On August 25, I celebrated my 39th birthday. I’ve heard that 39 is an awful year—particularly as one nears the end of it. I have been determined to embrace my age every year and grow old as gracefully as possible. I suppose my thought is that there’s nothing I can do about getting old, so I might as well make peace with it.Well, that’s all very nice. The truth is that I’m afraid if I really looked long and hard at what it means to, as Paul puts it, “suck up the last year of being in your 30s,” I might have an existential meltdown from which I’d never recover.It wasn’t that long ago that I was whining in one journal or another about having nothing to show for my life: no screenplays made into feature films, no Great American Novels, no home or land that I own, no children, no love-of-my-life… It was then that I really felt my age! What milestones, what badges of honor had I accumulated since turning 21—besides crow’s feet and a few new sprouts of gray hair?Now that I’ve gotten married, I can rest on the accomplishment of finding a man who can put up with me. Well done. Babies? If any of them are forthcoming, they will certainly be something I can happily leave behind when I die (assuming they’re decent human beings).As for my writing, I can’t say what will happen. Perhaps it is this constant work at being a writer that makes me feel younger than I really am; that work is the same work I’ve been doing for over 20 years. I’m still sitting at this desk, still creating, still networking… I could be 22. Or 28. Or 35.There’s much more to say on this age topic, particularly as it pertains to how late in life I’ve gotten married and chosen to start a family. It deserves its own entry, however, so stay tuned…
After a long blogging absence, I've decided to get back on the job, as it were. For those who have kept up with my blogging, you'll know that I simply don't write unless (as the title of my blog implies) there's some thing I can really share (besides what I ate for breakfast or where I last got drunk and made an ass of myself).
I think I found that thing to share.
Again, many of you know that over the last nearly six years, I have been completely, solidly, almost devoutly single. It's not that I haven't wanted to find a life partner, but I have not had much luck taking exhausting laps in the public pool of Internet dating. I tried it, found out that most of the men were using online dating to get laid, got disgusted, yanked myself off, got lonely, hesitatingly plugged my nose and dove in again (naked and willing), leapt out and ran…
I finally came to the conclusion that I was going about online dating the wrong way. Sure, there were men that used the services to find bed partners. But it couldn’t possibly be all of them. And, hell, even the lotharios were fun to hang out with. So, I decided to treat online dating like more of a social club. Since I work at home, I don’t meet a lot of people. (That, and I’m a magnificent introvert.) I’d had my share of Fun Sex and wanted to share something deeper. I made a pact with myself that the next man I had sex with with would have to understand that if he was going to sleep with me, there could be no one else.
Sound extreme? Think of it this way: if you want to find out if a man is really into you, ask him to honor your sexuality and yours alone. It’s not cruel; no one says you have to sleep together right away (meanwhile, he can screw anything or anyone he wants), and if you do get together and things don’t work out, you both can move on. But until then, stay focused. See what happens. It may sound old-fashioned, but I’m not apologizing for asking for at least that base level of respect. (Especially after what I’d experienced in my days of debauchery. Women and men know what I'm talking about.)
My plan was to go on dates with interesting men, listen to their stories…and not sleep with them. Interesting indeed! Of course, I often did not get more than one date with these men, in part I’m sure because they got the vibe that I wasn’t inviting them up to see my etchings any time soon. But that was fine.
See, I had also come to the realization that—as a writer and peace worker—I have much to offer the world. I wasn’t going to hang around, doing the dance to get a mate, while sacrificing time doing the work I can do right now. Any man who was going to fit into my life would have to catch up with me. I also realized what this really meant: I may spend the rest of my life alone.
And that was when Paul’s profile hit my inbox on Chemistry.com.
Besides being ridiculously handsome in that boyish way that makes my stomach feel all weird, his profile struck me as something I would have written if I were a man. It was at least worth a look.
We went through the necessary site-related butt-sniffing questionnaires, passed whatever tests we’d thrown at each other, moved our correspondence away from the mother ship, and began emailing privately at the end of November 2007. Our first date was the first night of Hanukkah (5 December).
Three days shy of eight months later, we got married.
It was the end of an era for me. A lot for my psyche to chew on, to say the least. But now I have a lifetime to do it.
So, that brings me to that thing I think is worth sharing. What does it really mean to be married—to make the transition from single, independent, creative woman to wife? I’ll be blogging on this subject as topics arise. I certainly hope to get comments and questions from you as we move along…
With peace,
Mrs. Paul J. Curley
(The Artist Previously Known as Rachel Astarte Piccione)
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