A True Rant on Freedom and Belonging

I wish I were alone.

I wish I could be happy in my relationship.

Recently the urge to go off on my own has grown stronger. After a couple of years being one half of a couple, I feel like testing my independence once again. It is complex, however. How do one tell one's better half: "I am going to apply for a job in China, can we please set our life on pause for six months"?

If it were him throwing this thought to me, I would probably scream, cry, ask why, doubt his love for me. Eventually he would stay at home or I would break up with him. I think. On the other hand I might reluctantly support him in his venture and wait for him to come back.

How can I be 32 and still want to explore the world?

The culture, I was born into, pretty much dictates that by now I should be going crazy to have a baby. However, recently I am thinking that this pressure to feel a certain way, might be what is driving me crazy. Maybe some of us are born without that maternal instinct or biological clock that seems to tick so frantically away in most women from the age of 20.

I have taken an education specializing in educating children, I should be dying to have my own and educate them. I should be happy that I have a lovely man in my life that isn't going anywhere whether I fly around the world or lie on the couch for a month. All he wants is my love and the occasional chance to a grab at my butt. I really should be happy. So now I am beating myself up for not being happy, for not wanting the small-town, steady job, family life.

Last summer he proposed to me. I said yes. By now, the plans of an actual wedding are very remote. I have a valid excuse: the depression diagnosis, but I really doubt if that is the reason. Long before it all went really bad, just thinking about that wedding was stressing me out; I didn't know what I wanted. There are so many options and I couldn't really feel which dreams were actually mine and which were the creation of weddings seen on TV, my mother's dream for my wedding and weddings as they appear to my friends and family.

I'd like to be free, but still belong somewhere, to someone. I wonder why we all want that: to belong. Why is it that it seems so hard for us to truly embrace the postmodern way of life and be free, move around the world to our liking and let relations to others be what they are; fleeting connections that come and go in accordance to our own needs and the needs of others; much like our jobs.

It is today a rarity that people stay in the same job for their entire adult life. A sociologist by the name of Zygmunt Baumann says that we are all likely to have approximately 11 different jobs throughout the working years of our lives. We get a new job when the old one doesn't hold the prospect for development anymore or the needs of our workplace has shifted in a way that we no longer wish to fill these needs. This is becoming more and more OK, though some people, at least where I come from, still stick to the work-ethics of the industrial society; to get a job and keep it by doing what is asked of you, but not much more than that.

Another sociologist talks of what signifies our way of living today as "ideological incoherence in time". For instance we try to keep up the ideals of partnership all the way back from an agri-cultural society-form; at this time marriage was for life. They had good reason for it back then; the marriage was not as much a question of love as of financial security and social acceptance. Today, the financial security matter is pretty much non-existent. Most of us can take care of ourselves if we want to.

On the other hand, there might be a thing about the social acceptance. I think singles everywhere will recognize being haunted with the relentless questions about your love-life from friends and family. We might not want to be affected by this, but I think most singles are subconsciously affected; they know that what the people closest to them want most of all from them, is that they will go out and find that significant other and thereby gain the social acceptance symbolized by a halt in the relentless questions.

For my own part, this social acceptance also plays a big part. People relate a lot better to me buying furniture with the man and nesting, preparing for a baby-boom (doom?), than for me getting all worked up about going to China or discussing existentialism.

I guess there is no real chance of changing this ideological incoherence of our time. So in the best existentialistic way, I guess the choice is up to me: Do I want to fly off and see the world and leave the adorable, but quite boring hubby-to-be, behind? Or do I want to fold my wings, give hubby a hug, pat the dog and embrace the life in social acceptance and the feeling of belonging?

When did it start?

Maybe it was the day I was late for school.


I was running all over the house, packing my bag, looking for the keys. All the everyday routines of an unorganized person - all the things I have learned to live with as part of the quirks that define who I am. However, there was an addition that I had not learned to live with. The dog. A lovely dog, that detests being left alone. Suddenly I noticed her standing by the door, tail between her legs and giving me the stare. The stare that only a dog can give you.


Since we got her, I have wondered many a time why the expression "doggy eyes" refers to something charming and sweet. This dog's eyes, at least, are full of resentment and persistence to obtain what she wants. The guilt hit me like a hammer. It wasn't the first time feeling guilt, but this time... the eyes wouldn't leave me alone; the eyes of a creature who's needs I couldn't meet.
I really had to go. I was attending my last history lecture before the exams, and I wanted to go. I never did, however. I sat on the couch crying, which didn't make the dog any happier.
This became the day I called my doctor and asked for a consultation. So maybe this was where it all started?
Maybe it started when my doctor told me after the second consultation, that she meant I had a depression and needed to go into therapy?


I have now started cognitive therapy and I am learning to think about my own thoughts in a more constructive way. I am not an unintelligent person, so I have actually known for years, that I just needed to start interpreting my life and the people in it differently. But I have learned that there is a long way to go from thinking this and knowing this in a rational way, to actually doing this and getting your emotions to collaborate on this project.



A couple of weeks ago I had yet another discussion in my own thoughts. I don't even remember where it started, and it doesn't matter anymore; Wherever these discussions start, they end up in the same thing every time: you are a bad person, no one likes you, and why should they, why should anyone even bother? On this day, however, I managed to separate myself from these thoughts and to some extend know that these thoughts did not necessarily hold the truth and that I didn't have to listen to this inner voice telling me these things.


So I started wondering: when did it actually start, this journey towards becoming my own worst enemy? I instantly remembered my past self, ten years ago, telling my boyfriend back then to start paying a little more attention to himself, sharing my philosophy with him that you had to be your own best friend, because then you would at least have one friend that would never let you down or turn you.
I was pretty young, and probably quite naive in addition. I realize now, that not only have I, some way a long the road through my twenties, forgotten about this philosophy, I could no longer believe it either. My best friend from back then has turned on me, and she's not exactly leaving me alone.



But when did it start? If something happens gradually, you can't really set a day where it started, I guess. Somewhere between then and now I realized, that people considering me anything but flawless were hurtful, and that all I could do to prevent this hurt was to appear flawless. This is not possible, so plan B became the strategy to be aware of my own flaws before anyone else; and in addition make everyone know that I knew I had these flaws. Thus started the never-ending spiral of self-devaluation that now lets my own worst enemy tell me every day that I am a bad person that no one could ever remotely care for.



Maybe this is it? I hoped for the answer to be more romantic than this, but the start was that undefined moment when I decided that nothing below perfection would be agreeable to me. Perhaps will me knowing this be the start of another long journey towards loving my imperfect life for everything it might bring my way and then perhaps one day I will once again find something that gives this value; that gives it meaning.