Posted by whiterabbit on June 2, 2003, at 10:05:06
In reply to Re: Don't be me » kara lynne, posted by kalyb on June 1, 2003, at 17:41:40
I never pictured myself as a 43-year-old "divorcee", but here I am. The old man is kicking me to the curb after 20 years. But I tell you what, the LAST thing I want right now is a "new love". What the hell for? I spent all those years trying to make somebody else happy and I never got it right. So now it's time for ME.
No rebound relationships, no blind dates, no prowling bars looking for some loser to mistreat me. I don't need no man to make me "complete".You guys don't either, take my word. Living single is better than selling your soul to be part of a couple. The "lonely divorcee", the "spinster" - those are stupid outdated terms.
My therapist was telling me about some of the women she sees, they come in to talk to her and they're all beat up - black eyes, broken teeth, bald spots where their hair was yanked out. She tries to help them get away but 9 times out of 10 they go back to the slimeball because they think they can't make it on their own. They allow some
worthless piece of trash to kick them around just so they can say they have a man, any man. How pathetic is that.Usually I'm not quite so militant, I've had a trying week. A friend called me and asked if I would help her paint a mural in a "nursery" - one of her co-workers is going to have a baby. (I paint murals.) She said the girl didn't have a lot of money and couldn't afford to pay me but I don't mind, as long as someone supplies paint. So then on the way out there - way WAY out there in the sticks ("Turn left at the unpaved road...") my friend gives me the whole story. This girl, who is a clerk or something in her office, has been coming in to work all red-eyed and depressed ever since she got pregnant. Seems like the baby wasn't planned and it wasn't something that the couple could really afford. To try and cheer her up, everybody in the office had pitched in for a baby-shower and got her a lot of nice stuff, and my friend had offered to paint the baby's room.
We get to this beat-up old trailer out in the middle of nowhere where a young woman, hugely pregnant, held open the screen door. The husband wasn't home, apparently he was out doing his favorite thing - fishing and drinking. I tried my best not to look horrified, but it wasn't easy.
There was one large room - livingroom/diningroom/kitchen covered with scrubby brown carpet and peeling linoleum. The small amount of furniture was all Salvation-Army rejects - a sad little sway-backed sofa, an old beat-up cabinet with a little TV, some plastic TV-trays and a tiny kitchenette set from the 60s. The "nursery" was a
small space with three walls, not even a whole room. The ceiling was sagging and a good wind would have knocked the whole place over. Around lunch-time, our hostess offered to make us some macaroni and cheese. "I'm sorry," she said, "It's all I have..."We did what we could with the baby's bedroom and left around sunset. I barely got the car door shut before I yelled at my friend, "What the f@#$!
does her husband do for a living!"
"I think he's supposed to be a cabinet-maker or something. When he's working."
"A CABINET-maker? With all that rickety beat-up crap they're using for furniture!"
"Well, that's what she says..."
"WHEN he's working, you say."
"Well, apparently he can't keep a job. I knew it was pretty bad, sometimes she calls in sick when she doesn't have enough gas to get to work."
"But he can afford to go drinking and fishing, what did she say? Three times a week?"
"Which probably means five times a week."I was pretty angry, although I didn't know who to be angry at. Not that I had been a whole lot better off myself when I was a young and pregnant single mother...I still remember one week when I didn't have a lot more to eat than a box of Bisquik, so it was pancakes for breakfast and biscuits for dinner. I hate Bisquik to this day.
BUT I had gotten myself into that situation, I was working and I wasn't supporting no man, especially one who drank up all the money. No way.By now you're saying alright Gracie, what's the point? I don't know, I have ADD. (That's my new excuse for everything.) But if I had a point, it would be - there are worse things than being
man-less and child-less, a LOT worse things. That poor little pregnant girl in the trailer, she needs to learn that. Her future looks pretty bleak from where I stand, and her baby's life isn't going to be much better.Let's hear it for being single! Wooo-hoooo!
-Gracie
poster:whiterabbit
thread:230242
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030517/msgs/230763.html