TITHONUS' DIARY!!
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valentine's day special Ok. - Special valentine's themed entry - something really depressing to ruin your day. - Ever since I left my ex I've had this kind of terrifying mental image of what the relations between men and women are, are about. I don't think it's true, essentially, but, yeah, it's there in my head nonetheless... ...but basically it seems as though, I don't know, being a single heterosexual woman beyong a certain age is a really sad thing to be. "Left on the shelf" they call it, or being a "spinster". - And being a spinster is such a frightening thing that every woman who thinks it might happen to her is looking to latch on to a man who will prevent it from happenning. But the trouble is, there aren't that many men around who are worth marrrying. Because they're violent or they're drunks or they're cheats or they have emotional problems that stop them from being able to really relate to another person. So it's like this awful game of musical chairs... - I don't think it's true. I mean, why is it more tragic to be a lonely old woman than to be a lonely old man? I don't know, I guess lonely old men can buy mail-order brides from the Phillipines or some other third world country, but women can't or won't or don't. I can't think of a nice explanation for why that is. - Why am I writing this? I guess I just want to kind of get this idea down in words so that I can face the fact that it's there because I don't want it to be in my head influencing the way I think, without confronting it. - The reason - I mean, I guess the primary reason it's so wrong is that it is predicated on the idea that a woman's purpose in life is to trap a man. And men's purpose... see, what is men's purpose in that model? Do they have one? Do they need one? - The thing is, I don't actually know what life is for. So I can't say what the correct alternative is. But... I don't know, I wrote something in a guestbook today that I was... I was trying to fumble towards this idea, which is that... there's something miraculous about life. Like, sometimes it feels as though life is so wonderful, so rich and filled with possibilities that you wonder how you could have been so blind to it all for so long - but you can't make it happen. But it's, the whole point is that it's more than you deserve, and since it's so, you can't very well insist on it. - No, I'm still fumbling. I guess the really scary thought, for me, is that my ex will grow old single, and I'll feel that I'm to blame for that. There are so many wonderful women... there has to be something more for them in life than catching some boor or being envious of the ones who did... life is not as simple as a fairytale, which ends with either marriage or unspeakable horrors... but I don't know what that something more is. - I think monks and nuns - there, that's the thing - they purposely dedicate themselves to a chaste life, no children, no "great works", nothing but meditation, the spiritual life - but they are the most extraordinary people. I think if I had the character for it I might want to be a monk. - "I don't care what you say Maybe I was happier blue" - Chris Smither |
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