Motherhood Sucks

I have written extensively about Women and particularly Motherhood and the larger Mommy Blogger Scene that has risen like a flood and a tide that has become a cottage industry of its own. We have reformed Mothers, converted Mothers, Christian Mothers, Aged Mothers, Royal or “former” Royal Mothers, Hot Mothers, Grandmothers, Lesbian or once straight Mothers, and all of them versed well in what defines being a Working Mother. That is a redundancy in and of itself as all Mothers are. We revere the concept of Motherhood yet not all of us should be nor want to be. Ah yes that is the question.

And while every day when you are a Mother is Mother’s day there are many many Women who have elected to not be Mothers. We are obsessed with Mothers and we are sure that again in our faux Meritocracy that it is some type of intrinsic failure to be a mother. We have Women who go to great lengths to be Mothers and hire women when all else fails to be one for them. We are sure any Woman wants to be a Mother and if not why not? I got 99 reasons and do you really care or is this again somehow about you? I feel that is our society now, it is always about me, no you, no I mean I. As My Mother used to say, “What are you an Eye Specialist?” I’ll let that sink in.

I realized the other day why I am shitty at interpersonal relationships. I don’t care. I used to try and it was over the top, as I thought if I tried real hard to care I would. It doesn’t work that way. Not a day goes by thanking myself that I did not have a child. I do believe we see all relationships as a type of a Mirror and I have used that euphemism repeatedly when it comes to Children. They see themselves as a reflection of the Adult holding it. And that is a bag of mixed nuts right there. And we do that with our Adult ones trying to find a reasonable compliment to our own view of self. As mine changes frequently anyone in a partnership with me would have to be a shape shifter. I loathe the expression finding a Partner just like Mom or Dad, YIKES, paternal incest how charming. And with that I duplicated my Parents marriage to a perfect imitation where we were literally in a Marriage of one. I liked it, he did not. And with that I moved on and out and about and he is in what I believe his 15th year of Marriage with someone who I assume gets him in ways I had no interest. No regrets what.so.ever. I learned something, got something from it and with that I am happy to be alone. I would enjoy genuine friendship/companionship but I do not miss day to day routines and I especially do not miss Sex. I can handle that one on my own.

People do confuse Intimacy with Sexuality and I realize that again I liked them in their own lanes and now perhaps at this age it seems to make sense more and with that I tried to hard to co-join them like bad Siamese Twins. (I believe that term is of course outdated and will the language Police give me the new and approved one) It takes a lot to realize that the difference between the two and I often think that is why when Women have children all of that unconditional love, the endless obsession and desire about what that is is now directed to the child. And that in turn is as equally smothering, damaging and destructive, it just takes longer to see the results. Much is often made of those Couples that have distinct relationships outside of Parenthood and those are thought of as Outliers who are selfish, weird or eccentric. And there are many Women wish they had not; The irony that the most famous Authors of Children’s books hated or did not have kids. The Cat is not in that hat. This is what we do as adults, make adults ones and leave the child behind.

The word CHOICE is being heavily bandied about of late as it is regards to decisions that surround Pregnancy. The move to make any type of option outside of carrying a Child to term is being now decided by the States, the same States that think Drag Shows and Drag Queen Reading Hour is a some type a recruitment mission or a pedophile on patrol. They are sure that Trans Men and Women are a threat to Bathroom freedoms and sporting shenanigans. I recall the scandal of the Women of the East German Swim Team. “Gosh Grunhilda can really do the backstroke, check out those shoulders!” I still will go to my own death bed believing it is about fucking and dicks. I can see a (fill in the blank word) Man standing at the Urinal and the guy next to whips out a foot long or he sees the feet in the closed stall facing forward. And the other is that the hot chick next to him is in fact a Trans Woman with still a Penis. Fucking or Pissing are two essential dominant factors in men’s thought process and then sports. See that is the Trans obsession.

Women I assume have less interest in where that dick is. We get bored of sex early on. How many Dick pics can you see where you think, “Haven’t I seen this in a Museum and wasn’t it better?” And when you love sex as I once did, it takes one too many dicks after a time where you think “God please let’s end this now as I got shit to do.” It will be a cold day in hell when I shove a dick down my throat ever again. That gag reflex is restored thankfully.

So when not planning the career life that will be crashed by Men in some way shape or another; That the Aging Parent that you now have to care for like a child will occur or that at some point you will be required to drop one from your Uterus or hire someone else to do it for you in both cases. I do wonder is that due to biological problems? And in turn that may be a sign that you should not breed or for some other reason that has little to do with fertility that demands you become a Parent. And then it begins.

When I read this essay from the Sister of Frank Bruni, the former NY Times columnist, I thought it was actually true. Children are not your clones and with that it explains again much of the Mommy Industry. When you can’t have a career you pimp your children. It is like Mama June only not making your kid a stripper.

Success for my children meant finding their own paths, not retracing mine

By Adelle Kirk

Every year, without fail, about 20 of my best female friends from college and I reunite for a long weekend. It’s not always easy to pull off; we’re career women, wives, mothers, busily “having it all,” which means having almost no free time. But we relish traveling back across the decades together. We reminisce about the nights spent dancing to Liquid Pleasure, our favorite 1980s band. We laugh about the sleepless fog we lived through our senior spring as we tried to finish the thesis papers required to graduate.

Then, inevitably, the talk turns from our antics back in the day to our kids today. To the trials they put us through or the challenges of parenting that no one saw coming. Some of our kids have real limitations. Others are quietly defiant. Still others are outright rebellious. But a single common thread runs through our observations and complaints about them: Why can’t they be more like we were?

We’re no doubt seeing our pasts through rose-colored glasses when we ask that. We’re also measuring our kids with the yardsticks of the academic accolades that we accrued, the elite university where we got our cherished diplomas, the big jobs we snagged, the fairy-tale parents we expected to be. We want exactly — and I mean exactly — the same for them.

But is that concerned parenting or simple vanity? Are we trying to encourage and shape authentic individuals or create clones of ourselves?

The positive spin is that the path we’re best equipped to help them navigate is the one we took, so we’re simply giving them the surest set of directions we can. There’s truth in that and in our desires, heartfelt and understandable, to make certain that they and we continue to have the same bearings, enjoy the same interests, speak the same language. It’s a way of holding them close as long as possible. It’s a recipe for lifelong friendship.

Now that they are young adults, I look back at my two children’s youths, and I see, over and over, me frantically trying to determine who they’d be rather than letting them discover who they really were. I’d been on my high school swimming and basketball teams, so my son needed sports of his own, and I forced him to play football and lacrosse, though what he loved was watching, not participating in, both. As soon as I got an inkling that he was better with numbers than with words, I bought verbal SAT books for him every summer and spent endless hours playing editor on his high school papers. He had to find a route to well-rounded academic excellence.

With my daughter, it was much the same. I rotated her through one sport after another, intent that she also follow in my footsteps. Alas, she was more an artist than an athlete — but that was OK! I loved theater in high school and performed in countless plays throughout college. So I pushed and pushed in that direction, a backstage tiger mother with a mighty roar.

I now realize that I wasn’t simply and benignly motivating my children. I was probably giving them the constant feeling that they were disappointing me, that their natural interests, talents and drive were never enough. That’s by far my biggest regret as a parent — not that neither of them has my alma mater, not that neither of them was all-American in lacrosse, not that neither of them had a precocious turn on a Broadway stage. I worry that neither of them understood how little I really cared about that. And that’s because I didn’t understand it myself.

Somehow, they survived. The credit goes entirely to them. My son prospers at a top-notch public university, where his major and his side interests bear absolutely no relation to mine at his age. He’s happy. My daughter decided that college wasn’t for her — at least not now — and took a job in the restaurant industry in a city halfway across the country from our New Jersey home. I visited her there recently. I ate where she works and watched her in action. She moved with a confidence that wasn’t always there before. She moved with joy.

So what was the tug of war that I went through with them — and that so many of my friends go through with their children — all about? What was the point? The gift our children give us is their individuality, and they develop strength of character not by emulating or outdoing us but by finding their own ways once we finally let them. That destination may not be one we ever imagined. But in being a surprise, it can be a special delight.

I try to embrace different yardsticks for my children now: their contentment, their fulfillment. And I genuinely admire their decisions and their determination to live their lives on their own terms. Maybe I’m just mellowing in my advancing age, or maybe they’ve taught me something crucial about the tyranny of precise expectations and the liberty of sloughing those off. When I swap parenting stories with my college classmates during our next weekend together, I won’t lament what my children haven’t done or may never do or the degree to which they aren’t replicas of me. I’ll celebrate their originality. Or — imagine this — I won’t hold them up for inspection at all.

On a Personal Note

Over the years, Frank has used his newsletters and columns to write at length about our family, including his relationships with our two brothers — Mark and Harry — and me. So I thought I’d seize this opportunity to give you my perspective on his. It’s not so much a correction of the record as a refinement and an elaboration.

He says that we’re big eaters and loud talkers. True. I mean, we’re (half) Italian. It’s in the genes.

He says that we take pains to carve out time for trips together. Also true.

But I’m not sure he gives you a full and accurate sense of how he fits into the group. As the second-born boy, he wasn’t the natural leader of our pack; that role fell to Mark, the firstborn, who cast a long shadow for Frank to grow up in. Frank also didn’t fly somewhat under our parents’ radar, the way Harry, the youngest of my three older brothers, did. And he wasn’t the pampered baby of the family, a long-awaited daughter. I drew that lucky card.

So Frank became, well, the family’s narrator. Its chronicler. We often turned to him to describe what we were going through, to put it into words (and this was before he went ahead and did that for a living). I can still remember the puzzled expressions on Mark’s and Harry’s faces when Frank sometimes came out with a verb or an adjective they’d never heard of. He was sort of like an SAT prep guide on legs. And if I’m being honest, he could be a little lordly — that’s a Frank kind of word — about it.

While we’re on the subject of his foibles, I should give you my view of his caretaking of Regan, given how frequently he regales you with tales about her. It’s … obsessive. He agonizes if he has walked her less than five miles on a given day; he’s stupidly happy if he has gone over eight. My dogs always gyrate with excitement when Frank and Regan drop by, because he’ll take them along for one of these marathons or force me to bring them along.

Oh, and on those family trips? No one else suggests that cocktail hour begin quite as early in the afternoon as Frank does.

He’s the only sibling each of us calls regularly. I’m not sure why, but it works out that way. He and I talk almost daily, often at some early morning hour when the ring of my phone beats my alarm because Frank is already up and (you guessed it) out walking Regan.

He’s generous — to me, to my children, to his other nieces and nephews. He’s generous with his time, with his confidences, with his advice (which is pretty good), with his gossip (which is even better). Heck, he’s even generous with his newsletter space, giving it to me this week. I’m grateful. And I thank you, too, for indulging me.

Life Loving

In the reality of our world, women do give life and with that we need to celebrate it. But we also know that for many it is CHOICE one makes. I chose not and have been grateful that I had access to Birth Control and came of age in a time of Safe Sex ensuring that I was healthy and disease free. I was assaulted on Feb 9, 2012 and do not know what happened to me that night other than I was found unconscious in my wrecked car. My memory erased not only by the injury I sustained but what a drug test in the hospital found the presence of a substance commonly known as Date Rape drugs, Benzodiazapine. I did not knowingly or willingly take the drug as I left my date briefly to use the rest room and the rest is all a blur. But with that I realized that I had no power no recourse and no way of ever getting justice. Today only served to remind me of that.

Anne Sexton’s poem came to me after the day where she celebrates her being able to keep her Uterus after a scare where they thought she would have to have a hysterectomy. Ann was a fantastic poet who had two children by the time she was 21 and with that suffered immensely from what we now know is referred to as Post-partum depression. In and out of hospitals for what were the better part of her life, she was still a fantastic poet who wrote of the mysticism and reality of life of being a woman in the world of her now. She sadly took her life at age 46 and I wonder if had she had better care she would have lived a full life in which to flourish. The implied bias and neglect in medicine when it comes to women has not changed much and I know that from my own experience and that of others. We have not come a long way baby and that was proven today.

In Celebration of My Uterus

By Anne Sexton

Everyone in me is a bird.

I am beating all my wings.   

They wanted to cut you out   

but they will not.

They said you were immeasurably empty   

but you are not.

They said you were sick unto dying   

but they were wrong.

You are singing like a school girl.   

You are not torn.

Sweet weight,

in celebration of the woman I am

and of the soul of the woman I am

and of the central creature and its delight   

I sing for you. I dare to live.

Hello, spirit. Hello, cup.

Fasten, cover. Cover that does contain.   

Hello to the soil of the fields.

Welcome, roots.

Each cell has a life.

There is enough here to please a nation.

It is enough that the populace own these goods.   

Any person, any commonwealth would say of it,   

“It is good this year that we may plant again   

and think forward to a harvest.

A blight had been forecast and has been cast out.”

Many women are singing together of this:   

one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,   

one is at the aquarium tending a seal,   

one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,   

one is at the toll gate collecting,

one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,   

one is straddling a cello in Russia,

one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,

one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,   

one is dying but remembering a breakfast,   

one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,   

one is wiping the ass of her child,

one is staring out the window of a train   

in the middle of Wyoming and one is   

anywhere and some are everywhere and all   

seem to be singing, although some can not   

sing a note.

Sweet weight,

in celebration of the woman I am

let me carry a ten-foot scarf,

let me drum for the nineteen-year-olds,

let me carry bowls for the offering

(if that is my part).

Let me study the cardiovascular tissue,

let me examine the angular distance of meteors,   

let me suck on the stems of flowers

(if that is my part).

Let me make certain tribal figures

(if that is my part).

For this thing the body needs

let me sing

for the supper,   

for the kissing,   

for the correct   

yes.

I VANT TO BE ALONE

For those too young to recall that infamous statment by the late acrtes Greta Garbo, it was in response to her leaving the fame and fortune of Hollywood for a live of privacy. It was actually a little more of both theatricality and reality:

Her aversion to publicity and the press was undeniably genuine, and exasperating to the studio at first. In an interview in 1928, she explained that her desire for privacy began when she was a child, stating “as early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I detest crowds, don’t like many people.” But MGM eventually capitalized on it, for it bolstered the image of the silent and reclusive woman of mystery.

She is closely associated with a line from Grand Hotel, one which the American Film Institute in 2005 voted the 30th most memorable movie quote of all time, “I want to be alone; I just want to be alone.” The theme became a running gag beginning in her silent pictures.

And then I read the article below from NY Mag and some of them I did laugh as many of those women quoted are more infamous for the love affairs and marriages they had during their time of “alone-ness.”

25 Famous Women on Being Alone
By Julie Ma
NY MAG

“That old-maid myth is garbage.” —Diane Keaton \

Depending on who you are, the very thought of spending time alone will send your heart racing with delight or despair. For extroverts, alone time can be an almost-withering experience. For introverts, it can be a crucial sanctuary and a chance to recharge.

While the days of openly calling single women “old maids,” “spinsters,” or “cat ladies” are nearing extinction, the social stigma surrounding ladies who are uncoupled by choice or by chance still runs deep. Below, 25 accomplished women — including Shonda Rhimes and Diane Keaton — discuss what being alone and living as single, independent women means to them.

Shonda Rhimes

“I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but I only ever write about one thing: being alone. The fear of being alone, the desire to not be alone, the attempts we make to find our person, to keep our person, to convince our person to not leave us alone, the joy of being with our person and thus no longer alone, the devastation of being left alone. The need to hear the words: You are not alone … Every single time it comes down to one thing. You are not alone. Nobody should be alone. So I write.” — Human Rights Campaign’s Los Angeles gala, March 2015

Mindy Kaling

“It’s funny, I used to freak out about being single much more in my twenties. I’ve noticed that the more professional success I have, or the more happy I am professionally, the less I worry about that because I have a great deal of professional confidence. I’ve noticed whenever I’ve felt the most boy crazy or when I wanted to get married it was when I was not so happy professionally. I have this thing and it’ll happen like five times a year on a Sunday night, the feeling like, Oh, a family would be great. Not even being in a relationship — but a family because I’m 35. I think what snaps me out of it is just the fact that I love being by myself. I think that if I was in the wrong relationship, which I have been in several, that would be so much worse than the feeling of autonomy I feel right now.” — BuzzFeed, March 2015

Rebecca Traister

“It’s nuts that people assume singlehood to be an immature period, just because it’s an unmarried period. Living singly in your twenties and thirties — and beyond — isn’t a tryout for life: It is real life … The expanding population of unmarried women, especially low-income women, is going to force — I hope — the government to acknowledge that women are not reliant on husbands as earners and cannot simply be home with children or pick them up from school every day. Social policy must reckon with single women and the fact that they require the same kind of economic aid and consideration from the government that men have received since its founding, i.e., tax breaks, improved housing policy, more welfare, paid leave.” —Elle, February 2016

Susan Cain

“People sometimes seem surprised when I say this, because I’m a pretty friendly person. This is one of the greatest misconceptions about introversion. We are not anti-social; we’re differently social. I can’t live without my family and close friends, but I also crave solitude. I feel incredibly lucky that my work as a writer affords me hours a day alone with my laptop. I also have a lot of other introvert characteristics, like thinking before I speak, disliking conflict, and concentrating easily … introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward. In our culture, snails are not considered valiant animals — we are constantly exhorting people to ‘come out of their shells’ — but there’s a lot to be said for taking your home with you wherever you go.” —Scientific American, January 2012

Susan Sarandon

“[Being alone]’s been a lot of different things. It’s traumatic and exhilarating. The one thing that’s been really clear to me is that you have to think of your own life and your relationship and everything as a living organism. It’s constantly moving, changing, growing. I think long-term relationships need to be constantly reevaluated and talked about.” —Reuters, March 2012

Stevie Nicks

“Most women would not be happy being me. People say, ‘But you’re alone.’ But I don’t feel alone. I feel very un-alone. I feel very sparkly and excited about everything. I know women who are going, like, ‘I don’t want to grow old alone.’ And I’m like, ‘See, that doesn’t scare me.’ Because I’ll never be alone. I’ll always be surrounded by people. I’m like the crystal ball and these are all the rings of Saturn around me … My generation fought very hard for feminism, and we fought very hard to not be labeled as you had to have a husband or you had to be in a relationship, or you were somehow not a cool chick. And now I’m seeing that start to come around again, where people say to you, ‘Well, what do you mean you don’t have a boyfriend? You don’t want to have one? You don’t want to be married?’ And you’re like, ‘Well, no, I don’t, actually. I’m fine.’ And they find a lot of reasons why you’re not fine. But it just seems to be coming back. Being able to take care of myself is something that my mom really instilled in me. I can remember her always saying, ‘If nothing else, I will teach you to be independent.’” — Vulture, June 2013

Carrie Brownstein

“I think alone time is good to know how to be alone with your own thoughts. I think it just helps you kind of be a better, more grounded person … and also I feel like it builds a sense of self confidence and a sureness that you know that you can venture out into experiences without the crutch of other people. Like, you’re not doing it because you feel lonely or isolated, but because it generates a new kind of experience.” — Spin, October 2015

Katharine Hepburn

“I put on pants 50 years ago and declared a sort of middle road. I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I’ve just done what I damn well wanted to and I’ve made enough money to support myself and I ain’t afraid of being alone.” — the New York Times, May 1981

Chelsea Handler

“It’s not just O.K. to be single for both men and women — it’s wonderful to be single, and society needs to embrace singlehood in all its splendiferous, solitary glory. Next time you see a single woman, instead of asking her where her boyfriend, husband or eunuch is, congratulate her on her accomplished sense of self and for reaching the solitary mountaintop by herself without a ring on her finger weighing her down like a male paperweight. Without single women and their impressive sense of self, we’d be without Queen Elizabeth I, Marie-Sophie Germain, Susan B. Anthony, Florence Nightingale, Jane Austen, Harper Lee, Diane Keaton, Greta Garbo, Jane Goodall and me, myself and I. Being single is delightfully more than it’s cracked up to be … if you can stand the horror of your own company, that is.” — Time, May 2016

Fran Lebowitz

“That I am totally devoid of sympathy for, or interest in, the world of groups is directly attributable to the fact that my two greatest needs and desires — smoking cigarettes and plotting revenge — are basically solitary pursuits. Oh, sure, sometimes a friend or two drops by and we light up together and occasionally I bounce a few vengeance ideas around with a willing companion, but actual meetings are really unnecessary.” — The Fran Lebowitz Reader, November 1994

Leandra Medine

“When I’m left by myself and I have some time to be alone, that’s the time I have to recuperate and re-validate how I am feeling about myself. That’s always when I feel like I’m being given an opportunity to really start to love myself again — it’s a really special time. I think that women think they’re afraid to be alone, but they’re conflating fear with discomfort. Dealing with that discomfort is so important.” — Paper magazine, February 2015

Diane Keaton

“I remember when I was young I honestly believed in some ridiculous way that you would find someone who would be the person you lived with until you died. I don’t think that because I’m not married it’s made my life any less. That old-maid myth is garbage.” — Wenn, July 2001

Jennifer Lawrence

“It’s not a sad thing to be alone. I think what I was trying to get across was that I don’t feel a lack of something not being in a relationship. I don’t feel like there is a hole to be filled … An emotional hole to be filled. My dad’s here!” — TimesTalks, December 2015

Constance Wu

“I’d rather lose all my stuff than lose myself, because I’ve done that before, and that feels way worse. I don’t have the best family life. I’m not going to have a sob story and be like, my parents abandoned me, because they didn’t. But they also are not that present. When I’m alone, I’m alone. I don’t have anybody to call, and so I have to create meaning from myself. That’s why I don’t give a fuck, because I can’t lose anything. What I have I make myself.” — Vulture, June 2016

Cheryl Strayed

“Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.” — Wild, March 2012

Rashida Jones

“I had the full princess fantasy: the white horse, the whole being saved from my life, which is ridiculous. What do I want to be saved from? My life’s great! But it’s just this weird thing that’s been hammered into my head culturally: that’s the only way to succeed, that’s the only thing that counts for a woman. I’m happy, but the fact that I’m not married and don’t have kids — it’s taken me a long time to get to a place where I actually am OK with that, where I actually don’t feel like I’m some sort of loser.” — The Guardian, February 2014

Julie Delpy

“Too many women throw themselves into romance because they’re afraid of being single, then start making compromises and losing their identity. I won’t do that.” — San Jose Mercury News, December 1997

Joan Rivers

“I’m so independent now, I’m so set in my ways … I hate the part where I come home from a trip and there’s no one to call. And I miss the Sundays doing nothing together. But I do like my freedom … I won’t go to a restaurant alone, because people will say, ‘Oh I saw poor Joan Rivers.’ … I do [go to parties alone] — but I dislike it. I am very shy when I don’t know people. I had to go to Charles and Camilla’s wedding alone and that was so difficult. I mean wonderful when I got there but very hard arriving.” — The Guardian, August 2005

Audrey Hepburn

“I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel.” — LIFE, December 1953

Yoko Ono

“The precious part of my day is when I’m alone. When everybody goes home and (son) Sean’s asleep and I’m just watching the night lights out of my window or something. I like silence, you see. I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it’s all right to be alone.” — Ocala Star Banner, June 1983

Jane Fonda

“I have a friend who says she has become a nerd cause she doesn’t go out or hang anymore with her buds. I told her I understood cause I was part nerd too and I realized that my blog gives the impression that I am always surrounded by excitement and people. But the fact is that I spend much time alone and cherish that. I don’t write about that cause what’s to say. ‘I am alone, thinking, reading, meditating…’ Isn’t so interesting so my blog gives a false impression of my life. I identify with the bear who hibernates much of the time–in fact, has her cubs alone while she sleeps–but then needs to be social, playful. That’s me. I am alone a lot. I read a lot. I meditate. I love solitude. It’s different than loneliness. I am not always surrounded by excitement. That’s just what I blog about. Anyway, I wanted to set that straight. I, too, am part nerd.” — her site, July 2010

Gertrude Stein

“After all human beings are like that. When they are alone they want to be with others and when they are with others they want to be alone.” – Paris France, 1940

Grace Jones

“I have made a big effort in my life to enjoy being alone, so that I don’t enter a relationship only because I am afraid of being on my own. I enjoy my own company because there is no guarantee even if you are in a couple that the match will last all your life. And I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have!…The key is to make friends with yourself. Children make imaginary friends. If I have to do that, I will do that. They will say I’m crazy, but I will be happy. Sometimes it is better to find ways to be happy alone than to have a relationship in which you are miserable for the sake of not being alone.” — I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, September 2015

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Justice O’Connor and I were together for more than twelve years and in every one of those twelve years, sooner or later, at oral argument one lawyer or another would call me Justice O’Connor. They were accustomed to the idea that there was a woman on the Supreme Court and her name was Justice O’Connor. Sandra would often correct the attorney, she would say, ‘I’m Justice O’Connor, she’s Justice Ginsburg.’ The worst times were the years I was alone. The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see. But now, with the three of us on the bench, I am no longer lonely and my newest colleagues are not shrinking violets. Not this term but the term before, Justice Sotomayor beat out Justice Scalia as the justice who asks the most questions during argument.” — The New Republic, September 2014

Dolly Parton

“My nails are my rhythm section, when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.” — Roger Ebert, December 1980

A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf wrote about such a place in reference to Woolf’s conception:

“a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’.

Woolf notes that women have been kept from writing because of their relative poverty, and financial freedom will bring women the freedom to write; “In the first place, to have a room of her own… was out of the question, unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble”. The title also refers to any author’s need for poetic license and the personal liberty to create art.

I would think regardless of such a profession or aspiration a Woman should have a place to call her own if she so chooses.

Today tucked at the bottom of the New York Times opinion page was this:

What the Single Ladies Have Wanted for More Than a Century
APRIL 24, 2015
By ANNA NORTH

In 2013, 44 percent of Americans over 18 were single, according to census data. And in 2012, the percentage over 25 who had never been married hit 23 percent for men and 17 percent for women, the highest levels since 1960.

While many single people are quite happy to live alone, it’s not always easy. When Kate Bolick, whose new book “Spinster” discusses her own singleness, first lived in her own apartment, she said, “it felt unbelievably exciting to be simply living by myself and master of my own domain. But then maybe at around the seven-year mark it started to feel kind of repetitive and lonely.”

Many single people relish their autonomy and don’t necessarily want to be part of a couple (a 2005 Pew survey found that only 16 percent of unmarried people were looking for a partner). But some would like another option, a way to have companionship without entering into a romantic relationship.

That might mean roommate groupings that might be more stable than the 20-something variety. Ms. Bolick said one of her favorite living arrangements was the home she shared with a married couple. “I was living my own life, doing my own things, but had this kind of home base to return to,” she said.

Or it might mean a larger community that mixes shared and individual space. “Cohousing” communities around the country typically include private homes surrounding a common house where residents can gather for meals and other activities.

Joani Blank lives in a cohousing community in Oakland, Calif. Of 20 households there, she said, about 12 (including hers) are headed by single people. The community was founded 15 years ago, and 16 of its original members still live there. Residents prepare communal meals three times a week, and help one another in other ways; recently, one of Ms. Blank’s neighbors took care of her dog while she was away.

Communal living arrangements were embraced by 19th-century feminists. The activist Melusina Fay Peirce was advocating that women join together in a “cooperative housekeeping” system as early as the 1860s, Ms. Bolick notes in her book, while Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the social reformer and author of the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” called for groups of kitchenless apartments for professional women, with meals served by a single, professionally staffed kitchen.

Others became involved in the socialist and utopian communities of the time — the journalist Marie Stevens Case Howland, for instance, lived for a time at the Familistère, a workers’ community in Guise, France, that included a factory, living quarters, and a school. She also designed homes with shared kitchen, dining, and laundry facilities, though these homes were never built.

Despite the dreams and efforts of such thinkers, though, Americans who want to live communally still face obstacles. One is zoning law, which can limit the number of unrelated people who can live together in certain neighborhoods or types of buildings. Such laws were often passed to prevent overcrowding and noise, particularly in postwar developments that aimed to attract only traditional families.

Another obstacle is design. Since the 19th century, Western architecture has focused on the needs of “the heterosexual bourgeois family,” with master bedrooms and smaller rooms for children or servants, said Alice Friedman, an art professor at Wellesley College and the author of “Women and the Making of the Modern House.”
But homes built for nuclear families may not work for single adults living together. They might need big common rooms, more clearly separated spaces for privacy, and even multiple entrances.

Even if innovations like these become more common, many Americans still aren’t comfortable with the idea of living with people who aren’t related by marriage or blood. The idea of cohabiting with unrelated people not solely out of financial necessity but as way to share a life, said Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist, “just hasn’t been part of our cultural consciousness.”

Of course, sharing life this way isn’t always easy, either, Ms. DePaulo points out. Living singly means relying on friends in ways that people used to rely on nuclear families, and that can create new kinds of frictions.

Still, removing some of the barriers to communal living would give America’s growing population of single people the opportunity, at least, to decide if living with other people works for them. It might also encourage Americans in general to think more creatively about our homes, our cities and our social networks.

Many single people, said Ms. DePaulo, want homes that combine privacy with community and sociability. That combination sounds pretty attractive for anybody, single or no

This came after a similiar dissertation in Harper’s about an Author and his quest of solitude. Going It Alone was Fenton Johnson’s thoughts on writers and their inability or unwillingness to capitualte or cohabitate.

Apparently only writers feel this need to be alone. Good thing I want to write a book or three as I have long planned in my head as I am also alone. By chance and by choice I finally realized that I am a “loner” and all that connotates may well be true. I am finding myself becoming isolated however and that is not good for the soul or for the ability to write so I am now seeking where I shall next room.

I have long advocated the co-housing concept. I tried to avial to enange an Architect acquaintance whose books on green design I appreciated and he made the necessary outreach and I never heard from him again although I hear he lives closer. But I will not bother to open that door again. Instead I have actually gone to several co-housing buildings here locally and one out of state and found them to be a pleasant alternative to senior homes or “mother in law” concept of what that usually brings to mind.

The idea of being social and still singular seems to be an anamoly to most people. When you are a couple that “other” is your best friend, your family and kids in turn open that concept and those who are like you are your friends. Having watched Thirtysomething in the 80s I had no interest in that and wonder if now at 50+ something they would express the same.

As a woman and solo one I just saw the Heidi Chronicles on Broadway starring the illustrious Elizabeth Moss aka Peggy from Mad Men, another solo gal of career. And the play is closing early. I am not surprised for all revivals are dated, hence they are called revivals, but there was something not right about the tone or tenor or the play. At my show there were rows vacant and yet we were all clustered in three tight rows so I ended up moving to a great seat and enjoyed the show. But at the end it rang false that Heidi would suddenly end up adopting a child and living alone in single motherhood. The character had been always saying she would marry but then as an Art Historian she discussed and knew all the women artists, their stories, their history and sacrifices and motherhood was never part of the problem or issue. Heidi had never seemed motherly only in fact observant as friends and colleagues and former lovers dabbled in choices of life and living through the decades of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And perhaps that is why it did not draw an audience as who could believe that now? It was not the roaring piece of feminism as it was 20 years ago and I suspect even the late great writer Wendy Wasserstein would have amended or updated the piece to show that times and people do change. It ended on a false note and that always ends badly for any play, new or old.

I did see also another acclaimed play, Skylight, about a woman on her own and her former lover who finds her to ask if she will return. There were no false notes in this play, also a revival and brought over from England, with Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan. There were only truths, hard ones about love, lost, abandonment and betrayal and that it pulled no punches was not lost on me. I wept and still do over that powerful work. But the couples in the audience had a hard time with it and funny this week I received notice that discount tickets were available all shows, showing that even a smashing success abroad does not do well in America when the conventions of life seem to be provincial for when it comes to women and men.

We are afraid of those alone, be it me or women. Men are sinister or predatory or suspicious and women, spinsters, tragic, flawed who failed at the earlier version of Betty Crocker meeting Martha Stewart or are not yet Lesbians who like Anderson Cooper or sad Bruce Jenner have yet to come out.

It is why I need to find a fake family and unlike the protagonist in Skylight, I don’t quite need to live and work and sleep with the husband in which to belong. That is what caused her to leave, once the wife found out she packed her kit to live in ghetto housing and teach the unteachable. Close to home met slightly closer to home as the story unfolded.

We don’t want Peggy or Joan or Heidi or any woman solo we want them with something anything attached to the vagina, unless your Oprah and then you’re rich bitch!