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OK, cough it up!I want to know what your FORMERLY is, not least of all because perhaps it'll be as superficial and relatively unimportant in the scheme of things as is mine.

Obviously, the fact that you've always been the smartest kid in your family and yet couldn't bring yourself to finish your dissertation is nothing compared to the problems of veterans returning minus a limb, but it's still worth a few words. Or that your high school peers voted you most likely to get rich quick and you're working at Dunkin' Donuts. Or that you had the marriage and little blond children that seemed so perfect, and now you have an ex and bigger blond children that you see every other weekend.

Boo-effin'-hoo, some will say. You're not homeless. You're not trapped in some abandoned bomb shelter with nothing but a skeleton and some plant water to drink like that girl on All My Children. Get some real problems. And you will, at some point. But for now, I want to hear about your FORMERLY.

Go to the drop-down menu, and select a FORMERLY from among the ones I posted. If none apply, write your own in the box to the right. And then give me a few words (no more than 200) on your FORMERLY, what it meant to you and how you're dealing. You can also post a relevant picture (it needn't be you but something that says it all). Keep it relatively clean, kids, and feel free to post more than one. You can be serious, self-mocking, however you feel.

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INDEPENDENT, What's Your Formerly?

Independent from independence

446301597_1ed26b3275.jpgMAIA WROTE: I was once a young, party-going, drinking, and hooking up kinda gal, but I’ve always been a little too fat, short, frizzy haired, and serious to be considered hot. I’ve spent most of my adult life making decisions based on the reality that I couldn’t get by on my looks so I needed to be extra diligent about making people believe I was competent and able to handle everything. I’m not sure if I ever fooled anyone into to believing that, but I managed to fool myself, at least through my twenties and early thirties.

Then life happened–failed relationships, cancer, and financial mess.

I no longer wanted the hot guy who was looking for someone like his Mom or the guy that was good for a couple of nights but was so self absorbed in his groovy self discovery that he didn’t have a real interest in me. So I had to face the fact that I couldn’t just rely on my smarts or self-reliant nature.

After all, how could a smart and independent girl have made such dumb choices in men, let herself get cancer, and not manage or make enough money to support herself? And then the worst happened. I realized I needed other people and I wanted a man who was at least capable of taking care of himself and of me, even if I could take care of myself.

I am now interested in the pedestrian, in talking to my friends about their kids (or the fear of having or not being able to have them); husbands, wives, and life partners (keeping, divorcing, or finding one); weight gain (I don’t know anyone, not even my skinniest friends who are worried about being too thin); juice fasts and colonics; mortgages; bosses; and the other sundries of everyday life.

Today I am formerly smart and independent and currently average and happy.

Photo by: The 5th Ape, CC Licensed

January 7th, 2009
by StephanieDolgoff
Posted in INDEPENDENT, What's Your Formerly?
787 views, Comment! »