Love or Something Like It (musings)

And now for something completely different...

LOVE. What a word. It means so many things and at the same time, is an enigma. No one seems to be able to define it, really. It's almost 4am and I'm here writing because I'm going to, as Papa Roach puts it 'tear my heart open'. I need closure on some things and to lift a weight that is bogging me down. Hopefully, this will work and as a bonus, if it helps anyone else understand life a little bit, all the better.

As we all know, there are many different kinds of love: for friends, parents, children, animals, beauty, country, music, art, God etc. The ever-elusive 'unconditional love' seems to be the hardest to pull off, and for many people, the hardest to receive. The word seems to be thrown around so often and so easily that it's kind of lost its power.

I'm listening to the radio and every other song has the word in it, movies bombard us with it and unfortunately, we are raised from the start to believe that there are certain specific qualities one has to have in order to receive love. Just read any fairy tale with their 'he saw her and fell in love with her instantly'. Baloney. We're fed this from childhood and it's misleading at best, damaging at worst.

I've been told many times in different relationships 'I love you', and when I really think about it, most of them really didn't 'love' me as much as I filled a void, they needed a mama, they were lonely and anyone suitable would do, they were fascinated by me or any number of other reasons, none of which are horrible, but weren't love. I say this because they really didn't 'know' me. I would say a few did, but one or both of us were either too young and/or inexperienced to really know the difference.

The longest relationship I've had was 7 years, and I honestly don't know what would have happened if he didn't die young, but it wasn't one of those situations where it was a starry-eyed, passion-fest, but good because we were alike enough to get along well, but different enough that we could give each other room to breathe and grow. We were a good 'fit'.

Another one years ago, and again more recently, turned out to be one of the most puzzling, frustrating and damaging (to me) times I've ever had and even then, love was spoken. I think now it was too much too soon as they say, and something that just had to happen either way. Neither of them could understand why I wouldn't take their bad treatment, as if this is what thought my job was.

While no one can define what love is, I do know what it isn't. If someone harms you physically, emotionally or otherwise, it's not love. If it was, they'd not be able to even think of doing anything like that. It's not changing the person, either. I'm not talking about telling them that they're hurting themselves when they are, but if you love someone, you love 'them' and not 'them with alterations'.

This has always been my main problem; guys are attracted to my being smart/independent/honest/whatever and sooner or later, those very things are what cause the problems. I don't get this really. I'm an open book; I hide nothing and often, unlike my sisters, will put my 'worst foot forward' so that everything's out in the open and the person can decide if they want to deal with it. No surprises.

Everyone, no matter who they are, no matter what their upbringing, station or background, when it comes down to it, wants someone to 'get' them, to understand and know who they are and how they got there. This takes work, and it's much easier to just look at someone, hear something, anything, and think they love them for that, but that's a disaster in the making. I want someone to love me because I'm kind, honest, compassionate, whatever I may be and not because they want to feel 'big' or because they need to treat me like crap because of their own unresolved issues. Fixing that stuff is something one can only do for themselves. I know, I deal with my own issues every day, and it's work.

Ideally, both people will acknowledge their own issues and shortcomings and you help each other be the best people you can be for yourself, and then for each other. That's love--helping someone with something because it needs doing, not because you're going to get some prize out of it in the end.

There are no 'standards' for love. You can't go by old worn out fantasy-driven things like butterflies, not eating, walking on air and all that romance novel business. You really have to know yourself and what you want and need before even thinking you're ready to be in love. If not, it's probably a crush or temporary infatuation that will fill a void that can only be filled by introspection and growing up.

When I hear that someone is 'completed' or made 'whole' by someone else, it bothers me because we can't take on the responsibility of love if we can't stand on our own as a person first, and need someone else to make us whole.
Sure, we are inspired by someone we love, energized, motivated, comforted, elated even, but that can't be dependent on them; it needs to happen because they brought these things out of us. There's a big difference.

When I first started seeing Jerry (the man who died), he asked me what I was looking for. I said that I didn't want to be his 'boss' or him, my 'boss' but rather, a partnership. I also said that I was not going to stop working and (because he had 2 children and had recently split with their mother) that I wanted him to be with me because of me being who I am, and not because he wanted to fill a space in the family unit that was now empty. On other words, I needed him to be able to still be him, even if I wasn't in the picture. He agreed, so it was good.

Another situation involved someone who for many different reasons, none of them having to do with me, spent most of his time telling me all that was 'wrong' with me and at the same time, telling me he loved me. This is very confusing because as I said before, this stuff doesn't come with conditions, it just is. Honestly, none of us can help how they look, talk, walk, think or anything else and the deal is, take it or leave it. Hell, I'm not thrilled with the way I look and I don't need to be reminded of it, especially by someone who claims to care about me. Looks are way overrated to begin with, and is the easiest thing to change and the least important part of a person. I couldn't even tell you if those who I loved (or thought I loved) were good looking or not in the traditional sense, because when you love someone, they are beautiful automatically.

There is no such thing as "You should change because you love him/her" or the other way around. I don't care how many women's magazines or websites say otherwise, it's all crap. You always regret it and you always feel like you were 'bought' to some degree because you are selling part of yourself off when you wouldn't have done so otherwise.

So no one thinks I'm a total bitch on wheels, let me clarify: I'm not talking about doing something for the other person because you in your heart, want to, but rather those times when (like the fellows I describe above and below) that you change something only because you think (or are told) that if you don't do it, the person will leave you. That's in no way shape or form love, and never, ever works out.

I had a boyfriend years ago who wanted to marry me, and to convince me was going to buy a beautiful old Victorian house I loved and give it to me, just to get me to agree to it. The trade-off was that I needed to wear my hair a certain way, dress and act a certain way, and (a little-known artsfarm factoid) wear a bra, something I hadn't done since I was 14. I balked at all this, and every one of my girlfriends thought I was out of my mind. They yelled at me, told me I was crazy, he's gorgeous, wealthy, etc and said they would take him up on it if I didn't. I told them to go for it.

For just a minute, I tried to imagine myself going along with this, not because of the money (which I hated) but because I did like him a lot, but when I really thought about it, I couldn't see myself sitting across from the table every morning and evening for the rest of my life from someone I knew wouldn't be with me if I was just being me. So I ended it. He didn't understand and got very upset, but that's ok. Within a year, he wound up marrying someone who looked like me, but who was pliable so I'm sure he's happy.

I guess I ranted on about this long enough. Even if no one reads it, it's ok because I just needed to get this out in some form, even if just into the ether.

The $47 Bag of Cat Litter

I walk a lot, always have. I don't drive, but even if I did, I love walking and would do it anyway. Yesterday I needed to go to the market and would normally have walked the 1-1/2 miles there, but since we're buried under 8 tons of snow I decided to take a cab. Another time I'd have put off the trip until I could walk, but I needed cat litter and if you have a cat, you know that's something you can't wait on.

When I lived in upstate NY, $5.50 would get you anywhere within about a 5-mile radius in town, another $1 for the next town over. I'd plan my trips to get everything done at the same time, so it didn't cost much at all. So when I called the local cab company, I didn't think to ask how much it would be since in everything costs more in NY, so I thought it would be ok.

We went to the market, and when I asked the guy to pick me up in an hour, and how much it was, he said 'Well, it's local so it'll be $18". I confirmed what I was thinking: "This is round trip, right?". He smiled and said that no, it was for a one-way trip, meaning it would be $36 to get there and home.

I literally got lightheaded hearing this. I'm not rich, and even if I was, would never give in to price-gouging. We were already at the store, so I had to pay him for the trip there. It turned out that the sidewalks were clean all the way there and I could have walked to the store and taken the cab back, but I didn't know this until afterwards. So I was stuck.

I was so freaked out that I had to walk for a few blocks just to get my head back to normal. I got the litter (Plug: 'Feline Pine' is the BEST) and a few other things. I didn't get everything I planned to buy because I had to offset the extra expense. I went home paying another $18. So $36 there and back, plus $10.99 for the litter comes to $46.99.

I'll shred newspapers and douse it with baking soda for a day or two before I'll ever do that again.

I was trying to figure out how this was possible; why such a difference in price from one place to another, then it hit me. In NY, many people didn't have cars and a lot of them are poor, but have to get to work, doctors, etc. There were about a half dozen cab companies in my town alone, so there was competition and price wars, similar to what gas stations do. There are also buses into NYC and even a 'Dial-a-Bus', a little van that you could schedule a local pick up with for only $1. But here in suburbia, there are no buses, no private services, nothing. There are tons of McMansions and more Lexuses and SUVs than I care to count. So the demand isn't there, nor is the competition. But, they're all doing the same thing--driving a mile or two and that's it. Capitalism at its finest I guess.

I need to take a walk.

Valentine's Day: Yeah or Bleh?

I have an online shop, and like any self-respecting retailer, am wondering if I should do anything special for Valentine's Day. I know my fellow entrepreneurs are right now making and listing everything red and/or heart-shaped they can, but since I have mixed feelings for the holiday, am still not sure what to do. I do like the idea of dedicating a day to l'amour but at the same time, it sends the message to some people that it's ok to act like an ass 364 days a year and then somehow 'make up for it' on the 14th. That doesn't cut it, folks. We should be nice and show others we care about them all the time, whenever the urge arises and not just when the mall tells us to.

There is one Valentine's Day tradition that I always thought was horrible. When I was in grammar school, one of the biggest days of the year was the day we made the Valentine's Day Mailbox. This was a big event, done with ritual seriousness. It was essentially a plain old cardboard carton wrapped in gift wrap, a slit cut into the top for depositing our cards. Then when the time came, we all stood around while some lucky student got to hand them out, usually yelling out names like it was a military mail call.

There was always at least one kid who didn't get a card, and that was the awful part. They would stand there empty handed, while everyone else swooned, blushed and giggled over secret admirers and 'be mine' sentiments. It was a cruel and unnecessary tradition, I think, and surely scarred more than a few kids well into adulthood. If you were one of those left out, you might as well have had the Plague for the next 2 weeks or so.

One would never know this now, but back then, I was painfully shy, extremely quiet, smart (not good if you're a girl!), a year younger than the rest of the class, left-handed (and yes, they tried to 'fix' me) and so skinny I needed rubber bands to keep my knee socks up (Catholic school). But even with all this, I still got at least one or two cards and so was spared the scorn that some of the others received.

One thing everyone noticed even back then: the girls who got the most cards were always the first ones to grow boobs. Some things never change, eh?

My first Valentine's Day gift was from my first boyfriend, Joey DiPasquale, a cute chubby kid with glasses, about a head shorter than me who always let me win when foot racing. He was 8 and I was 7. He gave me a little plastic change purse shaped like a bear's head, with googly wiggle eyes. Our 'relationship' consisted mainly of us running home after school together while our mothers walked behind us, saying how cute we were and planning our next 20 years. I have no idea what happened to Joey as he moved away after 3rd grade, but he was pretty cool from what I remember of him.

Many Valentine's Days later, my socks stay up just fine on their own, but I still don't think of Valentine's Day as a really good thing. I never could picture buying my guy boxer shorts with lips or hearts all over them, or one of those obnoxious singing, dancing stuffed animals that sound like crap and get dragged out of every stock room in the country at this time of year. I really hate those things. Maybe it's because I worked in retail for many years and without fail, at least once a day someone would walk down the aisle where they were and turn every single last one of them on at the same time. I'd want to throw them all into the incinerator, the stuffed animals too.

If you're still reading this, thanks. Let me know what you think about all this; I'd love to hear some opinions. Personally, I think leaving nice notes, giving flowers, kisses, hugs, little gifts, etc should be something we do without prompting, and done 'just because'. There are a million ways to show someone you care, and you can do it anytime and most of the time, it's free. How cool is that?

So what say you?

NET NEUTRALITY NO MORE? ONLY 2 DAYS LEFT TO SPEAK OUT!

First we had to deal with the "Orphaned Works Act" which steals the ownership of artists' work by stripping away the right to automatic copyright by creation/..publishing, forcing artists to either pay prohibitively enormous amounts of money to own the rights to their own work,

then the incredibly damaging "Consumer Product Safety Information Act" of last year, the vagueness of which makes it virtually impossible to buy anything except mass-produced garbage sold by the same gigantic corporations that sat in to "help draft" the bill,

and recently, the battle to put the few remaining small/sustainable/organic farms out of business so that we are forced to eat and drink the poisonous, non-nutritive crap that factory farms spew out,

(and don't even get me started on the seed industry, our total refusal to even start seriously considering alternative energy, or the uselessness of the FDA & AMA over their decades-long attacks on natural medicine and chiropractic/holistic healing, all to put more money in their pockets instead of healing people (but they will approve poison that can kill you, and feel as long as they add that microscopic disclaimer in there, it's ok).

Now our use of the internet will come under corporate control and influence as well (yes, more than it is now, and yes, you do pay for it and should have a say):

The FCC is rewriting the Net Neutrality law, which up until now, provides a built-in safeguard against corporations ( or anyone, for that matter) to tell you what to view, read or listen to, or influence it in any way. The changes will effectively leave us with the internet equivalent of "network TV' with all its pre-programmed material, brain-numbing (by design) whitewashed schlock and whatever else the sponsors want you to see (or not see), even down to what is or is not considered 'news'--all so a few behemoth-sized companies can make even more money at our expense.

Go here:
SAVE THE INTERNET NOW

and start yelling--the deadline for public input is Jan14--TWO DAYS away.

This mess was hidden from the public just like the CPSIA which didn't become well-known until people on the internet caught wind of it and spread the word, months after the original draft was written up, and it almost made it through unaltered.
Nothing less then a FLOOD of calls, e-mails and letters from concerned small businesses (just like many of ours right here) telling their legislators that the bill would literally put them out of business and cause even more unemployment as it stood. It got them to take a closer look at the bill and get a few crucial things amended.

Check it out, and remember that if we can't stop a 'Soylent green' scenario, we can at least postpone it for a while.