Now I Get It!

So... I always thought that blogging helped me understand myself better. It did and it does, but apparently not completely. I had to read another blog (www.unmana.com) to understand why I as almost 'betrayed' by SO's willingness to have a traditional wedding. To understand why I'm always afraid of his turning out to be somewhat different from what he thinks he is.

It's a rather dramatic statement, I know. But what I mean is, that when we discussed stuff like religion and rituals, we seemed aligned. We both seemed to agree that ritual means nothing to us, and using it to 'get married' didn't make sense. And yet, that's exactly what we did. Which is probably a part of why that day was not 'special' for me. That's another dramatic statement, and not one that I'd acknowledged much before.

Let me see if I want to take this one further.

Marrying the SO has been a challenging affair. I will say this, he was the one to first mention marriage, maybe seeing it as a given if a guy and a girl get 'physical'. I, on the other hand, was quite willing to let the 'physical' happen cause I wanted it to. What happened later, happened later. In my defence, I was 24 and relishing my first job and independence.

We progressed beyond that, to SO being totally resistant to the idea of getting wed before he was 30. So, at 23, he was ok with getting married at 30. Cool huh? I struggled with this, but it was weird to break up because he wasn't willing to get married. It hurt then, and to some extent it still does, but we went with it. We enjoyed each other's company, he didn't seem to want anybody else and was willing to put enough effort into it to ensure I didn't want anybody else either.

Then the actual discussions began. The discussion of when, where, how etc. When (as I'm sure I've blogged on here) shifted by a few months. Now when I look at it, it was just 2 months, but after 4 odd years of waiting, movement for reasons that I wasn't very convinced with was a let down.

Where, was relatively easily resolved. The 'how' caused me a lot of pain. SO, who refuses to visit temples, who doesn't do any pujas for festivals, agreed to have a traditional wedding. Without consulting me. Just agreed. Would consultation have helped? Probably not, I'd have been just as shrill and hurt, without understanding why. My parents also failed me sort of - they agreed to a traditional wedding without consulting me, but my father has always been strongly on the side of tradition, so I was not surprised there.

I guess it's all weird right? You test all relationships - knowingly or unknowingly. You put pressure on them from time to time and see if they'll hold up, of where the points of failure are. Then you address those one way or the other. With friends, you fix that by altering the rules of friendship, or by discussing what went wrong and vowing to be more supportive in future.

With a spouse - what do you do? I'll tell you what I did. I decided that we were too far along the road to call it all off due to my 'discomfort' with my spouse to be. I was a mess, I did nearly call it off (depressing my parents in the process). I did also speak to SO, to the extent possible. I was saying at that point, that he was not communicating enough.

For various reasons, we got past that. I'm ok with the wedding and the marriage. I will always have some scars from the process, but most of the wounds have healed.

Here's hoping that new ones aren't created.

Just what the truth is...

I'm 'disturbed' today. Maybe I was disturbed yesterday as well, but I definately am today. Some part of this may be PMS. I get more frustrated than usual as a part of my PMS. And maybe the bio clock isn't helping.

I'm going to take great comfort in the fact that nobody reads this blog to vent somewhat. I've never been 'thin'. Even when I was quite ok, my body image was of being 'fat'. As a result, I almost never felt attractive. There were moments, but nothing with regularity. I was never one of the girls who boys were 'interested' in. I was one of the 'safe' ones. I still am. In some ways, I enjoy this - I'll never need to be worried about being hit-on at work. But I'm still a girl, I would like to be hit on!

I met SO and he wasn't drawn moth-like by my amazing beauty. He does love me, very much. Sometimes I feel relieved that my looks are not as important to him as looks sometimes are to men.

I'm learning though, in a few years, I'll be polished and elegant. Well turned out for all occasions (except for my hair) and probably be admired for my 'togetherness' but still not hittalbe on. Some part of this may be my resistance to exercise.

And there you have it. The mood has turned. I'm not too upset, I still (at 32) have good skin, and decent bones. I would change my nose if I could, but as long as I groom decently and moisturize well, That stuff won't change too much. Which leaves exercise... but that's another blog ;)

Now I know why I'm a fatty... I'm too comfortable being fat.

The Fine Balance

There's a book, isn't there? Rohinton Mistry I think - called A Fine Balance. I've no idea what it's about.

Just that I'm in office today and have no inclination to work, but have a bunch of stuff. Some of it is not hard work, just high visibility. So, though I don't really care, and can't get it really wrong... I also cannot put it off.

My heart is paining and my mind wants to sleep.

In the middle of this (need for a vacation basically)is my personal desire to have a child. A desire that I believe my husband subscribes to. One that requires participation from both of us. The challenge of course is, the lives we lead and the way the system of conception works. A window of two days, alignment of items inside the body and alignment of stars and galaxies.

Given the challenges in my personal life, I'm not hoping for much. What challenges you ask? If I think over it, nothing in my personal life has come easily. I've had difficult relationships with myself, with my family, with SO... I've had a challenging time getting married... Why should having a child be any different?

The only area where I've had it relatively easy is in making friends. I have a truckload of em and I'm very glad. Not that it's simple to make and keep friends, just that it's not tied to my daily existence. It's not tied to my innermost feelings of worth and stuff. This is odd, I'll admit. The only places where it becomes tied to my idea of self-worth, is where I feel unattractive since I have several good male friends, who are purely platonic friends.

So... I'm worried about not having children, because I do want to get pregnant. I'm open to adoption, but I'm very worried about how the relationship with the husband will survive this. Survive my wanting to get pregnant and no efforts being made in that regard. Maybe it's true, we're degenerating into platonic friends as well...

Ranty?

There are some things I want to say. Some part of it relates to a cousin of mine, who wrote a note on Facebook about her maid.

See, now we all have maids. Ladies who clean our houses, cook our food, take care of our children - whatever it is that they do. And we always have complaints about them. Why? Because we 'expect' them to be different. Why would we expect them to do what we do? If they could do what we do, why would they be our maids? And in a world where everybody is equally skilled, we could well be their maids.

I guess this is where the 'feudal' mindset still prevails in this country (India). We still think there are people to 'serve' us. Why on earth? We employ them to do a job, and they do that job with as much sincerety as one who's paid a pittance to do it will. I work long hours, I work hard - I work smart... Whatever I do, it's my job. I enjoy it, but there are times when I hate it. If I apply the same logic to them, they probably hate their jobs a lot more. And worse than me, they're compelled to do precisely that job. There's no scope for change, no 'different role', no 'more money'... nothing. A sustenance job that they can't do anything about because they have homes to run.

And this is probably what depresses me about Slumdog Millionaire and White Tiger. The lives of the families described, will never end the way they've been fictionalized. If that chance existed, this country would be very different.

It's a disgusting kind of cynicism. I hate the self-perpetuating nature of society, and yet there's absolutely nothing I can do. I try to let the lady that cleans my house know that money for studies will always be avaialable, but is that enough? The way I see it, the only way up is to ensure that every child has a shot at a future - through education and nutrition. And what kind of country cannot assure that?

Follow Up

So, it's a new month, and I'd like to get pregnant :) Will I? I don't know. What I do know is that I'm going to stress about it. Not about how often SO and I 'baby-dance' but about whether I'm physically ok or not. About whether my body is able to get pregnant, about whether I did something horribly wrong in my past life or in this one, which will mean that I can never have children.

And through all this, I've not ruled out adoption. I do know that I want to have children in my life, but I also want to be pregnant. And it would be nice to have a little 'us'.