the woman who belongs to no man, belongs to every man

I probably shouldn't be using a precious half an hour to compose a blog post when I still have a million billion pages to write for my eleventy-seven thousand final papers, but I have slammed against a mental block and am pretty sure it's because I need to address what happened this afternoon and try to make some sense of it.  Hopefully, after I've put words to the experience, I can get back to the grind.

So, I've been operating at near exhaustion for a long time...but especially this past week. About 3 today, I set my alarm for 20 minutes and layed down to take a quick nap. When the alarm sounded, it felt like it was rousing me from a coma. The only way I can describe how I felt next is to say it was like being dropped  back into conciousness by layers--kind of like those stacking rings toddlers play with being slipped onto their plastic post one by one. First, I thought I was back in my childhood bedroom. Then, I thought I had to wake up because I needed to nurse a baby. Finally, I thought I needed to get up because my husband was up and out of bed and needed help. My eyes flew open and I realized it was afternoon...in my current home...in 2011...that I was not a child, I had no babies to feed, and...I was no longer married.

That was a bitter realization I used to have to let settle into me every morning for the first year after the divorce. That I'm alone. The one status that I so defined myself as: a wife, was no longer mine to claim.

"The woman who belongs to no man, belongs to every man."

That's the theme I'm writing my paper about 18th century women on. Women who were to be passed directly from their fathers to their husbands. And should they somehow find themselves alone--abandoned, widowed, without family-- they were at the mercy of being claimed by every man as lovers and prostitutes.

Kind of hard to be a prostitue when you're celibate, and the word "lover" has always made me laugh anyway, but I do still feel the strange weight of belonging to no one man, thus somehow belonging to every man.

In the last 2 1/2 years, I have dated the gamut from California software millionaire to temporarily homeless musician and all the variety inbetween. All men with at least one redeemingly good trait. Not that I date a lot, I've just managed to clear a lot of ground, so to speak. I'm a pretty good judge of character and can tell after two dates whether something is worth continuing or not (though the 'continuing' part isn't solely my decision to make and I've done my fair share of sitting around wishing certain people would ask me out again but don't...)

In the interest of trying out things that a guy I like enjoys, I have sumo wrestled, been shot at with paintballs, taken to listening to Tom Waits and old school rap, attempted breakdancing, eaten swordfish (when I hate fish), learned to spin a mean, peel-the-rubber-off-your-tires cookie in a car, and 'bombed' a parking garage on my skateboard. And I loved every minute of all of it! I'm grateful for the new adventures I've had with the varied males who have crossed my path. Each one I open up to emotionally, or give enough of my time and attention to, somehow changes me. My hair is even long and red right now because Ninja liked long, red hair. 

Wasn't there an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation where a certain woman existed to be whatever a man wanted her to be? Because that's sometimes how I feel. Also, Captain Picard was hotter than Captain Kirk but Data was the one who really had it going on. Tangent.
Anyway...

I assert again that my blog is just a blip of my life, not its constancy. Despite what it may seem, I don't worry continuously, or even frequently, about my love life.  I am content. I am capable. I am confident in who I am. But I know I'm not alone in my struggles and my longing and my struggles with my longing, so I share.  It's kind of  like a case of gout or bursitis or other *glamorous* ailment that flares up from time to time and has to be addressed.

In my innocence, I believed God would drop Mr. Perfect in my life after a year of being divorced. I thought it would be like Him saying, "Because you were so good and faithful and loving in your marriage...here you go. No more worries about being single.Ta dum!" But, three years later, here I am clutching my list of Mr. Almosts. Sometimes I've ended it. Sometimes they have. The ending is the same either way. And it hurts every time. It's not God's fault but part of His highly individualized plan for my growth. I believe that with all my heart. Even if I dont' always like it. And that's all I've got to say about that.