Dreams

Photo borrowed from: Here

I used to have a lot of dreams. I dreamt of fame. In a small way, i had it on the runways of Asia. I dreamt of college, and did it, going to an Ivy League university. I dreamt of being an artist, I dreamt of being a photographer (does a failed wedding photography business count?).

I always dreamt of having a life partner. I lover, a friend, an equal. Marriage, kids, the white picket fence and house to go with it... those i did not care for much. A soul mate was what i spent my life craving.

I am still looking for that, but jaded, wondering if such a thing exists. I pride myself on being a pragmatic woman, but deep inside, i crave and want to believe in romance, but even more importantly I still believe, in spite of experience, in love.

I read about 'The Secret' on another blogger's page, and suddenly realized that my day to day existence did not help me in getting out of this hole i have been digging for the last 10 years. I had to visualize. I had to know what i was looking for.

And there comes the complexity of the issue. When I was younger, i definitely had a 'type' that I can easily visualize. Tall, dark, strikingly handsome, and definitely ethnically (and racially) diverse from myself.  My parents, especially daddy dearest,  had hoped that was a phase. Despite their self proclaimed liberal intellectualism, their fear of the unknown was much greater. Race, and that which looked different was not acceptable.

Glossing over the misery of my teenage years, and confusion at college (controlled remotely like a puppet, yet rebelling whenever I could), I came to the place where M and I were engaged. I had tried so many times to tell my parents over the phone, but was promptly cut off and shut down.

Photo borrowed from : Here

In March, we got married. In May my father called me to tell me i have been gone too long. They are buying me a ticket to go home. I tried to tell him I can't but he was not interested. I am married! I finally blurted out. Without a moment of hesitation, he shot out his pressing question: What color is he? I refused to dignify that question with an answer. It was another 6 years before we spoke again, after the birth of my son, whose pictures proved that my husband was not black, although he certainly must have had dark features. Where did that dark hair come from? And those huge, black, watery, loving eyes?

I wish that were the end of that story. A familial reconciliation over the miracle of a child born. There is too much mud to waddle through to be able to reconcile.

It was but another year, upon the discovery of my father's late stage cancer, and his refusal to undergo conventional treatment, that my mother told me about the book. The life work my daddy dearest had spent his days and partly nights (when he was not skulking in the hallway around my bedroom, or sneaking around my school, some 20 miles away from home, at recess) was now live online. Why, oh why did i read the thinly veiled biography and journal of my youthful tortures?

Going back to my 'type'. Combine the familial attitudes, and my ex's inherent racism, my age and general white collar environment, and I am battling with myself over this.
I sit in a restaurant as a gorgeous, black man walks in, and I instinctively look over, my stomach crunches, I hold my breath. And then, after years of training, I force myself to look away and push away the obvious attraction, not even daring to acknowledge it. 

Yet, now, that I am single, I know some things that are important to me in a partner (of any color): loving, honest communication;  maturity; being in a good place in life; secure and stable; equally educated.

Have I narrowed the pool down enough?

And then the question looms: Am I even ready or able to have a relationship now?

Here is my daily schedule:
Wake up
Feed the little guy, A
Drive him to day care or dad's house
Work
Pick A up
Cook dinner
Shower
Play with A
Go to bed.

Good Lord! Its a miracle anything gets done at all. At this point, after having to fight for this tooth and nail, i get TWO Fridays a month where A is with M overnight. No, not two weekends a month. TWO Fri evenings. Pick A up again Sat am. God forbid i actually have some time to be an adult, to be an individual, to be anything else but mom.

I love lil A so much, but M goes out of his way to make me feel like a bad mom for wanting time to myself. I have met others, who assume that as a single mother, i have no right to think, to want anything for myself.  That just makes me mad. Very mad.