Someone To Watch Over Me

When did guys my age stop wearing chain wallets and start sporting wedding bands. It's starting to freak me out. It's like they are no longer guys my age. They are now of another plane, another life, they have surpassed me and I am left with their younger brothers with the chain wallets. I don't notice the phenomenon with women so much. But maybe that's because I am not checking them out on the subway. It never ceases to amaze me when I see a seemingly normal guy my age wearing a cool outfit looking cute and then I see the ring. It's jarring to me. Maybe if I had more contact with married people that were not my parents and their friends I would be less weirded out by the whole thing. Suddenly this guy who looks like my peer transforms into middle-aged, responsible, married guy as soon as I see the ring. And I feel young and weird and strange for checking him out and then stranger for recoiling the way I do.

I don't fall into the archaic stereotype of the lonely, single 30-old woman with the cats, if there is one anymore. I like living alone. I like my space. My life is very full right now. Yet I have never been further from being in a relationship. So marriage seems to tantamount to Mars. I can imagine myself married right now about as much as I can imagine myself as a man. Impossible. I have no frame of reference for it. It's very strange. I wonder if I am the strange one locked in my present tense transient sick world. This is an existence I never would have expected for myself ten years ago, for example, yet I never was one to plan my future and my life out. I just thought things would unfold the way they do for everyone else. But I guess you have to be proactive and you have to want it and make it happen, which I haven't.

Things have never unfolded for me the way they do for everyone else and I have never been proactive about those types of things. I never remember that nothing 'normal' happens for me when I expect my future will be 'normal,' and everything will 'fall into place.' I have to make an effort to make the normal things happen; they don't come naturally to me. I didn't want to go to college straight from high school. My dad was appalled. College didn't feel right to me. I wasn't ready. I had absolutely no desire and I didn't buy into the aspirations my parents had for my future or feel any competition with my peers or have any fear of security in my future. I just didn't want to go and didn't get why that was weird or why my parents were so frustrated by my point of view.

D reminded me yesterday that I am really going at it alone with this sick thing; i.e.; that I don't have a boyfriend to hold my hand. And I don't. But I couldn't imagine having a boyfriend right now. It might because no boyfriend I ever had would have taken care of me in this my time of need. They would have made me feel needy and selfish and emotional instead of being a silent strength saving me from my fear and lonliness and helping me around the house. Instead I have my mom and my friends for that. Monday night my mom slept over after I prepped all day for the colonoscopy and Tuesday after we left Roosevelt/St.Luke's with me high on demerol and doubled over in pain she took me home, made me french toast and I went to bed. As I slept, dishes were washed, laundry was done, pictures were hung. All the while there was a scarf placed under the crack of my bedroom door so I could sleep in quiet. If that's what a husband is like, then I want one. But I have never had a boyfriend that would have been proactive and anticipated my needs and not made me ask for it and then grumbled while they were doing it. Is that why I can't imagine myself married? It's the whole 'in sickness and health' thing that gets me. All my boyfriends are the kind of guys you want to go out drinking with. They are all fun and funny. They make me laugh. They are all 'the center of attention' kind of guys. But then whenever something serious happens and I need them, they are nowhere to be found or what I am asking or needing is like the biggest deal in the world to them. And it really never is. When I had the abortion, for example, Brooklyn left me alone the night before to go to a concert with his friend and then came back to my dorm room drunk off his ass with his friend who slept on my floor, also drunk. He had to go to that concert. He didn't consider cancelling. And the same goes for after the abortion. He 'had' to go home right after. He did not stay with me to see if I was okay. He left me to my own devices and I needed him with me. I tolerated it because he was fun. And we had already been together for awhile. And I was in love. But now when I think of relationships and marriage I think of these experiences and they are all I know of relationships. And I have finally learned that a fun guy to go out drinking with isn't enough. But I don't know any of those sensible, appropriate guys. Or maybe I haven't yet trained myself to like them. So why would I covet a big diamond ring on my left hand?

I just wish all the cute guys I saw around weren't wearing one.