Babes' Mouths

I've been thinking about my last post. The one where I alleged that I've blown it.

And today, I read of all things, a TAKS-essay composition from a grading guide... and you know that old saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher will come?" It's true, but it's not because of the specialness of the teacher. It's true because that readiness is the same as ripeness for truth. Only when an audience is ready can anyone else entertain it, after all.

So this paper explored the value of "new ideas," and this mystery girl from somewhere in the state of Texas expressed her disenchantment, anguish, and eventual acceptance of her parents' divorce and her father's remarriage. I heard that "click" in my head that happens sometimes. Maybe... well, maybe I've gotten some more of my head on straight, because I know better than to allege that I've got it all on straight, you know?

But this girl -- well, her parents, in a form or fashion -- "blew" her chances for a happy and intact childhood family. That's something she isn't ever going to have, you know? I don't have the fairytale anymore, and she doesn't have a childhood dream. But her paper continued that after four years, she's able to be rather friendly with her new stepmother, and she has besotted feelings toward her new baby brother. She concluded by saying that without being open to new ideas, she'd never have found peace about her family being different than she expected.

Is this what I have to do?

Accept it?

It's patently obvious that I don't have peace inside my head, however much I try to believe that. There's peace so long as I don't stir up my emotions by trying to move on, to challenge my comfortable status quo by finding friendship and companionship with men in my personal life. It's obvious, if I admit the truth to myself, that on some level, my quixotic personality continues fighting what's happened to me. I can accept my marriage was largely a facade of my own creation that existed nowhere except in my head. I can accept that my ex-husband as well was a creation of my imagination, a shadow of a real person on whom I projected all sorts of Godly virtues he was ill-equipped to manifest. I can accept that I'm a strong independent woman with imagination and good character, although I'm divorced. But there's a part of me somewhere inside that resents this happenstance. That wishes it would simply not be a fact of my life or part of my history. That wants to deny it altogether. But I can't. And it's not fair.

But that charming writer whose family collapsed around her shrugged her teenaged shoulders and looked forward. No, her family wasn't want she wanted it to be. She hated the woman to whom she referred as "my father's girlfriend" -- because she thought it sounded disgustingly tacky to do so. When her father and his girlfriend announced not only their impending marriage but that they were expecting a baby and moving out of the country positively rocked her young world. She blew like a Roman candle... but then she stopped and thought about what maturity meant. What negative emotions could do to relationships. To what she could control, when there was so much she couldn't. And she decided, quite deliberately, that she could be civil, if not friendly. She could make an effort, at the very least.

Is that enough for me to do? Can I make an effort just to meet a man? Just one meeting? Can I be civil? Can I deal with the step after a single date when, or if, it arises? Do I know myself well enough as a mature and independent woman... my needs, my expectations, my values, my priorities... well enough to remain myself in the face of a potential relationship, I who was always the accessory to the man and his needs?

It's scary, but is that what it all means, what I'm supposed to do now?