Thoughts on Escaping
I think romanticism is one of my mortal flaws. I have a long history of daydreaming, reading a website called Letters to Crushes (which used to be a big deal but now seems deserted), and making secret plans for U-Hauling. I am quietly obsessed with the idea of marriage and I watch a lot of YouTube videos of extremely young Christian moms talking about cleaning their houses and their alarmingly heterosexual marriages. Neither Christian, heterosexual, nor interested in birthing anyone, I can't exactly pinpoint my attraction to this kind of media. Yet in the last year especially, I have watched endless episodes of Millionaire Matchmaker, The Bachelor, Married at First Sight.
In the last year I have also developed an intense anxiety around flying. When I was a child I was afraid the pilot would "fall asleep at the wheel," which became a family joke. I have flown across the world many, many times, and there was a lengthy period post-infancy that allowed me many years of fearless air travel. Then I hit twenty-one and started researching plane crashes, train derailment, and other transportation disasters. I now sit in airplane seats with my eyes closed, saying Hail Marys to myself repeatedly whenever there is any turbulence at all. I told my mom about this a few months ago. Having traveled with me countless times throughout my life, she was used to an intrepid traveler whose fear of sleeping-at-the-wheel had been in remission for more than a decade. She was surprised, she said. But she also told me it made sense. Here I am in a period of my life that feels so unstructured, so wildly out of control, so ungrounded and unmoored. Flying in the airplane is a direct physical manifestation of those feelings: it is the most ungrounded one can be. Putting myself in an airplane feels to me like relinquishing the only control I really have right now, that I live on planet Earth and can feel it beneath my feet. Relinquishing control is intolerable these days.
I think my preoccupation with marriage and the raising of children is the metaphorical inverse of the airplane fear. If I were to get married, immediately start producing and rearing a bunch of small children and devoting my energy to being some sort of homemaker, I would effectively give myself plans for the next 19-40 years. Certainly, marriage is not the answer to one feeling lost. I have seen people go down this route. It is not a wise one. But I can be compassionate with the parts of me that are imagining some sort of certain future. Even if it would be an unhappy (and for me, a politically hypocritical) future, at least it would have a structure to it.
I think the marriage fantasy is tied up in a number of things (the parts of me that both crave and reject intimacy, my own parents' divorce and my family's current reconciliation with unpleasant collective truths), but I also think it allows me an aspect of escapism that I have been missing post-college. In school I always had an "escape plan," the thing I'd do if I ever decided to give up on the whole college thing. I wanted to open a B&B or a bakery or a combination of the two. Other people I know had dreams of lesbian farm-ownership and other things that seemed to have come from a Tom Robbins novel.
The world is open to me post-graduation. If I want to move to Oregon to be with my boyfriend of one month, I can. I've moved to an unfamiliar part of an unfamiliar city and I live with two strangers, after all. But still, I cannot escape. I take the subway and the trolley to a faraway Trader Joe's on a Wednesday night and I still see my college ex there. There is no real escapism for this period of time, although I so desperately wish I could fast-forward to twenty-seven (maybe that girl will have figured out how to budget?) and skip this part. The Pussycat Dolls have a song called "I Hate This Part." It's unrelated to this post except that I was reminded of it just now. I do hate this part right here. I said it before" relinquishing control is intolerable. Nicole Scherzinger understands.
In the last year I have also developed an intense anxiety around flying. When I was a child I was afraid the pilot would "fall asleep at the wheel," which became a family joke. I have flown across the world many, many times, and there was a lengthy period post-infancy that allowed me many years of fearless air travel. Then I hit twenty-one and started researching plane crashes, train derailment, and other transportation disasters. I now sit in airplane seats with my eyes closed, saying Hail Marys to myself repeatedly whenever there is any turbulence at all. I told my mom about this a few months ago. Having traveled with me countless times throughout my life, she was used to an intrepid traveler whose fear of sleeping-at-the-wheel had been in remission for more than a decade. She was surprised, she said. But she also told me it made sense. Here I am in a period of my life that feels so unstructured, so wildly out of control, so ungrounded and unmoored. Flying in the airplane is a direct physical manifestation of those feelings: it is the most ungrounded one can be. Putting myself in an airplane feels to me like relinquishing the only control I really have right now, that I live on planet Earth and can feel it beneath my feet. Relinquishing control is intolerable these days.
I think my preoccupation with marriage and the raising of children is the metaphorical inverse of the airplane fear. If I were to get married, immediately start producing and rearing a bunch of small children and devoting my energy to being some sort of homemaker, I would effectively give myself plans for the next 19-40 years. Certainly, marriage is not the answer to one feeling lost. I have seen people go down this route. It is not a wise one. But I can be compassionate with the parts of me that are imagining some sort of certain future. Even if it would be an unhappy (and for me, a politically hypocritical) future, at least it would have a structure to it.
I think the marriage fantasy is tied up in a number of things (the parts of me that both crave and reject intimacy, my own parents' divorce and my family's current reconciliation with unpleasant collective truths), but I also think it allows me an aspect of escapism that I have been missing post-college. In school I always had an "escape plan," the thing I'd do if I ever decided to give up on the whole college thing. I wanted to open a B&B or a bakery or a combination of the two. Other people I know had dreams of lesbian farm-ownership and other things that seemed to have come from a Tom Robbins novel.
The world is open to me post-graduation. If I want to move to Oregon to be with my boyfriend of one month, I can. I've moved to an unfamiliar part of an unfamiliar city and I live with two strangers, after all. But still, I cannot escape. I take the subway and the trolley to a faraway Trader Joe's on a Wednesday night and I still see my college ex there. There is no real escapism for this period of time, although I so desperately wish I could fast-forward to twenty-seven (maybe that girl will have figured out how to budget?) and skip this part. The Pussycat Dolls have a song called "I Hate This Part." It's unrelated to this post except that I was reminded of it just now. I do hate this part right here. I said it before" relinquishing control is intolerable. Nicole Scherzinger understands.