A field guide to growing up without growing apart
I have now been married to a wonderful guy for ONE WHOLE YEAR. **silent cheer** And in that time, I have stumbled upon the key to a happy marriage. Since you can probably barely contain your excitement right now, I’ll just say it. The secret […]
What’s life without a little give and take? Part of being a twenty-something is having to exchange some of the perks of childhood for the rewards of adult life. So here’s what the Naughty Princesses have to say about what they’ve lost, what they’ve gained, […]
So I’m from Washington. The state. And no, it is not very sunny there, at least in the Western half of the state (which is the cool one). And yes, it rains a lot. Stephanie Meyer got that part right. But does the gray, gloomy weather really affect my mood? That’s what people with Seasonal Affective Disorder claim to suffer from. I first heard of SAD (see, even the acronym is depressing!) several years ago when some acquaintances of mine decided to move from Seattle to Southern California. One of the reasons they gave was that the wife had SAD, that is, she often got depressed during the winter months. At the time I thought it was beyond silly. Really? You’re blaming the weather for your foul mood? More recently, some expat friends of mine remarked that they planned to retire to Colorado specifically because it gets 300+ days of sunshine a year, and after living in the Middle East for so many years, they just can’t live without plenty of sun.
When they said that, I felt defensive. I mean, sure, sun is great. It’s warm and happy and makes you feel like you’re on vacation, but to say you can’t live in a cloudy state because you need the sun? It struck me as weird, and, frankly, a little SAD. I think the notion of one’s mood being affected by the weather didn’t sit well with me because I like to believe I’m in control of myself. Mind over matter. I’ve never suffered from any kind of real depression, even if I did spend the first 22 years of my life in a state that is rainy and dreary 9 months out of the year. So if it doesn’t affect me, why should it affect you? I was a skeptic, as I often am when it comes to the innumerable syndromes and disorders you can be diagnosed with these days—the alphabet soup of the psychology world. I like to see the world in more simple terms. So if you want to be happy, just…be happier. And don’t blame the clouds for making you sad.
For me, SAD just sounded like an excuse, just like PMS. That’s right, for most of my life I have not been a big believer in PMS (and I don’t believe anything unusual lives in Loch Ness, either. Can you see a pattern here?) I just never seemed to experience it much. I considered myself a very even-keeled, low-maintenance kind of girl. A sudden bitchy outburst was rare for me, and spontaneous tears? Unheard of. I was not overly emotional. Not wildly hormonal. Completely rational, like a man, right? But in the last few months I’ve noticed a disturbing trend…about once a month I have a day when I’m just not happy. I might snap at my students or pick a fight with my husband. I don’t know whether it’s my birth control, getting older, or maybe that I have finally noticed a phenomenon that has been happening all along, but I finally had to admit: I was PMS-ing. Just yesterday I found myself inwardly stewing because I’d done all the dinner dishes by myself, and my husband hadn’t thanked me. But even after he did finally notice and thank me, I still felt depressed. I wracked my brain. Was I over-worked? No, in fact that particular week I had finished my Master’s coursework and paper-grading early. Was I dreading something coming up? No, it was almost the weekend, and spring break and vacation with my parents was just two weeks away. Suddenly, it hit me. There was no reason for me to feel upset in that moment. No reason at all except the fact that I was due to start my period in a couple of days.
It seems PMS, that oft-blamed hallmark of womanhood, is actually a real thing.
It’s kind of like how I didn’t use to believe that alcohol would affect me (and then I went out on my 21st birthday, and…well, that was the end of that theory). I’m skeptical until it happens to me personally. And I dislike excuses. I do believe that I’m ruled by my mind more than my body, and I don’t like it when that mental control is overpowered or written off. PMS specifically has been used as a trump card against women so often that it makes me sick. And the disturbing part is that it’s often women themselves who use it as an excuse to be crazy. When I first heard about SAD, I felt the same way. Why blame something you can’t control instead of looking to yourself to ensure your own happiness? It seemed like a cop-out for the weak. You know, the types that just can’t hack it in an awesome place like Seattle.
But then I got to thinking. Like I said, I’ve never been really depressed, which means I must have been pretty happy my whole life. But the last year of my life, I’ve been…ecstatic. Like totally loving life, enjoying my work, reveling in my marriage, jumping at every chance to explore the world, and appreciating the crap out of all my blessings (except for that one day every month). I have also been living in the middle of a scorching, sunny desert. It got me to thinking: could there be a correlation? Am I happier now than I was a year ago because of my new, sunnier, surroundings? To find out I consulted WebMD, the hypochondriac’s home page. And, I found that SAD must be medically legit, because sure enough, it has a page on WedMD! There it lists the risk factors: living in a place where there is a big variation in the amount of sun from season to season, being between the ages of 15 and 55, and being a woman. Well, frick. That’s a check, check, and check. I must have been SAD before, and now I’m happy, because I live in a land of sunshine.
I know that is an over-simplification. Obviously a lot has changed in my life, not just the weather, but I have to say I do believe the extra sunny days have helped. Like when I am seeing status updates all winter long from my friends back home complaining about wet feet, umbrellas, wind, cold, and cabin fever, while I can kick back with some lemonade and watch my garden grow any day of the week? Yeah, that makes me smile and appreciate what I have. And therefore, it makes me happier.
So I give in. Seasonal Affective Disorder is legit, at least a little. And PMS too. My mind cannot overcome every external factor it has to face, no matter how hard I try. But does that mean when I go back to Seattle I should just curl up in a ball and listen to emo music all day? Do I have an excuse to be mean once a month? No. Because when it comes to the question of mind and matter, you have to fight to find the balance.
I hate taxes. Not necessarily the fact that we have to pay them, but the actual process of preparing one’s taxes. I mean, I freaking fled the country, and still the government is managing to bite me in the butt and steal away precious time […]
I do not have many friends. And I am absolutely OK with that.
Part of moving to a new place halfway across the world is that you know you’ll have to start over and make all new friends. And, being a person who does not necessarily make friends easily, I was definitely concerned about that. But at the same time, I wasn’t, because I knew I was bringing my best friend, my husband, with me.
So flash forward almost 10 months. We still live halfway around the world, and we have cultivated a small circle of friends, mostly single guys. We see them on average about once per week, and take the occasional adventure, like our desert camping trip last weekend. At work, my husband has a good relationship with his coworkers (they build robots all day—how could they not?) but they don’t see each other much outside of work. And at my job, I have my trusty fellow English teachers. They’ve been a lifeline for me this year and I do consider them friends, but…it’s not on nearly the same level as my relationships with my friends back in college.
What about my old friends, you ask? Well yes, I still have those. Chief among them are the Naughty Princesses, and I’m glad skype, email, facebook, and blogs have kept me connected to these VIP’s in my life. But still, a long-distance friendship is not quite the same as the camaraderie and near-constant hanging out we used to enjoy, as Snow Whore and Sleeping Booty have both mentioned in previous posts.
When I first made this big move I think I was hoping to find the kind of community I used to have in abundance, but the truth is, I haven’t. But here’s the thing: right now, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I relish the 90 minutes I have each day between the time I get home and the time hubby does. Because that’s my time. My time to check my email, start a load of laundry, write a blog, make a lesson plan, finish an essay, or just enjoy a cup of coffee.
Some people try to take on too much, and they’re constantly sacrificing something. In my case, the sacrifice of being in daily contact with my friends and family back home has been made for me, freeing me up to really do my best in other areas. And frankly, without friends vying for my attention, my relationship with my husband has only gotten stronger and closer, just as it should in the first year of marriage.
I never thought I’d actually count a smaller circle of friends as a blessing. I’ve always been slightly insecure about my friendships and took comfort in having as many as possible. Six years ago I was terrified of saying goodbye to my high school friends—relationships that had taken years to cultivate. And during my freshman year of college I was always secretly jealous of people who seemed to have large groups of friends around them, or over 1000 facebook friends. Because surely that meant that those people were popular, cool, and happy. Luckily, I did make amazing friends in college, and I loved every second of being with them.
But this year has brought a huge shift in priorities for me. I went from having a relatively low-stress part-time job to working full-time as a teacher, with an online Master’s degree as the cherry on top. And I went from living with Snow Whore to being married. And frankly, a real job, a degree, and a marriage take a lot of time to maintain. So I am GLAD I don’t have better friends in close proximity to me right now. Because if the Naughty Princesses lived across the street, I’d barely have time to see them anyway.
It’s that time of the year again…the time when the stores are full of pink and red candies, heart-shaped balloons, and musical greeting cards (well, except where I live). The time of the year when single girls everywhere eat too much chocolate and wish they […]
Last week The Little Merskank posted a rant about balls. But she was talking about the Cinderella type of balls. I am talking about testicles. Nuts. Nards. Apple bags. I am talking about balls and birth control. Part of being in your twenties is considering […]
I’m not usually one to delve into politics, but this week I’ve got something on my mind. I’ve seen a lot in the news the past few days about the Benghazi hearings, in which Secretary of State Clinton took heat from Republican members of Congress as they discussed the “what-ifs” of the September terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya. From the clips I’ve seen, I have to agree with Clinton on this one: what difference does it make? U.S. citizens were killed in an act of terrorism, and maybe it could have been prevented. Maybe it couldn’t have. You could say the same thing about 9-11. You can always play the what-if game. But I didn’t see much coming out of those hearings that will actually help us find terrorists or keep the world a safer place. I just saw a lot of blaming.
The Republicans were eager to make Clinton look bad and blame her and her department for not preventing this attack or acting on it sooner. I understand that feeling; when something bad happens, we naturally want the bad guys to pay the price, and we want to point fingers, shift the blame. But I think that is exactly what terrorists hope to accomplish: they want us questioning, blaming, panicking. They want us weaker. And when we spend hours grilling the Secretary of State and only further polarizing relationships between our political parties, we play right into the terrorists’ hands.
I remember hearing about the attacks on the embassy in Benghazi. It was a news story that, if it had happened a year ago, probably wouldn’t have caught my attention. Another crazy bombing in a faraway place. But now I live in the Middle East, and I have friends who work at the U.S. Consulate. What if the same thing were to happen here? It was a scary thought that there were people in the world willing and eager to kill Americans over something as frivolous as a YouTube video that was disrespectful to the prophet Mohammed, or whatever other slights they were pissed about when they walked up to the embassy that night. It’s not ok, and blaming ourselves accomplishes nothing. I have to say I was disappointed when I heard both Obama and Clinton giving statements in the aftermath of the attack that spent more time condemning the weird YouTube video than condemning the despicable act of violence. So both sides, Democrats and Republicans, missed the message of Benghazi. The men who attacked our embassy and killed our ambassador and several other U.S. citizens were neither Democrats nor Republicans! They were terrorists, or severely misguided and brainwashed men who have been taught to put their faith in hate and violence.
I have a feeling that most of the countries in this volatile region, if attacked the way we were, wouldn’t stand around debating and trying to place the blame on themselves. There would be no question as to who the bad guys were. There are a lot of threats in the world today, and no nation can expect to face them well if they are shooting themselves in the foot at the same time. To quote a some cool guys named Jesus and Lincoln, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
“So, did you have an arranged marriage?” This was the question one of my colleagues at school asked me the other day, completely out of the blue. The notion seemed so absurd that I didn’t even take the time to formulate an articulate response. I […]
You have to go to college to get a good job. I heard this maxim my entire life, and, as a result, I was college-bound from the time I was in preschool. Well, the brain-washing worked: I am now a college graduate working as a […]
What do you buy for the guy who has everything? As Christmas day approached, this was the question I was pondering in regards to a certain husband of mine. I’ve always known boys are more difficult to buy for than girls, my dad and brothers being good examples of this. But t
hen I went and married the most tricky recipient of them all. He simply doesn’t want much. Apparently he has always been this way; he was never the kid with a list a mile long. Even though I knew this about him going into our marriage, it has nevertheless caused frustration for me as I have struggled to come up with ideas for gifts that he would actually enjoy. Unfortunately, there are quite a few constraints on me. It can’t be anything too large, or we would not be able to bring it back home with us on the plane. It shouldn’t be something purely functional, like a trowel to work in the garden—that’s something we should just buy for ourselves if we need it. And I can’t go shopping by myself here in the desert kingdom, at least not without a lot of hassle.
So what to do? The other day I asked him to work on coming up with ideas for gifts, and he spent a good 45 minutes browsing the internet for various items of interest. Then, when I asked him whether any of those things would be good gifts, he said, “Not really, I don’t think I really want any of those things.”
My frustration was palpable. How can a person browse the internet for 45 minutes and not find even a single thing they would like to have? I asked him, “Don’t you ever see something someone else owns and think to yourself, ‘I wish I owned that too?’”
Apparently not.
He’s not a woman, so he won’t be appeased by any of the good old standbys that I would be perfectly happy to receive as a gift: jewelry, bath products, decorative house stuff, candles, clothes, accessories, etc.
I was actually very upset by his refusal to cooperate with my Christmas present plans. I was tempted to inform him that if that was how it was going to be, all the better, because I could save myself a lot of time and stress by not buying him any gifts for the next 50 years.
But then I stopped to think. Why should I be angry with my husband for basically telling me that there is nothing he needs or wants to make him happier? Why should the fact that he is perfectly content with our life together frustrate me? I should be counting my blessings, because I received the gift of a lifetime by marrying a guy who tells me and shows me daily that he is happiest just coming home to spend time with me.
So what he ended up unwrapping on Christmas day wasn’t anything guaranteed to make our life amazing, but it doesn’t matter. We already have that.