. My very best friend." I wanted to add that she was far superior to the waitress in every way, but I didn't.

Now, of course, as a mature ADULT, I knew that this peer-pressure was ridiculous, silly, and far beneath me. I knew that whether or not I kissed this girl so that she could impress the boys that had accompanied me and were now harassing me, I would still be the same person and that my worth as an autonomous entity would not be determined by whether or not I pleased this crowd. It was embarrassing, really, that any of us were even entertaining this thought.

But then I did a strange thing. I leaned over to the short, cherubic, twenty-something gal and planted one quickly on her lips. 

Why did I do it?

I am still wondering myself. I could say it was just to shut them all up. To move on. To prove it was no big deal. I could even say it was because I suddenly became bi-curious and wanted to explore my own sexuality.

But then the bartender peer-pressured me into having another drink.

And I said yes once again!

Apparently no no longer exists in my vocabulary.

That is the thing about my new single life. In some ways the anchor is gone. Two years ago I was showering every night at 9pm on the dot and settling into bed with socks on my feet in order to read for half an hour before my husband came in to kiss my cheek and I fell asleep. Last year I was caught in the middle of transition and all routines gave way to crying and exhaustion. This year I'm staying out late on Monday night, kissing waitresses and drinking beer. It's a shocking phenomenon. Could I be experiencing what John Mayer coined as the quarter-life crisis?

I think rather a new chance for identity has landed before me and it is my job this year to embrace it all. I have cast off the numbness of my past and the trauma of divorce and now get to make out with the world. 

A Softer Kind of Armor

So I was sitting in the doctor's office last week, feet in stirrups, speculum looming in the immediate future and suddenly, I was tripping all over myself to explain to my new doctor (a woman as kind and gentle and compassionate as you would ever want to meet) exactly how to find my cervix. 

"Um, so- I guess have a really long vagina and my cervix is really hard to find, so I'll just tell you now that I need, like, the longest speculum you have." I said all of this through a cheerful smile, much like how someone would specify exactly how they liked their medium-skim-vanilla-wet-latte-in-a-large-cup, somewhat apologetic for the ridiculousness of the request, but also not willing to shell out $4.16 for a drink that is not quite right.

"Don't worry," said my doctor, "I am 100% confident in my abilities." And she proceeded to tell me where to relax and how. "Oh dear," she said as I forced myself to relax (a paradox particularly cruel when in stirrups) "you have had a bad pap."

I left, after a thoroughly improved gynecological experience thanks to my cheerful doctor and her new, softer, plastic speculum with light inside the tool. The whole procedure was so much better than my previous experiences-- the metal speculum, a hot bulb shining at my crotch, repeated insertions and removals, the smell of my own sweat, angling and agreement, that, well, yes, it is a tricky cervix to find, let's try one more time, just try to relax, don't tense. It was a relief. I had a renewed faith in the medical field.  

After leaving, I started to think about fear. I felt proud of myself. I feared the gynecologist and yet I went, again, and dealt with the fear. 

Of course, as a sexually active woman, I had no choice. I needed birth control pills, hence I needed a prescription, hence I needed a physical, hence I needed a pap. Fear was a luxury I sacrificed for the greater good.

It's not the only time I have sacrificed this luxury, fear. In fact, as I started to think about it, it's the only way I deal with fear. I plunge into the fear and beat at it. I slip on the gloves, pull on the shit-kickers, strap on my ammo belt... I don't allow myself to be afraid. Spider in the closet? WHAM! no more. Centipede running along the basement hallway? Not through the cloud of Raid I spray as thick as fog. Cute boy in the corner of the bar? I would much rather try to kiss him than fear talking to him. I don't do fear. 

Thinking about this method of attack made me realize I don't reserve my weapons and armor for my physical fears alone. I wear them everyday to cope with my fear of being disliked. My smile is my armor and my charm a weapon. I please people unconsciously and effortlessly, like scratching an itch or brushing hair out of my eye. I live behind a shield. I brandish  kindness daily. I barricade myself from the emotion of fear, from the fear of being disliked, from the heavy shame of perhaps being unlovable.

And to be honest, I think I am getting tired of all this fighting. I want to retire from the battlefield and hang up the weaponry. Of course, I am not exactly sure how to do this. How does a person begin to feel an emotion they have resisted for so long? Perhaps, just as I admitted my fear to my doctor, admitting my fear to myself is taking the first step.

On Wings