Sunday Scribblings: How I Met My Question Mark

I can imagine some of the responses to this prompt. People will write about the day they met their soul mate, or the day they met their baby. Heart rendering stuff, but also vomit inducing. There is only so many times you can hear “There is no love like the love you have for your child” or “When I met him, two became one”.

Yes siree, pass the bucket.

I’m a weird combination of a romantic soul and a practical person. I read Mills and Boons romances five in a row and then abruptly I decide it is all bullshit and I throw the paperback against the wall and deem the books stupid and misleading. Imagine if love really was like a romance novel? If you weren’t a slim 20 something virgin whose parents are usually dead or generally defective and you haven’t just met a stunningly handsome yet wounded billionaire, you’re out of luck. Sorry, sister. Love is not for the overweight, the self fulfilled or the poor. And then there’s the virgin thing… Of course romance novels have come a long way and not all of the female characters are virgins these days. But there are enough of them to illustrate a sort of trend.

In any case, what I’m driving at here is the fact that all of these soul mate and baby stories don’t seem entirely honest. I am thinking of one blog in particular that I read in the same way I read romance novels. Sometimes I melt a bit and think the heroine (ie. the writer of the blog) leads the perfect life with the perfect husband blah blah blah and the rest of the time I want to smack her across her beautiful face for being so self absorbed and lucky. Here is a woman who does a creative job working from an impossibly cute studio in her house where I’m sure she doesn’t have to worry about bringing in much money as her very handsome and perfect husband worries about that side of things. She swans around, typing out deep thoughts and obsessing over her life choices. Everything she writes about is virtuous. Even her flaws somehow come out as positives. I imagine her life to be wrapped in cotton wool. A protected, sterile existence where she is centre stage and the world worships at her carefully painted toes. She just doesn’t seem real to me. Doesn’t she ever wake up angry with the world? Does she never hold that anger instead of turning it into an entry in her blog whereby she worked through it, there was a sign from nature or the universe and her husband gave her a big hug and it was all okay again?

In short…is she really that perfect? A part of me is very envious. I’d love to have a husband to go out and make the “real money” while I fluffed around at home (this couple do not have children, so she really is fluffing around at home) writing little things and thinking deep thoughts and thanking all the people who make comments on my blog for giving me support and love and do they know how much they mean to me?

And we’re back to vomiting and obviously, I don't really want her life.

Perhaps it is just me, and whoever is reading this is thinking what a horrible bitch I am. I’m not. I’m a caring person, for the most part. I’m also scrupulously honest with myself and most of the time with other people. I don’t ignore the seedy underbelly of life. I like it, finding it infinitely more interesting than the warm fuzzies of life. I insist on making that underbelly a part of my “real” life. I’m not an angel. I don’t have wings and I don’t always see the best in everyone and everything. I get annoyed, envious and irritated. I lack patience sometimes. I’m a flawed creature. But at least I’m real. I’ll always give an honest and true answer. I won’t dress it up in its Sunday best and parade it before you with sweet words and patient insight that I think I’m supposed to feel as I show you how much I’ve learned and how much of a better place I’m in. I’ll get angry, I’ll beat it up and then I’ll reach a kind of war torn peace which I’ll share in the way survivors do.

I’m not afraid of the dark, or the wolves at the door, or the question marks in life. I think this is a good thing.