Put It On

When I was in school, we had health education. The most uncomfortable portion of the whole class, of course, was sex education. All sorts of inaccurate, yet clinical sounding, information was floated about once we had exceeded the teacher's knowledge, and of course there was the banana. After all, that's what you're going to need to put a condom on, right, a yellowish curved fruit that will one day over-ripen and turn into an odd colored mush in your hands. (Hmm, maybe they were on to something.)

One of the fundamental principals that we had drummed into us during these classes was directed at the ladies, as they were constantly instructed that men wouldn't want to wear a condom. They would come up with all sorts of excuses about sensitivity and lack of pleasure and the woman was to disregard these obviously false statements and insist on him wearing it, and not worry about whether or not he was still going to love or stay with them. If the man really cared, he'd wear the condom. Men were, of course, instructed to wear protection and that it was important, but mostly only because it made the woman's job easier. Ultimately, the woman was put in place as the gate keeper. We'd watch those stupid health class videos where the guy would come up with all the excuses our teachers said they would and the woman would triumphantly insist on the man wearing the condom. We, as men, were trained to assume that women wouldn't sleep with us unless we wore condoms, or if they did, we'd have to come up with some sneaky way around it.

Since then, I learned that women often do not perform their role as gate keeper in this, or often any other, area. I have had far more women insist that I don't wear a condom than ever ask me to put one on. "Do you really have to wear that?" "It doesn't feel the same when you have one of those on." Wait a second, why were these ladies using all the lines men were supposed to use. In school, they had taught us that we were the ones that would fight not to put one on, not the other way around. I felt wholly unprepared. The videos all taught us that men wouldn't want to wear a condom and that really we were only supposed to wear them so that the woman wouldn't feel uncomfortable. Now, it seemed that the only thing that would make them uncomfortable was if I actually heeded the words that had been imparted to me in health class.

So while there seems to be much debate about whether there is too much health (and sex) education in our schools. I happen to feel there isn't anywhere near enough. I know I certainly wouldn't have minded being more prepared for the inevitable time that all that training was about to be put to excellent use. Although, I still question the wisdom of the banana.

Alone at Last

I sometimes will hear the familiar refrain, "If you don't [insert verb here], you'll be alone for a very long time." I even received an anonymous comment on one of my recent posts suggesting this. (Don't look for it because as with most anonymous comments, I responded to it and then deleted it.) Every time someone offers this lesson in romance, they usually say it like being alone is the equivalent of catching Ebola.

At one point in my life, statements like this would have haunted me and given me night sweats and terrors. The fear of being alone was enough to strike fear into my heart. It didn't matter whether the judgmental person throwing this statement out there was right or not. Somehow my brain skipped the step of any type of analysis of the character of the speaker. All that mattered was that someone had found something in me wanting and if I ever wanted to be happy, I needed to change.

"Wait, what was that?"

"Right, if I want to be happy, I need to change."

"But that's not what they said. What they - this anonymous speaker who suddenly feels that they have sufficient insight into you, life, and love - said was if you don't change, you'll be alone. When did alone become synonymous with unhappiness? When did you let those two concepts connect in your brain and rule your life? When did you allow your entire concept of happiness become controlled by another and tied to whether or not someone else finds value in you?"

"Um ... since ever? Isn't that what happiness is? Having that person that loves you and understands you? What's the point in living if you have to do it alone? I don't want to be alone. In the movies the people that are alone are always sad. They're always missing something."

"Great, now you have movies controlling your self image. How independent of you. Have you noticed that you're never alone? Have you noticed the friends that you have and the things that you do? Why is your self-esteem and self-worth coming from external sources instead of from within, where it's supposed to originate? I mean, it's in the name, after all - self-worth, self-esteem."

"Just lucky, I guess."

It took me years of therapy to make all of these connections, to line up all the pieces and connect all the dots, and to come to the conclusion that being alone is not the worst thing in the world. It is not a fate worse than death and that happiness truly comes from within. I learned that while I would love to be in a relationship with the right person, I'm still just as good without one. I now find it rather humorous when I hear someone say, "Your standards are too high," or "You wonder why you're alone." The truth is I don't care whether anyone thinks my standards are too high and I don't wonder why I'm alone. Usually the person saying these things is the type to wonder at such things but I simply cannot be bothered. Because all of that inner peace and happiness that I kept expecting to find in someone else ended up being within myself all the time.

Free at Last

Every now and again, I'll catch a flicker of just the right hair color or just the right body type and I'll be instantly reminded of an ex. Sometimes it will be a fond recollection and other times it will be a bitter fleeting thought that I would just as soon forget. There are also the rare occasions where I will suddenly be filled with remorse and regret. The thought creeps in that perhaps I made the biggest mistake ever. Perhaps she was the one for me. No faith in my own decision making - it was an issue I had to address in therapy. "What do you mean that's a bad thing?"

I remember she used to ask me, and her other friends, for hours on end what we thought of Fred's behavior. It was a terrible exercise in futility, as we would all validate her feelings and tell her how right she was to be feeling the way she did, but then she would confront him and her entire self-esteem and boundaries would immediately crumble. We simply believed in her more than she believed in herself, a terribly unfortunate way to live. "He's not like you. He doesn't understand me the way you do. It's not his fault. I just need to be better. You don't understand him the way I do. You don't see how much potential he has." It's always frightening when you see others' dysfunctions in yourself. However, it's also relieving because it's that recognition and admission that can lead to recovery or behavior modification (as they like to call it).

However, there were other issues that I also had to address and, at times, it's difficult for me to look back and discern whether I got in the way of myself somewhere along the line. This self-doubt and concern can haunt me for days, as I reevaluate and reassess. But every now and again, something spectacular happens where the ex does something so annoying that I am immediately reminded of all the reasons she made me miserable and I am instantly glad to be away, with no regrets to ever haunt me again.

"She really did that?"

"Yeah. Pretty crazy, huh?"

"I can't believe you stayed with her for as long as you did."

"I was too busy being afraid that leaving would be a bigger mistake than staying to see just how unfulfilled I was. I kept thinking someone else would make the decision for me. I kept hoping that someone would say the magic words that finally gave me the courage and freedom to leave. What it took me time to learn was that I always had that freedom and only I could see it through."

You Should Read This

I started reading one of my books about codependency the other night. I think one of the problems with those books is they often discuss the severe cases or the cases that have, eventually, escalated out of control. Much like alcoholism, it's usually a progressive illness, worsening with time if left untreated. I felt like if I lent the book to one of my friends, they could easily shake it off and laugh, as it wouldn't really apply to them. After all, I don't have many friends dating alcoholics or drug addicts. I've had a couple, but they either grew out of it or eventually left the relationship, or we've lost touch. However, I know several codependents. In fact, in my life, I was often attracted to codependent women. I think it's probably because of the way I was raised. I felt that if maybe I shared one of their stories, it might have more of an impact.

In law school, I knew a girl named Liz. Liz was married to this guy named Fred. Liz was fairly unhappy about that fact. She really didn't like Fred. She didn't feel like he really understood her or the things that were important to her. She didn't feel that he was supportive of her in many ways and when she tried to talk to him about it, he usually made her feel like she was overreacting or being ridiculous. Liz couldn't leave Fred because she couldn't figure out anything that he really did wrong. He was a good provider. He made good money. He didn't beat her. Her family would never understand. And she constantly worried that it might be a mistake to leave. "What if he's the one I'm meant to be with?" She kept hoping Fred would either change or leave her.

Eventually, Liz had an affair and Fred found out about it. Liz figured Fred had to leave now. I mean, c'mon, she had been cheating on him. But Fred didn't want to leave. Fred cried and said he wanted to save their marriage. This caught Liz off guard. She explained that she didn't want to work on anything. She wanted a divorce. He wouldn't give her one. She said that she wouldn't stop sleeping with other men. He didn't care. He cried and begged and Liz decided she had to stay for a while. After all, she did love him and he was a nice guy. He really had always been the same guy. He just had never changed, or become the person she envisioned him being, despite all her efforts. Liz went home to see her family and they all confessed that they thought Liz had been unhappy for a while and that if she wanted to leave Fred, they fully understood. Fred said he wanted to have children. Liz changed her hair.

Liz started seeing a psychologist, a really good psychologist. Liz's psychologist diagnosed Liz as a codependent and he was pretty sure Fred was too. Liz couldn't leave Fred still. They'd fight and argue but she couldn't do it. She just didn't have it in her and she didn't know what her life would be like without a relationship. She had always had a man in her life.

Liz got offered a job far away. Her psychologist said that when she took the job, she should ask for a trial separation from Fred. "It doesn't have to be permanent. Just some time away so that you can truly assess your feelings about this relationship."

"Why do you look frightened?"

"I'm worried that if I do what you're asking, I'll never go back with him."

"From everything I know about you and everything you've told me, you won't, but you will actually need to complete the separation to make a rational and healthy decision. No contact for at least three months. None. If he respects you and loves you, he will give you this time."

Liz did it. It was the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. She walked away from Fred and moved, beginning her trial separation. It lasted all of three days.

Liz couldn't take it. She missed Fred. He wasn't that bad after all. And he did love her. I mean, he had stayed and he said he loved her. "He just doesn't understand how to make me feel loved. That's not his fault." Liz was still trying to make excuses for Fred and enable his behavior. It's what codependents do, and she had stopped therapy after she moved. Liz isolated herself from all of her friends, didn't return their calls, wouldn't go out with them and soon left town with Fred.

I recently spoke with a friend of Liz's, who occasionally speaks with her still. "I spoke to Lizzy the other day."

"How is she?"

"She's still miserable with Fred. Nothing in her life has changed one bit. They're the exact same couple they were years ago, maybe a little worse. I just don't get it. How could she be that miserable and still stay?"

I've Heard That Before

If I told you what was really going on in my life, you'd never believe me. I did a very long journal entry about it. It's really impressive and probably would make some great blog material. I even worked a reference to Heidi Klum into it. (That alone makes it worth it's weight in gold.) It's almost a tragedy to keep it simply in journal form. However, now after all that buildup, it would never meet your expectations. So I'm likely better off just going with something a bit less personal.

"He said I should go to law school."

If I had a $1,000.00 for every time I heard a person say that, I'd be rich. (I say $1,000.00 because really, what can you get for a bunch of nickels nowadays. Besides, if we're going to discuss in hypotheticals, I might as well make it worth my while - I thought $1,000,000.00 might be greedy.) Every person I talk to seems to have been told, at one point or another, by some mentor type figure - you should go to law school. I sometimes think that perhaps this line is just thrown out there as a compliment - "You're so smart, you should go to law school." The person doesn't actually have to believe what they are saying, they're just throwing the compliment out there. Other times, I think the person offering the statement simply has no damn clue what law school is like. They've never experienced it. They figure it's just one of those things people do. Just go to law school. Like it's as easy as breathing or climbing Mr. Everest; a walk in the park.

I have always done everything in my power to discourage every person I meet from going to law school. From my experience, only people that really want to learn law and how to be an attorney should go to law school. They shouldn't do it for money because lots of attorneys don't make a lot of it. They shouldn't do it for respect because almost everyone I meet immediately looks at me sideways when they find out I'm one of those scum sucking, bottom feeding, attorney bastards. They shouldn't, necessarily, pigeon hole themselves into any one area of law they would like to practice because often, they won't get to practice in the area they so choose. And law school is no picnic. Unless you really like law, you likely are not going to enjoy law school at all. It's going to be stressful and miserable, threatening your relationships and your sanity, as you undergo the metamorphosis from an ordinary person to a person that thinks like an attorney. Sound like fun yet? (I did have a friend that went to Harvard who found it a fairly easy experience, much easier than her physics classes in undergrad. As a general rule, the higher ranked schools are easier, and after first year, you can sometimes find ways around the difficult professors - especially if you do not actually care about learning.)

You want money? Go work on Wall Street or do something entrepreneurial. There's far more money in either of those fields, and you probably won't have people looking at you with utter disgust and hatred when you announce what you do at dinner parties. Do you have any idea how many attorneys leave the practice of law so that they can work on the investment banking side of things? Or how many unhappy attorneys are out there?

Generally, people have listened to this advice from me. I've actually talked people out of going to law school in one sitting. I think it's because I'm just so matter of fact about it. I remove all of those romantic notions about law school and tell people real stories about real people that I've known, and of my own experiences. (And most of mine were good, for law school.) However, I really think people have to stop with the whole, "So and so told me I should go to law school." Because, really, everyone seems to have been told at one point or another that they should go to law school, and it's clearly not a career for everyone.

Face Value

Often movies or stories try to teach us not to judge a book by its cover. When this mantra is applied to people it is often illustrated with the less attractive women being really just an amazing catch and a beautiful person on the inside, and people have just never taken the time to get to know her so they just don't see how wonderful she really is. I once had a discussion with my friends about this cliche that the movie Shallow Hal memorably illustrated.

What we all agreed on is that this is a great concept and is possibly applicable in a certain number of cases, as we all have known that guy or girl that is really just an amazing person but never has much luck with landing that very physically attractive person of the opposite sex. However, we have also all met a lot of really mean, jaded, angry, miserable unattractive people. Whether their personality is a byproduct of not being anyone's object of affection frequently enough or if it's because they just don't feel terribly good about themselves or their parents didn't hold them or something as a child, I don't know. But they are ugly as sin, inside and out.

In fact, we all agreed, it's actually more common that the physically unattractive women are just as unattractive on the inside as they are on the outside. So instead of that woman in the movie looking like Gwyneth Paltrow (or Heidi Klum - yes, I know she was never in a movie like that but this is my blog and we will talk about Heidi Klum as much as I want), she is more likely to look Rosanne Barr. Not that Rosanne Barr is ugly, but she's certainly no Gwyneth Heidi Klum.

As I've noted above, this is not to say that there aren't some tremendously cool people out there that just don't have the looks of George Clooney or Natalie Portman, but there are also a lot of mediocre people out there with this condition. And, I'm assuming, a good amount of very attractive people that are positively atrocious on the inside. Which brings us back to the original cliche of, Don't judge a book by its cover. However, one would be served well to keep in mind that just because the cover isn't very attractive does not mean that the story will be any better.

Order Out of Insanity

All the topics that were spinning in my head have suddenly decided to check out, and all I've got now are snippets from my weekend. Enjoy.

"He says he's changed."

"Doesn't he always say he's changed?"

"Yeah, but what if this time he really has?"

Ah, there it was, the eternal female hope that I know and love. It's all vanity, though. It's not just hope that the person changed. It's the ego trip that this person changed for me. Oh, vanity.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

There was an upshot to her going back with him. Even though it might mean a lot more complaining and drama that I would have to watch her go through, it would provide excellent material for my blog. You know, when I really have nothing else to talk about. And then I can listen to all the women tell me that "not all women are like that". Funny thing, she used to say the same thing. It remains my belief that most women like it when that man - you know the one that never does - treats them well. Vanity of vanities.

For my part, I've been doing my best to organize my life, or at least the physical objects within it. Getting new file boxes and storage containers. Reorganizing my kitchen and trying to create a more appealing order to things. It's certainly not the easiest thing I've attempted, as it requires a lot more effort to figure out how to organize things in any sort of logical way, as opposed to simply putting them somewhere. However, I find it rewarding, as I seem to have more room and I actually know where more things are when I need them. Fancy that.

When I'm not organizing my life, I'm at the movies. It became a tradition somewhere during law school that every Saturday, this girl in my class and I would go to the movies, but never together. We took Saturday completely off and refused to open a single book, unless absolutely necessary. You weren't even allowed to worry or think about classes. This is why movies were always appealing. It was great to actually have one day every week where I didn't have to do anything.

Soon I'll be signing up for my surgery and have screws drilled into me. It ought to be a blast. Although, I'm really nervous and worried, as I haven't had surgery since I was very little. I'm afraid about what I will feel when I'm in my "twilight state" and how much pain I will be in when I wake up. I don't really like all of this unknown stuff, but I also don't like not being able to lift things without a certain degree of personal agony.

The Power of Post-It

There's a certain something about a Post-It note. They can be used to convey that extra message when nothing else will do. We all remember the time Berger broke Carrie's heart with a Post-It note. Well I don't actually remember it, but I know it must have happened because every woman I know immediately is reminded of that scene when I tell them about the attorney that quit my friend's old firm (or as he called it, the death camp) by leaving a Post-It note on the office manager's computer monitor, which read, "Nice knowing you."

However, what I saw yesterday adds a completely new dimension to the entire concept of Post-It notes in my opinion, and their ability to convey a message without a single word.

My Space

I was convinced, somewhere along the line, to establish a My Space page. (I actually wound up with two of them, although I cannot figure out how and am doing my best to remove one of them, but it does not seem to be linked to any email account that I actually use. So I'm not sure where it came from, nor how to delete it.) I didn't really enjoy the idea of establishing a presence on My Space, as I really think the pages are stupid and annoying. They can get so bogged down with content and everyone has some sort of song that automatically starts when the page loads - tell me that isn't bloody annoying.

I really feel that My Space pages can often be referred to as My Virtual Clutter Zone. The organization and layout of the content is, to me, absolutely annoying and pointless. If I really wanted all of that crap, I could add it to my blog. After all, to me, I feel the blog is probably the most important aspect of those pages (unless I'm looking for gorgeous red heads), and most people I have seen on there do not update theirs very frequently, if at all. Not to mention, the blog is not really featured very prominently and the posts look bizarre there. It reminds me of blogging for junior high. (Not that my blog is terribly impressive or updated frequently enough. It does, however, seem to have a bit more of a sophisticated appearance.)

I am, however, terribly happy that I created the page. Not just so that I could gawk at the lovely ladies or do something trendy, but also because it allowed me to find two of my friends that I have known since I was about six, but who I lost touch with over the last three or four years. I also located another friend from high school. I'm so excited. I haven't actually been able to communicate with any of them yet, as they seem to check their pages about as frequently as I check my snail mail box. However, I figure that will all come in time and soon I will be catching up and learning about their new and exciting lives.

Every now and again, the Internet spits out a gem.