Time stands still...
Whoa! WorldCup frenzy everywhere... honestly I am not really interested in soccer. Still in our departmental soccer bet listing I am the headliner now way ahad with the right bets. Why so? Probably because I do not have any emotional ties on who I want to see win and in my subconscious - by reading the news headlines every day - I know more about soccer than I want to admit...
Otherwise life is quite the same. Job, home, pain, cats. My life is stagnating and although I am quite happy - despite the pain - I feel as if my life really lacks perspectives or a purpose. I lack hope. I lack anything to look forward to. When I look into my future I see a nauseating black abyss without any clue what is waiting for me. In order to be happy I spend money. In order to have anything to look forward to I travel to places I might like, to fill my empty life with some sort of positive events. I do charity to fill this empty life with some sort of purpose. I cook and write to leave traces of myself and be creative. I desperately try to give my life some sort of meaning, but I am failing miserably. I know that my cats will die before I do, that's the only certainty I have. Otherwise everything is open. It is as if nothing would cross my path through time-matter continuity, nothing to look forward to. I don't have any plans, any ambitions, I am a bleak white sheet of paper with no story written on it. I am floating through life like an Amoeba absorbing stuff but without a clear idea of what I am doing.
I gave a speech on Cross Cultural Communication for the Business and Professional Womens Club lately, which really gave me a boost, but otherwise I am not at all confident. It was good to be cheered and admired, something that I had rarely in the last years. But it also made me realize how unhappy I am in my professional life and how everything has been going downhill in my professional career in the last two years.
Yesterday my uncle from Ohio was at our place. He showed me and LordYo pictures of my cousins, the ones im my age well settled, stay-at-home Moms... :-) I really envied them for their family lives. I wonder how LordYo and I will live in 10 years...
In September I'll have a High School reunion. And High School reunions are somehow dreadful because no matter how you want to avoid it, it still ends up in comparisons. Will I envy those classmates who now have children and live a family life, including a house, garden and a dog? Or will I feel happy that I can go on London trips on a whim without bothering about a sitter or spending half my income on daycare.
So what do I have to show for myself. I have a happy relationship (which is more due to my partners good heartedness than myself) and 3 cats (who don't really have a choice) and a job (I don't really love, but don't loathe enough to leave), debts and low self-esteem, and damaged kidneys, first grey hair. My good career days as a Trainer are over, what is left is the hangover of the new economy. I am with some organizations which give me opportunity to meet people outside of work because I am not able to maintain friendships to other women, as they perceive me as threatening or weird or mentally male, because I don't share the common women good/men bad speak. :-)
Allthough I know that a traditional family environment would probably give me the creeps, I envy them for the stability of their lives and their faith in themselves. Their willingness to commit to eachother, their strong values. More than half of the marriages get divorced in the first 10 years, but who cares? Half of them last for at least 10 years! We should start to think positive again.
I'd be hell of a strange mother for sure, like my own probably, who always was better in explaining science than doing motherly stuff, meaning no offence. Maybe I only have a false idea of motherhood and should revise it. The stay at home mothers of most of my friends - even the ones from academic households - were very often straight dumb, nearly illiterate, of no use at all except cooking and wiping and without any wits. Pathetic creatures, not anything I wanted to become. My mother never sought contact with them, retrospectively she was really right to do so. Our family way of raising kids does clearly not fit with Swiss society.
Would I be a bad mother if I'd teach my baby girl to build a stink bomb, instead of taking her to Ballet classes... Could I guarantee her a safe life until she is 18? No, probably not. Maybe my relationship would end, maybe I would have financial problems, she'd have to live with my parents, so that I could get the money in (being not married I'd not have any financial backup for the kid), she'd hate me for failing as a Mom for sure... this is not the way I would want a child to be raised, honestly. If I ever get pregnant, I'd do anything to move away from this country. India, Scandinavia, even France or Canada are welcome alternatives. Did you know that in Finland fulltime daycare from 7 AM to 8 PM only costs 200 Euro at a max per Month??? In Switzerland you pay 2500 per month for 8 to 17 without lunchtime and without school holidays. With that money I'll get myself a cuddly nanny from Estonia instead which would save me additional sitter money.
I guess many of my former classmates won't have kids, so not having kids is not really going to bother me that much. The only thing that will bother me though is that with my 32 years of age I am not married yet. I am fat and wrinkly now, my skin as dry as paper and I have grey streaks in my hair, what a pretty bride I'll be, literally a corpse bride. My chocolate days are over and I really really regret that I did not marry some idiot when I was 19 only for the photographs. Well I was with Pat then and he didn't want to get married ever and he isn't an idiot either. :-) I also regret not having coerced some Chinese guy to pose in a Shanghai Wedding Photo Parlor as groom with me, but anyway. I will not have grandchildren to whom I could lie about "the 3 day romantic marriage of mine with Cheng Lu in Shanghai(incl. annulation)", so it does not really matter.
I know at the reunion I will feel totally dreadful looking at other people's wedding pictures and children photographs and feel empty and worthless inside, as if I lost track in life and somehow was left on a lonely train station out in the Boondocks. I am neither careerist, nor family person, nor guru-seeking hippie. So what am I? A mad cat lady, who will one day sit in her own mess with only cats who comfort her? I am afraid that it will end this bad if I don't change anything about it. I know that the Supermoms will make me poor Dink feel like crap. Still according to demographics probably more than 35% of our class shouldn't have children by now.
I don't know. I am really looking forward to seeing my old friends again, but I also fear and dread the moment. Seeing them will be seeing me and finally facing where I am and where I want to be / should be.
Otherwise life is quite the same. Job, home, pain, cats. My life is stagnating and although I am quite happy - despite the pain - I feel as if my life really lacks perspectives or a purpose. I lack hope. I lack anything to look forward to. When I look into my future I see a nauseating black abyss without any clue what is waiting for me. In order to be happy I spend money. In order to have anything to look forward to I travel to places I might like, to fill my empty life with some sort of positive events. I do charity to fill this empty life with some sort of purpose. I cook and write to leave traces of myself and be creative. I desperately try to give my life some sort of meaning, but I am failing miserably. I know that my cats will die before I do, that's the only certainty I have. Otherwise everything is open. It is as if nothing would cross my path through time-matter continuity, nothing to look forward to. I don't have any plans, any ambitions, I am a bleak white sheet of paper with no story written on it. I am floating through life like an Amoeba absorbing stuff but without a clear idea of what I am doing.
I gave a speech on Cross Cultural Communication for the Business and Professional Womens Club lately, which really gave me a boost, but otherwise I am not at all confident. It was good to be cheered and admired, something that I had rarely in the last years. But it also made me realize how unhappy I am in my professional life and how everything has been going downhill in my professional career in the last two years.
Yesterday my uncle from Ohio was at our place. He showed me and LordYo pictures of my cousins, the ones im my age well settled, stay-at-home Moms... :-) I really envied them for their family lives. I wonder how LordYo and I will live in 10 years...
In September I'll have a High School reunion. And High School reunions are somehow dreadful because no matter how you want to avoid it, it still ends up in comparisons. Will I envy those classmates who now have children and live a family life, including a house, garden and a dog? Or will I feel happy that I can go on London trips on a whim without bothering about a sitter or spending half my income on daycare.
So what do I have to show for myself. I have a happy relationship (which is more due to my partners good heartedness than myself) and 3 cats (who don't really have a choice) and a job (I don't really love, but don't loathe enough to leave), debts and low self-esteem, and damaged kidneys, first grey hair. My good career days as a Trainer are over, what is left is the hangover of the new economy. I am with some organizations which give me opportunity to meet people outside of work because I am not able to maintain friendships to other women, as they perceive me as threatening or weird or mentally male, because I don't share the common women good/men bad speak. :-)
Allthough I know that a traditional family environment would probably give me the creeps, I envy them for the stability of their lives and their faith in themselves. Their willingness to commit to eachother, their strong values. More than half of the marriages get divorced in the first 10 years, but who cares? Half of them last for at least 10 years! We should start to think positive again.
I'd be hell of a strange mother for sure, like my own probably, who always was better in explaining science than doing motherly stuff, meaning no offence. Maybe I only have a false idea of motherhood and should revise it. The stay at home mothers of most of my friends - even the ones from academic households - were very often straight dumb, nearly illiterate, of no use at all except cooking and wiping and without any wits. Pathetic creatures, not anything I wanted to become. My mother never sought contact with them, retrospectively she was really right to do so. Our family way of raising kids does clearly not fit with Swiss society.
Would I be a bad mother if I'd teach my baby girl to build a stink bomb, instead of taking her to Ballet classes... Could I guarantee her a safe life until she is 18? No, probably not. Maybe my relationship would end, maybe I would have financial problems, she'd have to live with my parents, so that I could get the money in (being not married I'd not have any financial backup for the kid), she'd hate me for failing as a Mom for sure... this is not the way I would want a child to be raised, honestly. If I ever get pregnant, I'd do anything to move away from this country. India, Scandinavia, even France or Canada are welcome alternatives. Did you know that in Finland fulltime daycare from 7 AM to 8 PM only costs 200 Euro at a max per Month??? In Switzerland you pay 2500 per month for 8 to 17 without lunchtime and without school holidays. With that money I'll get myself a cuddly nanny from Estonia instead which would save me additional sitter money.
I guess many of my former classmates won't have kids, so not having kids is not really going to bother me that much. The only thing that will bother me though is that with my 32 years of age I am not married yet. I am fat and wrinkly now, my skin as dry as paper and I have grey streaks in my hair, what a pretty bride I'll be, literally a corpse bride. My chocolate days are over and I really really regret that I did not marry some idiot when I was 19 only for the photographs. Well I was with Pat then and he didn't want to get married ever and he isn't an idiot either. :-) I also regret not having coerced some Chinese guy to pose in a Shanghai Wedding Photo Parlor as groom with me, but anyway. I will not have grandchildren to whom I could lie about "the 3 day romantic marriage of mine with Cheng Lu in Shanghai(incl. annulation)", so it does not really matter.
I know at the reunion I will feel totally dreadful looking at other people's wedding pictures and children photographs and feel empty and worthless inside, as if I lost track in life and somehow was left on a lonely train station out in the Boondocks. I am neither careerist, nor family person, nor guru-seeking hippie. So what am I? A mad cat lady, who will one day sit in her own mess with only cats who comfort her? I am afraid that it will end this bad if I don't change anything about it. I know that the Supermoms will make me poor Dink feel like crap. Still according to demographics probably more than 35% of our class shouldn't have children by now.
I don't know. I am really looking forward to seeing my old friends again, but I also fear and dread the moment. Seeing them will be seeing me and finally facing where I am and where I want to be / should be.
gothmala - 26. Jun, 13:37
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