« Matt Lauer Did Need Some Socks Too, But... | Main | Baltimore Terror »

July 03, 2006

Tryin' To Catch Me Ridin' 30

This shit is profound.

So profound I have to write it down, send it to the universe and get over it so I can stop this internal dialogue for a second. Is there a such thing as temporarily profound? I hope. I don’t want to have this conversation with myself anymore, to be honest.

I’m fast approaching 30 and have entirely bought into (even if for one blog’s worth of time) the idea that I should be a mom, crying randomly and trying to latch a newborn baby’s mouth to weird looking nipples. Have you seen what happens to those things once you have a baby? WOW.

My imagination takes me to crazy places from one second to the next. One moment, I’m thinking Ooh babies. The next I’m like Ugh babies. I do spend about 8 hours a week with a little baby that is beyond adorable. When I am with this child, I experience a selflessness and a floaty feeling of what can only be described as pure love (and that's not even my baby!). Interestingly enough, I encounter similar feelings about J but it's a bit different because he isn't helpless and he can use his words for good and stank which flips the whole script, but you know what I mean. This baby time could be feeding into this bizarre emotional outburst of baby thoughts.

Is this normal?

I refuse to blame my rational mind. I am thinking the body, brain and spiritual whatever align against the rational mind and make the mouth say crazy shit to the boyfriend before he falls asleep like, Do you think we’ll send our kid to Hebrew school or do I have to be Jewish for that to go down because I’m thinking I want him to go, right babe? He just looks at me and goes, “Babe, you’re insane right now,” rolls over and falls asleep to the live Mint Condition DVD. I must be insane because why would I say that after I just made him go all the way downstairs to get me water so I can take my PILL. I mean, for real.

Baby psychosis?

Don’t even let me get started on the day that I was in such rich denial over the growth of my stomach due to chocolate cupcakes (and burritos, damn) that I made him go purchase some pregnancy tests. They were ALL (plural) negative of course, and in a pathetic heap on the guest bedroom floor, I said, “Dude, I’m just fat in the middle, I guess!” He laughed but I was looking around for my yoga mat so I could get cracking on those crunches.

I’m now on a five days a week cardio ritual. Oatmeal in the morning. Egg whites. Blah blah blah. I get my fucking exercise on. Pure vanity, I tell you. Embarrassing but true.

I have punished myself for coinciding thoughts of vanity versus pregnancy. I say to myself, Self you should really get over yourself. The world is a mess (and that laundry from six days ago is begging to be folded) and you’re up here tripping off the sight of a cluster of dimples on the left thigh. I must stop reading tabloids. Nobody can look like Kelly Ripa after 19 babies. A career, a hot husband, adorable babies that she seems to actually raise and a tiny body? My sister and J’s sister both said that you don’t even think about your body once the baby comes. You’re just tired and happy or tired and fucking overwhelmed with a sea of emotions.

Nonetheless, I still examined my sister’s stomach, thighs and buttocks this past weekend when she visited. Girl has hardly any stretch marks and hardly any cellulite. And she’s not a product whore. She’s not into the cocoa butter or the anti-cellulite creams or none of that. She just looks damn good after two kids. She had babies in her early 20s though. Resilience levels might be different now. Well, whatever, Mercy looks damn good too. Vanity is a bitch. Why I am disclosing this information, I don’t know. But I feel like I can’t possibly be alone.

Doesn’t matter. One day I’ll have a kid and all the judgments I’ve passed and superficial comments I’ve made will be laughable (and I hereby willing apologize for and take back whatever seems completely juvenile/so junior varsity) when I am actually experiencing the whole motherhood thing. I roll my eyes every day when I watch TLC's Surviving Motherhood. Put a weighted vest on a kid because he is being disruptive in the classroom? Um no. I mean, I guess. Shit, I don’t know.

But here’s the thing. These irrational age-based internal ramblings don’t just stop at babies. Remember my blog about not wanting to get involved in the super Long Island wedding trend? Okay, maybe I don’t want to spend a quarter million on the actual wedding day. I watched that Oprah episode where that lady was selling this book and yes, I want to answer all those questions for myself before I say I do. It’s not about the dress and the limo and all that shit. The fantasy can kiss my ass. The important part is the forever life partner shit, the can we really do this together and make it, dude! Having said that, a part of me does want to get married. Back up – a part of me really wants to know what my body, mind and mouth will come up with if I get proposed to. Am I a crier? Speechless? Tripping?

I was IM’ing with my friend Gene. It started off normally enough. Gene says, “What it do…” and I say, “What it look like…” and then I give him a brief update on my book project to which he always enthusiastically responds. Even when I say something as insane as “losing hope it’ll never happen” because that’s my way of expressing that I really hope it does happen – he’ll say, “It’s totally happening. You’re so on Oprah!”

Oprah dreams or not, everybody needs a Gene, I swear it.

He’ll tell me where he went, whose number he got that he’s so not calling because he’s shy like that. I scold him and tell him step by step what to do, what to say, when to say it. He changes the subject to Cassie, the black/Filipino model/singer that I get emailed about every single day. For some reason, Gene and I can go on and on about this girl. We are, grossly, obsessed. For me, it’s some twisted level of narcissism slash disbelief slash depression that I could get dozens of emails a day telling me that I resemble this girl. This MODEL girl. I don’t believe it. I won't believe it. It is simply not true. She’s 19, without cellulite, way over 5 feet tall and basically smoking hot. I, on the other hand, am 29, with cellulite (although kneading the shit out of it twice daily with my special gels), totally under 5 feet tall and um as hot as a former reality “star” dream-chasing “writer” part-time housewife who randomly has an audition in the city tomorrow can get. You be the judge.

This is basically how our conversations always go.

The conversation fell quiet. I assumed he was doing work as one should be doing at work. And I moved on to open up MySpace. I’ve been policing my niece’s page ever since I discovered she is quite computer savvy. After watching those Dateline To Catch A Predator episodes, I’ve been very nervous about my niece roaming about on the Internet opening her life up for any nasty pedophile that sets out to injure my baby girl. She’s 12, but she’s still a baby girl to me. I demanded that she make me (my friend’s MySpace account) a friend so that I could view her profile and ever since, I check up on her every single day like the mean auntie she thinks I am. And yes, she is told to remove questionable friends, translate secret abbreviated talks and explain photos of Mona Lisa smoking a joint. (?) So not her favorite auntie anymore, sadly, but these investigations must be done.

Anyway, as always, MySpace just sucks you in and somehow I stumbled onto the pages that belong to people that went to my high school. My best friend from sixth grade through college recently got married and I went to her page to “view more pics” of the wedding day and everything. When friends start to off and get married, you really start to think WOW, I’m getting old!

She’s connected to folks from high school and I just started clicking away.

Because I feel weird about looking at information like this, I had to tell on myself so I IM’d Gene to say, “I’m looking at people from high school on MySpace.”

To which he responded, “Me too.”

I laughed out loud (or as my niece would say LOL) that we were on opposite coasts doing the same exact thing, probably feeling the same way.

I IM’d him, “Everyone is married with kids…”

He, a single, intelligent, successful, artistic professional in LA said, “I know.”

And then the conversation fell silent again and I was comfortable knowing that someone in the world was feeling this same sense of --

How do I explain it?

I don’t know. Am I supposed to be married and having babies? Am I that American, that tied to the dogma of life’s plan for a girl? Go to school, have career, get married, have babies. I did the school part. Career is up for interpretation (by you and even me) and the last two on the list, well, maybe I personally am not ready. If this is the case, why am I always thinking about this shit?

“Dude, we have a cool life,” J said to me this afternoon. We were rolling around that side of town looking for good garage sales, drinking iced green tea with the sunroof open, listening to Say Anything (my latest favorite). I was so happy to have acquired (for free) four Andy Warhol-esque paintings of Coco Chanel No. 5 perfume bottles and a 70s makeup mirror in perfect working condition with lights on the side that change colors according to day, office, night and home. Enough with the vanity, I know, but it does look really cool too. And I plucked like a mother fucker tonight with absolute precision.

I smiled and agreed. Inside though, I had to force myself not to add, “It’d be cooler if...”

And for me, I was really thinking it’d be cooler if I hadn’t received a rejection from a publisher which I know, I know is part of the process but still. Regardless of my constant pessimism when I know full well my life right now is pretty sick (sick meaning awesome, yeah!), I still have to contend with this thing.

Why, when looking at the pages of these high school peers, do I feel all weird inside?

Is this what just happens when you knock on the door of THIRTY? Or am I feeling unfulfilled, temporarily as a one of those struggling “writer” types? Am I fixin' to start drinking boxed wine first thing in the morning? Is this how it’s supposed to feel? Is this a “career” thing? Or god damn it, do I want a fucking baby?

I tried to get an understanding of this feeling so I IM’d Gene who told me this:

gene: i get that feeling too. i mean, i just went to a wedding this weekend. kids everywhere! i have friends about to have their SECOND child.

me: oh my god

gene: at least you have a long term relationship. i got placed at the "singles" table.

me: yeah, and you look around and feel WEIRD about it, like you're left out but at the same time feeling a little evil for feeling like thank god i don’t have to deal with THAT shit*

gene: EXACTLY

gene: all the while getting called out BY NAME for the friggin garter toss...

me: OH HELL NO

gene: "GENE, you need to be down here..."

me: oh my god

gene: yeah man....

me: i'm putting that in the blog

gene: cool

*I felt bad even typing that statement. But I heard the little bloodoop and it was already sent and what a relief I instantly heard another bloodoop. He typed the word EXACTLY in all caps. Instantly, I felt better for being so vocal about my feelings when in my mind, I thought, I should so not say that out loud.

But that’s me, I think. I guess I am one of those people that just says shit out loud. Over the past several years, I have tried to curb, manipulate, stifle this part of my personality but it’s just unmanageable. It’s just me. I mean, don’t think that I don’t have remorse sometimes. That comes into play sometimes, of course. But other times, it’s like, I can’t possibly be alone. Someone feels this way so maybe, just maybe I’m helping someone? Or something? Or I’m just an asshole (which is totally, entirely possible).

Hmph.

This would be a lot easier to express in total anonymity like this amazing marriage-deterrent page that I’ve been reading and LOL’ing at. But them’s the breaks for my choices: finishing school to absolutely no avail, doing a couple TV shows, clicking around in gorgeous heels in LA living what Mercy calls the “high life”, settling down ringless with amazing boyfriend in NY, and blogging/bitching/over-analyzing/loving it.

Posted by melissah at July 3, 2006 04:36 AM