One occurred while I was sitting on my apartment patio Memorial weekend drinking a beer after work and catching up on emails on my laptop, yorkie-poo at my feet. A friend, one I had been on a date with earlier in the year, joined me while waiting for his cab to come and take him away to a rooftop party downtown. He leaned in to me, open after a day of holiday drinking on a bar's patio, and said "Can I ask you a question?" I nodded. "Are you into girls?" I raised my eyebrows and shook my head. "Because I never see you with any guys. Why don't you have a boyfriend? It's time, you know? You should just try to trust someone. They're not all bad. One out of five. I'd say you can trust one out of five men. With women it's a little different. More like three out of five."
One out of five, I found myself thinking. Yeah, right.
Another question occurred when I was talking to a friend of mine about feelings and issues and concerns, etc, etc, (all of the stuff I am really awkward and uncomfortable with) and he said, in response, "Why are you so serious all the time?"
I bristled and steered the conversation back to the topic, but the remark stayed in the soft gray area of my consciousness.
And finally, at work, where I am currently a waitress, one of the regular customers stopped me as I was passing his table with a pot of coffee. This 70-ish gentleman moved his cup to the side of the table and said, "Say, I want to ask you a question. What do you want..." he moved his cup again, "to do with your life?"
As it was 9am and I was a waitress working on her second master's and holding a pot of coffee and just done with mopping the floor, I didn't exactly warm up to this question.
In fact- I didn't warm up to any of the questions. Who were these men to be asking me such weighty questions? Did I question their judgment? Their choices in life? Their decisions or lifestyle? No- of course not. What right did they have to judge my life? Or expect more from it?
As I thought about the questions more they irritated me even more. Why do I need to trust men again? Who says I'm serious all the time? Why do I need a plan for my life? And, more importantly, how is that anyone's business other than my own?
As I got riled up I started writing a blog in my mind about the audacity of these questions and the pretentiousness of the people asking them. The blog would end, of course, after analyzing this situation with a I-am-woman-hear-me-roar type of triumphant closing. Something like I like who I am and how I am content with my choices and I don't want a boyfriend and I'm not too serious and my life will be whatever it is meant to be and it will be perfect in that sense.
But then I realized the mental blog I had written would not work.
It was a lie.
The truth, if I dare to write it, is that I bristled at these questions not because of the people asking them. Not because I felt I shouldn't have to answer to anyone. Not because I had an answer to each of the questions.
I bristled because they are questions I ask myself. Or questions I would ask of myself if I were brave enough.
The truth is that I do want a boyfriend. The truth is that I am scared to trust again. The truth is that I do wonder why I have to so seriously analyze my life all the time. It is like I am hyperaware of all of my many imperfections all of the time. And the truth is I don't want to be like this. I want to go back to a life where I don't have to work so hard to be honest. Sometimes I think I might prefer the life of complacency and permanent mild dissatisfaction. Why not settle? Allow myself to drift into a relationship with one of the men I have gone on first dates with--the men with checklists who after a thorough two-hour interview almost visually decide things could work out between us. The men who are looking for a certain accessory to add to their individually crafted lives. It would be easy. I could stop feeling lonely. We could date and then live together and then get married and have kids and share space and exist in sort-of companion style life. All I would have to do is adjust to his life.
Or--I suppose I must look for another option--why not try to trust someone who does know me for who I am? Why not let someone see me as myself?
The truth is that this is the scariest situation of all. Because the truth is that I am the sort of woman who accidentally almost starts her paper coffee cup on fire while heating it up in the microwave. I am the sort of woman who rebels and adopts the mantras of self-help books in the same minute. I am the sort of woman who takes herself seriously, who worries about making the same mistakes over again. I am the sort of woman who would get into a car accident before she would share her feelings. I am the sort of woman who has a dirty shower and snores and feels confused and doesn't know what she's going to do with her life and trips sometimes over the cracks in the sidewalk and who wants to let someone into her life again but has no idea how to do it.
"Why don't you go talk to that guy?" my apartment friend said to me on Memorial weekend, nodding at another man drinking a beer and watching the baseball game from his chair. And so I did. Not because I was particularly attracted to him or excited to meet him (in fact I sensed a checklist from 20 feet), but because, when all is said and done, I am also the sort of woman who keeps trying.
It's bound to get easier with practice. I hope.
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