You'll notice that I wrote 'ladies'. Not women, not bitches, not gals, chicks or babes. We may be babes, but we're ladies and we happen to be single. A few people have been asking me lately why I'm single. What type of man I like. How many men are waiting in line for a chance to date me. But you know what. I'm one of the thousands of amazing ladies (yes, I'm amazing and so are you) on the island who are single because we do not settle for what's being offered. So no, there's no line. A few weeks ago, my neighbor got angry at me for not wanting to get to know someone she sent me a photo of. 'Yolanda, you really disappoint me' she yelled through the fence 'I would never have expected that you, an intelligent woman, would look at a photo, A PHOOTOOOO, and claim to already know that you two won't be a match!!' I almost agreed with her wondering what was wrong with me. How can I not even give someone a chance? But you know what, I've passed the 40 threshold and have come to a place where I'm fine by myself. I always was, but now I'm finer than the fine I used to be. If you're not adding good stuff to my life I'm not interested. And with "good stuff" I mean high quality ish! Quality you cannot find on the island but have to research for weeks and order online. Not literally, but you know what I mean. Because We The Single Ladies, have got our shit together. Yes, we may drop a few balls here and there. Those balls are the small turds that sometimes come out after you've already dropped the main shit load. (Can you tell I love poop jokes?) But we handle that turd. Alone. So you, Mr. Man on the island we call home, need to come correct. You need to connect with us on our level and you need to come with feeling. Come with emotion. You, need to feeeeeeeel it. We can feel it when you feel it. We can feel it when you don't. When you want just the benefits but not the rest. When you want just the sexting in the middle of the night. When you want the drama so you can feel wanted. When you want someone to have endless discussions with, because you're so intellectual. When you want someone to make you feel good when you didn't connect with your real woman. When you need to boost your imaginary manhood by juggling multiple women. We can feel all of this and more. We may not be able to verbally explain what we're feeling, and sometimes we'll need to check your eyes to confirm, but we always catch your vibe. Now Mr. Man, we know you think you impress us by calling us dushi and babe in the first conversation we have. Honestly, we ask you to not ever do that, with anyone ever again. Don't try to manipulate women by faking feelings you don't feel. And don't underestimate our ability to discern the vibes we're getting from you. Coming correct means being real. Be ok with where you are. If it's nervous, be nervous. If it's intimidated, be intimidated. If it's insecure, be insecure. Be. ok. with. where. you. are. We have been ok with where we are for ages and we SO admire a man who can be vulnerable enough to be ok too. If you can't be ok with you... as you, you're wasting our time. It's not our intention to be rude, but it's just how we live. We have worked hard to get to where we are. And it's an ongoing process to stay where we are. There's no freewheeling here. You'll need to understand that we are hyper vigilant of any disruption of the stability we have achieved. This may mean that many single ladies on the island will become old spinster ladies in the future, but most will probably choose that over the disruption a man may bring by not being true. By not truly connecting with us. Our complete us, not just some aspects of us. Just our bodies or our minds. Our image. Our persona. To truly connect. That's what anyone craves really, deep down in the darkest, furthest, tiniest crevice of our purest hearts...... true connection. So why waste time with anything less. As for what my type is. I'll explain it once. My type is the man I look at with my heart and what I see is his heart looking back at mine, every time. He may stumble with his words but that doesn't matter. If his heart keeps looking at mine through the stumbling, that's the heart I want.
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I don't know what I came here to write about, but it's been a while since the last time and I feel like expressing myself in writing. Not privately, but publicly. Which, every time I feel this urge, is a very strange sensation for me, because I have an innate need to be invisible. To be as anonymous as possible. And at the same time I feel the need to influence the world and leave it a little better than when I came into it. As you can imagine, this is a strange limbo to live in. So I wonder. How did I end up in this limbo in the first place? Is it because we women have been conditioned into being pretty but invisible? Into not rocking the boat? Shying away from the spotlight? I think for a big part we have. We have allowed ourselves to be put in glass boxes where we can be looked at, but not heard. Where we can be pretty without being a personality. All of this is nothing new. We have heard this same song for the last 7 decades, at least. But we're almost in 2018 and the song hasn't changed. The way women react to it hasn't changed much either. We still bitch and moan about not being equal. We still shout from the top of our lungs that we women should unite. And at the same time we keep raising our sons differently than our daughters. At the same time we keep accepting less pay. At the same time we keep gossiping about other women every chance we get. We keep overreacting about awful things women do and underreacting about the same awful things men do. We keep assuming that a surgeon is a man. We keep underestimating a female CEO. We keep calling our female friends 'my bitches'. We keep letting ourselves be interrupted by someone else, but expect a man to keep talking. We keep associating weakness with feminine traits. How are we owning up to the fact that we are to blame for the biggest part of this inequality? Are we even aware of being the biggest party to cultivate this unbalance? No. We are unaware because we are too occupied living out our drama. Singing our song. Which means we must be getting something out of it. There must be a benefit for us hidden in the drama of yelling 'we should be equal to men!'. On some level, we are choosing the false benefits of our drama over authentic equality. It is not easy to admit this about ourselves. We would rather blame someone else for our misery. But if we're truly honest, we know. We KNOW that we are the ones who have been maintaining this misery. I think this is good. This is a first step. A first step to come out of any misery, really. Acknowledge your own contribution to it. And then?
And then we let this awareness sink in and take some time recover from this blow to our persona. And then we go out in the world again. With this huge essential shadow part of ourselves, integrated into our collective psyche. And now we live our daily lives, aware of our shadow. Aware of our actions that foster inequality, helplessness and dependency. And we learn to live unapologetically authentic lives. Grounded in the awareness of our actions. Aware of how we speak, how we dress, how we listen, how we treat others, how we own our weaknesses, how we love, how we respect, how we live. This awareness will make us whole. This awareness will replace the false benefits we have been getting from the drama. Because being whole is being enough. Women do not notice all the ways men love them. A lot of women complain to their friends. Their man doesn't listen. He doesn't help out around the house or with the kids. He never says 'I love you'. But he says it in SO many ways. As an outsider looking in, I assure you it is heartbreaking to see men profess their love for their women and then in turn see these women ignore or even attack them for it. It's important to understand that most men come from a world where emotions are not shown openly. At least, not the warm, fuzzy and soft emotions. But, smart as they are, men have found a way around that. Instead, they show these horribly beautiful emotions in small gestures. Tiny gestures. And it is time that we, the women who have been brainwashed by Hollywood movies, start appreciating that. Start noticing the tiny gestures. Because if you knew how you keep breaking the heart of the man of your dreams, your life partner, the love of your life, you would die a little inside. When a man comes to pick you up for a date and he has showered, his clothes are clean and, very important ladies, his car is washed, he cares! For you! It doesn't matter what kind of clothes he's wearing. If they're clean and ironed and his car is washed, it means he has spent a good portion of the day preparing to go pick you up. Most men will never tell you that they cancelled plans to hang with friends that day, so they would have time to wash the car. So notice that! When your man says that your sister could help out more with taking care of your elderly mother, he is telling you, albeit in a very caveman way, that he sees you juggling your job, the kids, the household and the pets on top of taking care of your mother. But instead of thanking him for showing his concern, you attack him for not understanding and talking crap about your sister. Now he feels rejected and misunderstood. He is probably wondering how his attempt to show love and appreciation turned into this major discussion he now finds himself in. When your man comes home from work. He cares! If a man is tired or grumpy or stressed out, he will go to the place he feels most comfortable being all horrible. If that is with you, you're a lucky woman! And this is not a joke. It's much easier for men to call up a friend and go grab a beer or go to the gym and sweat it all out. So if you have a man who chooses to be close to you in the yucky moments, appreciate that. And let him show you how he wants to be near you. Don't push, don't pull. Just let it unfold. There is immense beauty in watching a man unfold. When a man wipes his feet before coming into the house. When he says that the food was delicious. When he puts his phone on silent when he is talking with you. When he is nice to your dog and he doesn't even like dogs. When he calls just to check if the day is still going according to plan, to confirm when and how you'll meet later. When he puts down the toilet lid. When he doesn't put his feet up on the dinner table. These are all ways in which a man shows his love. How is that? Because men don't do these things naturally. They operate from a functional mindset. Mind you, functional does not mean simplistic. It means: I'm hungry, I eat. I'm tired, I sleep. My legs are heavy, I put them up on the table. Men are not used to taking into consideration how they might make others feel. And they surely never want others to know how they are feeling! Being functional is safe. And men are experts at it. So if a man takes time to not be functional with you it is a big deal. It's outside his comfort zone. Most men don't want to be seen as soft. Soft is weak. Weak is death. It's a caveman thing. A survival thing. You will certainly see immediate improvement in the dynamic between you and your man when you start noticing his tiny gestures. And now comes the easy part: your appreciation can be tiny too. No need to make a big deal of it. Finding a way to acknowledge that his gesture didn't go unnoticed is really all it takes. 'Thank you for putting the lid down.' 'I love how you always come get me at the door.' 'Had a rough day? Just sit here and breathe. I'll take care of dinner.' |
Photos used under Creative Commons from julian_fern, Humphrey King