Things not to do right before bed.

My whole day started off running late because I slept too long because I woke up in the middle of the night with a nightmare. It was about Mother Natures Son who I have not seen or talked to in about 14 years. The dream was about him leaving me for another woman and that he owed me money. Which is odd, as I don't recall ever loaning him cash while we were together.

I know this is directly connected to reading Learning to Drive right before I went to sleep. It's a remarkable book of essays but it disturbed me. Largely because I feel I know the author. Not in a literal sense but I know every where she is going in travels. Her neighborhood is my old neighborhood. The subway stations, the parks, I know exactly where she is. But more importantly I know the woman she is. She is a brilliant, well read, neurotic fem of the born and bred NYC gene. I know how she dresses, I know what kind of men she would date, I know what kind of mother she is. Because she is me. And she freaked me.Like a literary ghost of Christmas future.

The main essay is about the end of her last live in relationship with a well known Marxist who seemed to have slept with every other brilliant, well read,neurotic women in NYC. She is so honest about her rage and obsession with him it made me very uneasy. While on one hand it is a real blessing to have a writer be so out there and honest with their personal experience. But on the other hand, I don't want to be her in 15 years. I'm a sitting there in bed reading.and it was like a watching a slow moving train wreck. I could not bear her being so stupid and self abusive but I could not look away.

The whole thing has put me in a very bad state of mind all day. I'm scared. I have this collection of women in my life that I think of as the nuns. Collectively they are clever, kind hearted, good at what they do, responsible, good with money and wear great looking scarves in flattering colours. But they have been hurt one too many times in their romantic lives and its like a switch hit them some where in midlife. They don't try anymore. They don't take lovers, they don't date, they don't even flirt. They give their love to their friends, their pets, their causes. Gay, straight, bi, they just don't let themselves being emotionally or physically romantically touched anymore. They break my hearts.

I have a few peers who have done the same but I don't choose to have relationships with those women any more. I tryed but they would get so bitter and ugly if I mentioned adventures I was having on a personal site or an interaction with a cute potential guy that didn't work out the way I might have hoped it would. I was a fool for even trying . But for those women what ever was going on with them was so extreme and unsettling, it would never be fun or comforting to be playmates with them. If you have given up hope that you will ever meet a kind person that will find you right and you are only in your 30s, something is dying in you. Frankly, I got enough potential death to deal with in my life to deal with.

When I was in my early 20s my then roommate and I were talking to an older woman friend about what we wanted for our future. The number 1 thing we both wanted was a child and we had no question that we would have one. The older woman started laughing and shaking her head.She told us how she had been the same .But things has not worked out as planned with her partner. That we were foolish and arrogant to have such dreams.Almost 20 years later my roommate is a mother of a beautiful boy but is in a marriage that makes my stomach lurch. The older woman verbally castrates her husband every day for not forfilling her dreams. And I am alone but mostly content.

Short list of things I don't want. I don't want to look back on my life ten years from now and be bitter. I don't want to marry some toxic hazard of a male just because I am scared time is running out. I don't want to have sex with someone that I don't particularly like or have anything in common with because I lonely, or horny, or want to feel better about my self.

Short list of what I do want. I want to find someone who likes themselves ,their lives and me most of the time. If I choose to not have a child, I want it because I made the choice, not because I feel I never met a good man. If I choose to have a child I want it to be because I have a calling to, not because I need to feel normal or rewarded by society . And if I have the kid, I want it to like itself, it's life and me most of the time.

It's not quite 4 o'clock yet.Am I allowed to have a glass of wine?