Finding Me Again
I know, I know, I know. I’ve been absent from this site lately. But there are a few really good reasons for this, and I haven’t really been ready to write about any of it until just now.
Honestly, blogging here has been difficult in the past few months. No matter how much I try to sit here at this blog and talk about my enlightened relationship and how I am going to remain independent and not let marriage change me, there’s a little part of that that cannot be true, and hasn’t been for me. I’ve been struggling to not feel like a phony writing here about feminist relationships when my relationship doesn’t seem all that “feminist” lately… whatever that means. Allow me to try to explain.
Marriage is an identity shift, especially for women – whether we like it or not. We will change when we get married, if only a little, because our lives have changed in some way. I know not all of you agree with this, especially those who cohabited before marriage, but I’m not talking about how you do things day-to-day. That kind of stuff probably doesn’t change very much; if your partner took out the garbage before you got married, he or she will probably continue to do so after you get married. I’m also not really talking about how you feel about each other. You’ll probably still be in love after you get married just as you were before, societal sitcom narratives be damned. I’m talking about a shift in yourself. You will change in some way. It could be a shift in priorities or a shift in how you see yourself or a shift in desires. Maybe you find yourself wanting to change your name or have a hot dinner on the table every day or have a baby or go to sporting events or quit your job, even though you never wanted or even thought you might want these things before. (I’m not saying I want any of these things. They are just examples.) And maybe, if you’re like me, you beat yourself up for wanting different things and doing different things because you shouldn’t feel like you have to do anything new and you should be comfortable with how things were before.
Couple all of this with a permeating conservative narrative about how wives should be from the devil on one shoulder and a permeating liberal narrative about how wives should be (if one should ever even be a wife at all) from the other and, before you know it, you’re not quite sure what you should be doing at all, let alone what you want to be doing. And, if you’re anything like me, you end up so overwhelmed that you find yourself sitting on the couch with a glass of wine, watching TV and yelling at your husband for no other reason besides he forgot to push the chair in after he last sat it it and OH MY GOD WHY CAN YOU NOT JUST REMEMBER TO PUSH IN THE DAMN CHAIR?!
So. That’s where I found myself at the start of this summer vacation, even though I was bound and determined to use every second to relax and renew myself. And I yelled at Tim for not pushing in the chair at the kitchen table (a story for another time, perhaps, but this argument has been ongoing since, oh, last July), walked out and called my good friend, Jillian, crying and trying to make my way through the worst traffic ever to see her and telling her I just didn’t feel like myself anymore.
Well, no wonder, right? With about eight competing narratives, a (relatively) new husband, a new dog, house shopping, and a major change in routine with the start of summer break, it was hard to see myself through it all. So Jillian, bless her heart, listened to me for about an hour (the time it took me to get about two miles on the highway with all the traffic) and convinced me that it would be best if I turned around, talked to Tim, and did something that made me feel like me again.
Tim and I did talk, though that’s not the most important part of the resolution of this particular problem. While it’s important to have the support of the ones you love, sometimes doing something by yourself and for yourself is really the best solution. The next day, I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a real book (while I love my Kindle, I do sometimes miss the satisfaction of actually folding down the page) which I have almost finished reading, and started cooking and baking. And I pretty much haven’t stopped since.
I made grilled pizza with homemade tomato basil sauce and homemade pizza dough. I made a rose cream sauce with a white wine base and fresh tomatoes, basil, and garlic to go with pasta. I made a variation of tiramisu with champagne instead of coffee and fruit instead of chocolate. I made white chocolate brownies. All of this from scratch, people. It has been time consuming to say the least, but extremely gratifying. I truly love cooking and baking. Cooking more than baking, but the same principles apply. You can take ingredients that, alone, are nothing and combine them in such a way that something beautiful and delicious emerges.
In the kitchen, I feel at home. Even as I write this, I’m sitting at our breakfast bar, smelling white chocolate brownies from the oven. When I first moved out on my own, I used to cook all the time, mostly because it was the only way I could afford to eat. You may not believe this so much, because cooking can be very expensive, but when you buy a pound of pasta for $0.99 and a few basic ingredients for sauce, you have a meal for four days that cost you about $5. I couldn’t go out because I didn’t have the money, so I bought a couple of cheap ingredients and worked from there, making sure to have plenty of leftovers for the week. After a particularly trying day at school or in the midst of a trying relationship, there was nothing better for me than to chop vegetables, measure ingredients, and make something completely satisfying, even if it was just for myself.
And this is just for myself with the added bonus of having a partner to eat the food and tell me how awesome it is, which never hurts the self esteem. I’m feeling my balance start to return and, while I won’t (and can’t) always want to cook and bake every day, I’m finding strength in doing things I used to love while also loving the new experiences and wants and needs.
It’s not a perfect solution, and it isn’t a perfect balance, but it’s working for now.