(no subject)

Reading Material:	Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlich
	The Successful Child by Sears' etc.
	+ asst. romance novels and children's books

I've been busy. I do have a monitor of my own now, so that's not it. But we finally grew a brain and made up a schedule for ourselves which has been a very good thing, but it basically means we both kind of went back to work. The schedule codified our expectations so I feel like I'm giving Alan the help he expects and vice versa. We're both getting more done and have less friction. Yay. Apparently journalising is not on my schedule, however. Probably it should be.

But that's not actually what I want to talk about. Uh. I wanted to talk about... Um. Relationships! When I was in high school I believed that the the road to a successful life was through college and a spiffy job. Anything that interfered with this was bad. And indeed education and fulfilling work are not bad things at all and can contribute greatly to a good life. The conventional wisdom is that romantic relationships between teens are not considered to have any lasting value and should not be allowed to interfere with things that are Really Important. Consequently my relationship with Alan was very much a guilty pleasure for some years. The whole feminist thing didn't help either. When I told people I was moving to So. Cal. to be with him, I would say he was my fiance so I didn't feel like such a loser, sabotaging my college career to trail around after a Boyfriend. What a dumb bunny, no-self-worth thing to do.

And I never did finish school. If I had stayed in Humboldt County I am certain that I would have. I've made all kinds of excuses for myself over the years. "A college education is no guarantee of a better job than I have now. I'm surrounded by folks with four-year degrees." "A college education and a high paying job are no guarantee of happiness. Just look at my biological dad, he has all those things but he's very lonely and unhappy." These all contain truth, but are seriously flawed like all excuses. What it boils right down to in the end was that I just didn't wanna. Against all sense, what I wanted was to be with Alan, and then what I wanted was to have a home, and then I wanted to have babies.

I guess I was pretty well indoctrinated that I fought it for so long. Years. I made a three highly stressful attempts to go back to school. Each time I felt like a failure. Maybe I did sell out, maybe I don't have what it takes to succeed. Maybe I just 'settled'. I can't deny that there is probably some truth to these bits of self-flagelation. Even now the tears come when I think them and write them, but as I became more at peace, and as I reexamine this stuff now in light of how much joy I get from my son and my marriage, I'm starting to think that I did what was right for me, or at the very least that my choices were not bad ones. I can't imagine any other 'job' fulfilling me this much, or any other relationship, that a different path might have led me to, suiting me better. I can imagine many, many that would be much worse. So somehow I've come full circle. I fought myself and won. Now I have much more faith in myself to decide for me what is valuable and important and what is not.

While I can't deny there was a certain amount of luck in the way things turned out, I think the key is that I must have had some measure of self-worth and self-faith to start out with. When you have self-worth you don't 'wanna' do things that are genuinely self-destructive, so you can follow to your desires with a certain amount of impunity. When you have self-faith you have the courage to follow them. I will have to try and nurture these qualities in my children.

Aquarium plants came! :)