the quirky girl's conundrum

More from xkcd here.

the holiday reclamation project

My friend D. once told me that occasionally he will stop and question everything he thinks he believes about himself. Does he really want to live in a city? Does he really want to do the kind of work he's been doing? I remember feeling shocked when he told me this. Who does that? What happens when you periodically undermine your identity?

Because D. revealed this to me shortly after the Fourth of July, the first belief about myself that I threw out there is that I detest holidays. They unleash a normally subdued part of me that hates to be told what to do. I love to give gifts, but not because it's some day in December and everyone else is doing it. I love to go to parties, but I don't enjoy being made to feel like a sociopath if I opt out for New Year's Eve. I won't even touch Valentine's Day. So it was with some difficulty that I asked myself what it would look like if I didn't hate the holidays.

Thus began the holiday reclamation project. Beginning this year, I have taken back the holidays. First up was Thanksgiving, and as many of you know, I hosted the First Annual Orphans & Singles Thanksgiving Potluck. I intend to make this a yearly event, upon which orphans and singles across the globe (who happen to be my friends) can depend and arrange their travel plans accordingly. Each year when Christmas arrives, having visited my family earlier in the season when travelling is not a nightmare, I will depart for a three-day yoga retreat at one of the many beautiful sanctuaries within driving distance of my home. I will make sure to return in time for New Year's Eve, in anticipation of which I will have secured tickets for me and my single girlfriends/latest suitor to an enviable live music event.

As unbelievable as it may have been earlier this year, I think there's hope that I will one day be someone who - ugh, it's still hard to write it - loves the holidays.

what I do not want for christmas...

...your pity.

If I choose to remain in the city where I live and not travel 3000 miles with 3,000,000 other people in order to visit my family, there's a really good chance I may spend the day distinctly not celebrating Christmas. I may watch a DVD (this is an excellent choice), read a book, work on my novel, do some laundry, talk on the phone, cook an elaborate meal or eat mac & cheese, take a nap, blog, make a mixed CD, go hiking, finally write my Christmas cards...in other words, anything and everything that strikes my fancy. How many people - struggling to maintain their self-esteem while being pummeled by their relatives' probing questions and passive-aggressive put-downs - would love to spend the day the way I get to? More than a few, I would suspect.

Therefore, I do not need you to call me on Christmas and repeatedly ask me what I'm going to do - your voice dripping with condescending concern - even after I have told you I'm going to do whatever I damn well please. And yes, I'm more than OK.

holiday cards

Have you ever noticed that single people (or maybe more accurately, people without children) do not send those photo holiday cards? Is it good for my mental health to receive all these reminders of everyone else's "perfect families?" OK, the kids are cute, it's interesting to see how they've grown since last year. What's keeping me from doing one with my best travel photo of the year - just me or me and a friend or me and the scenery? I know my friends with families envy my travel opportunites. But my holiday cards serve the purpose of letting people know I value them. These photo cards seem to say (to me at least) here's what I want you to know about me and mine, not here's what I want you to know about my feelings for you. I don't think I've ever received an annual newsletter from a single person either. There isn't time to be writing blog entries while trying to survive the holidays and yet it's a perfect time to start a blog on this topic since the holidays provide constant reminders of how being partnered is supposed to be the goal.

welcome

"My dear, to a brighter future - when there will not be so many forced marriages, and women will be taught not to feel theirs a destiny manqué, nor the threat of poor spinsterhood, should they remain single." - British Woman, 1859

"A woman alone is an atrocity! An act against nature. Unmarried women pose a grave danger...our great civilization could decline...the larger health of the nation is at stake." - British MP, 1922

"I am so lonely I could die. I wake, realize I don't have a boyfriend and put my head in the oven...I go to parties, night classes, museums, various clubs and mixers with my eyelashes curled hopefully and am wracked with disappointment to find only more hopeful women with curled eyelashes. I go to dinner parties and my throat seizes up with envy as I watch the happy couples, who are my friends. My nights are long with longing. Grief. Also, I have a large bridge in New York to sell you. Ho. Ho. Ho." - Cynthia Heimel, Playboy, 1987

All quotes from Betsy Israel's Bachelor Girl