I Have No Title for This Mess. . .

I have a friend whose home is covered in adorably monogrammed lampshades. In every nook and cranny, there is a perfectly appointed piece of furnture. There are polka-dots and stripes. There are exact fitting slipcovers of clean, ecru canvas. There are "window treatments." There is an actual, God help me, APRON hanging on a hook in her adorable kitchen. And she uses it. She and a majority of her friends are all similar in that they are tasteful to the nth degree. They are perfect in their graduated pearls and J. Crew and baby-makingness. And when I am with them, through no one's fault (certainly not theirs!), I feel so dirty and strange. I feel like Pigpen next to Charlie Brown. I feel like Cinderella. . .LONG before the prince and the shoe and the ball. I feel like Joan Jett standing next to Sandra Dee.

I see them in their petit-four life and I think I want to be that. I think it would make me. . .better somehow? I want to be a homemaker and a mommy and clean and pure and . . .and. . .and. . .who am I kidding? None of those things are anything I will ever be and to assume that I could glue those feathers on and pass for a peacock is a disaster in the making.

Several years ago, when I was married to First-Husband, we were close friends with three couples. The wives in that circle were these amazing Earth Mother types. They drank smoothies before I ever know what the hell a smoothie was. They made their own perfumes and soaps and earth-friendly cleaners. They wore these clothes that were so hippie-ish and strange and exotic. ..yet pulled together like the finest fashionista. They made slings out of batik in which to carry their babies. They were She. They were Woman. They were Earth Mothers.

And I stuck out, like a sore thumb. . .not all of the time. . .but some of the time,much of the time. . .like the time I stood swaddled in a lambskin leather jacket at a vegan's birthday celebration (true story). 

To belong, I wanted to be so like them. They seemed so authentic, so good. To be dearer to my husband's heart, I wanted to be more like them. You know, because when someone says "Why can't you be more like Lale?" you think that's what they want. To be more like HER (Lale, Lauriel, Carman, etc.) Somehow whatever they were was more pleasing that whatever I was. Whatever I am. And so help me, I tried to be. I tried to be Earth Motherly and kind. I tried to make my own cleaning solutions and. . .hell. . .I tried to clean the house, which was something I was never naturally inclined to do. I tried to read The Celestine Prophecy and the Hippie Kama Sutra and How to Make Your Own Cosmetics Using Cow Poop and Other Assorted Sundries Not Chemically Enhanced by the Science of Man. I tried and tried and tried until I looked in the mirror and saw some strange, pale, unadorned woman staring back at me with a puzzled face as she contemplated the pros and cons of dreadlocks. And in a sudden surge of anger, I took the scissors to my still shiny waist length hair and chopped it up off to my shoulders. "WHO ARE YOU?" I did not know at the time, but I knew what I wasn't. I wasn't a god damn hippie (not that there's anything wrong with that), I wasn't someone who agreed that "veggie-dogs tasted just like the real thing" and I wasn't someone who didn't shave their pits or pubes; nor was I anyone who could, in good conscience, go skinny dipping with a crowd of other hippie-like people. Skinning dipping is good. It's GREAT . . .if that's what you're into. But trying to force this pony into the pond of frolicking nudity was just not something that was going to happen. And hemp. Screw hemp. And hacky sacks and making your own ANYTHING that you can buy in a store.

It wasn't long after that I bleached my newly cropped hair blond, in it's uneven bob a la "Posh Spice." (Which leads me to believe that when Posh debuted that hairstyle several years later, it wasn't an intentional style her hairdresser created. Either he slipped with the scissors or sister was peeved at all of Beck's footballing or whatever and took a whack at it herself.)

No longer was I "Amy Trying to Be a Hippie," I was "Amy So Angry She's About to Get Divorced and Tear This Entire Playhouse Down." 

And as you can plainly see, it wasn't only my identity crisis that caused the demise of my marriage. It was something more along the lines of two utterly and completely different species' inability to effectively communicate with each other. Of course, the frustration at my not knowing who to be, how to act, what role to play only fueled the fires of turning "I love you" into "I hate you so much I want to hit you with a baseball bat." 

While I've been able to leave my communication issues behind and while I am currently (very happily) married to someone who, while still a foreign species to me, at least understands my language, I still have occasional bouts of trying to identify with other members of my tribe.

Most recently, I observe my preppier counter parts with wonder. They exude furious competence at having both careers AND being June Cleaver. And from time to time, I try on this persona.  I try to be preppy and cute and wear madras and Ralph Lauren. Or I try my hand at crafting amazing birthday party decorations: big flower poofs made out of fragile tissue paper to hang from the ceiling for my niece's first birthday. I made ONE. I had to enlist every female I knew plus my artistic step-son in order to get the rest of those bastards made. Mine looked like a wad of trash, while everyone else's looked exactly like Martha Stewart promised they would on MarthStewartEvenThoughIWenttoJailI'mStillWAYBetterThanYou.com. 

And the other night, I even tried to make a sit-down dinner for my husband and his sons. I called him to find out whether we had one or both boys (we have a fun schedule where each kid gets alone time with mom and dad PLUS together time, like a real family. It's different, but pretty cool.) and when he asked me why, well, I told him.

Silence.

"Ummm. What brought this on? You want to make. . .dinner?"

"Yes."

"Well, you know. . .the grill is broken, so you can't grill anything."

"Yes. I know. I know that. I'm going to actually COOK."

"What are you going to make?"

"I don't know, really. I was just going to wander around the store and. . ."

"Well, we only have Kid Two tonight and he's spending the night out and. . ."

"Oh. O.K. Well, I can make it just for us then."

"Weeeee-eee-lllll, see, I already had stuff out and ready to go for dinner. Why don't you save your efforts for another night?"

I love my husband. And I know he loves me. But his lack of enthusiasm perturbed me a little. Though this was NOT his message at all, the message I received was "What are you thinking, psycho? You can't cook. You suck. I hate you. You're a terrible wife." And because of that, I was angry at him for hours. Until, of course, he came home and poked and prodded me enough to make me shout all of those sentiments - saying thing he never said, accusing him of feelings he never felt. Thankfully, he knows me. He can at least decipher my foreign language.

I cried about not being all pink skinned and home-makery. I cried about my continued struggle to understand why the words "having a baby" don't stir up anything in my heart. I managed to eke out that didn't understand why I can't be soft and pretty and look good in pearls and cardigans. I begged him to tell me why I feel like an impostor. I cried and bet him that most of those girls have never done the ridiculous thing that my brain chemistry will have me do. (Overspend, believe delusions of grandeur, go missing for an entire day because someone said something to me that triggered something else. . .that made me go on auto-pilot and drive to Columbia, buy a ticket for a Gamecocks game and sit in the stands and watch until half-time. . .then leave. I can't see them ever alienating people by saying something thoughtless, filter-less. . .not intending to hurt, just. . .it just comes out. And kind people laugh and say "At least you're honest." It's not honesty. It's mental illness.)

As usual, in his Taoist, Zen-like way, he said "Just BE, dear. Don't worry about HOW or WHO. Just BE. That way, you don't need to know who you are" He asked "Why the panic? So, you aren't meant to be whatever it is you think someone else is. Whatever. And you have no idea what it's like to be them. You see them and they are perfect. You have no idea of what goes on when they aren't looking. You have no idea whether they struggle or they don't. They could be wrestling with themselves. Some of them might even see aspects of your persona that they want to try on."

That statement, of course, stopped me cold. Who in the HELL would want to pick up ANY trait of mine? I swear a LOT and I don't like children. (I mean, I like SOME children, but as a general rule, children are not my favorite people.) I give human traits to all of my pets. I laugh at really gross, childish and vulgar things. I can be incredibly rude when provoked.   My mood changes hard and fast with the slightest drop in barometric pressure. I am . . . I am not "good."

Furthermore, I don't want to think of my loving, monogrammed, shiny friends as anything but perfectly happy. I mean, sure, we all have our issues here and there, but to think of any of them as unhappy is unsettling to me. I don't want that for them. I want them to stay as they are in my mind: Perfect. Someone needs to be perfect, right?

Thankfully, my husband just laughs off my insecure hysteria every time it raises its ugly head. He's seen it all. That's the benefit of him being 20 years my senior (give or. . .err. . .give a few years), he's seen it all. He's already felt what I've felt. He knows how I want to feel and God help him, he has every confidence that I will one day, feel how I want to feel.

But how do I want to feel? I don't know. 

I think I want to feel GOOD. ALL. OF. THE. TIME. 

I think I want to look in a mirror and think "You're alright."

I think that I want to feel comfortable with who I am. . .even if I don't know who I am supposed to be.

I say all of these things and know that despite the investment into cardigans and a strand of (totally fake) pearls last year, I am still me. I still have style, but it's my style. And my style is kind of unkempt, kind of rock n' roll, kind of "I don't know what the f**k I'm doing." And while my style is devoid of all that I believe J. Crew and pearls encompass, it's still. . .mine, I guess. It's the only style in which I DON'T feel like a total fraud.

So, I'm sorry folks, I guess this is. . .what you get. Please accept my sincerest apologies and the fact that I am wearing man-boots with a dress today. xoxo

(*In an odd twist of fate, the writer currently drinks hemp milk, entirely of her own volition, because she's pissed off about how cows are treated. She is also (gulp) for the most part, a vegetarian. Some restrictions apply. Readers' entitlement to know more is based on an average credit score and. . .)