There is a different breed of women today. We no longer sit home and knit, while waiting for a man to come along and take care of us. Not that there is anything wrong with someone else taking care of us, we just live in a different world today. More women are going to college today, graduate school. . . landing higher paying jobs then they would of a generation ago. Nearly 40% of women today are the breadwinners in their homes. And while the alpha women continues to progress even further into the feminist movement now in its second generation, I can’t help notice the beta male left in the dust. But are the men really left behind, or is the independent women just waiting for them to catch up?
Women’s role in society today hasn’t just progressed it has radically evolved. We have mapped out our lives, and goals. We are career minded, independent at making our own decisions, and children? Maybe when I am nearing my forties; the age considered the end of our childbearing years. We are no longer the damsel in distress looking for our knight in shining armor. Most of us women today are doing the rescuing.
I find myself to be insistently independent. Some people mistake my independence for being guarded and jaded, and maybe I am to some extent, in fact I know it is, but even when I am in a relationship I always seem to fight for my own time. I am my mother’s daughter, I worry, I fix, and I need my space. I always find myself in relationships where I am fixing someone. I make excuses for their behavior and strive to encourage and motivate. Don’t get me wrong it takes two people to make a relationship work and I’m not mother Theresa, I have my faults. I think my insecurities and walls I’ve built, mask brilliantly as independence. I am the star in my own one women show, and when the curtain closes, there I am alone waiting for someone to rescue me from myself. So how do I balance? How do I let down my guard and walls, while still hanging on to some of the great qualities that stem from being independent? I am begging for someone to rescue me from me, and when that person comes I instantly push them away, while chasing the male opposite of myself, the “fixer-upper”. Who am I kidding, I am the “fixer-upper”. I am suffering from a manifested, hypochondriac, self diagnosed from WebMD case of “Independent Women Syndrome” the reason why so many women are reporting the greatest dissatisfaction with their relationships of any time in history, according to the New York Times.
So here it is. . .I’m a fearful person, I fear failure, and I fear rejection. I am indecisive, I fear making decisions, because what if I am wrong, I make the wrong choice and I don’t know how to fix it, a decision so huge I don’t know how to undo it. I was always the kid who ordered chocolate ice cream, and wished I ordered vanilla. I also understand the even the biggest mistakes, the biggest chances, the biggest failures, beat the hell out of never trying. It’s like intimacy, both desired and feared, impossible to live with and damn hard to live without. And without you. . .my life will go on, masked independently on the outside, but on the inside it will kill me.
I am aware of all my shortcomings, and my issues, packaged so elegantly and appealing. So why, . . . why do I keep banging my head up against the wall? Because, . . . because it feels so good when I stop.
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