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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I too had the brilliant, Simpsons-watching, dependable, "nice guy" boyfriend in my early 20s. He was boring, pretentious at times, and a liar. I left him after four long years. Less than a year later I started graduate school, became severely depressed, and flunked out. I too have a lifetime of being told how brilliant and gifted I am behind me. Today I am an Admin Assistant, oh, and completely alone. I used to wonder where I went wrong. How could I have been reduced to this? But now, four years after the Big Crash, I am a person, not an expectation. I like myself. I work out, I run, I make jewelry, play tennis, write erotica, and now I take science classes on the side so I can go to med school. Oh yeah, I also have been in therapy. You may want to give that a try. I'm of the mindset that everyone could benefit from it.
Listen, graduate students who want to save the world are a dime a dozen, especially 25 year olds who believe their existence is the Second Coming. But a self-aware woman with a grounded sense of self and a goal based on her life experience, not her life expectation, is a little rarer. Forget about the men until you know who you are. You are in no position to judge how suitable they are to your life until you know how you fit into YOUR life.
I think you said it all about relationships being too complicated! funny how many so called " liberals" in both urban and suburban areas seem to view things from that " sex and the city" perspective of " he said/she said" ; or even for LGBT's "she said/she said" , or " he said/he said". I've often felt that once you get far away from all the malls and retail horseshit as well as major employment centers[ overpriced , materialistic yuppie cities/suburbs]; that relationships seem to work much better.
Maybe because Jane and John Doe, or Jane and Jane Doe, from Yreka , California; simply do not expect as much " perfection in love" from one another?
Or is it just that once you get away from those Fifth Ave. Stores and the Sex and the city types whom shop there- there just happens to be less to get in the way of a love relationship's working out for the better even when things seem not that great?
Sometimes I find it funny how many in my own LGBT community, like many here in Salon; seem to view the simpler, rural lifestyle in terms of " redneck" and " big fat trailer trash women"!
As for ' Burning Man' , I had heard of this some years back while reading Relix magazine. But I just thought it was basically another " stoner fest" full of Gen Y Modern "Deadheads"; mixed with the much more common for today, "enlightened" supermale assholes with the shaved head and piercings galore and their " pretty as a princess" girlfriends whom they feel they must "defend and protect" with their muscular masculinity!
Not as complex as the letter writer thinks, not as complex as most of these letter responses make it out to be.
Philosophy guy - yeah, you're sad he broke up with you, that you lost it before you were ready to admit you'd already lost it long ago. But - it's done, and it's more than past time. Anyone that puts that burden on you of always being perfect or else, someone you really don't get along with that well - yeah, it would never have been right.
Doctor guy - IMO - he's a decent guy, who is a bit malleable, got taken in by a bunch of Burning Man anti-realworld pretension, went with it, found out he was wrong. You need some mourning time for your old relationship - but don't turn it into what it wasn't - philosophy guy was what you settled for. Tell Doctor guy you need a little time, then see if the old spark is there, if he really has changed. He was a jerk - but he apologized.
It's just not that complex - figure out who you do and don't want to be with. It's not pretentious to want to do things, change the world, have goals and ambition - that's a good thing, that is how the world changes, how infectious diseases in the third world are cured. Nor is it all that unusual, and grad student focus, however much it may be annoying to those of us who have to live in more complex worlds, is there for a very good reason - to get you through grad school, to learn what you need to know to make a difference. Go for it.
Fake.
I am writing to Salon to object to the lack of bisexuality in Cary's latest column. The article featured three "highly intelligent" faux graduates in their twenties beleaguered by a typical teen drama pretentiously cast as existential angst. Naturally the LW is also suffering from residual sexual confusion in part due to our society's oppressive hetero/homo-normativity. Unfortunately this letter contains no explicit discussion, much less endorsement, of the bisexual/bi-poly lifestyle option. Cary's refusal to engage the subject of bisexuality in an article about our 20-something left-wing intelligentsia only perpetuates the ignorant bi-phobic pressures that plague our national psyche.
I can't imagine a bigger bourgeois cliche than going to Burning Man then ditching plans to go to med school in favor of being a nomad.
These people sound as complex as the characters in Reality Bites -- basically cliches who are driven by their fear of being ordinary.
LW's relationship with each of the boyfriends seems unhealthy and unproductive. And contrary to what the LW states, afternoon tete-a-tetes with an ex-boyfriend while living with the current boyfriend do not seem "on the up and up." Sounds very passive-aggressive to me. It's no wonder that the current bf moved out.
My advice to both suitors would be to run the other way and don't look back.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
