Monday, September 24, 2012

On marriage: a case study

So at least two of my friends have said to me in the last month "I can't look at my Facebook anymore because I can no longer bear to look at everyone getting married."
I am not sure if I'm surrounded by emotionally stunted adult-children or whether I'm selectively ignoring the wedding stuff but none of my close friends (all ten or so or them) are even close to getting married. Not even teetering on the precipice and we're all about to tip on over to the grand 3-0.

The not-so-close friends I have that are married, I'll be honest, are Chinese nationals. They have kids, they have station wagons and they have baggage coming out of the damn wazoo. I say this because I feel that most of them marry less for love but more because they feel that they *are* supposed to and this leads to more problems than it's worth.

I don't know how many times I've sat with one of them or the other and they've asked me if its time yet. Why the heck am i not married? I don't know how to explain to them that tripping to the altar is liable to lead to a broken neck. I just say impatiently "I don't know. I don't want to be" and then they look at me like I just poked myself in the eye on purpose. Borne of love and pity and complete cultural misunderstanding.

So in guessing that none of these friends read my blog. Here are two really fun examples of why you shouldn't get married too damn early (and how I couldn't stop the train from driving off the cliff)

Sailor: got married when she was 25 to her first boyfriend and has been bored out of her mind ever since. Except that she won't admit that she's bored, and because she's been bored, she's been having emotional affairs with other men. One, while she was pregnant with her kid and the other one just last year. She knows this is wrong but she has decided she won't leave her husband because he's a good man and he provides her with a sense of security.

So in this just past affair, she very blatantly hid the fact that she was married with a kid to this oblivious guy. I exasperatedly said "wth lady. What is the point of this? what do you think is going to happen once he discovers that you are married! And you have a little boy! Are you going to leave your husband?" and of course, the answer was no.

I get why she's bored. She's isolated out in the country and her husband is so staid that he won't try pasta (for dinner!) to try something new. But how many affairs can you have before hubby figures it out and then the train falls off the cliff creating a catastrophe? (Personally, I think she's being subconsciously self destructive but who the heck knows what's really going on in the human brain.)

Mooncake: is not the prettiest girl you've ever seen, so when she got pregnant, at a "marriageable"age to a guy she had been dating for six months. She took the offer, it was a readymade family and he decided to spirit her away to China after the baby was born.

Before she got pregnant, she had said to me that she wasn't even sure that he really loved her. Sound the alarm bells. Before she left, she mentioned she wasn't even sure she wanted to go.

Two years later, she's completely stuck and she doesn't want to be there anymore. She can't get divorced because the family will take the kid away from her (they have money and influence in their home town and custody battles are a cinch) and she's pregnant with another one- which she can't terminate because it's too late.

What can you do? What would you do? He doesn't beat her and he's perfectly nice to her most of the time, but she has really well and truly dug herself into a big hole.
So what is the moral of the story here folks besides a) just because people say you should get married doesn't mean you should and b) it's not just about pretty white dresses- it's a lifetime commitment that you have to seriously think about. It's sounds so stupid and basic and it never occurs to people until they wander into a shitty marriage without properly thinking about it and the ramifications.

(out of pure curiosity, I wonder how the kids of both marriages are going to turn out)

Friday, September 14, 2012

Bubble wrap, bumper stickers and golden retrievers.

If you ask me where I've been, I'm just going to say I was right here.

I have five different hats on this point and have had no time to dedicate to this blog. You may now commence scolding me on my disloyalty (are we in eight years in now? Jeebus.)

So I have my day job (my super awesome day job), I'm trying to put together a zine, I'm ever so slowly writing a novel, I'm still freelancing and I'm event managing for ND and so if you'd like to imagine how my apartment looks like right now- I don't think it's ever been this messy.

I am complaining and I'm not complaining. I love what I do- I love to write, I love to talk to people and there's been a plethora of cute boys coming by the office to shake my hand of late, but sometimes I want to just go home at 5 o clock, cook a roast chicken and watch back to back episodes of American Gothic/The Tudors/Freaks and Geeks.

And that means that my personal life is taking a backburner in more ways than one. About two months ago, my stepbrother and his partner flew in from Perth and we had all dinner together. They came again just recently and it was mentioned that I hadn't seen my mum the entire time. It was the running joke that they should visit more often so I can attend family dinners. It's not like me hey?

(I called my cousin Hexagirl just then and to multitask as I type this, it turns out that my great-uncle Jim just passed away. I don't think anybody was by his side and it occurs to me that the elders of my family are slowly slipping away. They worry that no-one will go to his funeral. How's that for an Ebenezer Scrooge type wake up call? I asked her what about his friends? won't they be at the funeral? And she said 'He was eighty. He probably had no friends left.' Which is probably true that no-one keeps a full social circle at that age)

My mum keeps telling me to call my dad. I think the whole Julia Gillard father thing has affected her more than she lets on.

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I'm letting my friendships slide too, and for once I think I'm okay with it. Who knew. Speedy and ND always tell me that I'm good at making friends, that even if I moved overseas and was there by myself, I would have nothing to worry about. I'm bubbly (when I want to be) and I'm good at establishing connections and keeping them there. It made me think about the stability of my friendships over the years, they lapse when I let them lapse. Of course some of them will be there forever like Dylmah and MD, I don't have to talk to them every week but there they are.

I just received a box of makeup in the mail and it was parceled with absurdly large bubble wrap. Which of course made me think of Mexicana and when we took a roll of bubble wrap and ran over it with the car (which today remains one of my favourite memories of all time) and so I just sat there popping this stupid large bubble wrap missing her. How do you like that for morbid sentimentality? It's not as if she's dead or anything, she's just 800km away and I want to talk to her about boys, stupid tv and zombie cannibals.

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(excerpted from the Gloss. Love that site.)

Ashley: Also, do you just look at the world in terms of who you could be friends with and who you couldn’t?
Jennifer: Of course. Don’t you?

Ashley: I do not!

Jennifer: Frankly, I could probably be friends with anyone who was just really, really nice to me. Like, if Hitler came up to me and was all “Jennifer, I am such a big fan! I think you are so pretty and smart and nice. I bought you a goldfish. I like dogs.” I would probably say, “You know, Hitler, you and I disagree on some points, but I think I see the real you.”


Ashley: To everyone out there reading along in Gloss land, she is absolutely fucking serious.  I think that can be an admirable trait, though, because I have really high expectations of people and become absolutely crushed when they fail to meet them, whereas you’d be friends with someone forever if they found out your favorite cookie and baked a batch for you. And then, if that person killed your family and fucked your dog, you’d be really angry until… well, until they made those cookies again. It’s crazy! You’re like a golden retriever in this way.

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 ND and I went to Melbourne the other day (i.e I went home) and for the first time, I was not feeling it. I do not know why. If that's not home- then where the hell is it? Here's hoping it's just temporary diaspora.

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And then in an mmmbop you're not there. Signing out.

 
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