Yet Another Single Gal

Recently, a student came to me in tears. Two years prior to Bev’s teary conversation with me, she had engaged in a teary conversation with her mother. An honorable 13 year old, Bev sought to be open and honest with her mother. “I like girls,” she’d admitted timidly. Her mother dismissed her feelings, repeatedly reminding Bev that she was not raised to like girls. Naturally, Bev had little incentive to talk to her mother again about these incorrect feelings she was not raised to feel. As a matter of fact, the conversation would not have come up again if a now 15 year old Bev had not been caught in what her mother called “a lie.” The girl that her mother preferred to believe was not Bev’s first love, but just her really good friend came out to her mother, revealing that she was dating Bev.

Both mothers have spent months trying to “punish” these feelings out of their daughters. When her mother has discovered that Bev has still found ways to communicate with her girlfriend, Bev has had video games and computer privileges taken away from her. She has been forbidden to go anywhere but straight home after school so as to minimize the chances of her spending time with her girlfriend. Bev was crying in my classroom because she did not think it was fair (or even logical) that her mother could punish her for something over which she had no control in the same manner she had once punished her older sister when she cut class in high school or was caught smoking weed with the neighborhood losers.

“I know my mom loves me,” Bev agreed after I reminded her that her mother wouldn’t be taking such extreme measures if she didn’t fiercely care about her daughter. “But, what does she expect me to do? When she tells me to stop seeing my girlfriend, I never say I will because I know I’m going to keep seeing her. And liking girls. What she wants from me…well, I just can’t give it to her.” As teachers often do, I bit down on my tongue and compassionately listened to Bev, telling her that I was sorry she was in such pain. I valiantly fought not to voice my own disbelief and sadness that her mother unjustly placed this bizarrely level-headed, thoughtful and well behaved teenager on the frontlines of a battle she was destined to lose. “Do not lie to me,” her mother repeatedly demands. But, to tell her mother “the truth” she wants to hear, Bev would have to tell her mother and her herself one gigantic, soul-stealing lie. And then, until she is old enough to move out of her mother’s house, Bev would have to act out the lie that her mother has pretty much required her to live.

And all because Bev has decided to love. Openly.

There are many things that baffle me, but none have floored me as much as my conversation with Bev. I am amazed that Bev’s mother has decided that either her daughter is able to simply shut off the feelings she has felt since she was in middle school like a bedside lamp or if she can’t, that she should properly respect her mother’s house by not acting on those feelings or acknowledging them openly enough to remind her mother that they are still there. “I know it’s hard for you to be you, but it’s harder for me to ACCEPT you so could you work harder at not being you, please?” How can someone who loves you so casually and cruelly take away your dignity like that?

Apparently, to be repeatedly robbed of your dignity is common place for people like Bev who have the audacity to be who they are and love who they love with no apologies.
According to my friend, Janine, she obeyed her parents’ silent orders to not be who she was well into her 20s. She brought her girlfriend home many times, careful not to touch her arm too tenderly or brush away a lose strand of hair from her face and then smile sweetly at her. “They thought we were just friends for years,” she told me. Janine, who was a 25 year old college-educated, productive member of society, thought it easier to save these tender displays of affection common among lovers for moments when no one was looking. Basically, Janine regressed back to being a teenager whenever she went home. She “snuck off” to kiss her girlfriend or hug her in a manner not congruent with platonic friendship.

Now that she is 30 and her parents are well aware that the friend who visited with their daughter all those years ago was her live in lover, they still require her to lie to them. Janine and her ex-girlfriend were together for almost a decade, but never spent a holiday together in either of their parents’ homes. Janine went to her family for a few days and her girlfriend to her family. Both families avoided talking about the mate with whom their daughter/sister/niece/cousin had created an honest, productive, mutually loving life. While sisters showed off engagement rings and younger cousins awkwardly tried to incorporate first boyfriends into the family routines, Janine ate potato salad. Across the country, her girlfriend did the same thing.

Oddly enough, no one in Janine’s family showed any hint of discomfort about their family member quietly cutting off a part of her life just to be a part of their’s.

Recently, Janine has made it clear to her parents that there will come a point when this lying will have to cease. Not solely because getting jacked for your dignity gets exhausting after a while, but it simply is impractical.

“I plan on getting married one day,” she told her father. “I plan on having children. When that happens, it would be crazy to expect me to leave my wife in New York City while I take my kid to you and Mama’s house to spend Christmas with my family. So, eventually, I won’t be coming home.”

Her father asked if she were threatening him. He implied that she was black mailing him, trying to force him to accept a life style he believed to be wrong by refusing to come home.

When Janine shared this disturbing exchange with me, she also mentioned how her parents routinely dismissed she and her ex’s relationship. From never asking how her girlfriend was doing to not taking Janine’s plans to travel with her partner as a “good enough” reason to miss a family function, her parents made it clear that they questioned the validity of her love. As I listened to Janine relay how her father felt so comfortable adding guilt to the shame and dismissiveness her parents had placed on her over the years, I actually questioned the validity of her parents’ love for her. I was not questioning whether or not they loved her, however. What I questioned was the purity of that love. The depth of it.

How does Love look you square in the face and repeatedly demand that you sacrifice who you are because it believes who you are is not acceptable? Who you are makes it uncomfortable so it then further asks you to bend the truth a little when you are in its presence? Live a benign version of a “double life.” How can love make these types of requests of you when “who you are” is simply a person who chooses to love? Isn’t that all Janine and Bev are doing?

As I listened to Janine share her story, I found myself having the same internal conflict as I had while listening to Bev tearfully share her own turmoil about trying to be a good daughter while staying true to who she was. I did not want to demonize Janine’s parents, either, and judge them because their belief system differed from mine. But, I really could not wrap my brain around both sets of parents’ preference to have their daughters lie to them and pretend they were something they were not.

When you punish your teenaged daughter for refusing to stop loving another girl, no matter how you justify it, you are asking her to be silent and allow you to believe that she has managed to heterosexualize herself. This is a lie. When you repeatedly sit across from your adult daughter at Christmas dinner and talk about her job, her latest travels, her new apartment, never mentioning the woman to whom she vents about her job, with whom she shares those trips to Europe and the home they both come back to…well, you are instructing your daughter to play act when she is in your presence. To pretend she is a single gal in the city when she obviously is not. This is a lie.
While I am by no means an expert on love, I do know one thing with absolute certainty. LOVE DOES NOT LIE. It doesn’t ask you to do so, either.

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Several years ago, Oprah gave me some sound advice. Her show on that day was built loosely around the much-loved topic: How Single Women Can Get the Man They Really Want. There was the requisite audience of fabulous women in their 30s and 40s lamenting on how they had EVERYTHING – jobs that brought them financial stability AND personal fulfillment, fun and exciting extracurricular activities, supportive families who were happiest when they were happy and even semi-regular romantic lives. There was, also, the requisite “expert,” who, to her credit, spoke firmly about women shifting their man-hunting focus to what really matters in a mate as opposed to the endless checklist of “resume-appropriate” attributes that we often run down when we are evaluating whether a handsome date will graduate to a fulltime mate.

Oprah encouraged her audience to create a detailed list of every quality they wanted in a man. The sensible expert gave very specific instructions for this list. “You are not wasting ink on his income, hobbies and whether or not he likes poetry,” she chided. She urged the attentive single gals to dig deeper. To think hard about what characteristics were encoded into the very core of their ideal man. Qualities that were so central to a person’s way of “being” that a woman would not even really see these qualities until she was well into the relationship. Both Oprah and her expert then instructed the audience to put the list away and not to worry about it again. They warned against pulling it out every time you were excited about a new gentleman caller and comparing the few shallow details of his life you were able to figure out after two dates with the list of your mate’s core characteristics.

Like any good American, I did as President O instructed; I made my list.
In the years since that show aired, I don’t remember what became of my list. I do remember what a great time I had compiling it, proud of myself for finding it ridiculously easy to dig beneath the surface and get to the core of what I sought in my Mr. Right. High on my list were honesty and openness. A series of unfortunate events over the years has now caused me to question these two attributes that every woman on the planet claims to seek in a man. Oddly enough, my questions have nothing to do with this ideal man (who I have yet to meet, by the way). My questions are directed at me. I am wondering if I can honestly claim that I am…well, honest. And open.

One painful, complicated relationship and one dead-upon-arrival courtship later, I have come to realize: I lie. A lot. It is difficult for me to identify just how often I lie because I lie in the sneaky, sophisticated way in which many women excel. I do not speak untruths to gentlemen callers. I just don’t speak at all.

During the dead-upon-arrival courtship, there were several times when I felt uncertain of his interest level in our budding relationship. Instead of voicing this discomfort when I felt it, I simply said nothing. By the time I got around to saying something, I admitted to the easiest emotion: severe annoyance. My voice registered a tone with which it has the most experience: blunt pseudo-honesty. I asked the gentleman caller: “Is it your intent to send the message that you are no longer interested and I should back off?” I allowed myself credit for not beating around the bush when I asked him this question, conveniently overlooking how this version of honesty was tainted with deceit’s classier cousin: silence. I said I was irritated. I didn’t say I was frightened. I pointed to the week that had passed since we had seen each other or had a conversation that lasted more than five minutes. I did not admit I noticed the exact number of days since he had disappeared because I missed him, which meant I liked him. I left all of this out because the rule of casual dishonesty dictates: Stick to the surface. Stay there.

Shockingly, when you are not honest with a gentleman caller, it makes it that more difficult to be open with him. Weeks before I shared only about 45.5% of my truth with him, the gentleman caller had made a telling observation about me. “I tell a story about some part of my life and I wait for you to share something about you,” he explained. “Either you offer nothing or when you start talking, it’s like you are being very careful in what you share. You shut down. Edit yourself all the time.”

Really?

Perhaps that could have been what the gentleman caller who had starred in the painful, complicated relationship was eluding to when he challenged: “Remember that time when you broke up with me? When you abruptly kicked me out of your apartment…well, I really had no idea where that was coming from.” When this particular gentleman caller mentioned this incident (months after he was asked politely to leave my abode), I was reticent to accept that I had not been completely honest with him about my dissatisfaction with our relationship. Hadn’t I actually said: “I do not like where this relationship is going.”

Cue the sound of crickets as I thought long and hard to remember when I had actually said those exact words to him. Does pouting vigorously when I didn’t get what I wanted count as being honest?

Hadn’t I stuck to my guns about not allowing him access to my time and the pleasure of my company until he gave in to my vague, hinted at demands for intimacy?

Well, right before I politely asked him to leave my abode, we were naked on my living room floor. So, yeah…

Apparently, this decision on my part to forego the arduous task of giving full voice to my wants and needs leaves me wide open to not having those wants and needs meant. Yes, I could claim that these gentlemen callers took advantage of the loophole my silence created. “What grown man DOESN’T know that any woman in her 30s wants closeness, attention, depth,” I could argue. Unfortunately, such an argument is woefully flawed. The gentleman caller’s choice to take advantage of the loophole does not exonerate me from my repeated choice to create the loophole in the first place.

The dead-upon-arrival courtship officially flat-lined almost two weeks ago. It has been embalmed, eulogized and tucked away into the earth. The painful, complicated relationship has already decomposed to dust. The ghost of the gentleman caller no longer powerful enough to warrant more than a passing shrug of the shoulder. However, my list still lives on. If I could locate it, I would smile proudly at this wonderful human being who I will someday meet. Although I am looking forward to meeting the human being who posesses these wonderful qualities, I am even more excited as I struggle each day to BE this amazing human being who posesses such wonderful qualities. Isn’t working to become more honest and more open simply much more practical than exerting limited energy on hunting down a mate who is honest and open?

Is it even possible to have something/one you are unwilling to be?

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In his memoir, The Discomfort Zone, Jonathan Franzen chronicles the woes and follies of growing up comfortably middle class in 1960’s America.  The impressively written collection of essays covers a lot of big ideas about traditional family structures, the reassuring boredom  of suburban life and oddly enough…the downward spiral in which our country seems to be spinning – a spin that J. Franz vaguely hints at even when he was coming of age in St. Louis.  Far more interesting to read, however, is a particular essay in which J. Franz spends his first year of college trying to lose his virginity.

I use that word “trying” loosely.  J. Franz doesn’t really try to lose his virginity.  He thinks about how much he is trying to lose his virginity.  He thinks about this a lot.  As a grown woman reading his accounts of “trying” to get the attention of any kind co-ed who will take away his virginity, I want to tap little 18 year old J. Franz on the shoulder and give him this advice: “Bruh…you aren’t really trying.  You keep thinking about the girl.  Maybe you should actually DO something?”

I suspect if I dropped these words of wisdom on the 50 year old J. Franz, he would be just as baffled as his 18 year old self.  J. Franz would really believe that his thinking about that cute girl in his Russian Literature class could have somehow (perhaps through magic or the miracle of fate) morphed into he and the cute girl somehow being in a situation where they would have possibly kissed and then caressed and then…WHAM…SEX! Even in his humorous depictions of standing in the corner at parties, looking at all the girls dancing and wondering if one of them would be in his bed that night, there is an air of “Why didn’t I ever end up with one of them?” As J. Franz recounts these experiences decades later, he still seems to underestimate how much his lack of action played a  key role in his inability to shed his virginal self and the subsequent loneliness that ensues when you are the sole person on your college campus who is not having at least semi-regular sex.

Over the years, I have come across more than a few men who believe as 18 year old J. Franz did.  If I do absolutely nothing in the arena of love, the fact that I wanted to/thought about/tried to do something will buy me at least a little bit of attention from the object of my affection.  It is a sad delusion that often results in perfectly nice, perfectly sweet men spending year after year wondering why women don’t like them. Why men who are less nice, less sweet still end up with pretty women on their arms.

Right now, there is a 40 year old J. Franz who calls me periodically.  Every few weeks, I get a series of enthusiastic calls from Peter in which he leaves me voice mail messages that sound a little bit like this: “I have been thinking about you so much.  Call me.  I really miss you.”  When I do get around to returning Peter’s calls, he proceeds to share all the things he thought about doing with or for me.  “I wanted to take you out to brunch since I had to work the night of your birthday party,” Peter sorrowfully informs me.  “I wanted to call you last week to see how you were doing,”  he will share just as sorrowfully.  I am always tickled when Peter seems surprised when I do not react positively to all the things he has thought about over the weeks.  He seems even more confused when I do not react negatively to his thoughts either.  More often than not, I simply respond to these sharings with, “Oh, okay.”

Since Peter and I run in the same circle of friends, I have come across him randomly at social events or just on the street.  When these moments occur, I am reminded again of how much he discounts his inability to act on his attraction to me as a key factor in my indifference to him.  Recently, I ran into him at Union Square Park.  We hugged, chatted, gossiped a little about mutual acquaintances and then I politely bid him farewell.  “It was good seeing you,” I kissed his cheek.  “Be well.”  Peter stood there and stared.  He suggested we head to one of the million Starbucks in the area and have a quick coffee so we could continue our talk.  “I’m actually on my way to meet friends,” I explained as I made my way to the subway station.  Peter jokingly pleaded: “Just one quick latte. We don’t even have to sit at a table.  Just get the coffee and go.”  I laughed and kept walking to the train.

Peter actually looked disappointed.  While I can understand why he would be, I am flummoxed as to why he would be surprised I didn’t trot to Starbucks with him.  A woman chooses to spend her day with friends instead of a few more moments with a man who consistently chooses to remain on the periphery of her life? Makes sense to me. Getting on the train and meeting up with real friends is the logical route any person would take when the alternative is more time with a psuedo-friend whose presence in your life only occurs because of a chance happening on a busy city street.

It is easy to simply write off Peter’s inept attempts at courtship as yet another lazy New York man who is running a bunch of women and therefore, doesn’t feel inclined to make effort with any of them.  I don’t believe, however, that Peter is a playboy who has placed me at the bottom of his priority list of beauties.  If he were, I wouldn’t be wasting words writing about him.  I believe that Peter is J. Franz trying to lose his virginity.  He is not a stupid man or a lazy one.  When it comes to other aspects of his life, he seems to understand the concept of graduating thoughts into action in order for life to reward you with a tangible thing.  Somehow, there is a disconnect in the part of his brain that deals with women and love.  As J. Franz’s memoir reveals, Peter is not the first man to suffer from such a disconnect.

And this is what I know with absolute certainity: Both Peter and J.  Franz know how to take action in other aspects of their lives.  I think of Peter going to his boss to negotiate a pay increase.  When his boss asks Peter to explain why he is entitled to a raise, I can not fathom Peter (even on his worst day) rattling off all of the things he THOUGHT about doing for the company. “I thought about staying late to finish those reports.”  “Sir, I really, really, really wanted to go to that conference and I would have gone, if…” “Remember when I almost  brought in those new clients?”  The mere thought of his approaching his professional life that way is completely ridiculous to me.  And it would be ridiculous to Peter as well.  So, why would he believe that it were less ridiculous to win a woman by doing nothing more than thinking about all the things he should be doing to win her?

The only conclusion I have drawn is that Peter believes “taking action” means something bigger than it really does.  After closely listening to men do their own ranting about relationships, I am keenly aware that many falsely believe most women expect to be bowled over with unrealistic amounts of attention, gifts, high pressure dates and endless adoring flirtations.  For men like Peter, who are of average charm and humble means, doing nothing might prove to be of less risk than doing a little bit of something and being made to feel that that something wasn’t enough.

I am hopeful that Peter will come across The Discomfort Zone and learn from J. Franz’s story.  When J. Franz was finally successful in losing his virginity, he didn’t do much.  But he did do something.  Here is what happened: A cute girl (not the one from Russian Literature class) invited J. Franz to a party.  J. Franz thought about going.  Then, J. Franz actually went to the party.  At the party, J. Franz. thought about dancing with the cute girl.  Shockingly, he then proceeded to actually dance with her.  As it got late and the guests dispersed, J. Franz. thought about staying behind and watching a movie with the cute girl whom he had come to learn had similiar tastes in film and music as he.  J. Franz actually stayed and watched the movie.

While watching the movie, J. Franz had two more thoughts.  He thought it would be nice to put his arm around the cute girl.  He thought it would be even nicer to kiss the cute girl.  Now, J. Franz actually harbored these thoughts for quite some time.  BUT…when he finally promoted those two thoughts to two actions…WHAM…SEX!

While Peter will have to do much more than show up at a party to eventually win over an adult woman, the implication of the scenario is not so far fetching.  I think it’s pretty clear what he can learn from this 18 year old mating story.  The Spark Notes version: When J. Franz thought, he slept alone.  When J. Franz did, a woman magically appeared in his bed.  He seemed happier once he started to do.

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Once the holidays were over, but before the beautiful boredom of the normal routine of life continued, I began most conversations with the standard post-Christmas greeting: “So, how was your holiday?”  The responses were the typical: “Stressful.” “Glad I didn’t have to work, but…God, my family gets crazier and crazier every year.”  One friend actually surprised me by smiling and saying: “It was GREAT!”  When I jokingly replied: “Wow, you’re the first one to answer so enthustiacally,” she quickly set me straight.  “Well, I decided not to spend the ENTIRE time with my family.  I flew out the day after Christmas.”

I am all too familiar with the mixture of aggravation, exasparation and weariness one feels when forced to spend several  days with people who share your last name.  While I am not such a cynic that I find the expectation of family togetherness during Christmas to be a futile farce, I am a realist.  An honest one.  There is no combination of people who can spark equal amounts of rage and fatigue more than the dozen or so wackos who break bread with you on Christmas Day.

In years past, I have felt like many of the friends who spent this past holiday season biting their tongues and grinding their teeth.  I rolled my eyes at sisters in law as they offered me thinly veiled judgments dressed up conspicously as “helpful advice.” I have bit my tongue as cousins shared asinine get-rich-quick schemes with me, asking me to go on wild goose chases around Chinatown when I got back to New York in order to aid in their schemes that were doomed to fail. I have diplomatically “agreed to disagree” with the uninformed, idiotic political and religious views of in laws and other peripheral family members.  In years past, I have eagerly gotten on an airplane as soon as my familial obligations were complete.

This year I took a vow of acceptance.  It was an informal one.  I did it in front of my altar as I went through my normal evening prayers.  I simply thought: Perhaps, I will forgo the judgment of family this year and just accept them as they are.  Perhaps I will accept that certain unfortunate comments will fall from their lips.  Perhaps I will accept that a series of redundant, raucaus “debates” will occur among certain people who happen to share my last name.  And most of all, I will accept that the woman who shares my last name (and who happens to have given birth to me as well) will have a minor life-altering crisis to which she will overreact and speak in hyperbolic accuastions such as: “No one gives a damn about what happens to me; maybe I should just go sleep under the bridge!”

So, a month ago, I walked into the wonderful winter warmth of New Orleans basking in my vow to ACCEPT.  To shun judgment, choosing instead to live in the light of compassionate Buddhahood.

It was difficult to keep my vow.  My first day there a person who shares my last name decided to get my feedback on an idea for an innovative invention he had been considering for months.  This person exuberantly explained that since most people use their cell phones to tell the time now-a-days, a nifty invention would be a cell phone that could be worn on your wrist.  “Like you would wear a watch!,” he elaborated as I worked hard to make my face look neutral.  When I asked him if he had done any reasearch to see if this innovative idea either already existed or (more likely) didn’t exist because there was no market for it, the person who shared my last name looked surprised.  He told me his next step in the invention process was to start looking for investors to make this wrist watch/cell phone thing happen.   “How can I go about researching it anyway,” he shrugged.  “You don’t know what people want until you offer it to them.”

I could have shared all the things that were wrong with his premature plan.  But, I had made a solemn vow.  And I was on my way to get a po boy.  I imagined how this much-cherished culinary experience of mine would be tainted if I shared it with someone whose ill-planned dream I had just belittled.  The fried shrimp lying yummily in between two fresh slices of french bread might not taste as savory if I had to devour it while apologizing profusely to an angry person who was kind enough to buy me a po boy.

I wished the person who shared my last name luck.  We ate a po boy.  I took a nap.  All was right with the world.

Several days into my vow, I spent THREE DAYS with the woman who gave birth to me.  It was during this experience that I realized the true freedom in acceptance.  While most mother-daughter relationships are fraught with complex emotions and paradoxes, the one I share with my mother is a unique twist on the time-honored tradition of adult daughters being driven crazy by their mothers.  When it comes to what makes my relationship with my mother a potential for developing a substance abuse problem, it really is about basic differences in personality and perspectives.  For instance, I am a fan of logic and reason.  My mother is not.  I believe in action-oriented approaches to problem solving.  My mother believes in creating problems for herself and then voicing disbelief of and anger with the world for being a place that does not accomodate an individual’s repeated decisions to act irresponsibly.

This Christmas my mother voiced this disbelief to me several times.  Once, she was severely annoyed that the cable company cut off her cable the day after Christmas.  When I asked her if she had paid the bill, she unabasdedly answered, “Well, no, I didn’t.”  When I innocently joked, “Well, then doesn’t it make sense that your cable was cut off; I mean, your not paying the bill and all,” she looked at me as if I were completely clueless to the bigger issue she saw in the cable company cutting off service she had not paid for.

“I mean, it’s Christmas,” she huffed and puffed.  “It’s like they’re saying, ‘We don’t care if you had to buy gifts for your kids, we’re still gonna cut off your service.'”  At this point I could have further offered my more logical and reasonable take on this sinister plot Cox Cable formulated to punish my mother for not paying them.  For instance, I could have reminded her that she had not, in fact, bought gifts for her kids. Nor her grand kids for that matter. That her decision to not pay Cox Cable was not a noble one, steeped in Single Mother Sacrifice And Selflessness.

But, I remembered my vow.  I remembered how much better that po boy had tasted once I had fought valiantly to keep my vow to live with acceptance.

“Yeah, that was kindda cruel of the cable company,” I pretended to finally understand her annoyance.  “I am sure that somewhere here in this city some mother didn’t pay her cable bill because she bought her kids food or an Ipod touch instead.”

My mother seemed satisfied that I understood her outrage at the cable company’s lack of compassion.  She even noted that my being able to admit that she was right was a sign of my maturity. 

I ate a bowl of left over gumbo.  I took a nap.  All was right with the world.

This concept of accepting people.  Of not expending energy on judging their actions, questioning thier choices.  Instead, simply surrendering to the reality of this is who this person is, always has been and always will be makes it all the easier for someone to accept the same reality about you.

This Christmas was quite possibly the most enjoyable one yet.  Accepting the truth of my family freed up so much time in my day and space in my brain.  I was able to eat more, nap more and even exercise more.  I was so impressed with how much happier acceptance made my holiday that I carried my vow with me back to work.  I’ve learned to accept that the teenaged brain is a bizarre little mechanism that seems to function quite differently than my own.  A few weeks into the new year, a teenaged person voiced irritation with me for putting a big red F across a quiz she had failed.

I explained that the F was only there because SHE had failed the quiz and not because “F” was my favorite letter of the alphabet so I just went all crazy writing it across every quiz I graded. When she replied that she still thought it was kind of wrong of me to “actually write F across the paper like I did bad,” I decided to accept something: She was 13.  And so was her brain.

I ate my pastrami sandwich.  Went to the bathroom and had a pee.  All was right with the world.

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To say people teach us about ourselves is a bit cliche.  To say that everytime you point a finger at someone, three are pointing back at you is even more of a cliche.  Both cliches have become a part of our lexicon because they are laced with truth. 

For quite some time, I’ve felt a spiritual void.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I knew that while I was a happy, well-adjusted woman who was, for the most part, content with her life, I also knew that I needed some sort of belief system on which to rely.  A set of principles which gave my life a sense of purpose that was larger than checking off a list of personal and professional goals.

I found such a system through a friend who introduced me to Nichiren Buddhism. I began practicing this faith about a month ago and as typical of a new convert, I have used almost every occasion I could to bore people with my new-found religion that is far BIGGER than religion. And far more practical and useful.

Since I am a new convert to Buddhism during the 21st century, much of my soap boxing has occured on Facebook, where all of life’s essential soap boxing  occurs.  As I read the writings of the “founder” of the Buddhist practice and the more recent writings of the current president, I posted particularly inspiring quotes to my Facebook status updates.

Almost immediately, the universe sent someone to teach me something.

This someone came in the form of a devout fundamentalist Christian whom I vaguely remembered from my childhood when I was a less than devout fundamentalist Christian.  Joseph had sat, relatively quiet, on my friend list for the last year or so, occasionally, leaving a comment on one of my pictures or responding to a post.  He was one of those Facebook “friends” who only gets added to your list because…well, there isn’t a good enough reason not to add him. He was nice to me when I was 10; yeah, I’ll accept his friend request.

Joseph found every opportunity to respond to any post about my faith with a fervent rebuttal from the Bible.  To my quote from The Basics of Buddhism, admonishing modern-day religions to move pass holding its followers in a “childlike state,” thus discouraging them from finding the courage and wisdom to make decisions that are best for the lives they choose to live, Joseph reminded me that “GOD does not need help.  HIS word is the law and we should therefore follow it.”

I ignored Joseph’s cyber  finger wagging.

When I posted one of the main tenets of Nichiren Buddhism: the essential state of this world is compassion so we, must, therefore, live our lives with the explicit purpose of ending all human suffering, Joseph took this time to remind: “GOD is love.  Alpha and Omega.  Only through HIS love can we accomplish anything.” (Joseph puts GOD’s name in caps an awful  lot; I think he does this to make a point.)

The friends who responded positively to my post ignored Joseph’s wagging finger.  So did I.

At first, I was not agitated by Joseph.  I was grateful for him.  I assumed he had been sent to teach me this lessson: You are on the right path.  With each display of Joseph’s inability to acknowledge that other faiths beside Christianity could be the “truth,” I became even more grateful that when I went searching for a spiritual center, I instinctively knew Christianity was not what I sought. Its teachings were not the source of solace and comfort that I was now finding in Buddhism.  Joseph reminded me of why I informally cut ties with the Christian church once I was able to verbalize a silent, inexplicable lack of belief in it.

Joseph didn’t become annoying until this past Friday.  When I updated my status to reflect my excitement about going to  a meeting of other practicing Buddhists later on that evening, Joseph responded exactly 7 minutes later to say: “Don’t forget tonight is the Sabbath.  When the sun sets, it is GOD’s time.”

I was on my way to defriending Joseph.  I sent him a private email first. In my email, I expressed happiness that he still believed so strongly in the Christian faith and I hoped it continued to bring him what he needed.  I made it clear that I found his constant proselytizing overbearing and self-righteous.  That I respected his and other Christians’ beliefs so I didn’t think it unreasonable to have mine respected as well. Joseph replied to my message by saying I could believe anything that I wanted, but that when JESUS returned, I and every other Christian and Buddhist would have to bow down to HIM.  “You remember HIS name, don’t you?  You know who HE is.” 

On Thursday, I had 256 Facebook friends; as of right now, I have 255.

My reaction to Joseph’s email surprised me.  I was vexed by it for most of the  day.  I found myself increasingly irritated by the tone in Joseph’s email and the implication that I could not escape judgment; that my decision to follow another religion was my attempt to exonerate myself from Jesus’s wrath.  “Geez…how do Christians manage to get anything done,” I simmered.  “Such self-righteous judgment must take a lot of energy.”

Although Joseph’s intolerant rants strengthened my belief  in Buddhist philosphy, I still could not get him off of my mind.  For a brief moment I wondered if I was obsessing over his rants because I really was afraid of “burning in an eternal bath of flames.”  I eased such unfounded fears by reminding myself that even when I was 10 and sat in the same church with Joseph, I did not accept this God as abusive husband model.  A God who “loves” you so much that he only punishes you when you  don’t do exactly as he says when he says to do it.  A God who dangles the  carrot of heaven in front of your nose, promising to reward you…but snatches the carrot away as the ultimate punishment if you fall out of line.

Midway into my mental Christianity-bashing, I realized I sounded a lot like Joseph.  To denigrate a faith which brought peace and happiness to worshippers who would once describe their lives as chaotic and miserable seemed terribly judgmental.  And intolerant.  What was really behind my severe irritation with Joseph?

My family.

As Christmas approaches, I am aware that I will go home to a family who, although they are slack ass Christians, will probably be suspicious and dismissive of this weird “religion” that has me chanting non-English phrases and blaspheming God by boldly claiming it is really I who has the power to shape my destiny; it is a power that lies inside of me, not outside in an authoritative figure.  I can not remember the last time any member of my family stepped inside a church or picked up a Bible, but I know enough about the dynamics of family and culture to know that religious faith is just as much an ingrained part of a family’s culture as holiday routines and yearly rituals.  Just as every member of the family makes an effort to travel back home to gather around Mama’s table on Dec. 25, we all make an effort to live a Christian life.  Just as we expect that everyone in the family will go to college, we expect that everyone in this family will vaguely believe in an after life spent in Heaven and will just as vaguely work on getting ourselves in those pearly gates.  To reject the religious teachings that generations of your family have accepted without question is to reject an essential part of the family itself.

What if my mother turns into Joseph?

And it is this question that I thank Joseph for forcing me to ask myself.  What if my mother wags her finger in my face, falling on her knees and praying to God to save me from my eternal punishment?  She is my mother; she will love me and won’t be so overbearing that I have to defriend her like I did Joseph.  However, there are crucial differences between the philosophy of Buddhism and the dogma of Christianity.  Although both religions serve the same purpose as all religions: to bring happiness to its followers, there are principles of Christianity that make it very difficult to acknowledge the underlying truth of Buddhism.  In some sense, it is almost impossible for any good Christian not to doom me to hell.

An acquaintance who is on the periphery of the periphery of my life dooming me to hell is laughable.  My mother dooming me to hell is not.

It is the thought of not being accepted by the people I love the most that frightens me.  If it had not been for Joseph, this fact would have been at the back of my consciousness and I would not have had this next week or two to chant and pray more fervently to give me the courage to think better of my family.  Thanks to Joseph, I have sought other Buddhists who were raised as Christians and shared my fears with them.  Thankfully, they confirmed that mothers don’t take it well; fathers are concerned, but once you assure them that it has brought peace and happiness to your life, they smile and ask you a few obligatory questions about the practice.  Siblings still simply ask you to borrow $50 when you “break the news” to them.

“Whatever you do,” one former Baptist who has been practicing Buddhism for almost 30 years told me.  “Don’t intellectualize it; speak from your heart.  Tell your family how this practice makes you feel.”  She reminded me that no matter how much a family wants you to do what they all are doing, they can not refute your choices when those choices bring you sincere happiness.

It’s a shame Joseph is no longer my facebook friend.  I need to thank him for solidifying my belief and being the catalyst for my decision to look within for the source of my irritation.  A Christian made me a better Buddhist.  Yes, the universe does work in mysterious ways.

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When I was in middle school, the girls in my 7th grade class routinely played this game, which by its mere premise, excluded my active participation.  The game did not have a clear system of scoring and did not exist on the requirement that someone “win” each round.  There was no victor because there were no timed rounds, no markers of when the participants had successfully reached the winning score.  The game would spring up during recess, on the bus ride home from school, at slumber parties, during rambling late night telephone conversations.  It never ended.  None of the 7th grade girls with whom I associated wanted it to end, either.  I was a nerd who learned early on that in order to survive in the world of “normal, acceptable” behavior, you had to fake enthusiasm in dull, pointless activities that had been deemed “fun” by your peers. So, I made no mention of my disinterest in this game that so many of my friends relished. While I had little to offer as a participant, I sort of sat back and cheered my team members on until someone gleefully handed me a bat and told me it was my turn.

This game was called, “Who I am Going to Marry and What My Wedding Day Will Be Like.”  Sometimes, the number and names of children that would come out of this marriage would also be shared and commentary on smarter selection of names offered.  Where you, your handsome husband and cute little kids would live periodically found its way into the game, also.  My friends were very specific about their choices in husband and all the amenities he would bring them.  Although much of their specificity was based on naive, adolescent fantasies of what marriage entailed, it was clear that the concept of womanhood without husband was foreign to them.  Foreign, and more critically…completely incomprehensible.

I went to a tiny religious school in New Orleans, Louisiana. For a long time, I assumed that the obsession  my childhood friends had with marriage had more to do with their being raised as good little Seventh Day Adventist girls in the south.  Good Seventh Day Adventist girls from the south married.  They had children.  They kept after their husbands and children when they misbehaved and/or broke any of the litany of rules one followed in order to consider herself a good Seventh Day Adventist girl.  Surely,  debating which Luther Vandross song would serenade you and your husband as you danced at your wedding reception was not something that girls in other regions did?

Chances are, if you are a woman reading this, you are all too familiar with the game I just described.  Your religious background and region of rearing bare no distinction on how the game was played and it does not have any reflection on how much fervor your peers (and perhaps, you) put into the elaborate fantasy of the blissful life you and your husband would create together.

As a woman who is no longer religious or living in the South, I find I am sometimes expected to fake enjoyment in the more mature version of the game my middle school friends played.  The “Who I am Going to Marry and What My Wedding Day Will Be Like” game has now morphed into “I Can’t Believe I am Still Single and Haven’t Found A Husband Yet” game. It springs up during dinner parties, phone conversations about unrelated topics and even during (seemingly) harmless Facebook posts.  I find myself less willing to play along now, though.  Mainly, I choose not to participate because the tone of the game has shifted considerably.  It is not so full of hopeful anticipation anymore.  It is much less fun and pleasant as I remember the 7th grade version.  I have also changed a bit in the decades since I was first introduced to this favorite female pasttime.  I now accept that I am a nerd and am probably judged as “weird” for not understanding or engaging in acceptable female behavior.  I feel much more comfortable now simply asking, “Why is having a husband of such great importance? Seriously, will the earth fall off its axis and you go careening into a black hole of lonely abyss if you don’t marry and have chidren?”

I understand the deep desire to be partnered.  Humans were made to love.  To give and receive romantic love is the most basic of needs.  Seeking out a mate when your heart yearns makes just as much sense to me as seeking out a lamb chop when your stomach churns.  However, I am left with nothing to contribute when women commiserate over being 30, 35, 40, 45 and “STILL single” (insert moan of despair here).  I have tried to muster up the energy it takes to fret over the latest dude who did not fit the “husband prototype” and work myself into a frenzy of when-will-he-come hysteria.  Much like beating myself up over not having toned biceps and a flat stomach, I just can’t find the motivation to add yet another pressure, yet another anxious inner monologue that will play itself in my head repeatedly.

I asked a friend once why some women do allow that monologue to replay in their heads. My friend, Jen, is upfront and unabashed in her fatigue with single life. (Direct quote: It sucks ass!) When I talked to her about how long she has been tired of being single, she gave me a brief timeline of her search for a serious boyfriend or husband. From the time she was in her 20s, Jen has been on the search for a mate.  In the middle of a casual conversation, Jen can magically find a way to mention how much she hates being single.  She has started off conversations with: “Girl, how you been?  Ya know, I am SO sick of being single.” I do not speak in hyperbole; a recent conversation with her began in just that manner.

Jen asserts that a husband will bring her not only love, but several other comforts that she does not enjoy as a woman living solo.  Marriage will help her with her current state of being broke.  It will cure her of recurring feelings of loneliness.  It will provide her with as much sex as she wants when she wants it.  Wearing a wedding band will finally prove to her and the world at large that yes, someone does indeed love her.  “The older you get,” Jen explained, “the more you want someone to take care of you.  To love you.  God did not make me to be alone.  He wants me to be married.”

Listening to Jen made me want to buy Marriage a drink.  Folks dump a lot of shit on its shoulders.  And for an institution that is struggling to simply still exist in today’s climate, the last thing Marriage needs is the expectation to fill voids, clean up credit reports, and guarantee free-flowing sex.  Marriage has a hard enough time simply keeping people together; how can it take on all this other stuff Jen wants?

Another friend, Barbara, who is less annoyed with single life than Jen, has shared her legitimate complaints with being single several times, too.  “You just deal with a lot of wasted time and all around bull shit the longer you are single.”  She speaks of divine destiny as well.  “I really do believe God meant for me to have a family.”  She does not hate being single, but is clear that it is a state from which she must (and hopefully will) rid herself.  I admitted to Barbara that while I would like to have a man whom I completely adore in my life, I didn’t feel that such a love neccesarily had to lead to marriage.  She said something that stayed with me: “I don’t judge any woman who wants that kind of life.  But, I want the real thing.”

The real thing?  I thought that was what I wanted, too.  Is the litmus test for “the real thing” a marriage license?

When I talk to women who are marriage minded, I get the impression that while many don’t lie awake at night clinging to their pillow as they bemoan the absence of “The One,” many of them do have a very specific way of looking at their status of being single.  It is seen as some sort of illness.  An unpleasant, inconvienient nasty cough for some of us.  A cancerous tumor that threatens our life for others.  Whether it is a minor inconvenience or a major malady, women like Jen and Barbara are clear that they need to rid themselves of this illness.  The cure for them is marriage.  And nothing else.

And I watch these women work diligently to cure themselves.  They feverishly “work on” relationships with men whose greatest gift to them would be to break things off.  And when these men do grant them this blessing, they worry and fret about how much further this sets them back.  They were so close to being able to say, “Someone really does love me enough to cure me of this disease!”  I listen to them as they plan and plot, trying to figure out what they are doing wrong.  What could possibly be wrong with them since they are no closer to a husband than they were when they started this hunt back in college.  I watch and I listen and I wonder: Why aren’t they treating the real illness?  If fear of being alone is really what’s driving the hunt for a husband, why aren’t they addressing that?  Is the issue really a desire to share your life with someone or is it really, the desire to be vindicated?  To not be the only one at an event who is unpartnered?  What magic transformation of their lives do these women believe marriage will bring?

Like Barbara, I do not judge women who actively seek marriage.  Ultimately, I wish the same for each and every woman: To live the life that she truly wants.  If a husband is what Jen and Barbara truly want, my prayers to the Universe will whisper that request on their behalf.  I do wonder, though, if thier insistence that marriage is the divine edict for their lives only sets them up for a fall.  The reality is that more than a few women have planned to be married and never found themselves in the ideal situation to do so.  It seems that these women’s lives have not been affected too horribly by this ailment called “single woman.” 

Truly, what if they never find the cure?  What if Jen and Barbara leave this Earth never having said I do?  If that is their only regret, is it just me, or have both women lived a ridiculously charmed life?

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