When I was a teenager I thought I wanted fast cars, fast people, bright lights and the big city. My life was so mundane that I wanted someone to come and sweep me away into a new one. So I waited patiently for someone to spin my world around but they didn’t come. My brain constantly resembled a Louise Rennison book: hearts on everything, glitter drenched rainbows over all my dreams. Despite being SO SO IN LOVE all the time I was terrified that someone prettier, or cooler, or smarter, or skinnier, would come along all the time. After all what could anyone want with me when they could be with some raven headed pixie girl who ran her own magazine from the garret of a Georgian mansion?
Biding my time hoping to be dazzled made me bored and grumpy: I was now in my twenties and still waiting. Every day was unbearable. Then I had a revelation. One evening, a shitty rainy Wednesday, against my better judgement I went to see a gig with a friend. At 4am I was standing wrapped in a nothing but a shower curtain on a burning hotel mattress while skinheads danced around me trying to douse the flames with brandy, all of us singing and laughing. And that’s when I realised it: I could be my own adventure.
Maybe it shouldn’t have taken causing a few grand’s worth of damage to an innocent hotel room to realise that but it did. No-one was going to come along and ‘save’ me because I didn’t need saving. All the excitement I wanted was there for the taking: I just needed to reach out and touch it. I’m not saying it’s been some smooth ride since then, nor am I going to claim that my life is a high octane thrill ride, but it’s a damned sight better than looking at every face trying to figure out if they are the one who’s going to inject the glamour into my life. The reason I was so scared of that girl in the garret? She was out there, doing things, not waiting to be found, and I was horribly jealous.
It is killing me to type this, it really is, but waiting to be driven appears to be a, whisper it, girl thing. Boys don’t seem to plan on a jazzy girl coming along and changing everything in their life, unless they’re in an indie film, and then it’ll just be to teach them to get in touch with their feelings (don’t mind me while I barf over here). I don’t want to use the words ‘knight in shining armour’ but that’s exactly what it is. Whether it’s Josh in Clueless rescuing Cher from a life of braindead inanity, or Robin saving Helen from a lifetime of bogey eating in Wetlands, there’s always a man ready to take the wheel and continue the drive. Even in adverts women are constantly being rescued.
But what happens after the credits roll? Once you’ve finished being thankful for your saviour where do you go from there? When I meet my Future Baby Daddy I don’t want to kick it while he decides the course; I want us to be co-pilots, bobsledders, tandem cyclists, or possibly even runners in a three legged race. If I’m hammering this point a bit much it’s because it’s important!! All these stupid dating books I’m reading (for you! not for me! I hate them!), and all the advice I get from my friends, tells me that if I wait ‘he’ will come. Why do I have to wait? If I can take control of my life in every other way then why can’t I take control here? Waiting turns us into slaves to romance. Waiting makes fools of women, it takes us back to the predator/prey idea of relationships, and belittles the efforts that we make to meet someone new.
It’s hard not waiting, almost as hard as waiting, and there are books, tv shows, and nosey old ladies on the bus, who are going to tell you “When you least expect it, they’ll come along, and then everything’ll change!” but I’d rather be getting on with my life and living it the best way I know how, than counting the days on my calendar until he comes along.
Photos by Yann Faucher, blog title stolen from Heartsrevolution‘s awesome song C.Y.O.A
4 Comments
yep, must agree with you.. if you’re talking stereo-typical gender roles, then yeah, it’s supposedly a girl thing to have to wait until the “right” boy comes along and makes the move.. but i think it’s bullshit, to be honest.. the basic truth is that the game has changed and we’re far from “traditional roles” in so many ways, so why should this be any different? and don’t you think it’s true that, aside from the puke inducing indie film dude (well.. in spite of him), there genuinely are guys out there who are “waiting” for the right girl to come along?
but i guess your advice applies to both sexes:)
I think boys are waiting, yes, but it doesn’t seem like they’re waiting in the same way girls are encouraged to. Whereas almost everyone, male and female, seems to be waiting to find someone great, to me it feels like girls are encouraged to wait for someone who will change everything in their life, whereas with boys the person will just come along for a fun ride. If that makes sense? It’s very early in the morning for me…
too early? lol .. no worries.. thanks for the response :)
yeah, that makes sense.. it’s all the fault of the romance novelists damnit!
you’d think by now that we would have gotten past such unrealistic ideals.. but it’s probably just a hang over from the sexist past.. the “house-wife era”.. which is why those old ladies propagate these ideas!
i’d like to believe people are waking up to the fact that these ideals are behind us.. but apparently we still have a long way to go – and perhaps they’re so deeply entrenched that they’ll never be removed
It’s definitely better not waiting around, you experience so much more of life if you don’t. With that said, though, my own adventure-choosing personality is pretty much definitely what keeps me single. It’s tough on anyone I date, because I’m like “hey, moving to London for 6 months! Moving back to the U.S for a few months! Moving back to London for a year! Oops, no, I can’t meet you tomorrow because I’ll be in Manchester not London. Sorry I never answered yr texts the other day but I was in Berlin seeing this band etc etc…” and there’s so much ME going on that there’s not a whole lot of room for any HIMS in there, unless they’re content to be dragged around like a suitcase after me. :S