I hate you. I thank you.

(warning, long-winded rant to follow...)

  

Mr. B. and I have finally gotten around to watching Ma.d Me.n, digging into the first season on Netflix. We're only 3 episodes in, but so far, good god I hate this show. Spewing venom, hate it. I mean, am I missing something that everyone seems to love about it, or does the story unfold in a way that will change my feelings? I'm flat out repulsed by most of the characters and 95% of what goes on in the show. Talk about bringing misogyny back. I have visions of guys sitting around watching it, scratching their crotch and wistfully dreaming of the good old days. Last night I had a bizarre dream where Finn from Glee was getting all hostile and handsy with me and I scratched the shit out of his arm and punched him in the face to get away, and then he just smirked that I would be the one getting arrested for it, that he still held all the power. Got me so riled up I woke myself up.

  

Mr. B. laughs at me that I'm making a Liz Lemon badger face the whole time with my cursing and scowling, and is like, calm down, it's just a TV show. Maybe it would seem more like an interesting period piece if there weren't still traces of this bullshit around today, especially with the political climate lately. (Okay, I'll keep my politics to myself, but are we REALLY still arguing about birth control, people???)

  

But in a weird way the show has stirred up all the old emotions of what led me to where I am today. In my pathetic regretful sad place of the last 3 years, I tend to look back on everything about my 20s and early 30s as foolish distractions that led to The Big Mistake of Waiting Too Long to Have a Baby, with the seeds of failure planting as early as my childhood. I could fill a whole other post about this, but I've had such a hard time lately with memories, old photographs, etc. - total revisionist history of regretting absolutely everything about my life and mentally flipping even the best of times into mistakes.

  

This feminist uprising in my spirits, though, has reminded me of what motivated and influenced me for so much of my life, and that I'm not just a dum dum who, oopsie, forgot to have a baby. Some distinct moments when girl power started shooting out my boobs:

• Being 5 and 7 years younger than my brothers (an eternity when you're young) and the only girl meant that much of growing up I was relegated to "stupid little sister" status. And so begins the internal monologue of "I'll show you...!"
• Ever since high school, my mom beat into me to not get too serious with any boy too soon, only thinly veiling her own regrets over getting married and having kids too young, hamstringing her career the rest of her life. Independence, self-respect --- no man's gonna tie me down!
• I was always good in school. I'm not trying to be immodest, but good grades and test scores were in my wheelhouse. Creativity, street smarts, not so much, but book smarts I got. Well, one of my best friends had the book smarts too, and along with 2 of our guy friends, we were among the top in our class. A pretty overt battle of the sexes developed by our senior year, spurred on even by our teachers over AP test scores, college admissions, etc., with victories being the sweetest in the male domain of math & science. (Side note: a science teacher actually once told me "you're pretty smart for a girl." Down girl, down.) My friend went on to MIT and both of us ended up engineers. Suck on it, boys!
• During college summers I worked at a material testing lab - soil, concrete, asphalt, exciting I know! I basically got paid to play with dirt, it was awesome. One day I was elbow deep in asphalt and some old school blowhard vendor came strolling in, and seeing that I was the only uterus in sight, asked me if I was the secretary. Do I LOOK like a freaking secretary, old man?!
• My first job out of college was at an engineering company. Cue montage of offensive boys club moments. But the most impressionable was the distinct shift that happened in how the women in the office were regarded once they became pregnant. It was the kind of place where long hours and sacrifice were expected, and well, a damn baby got in the way of that and ruined a perfectly good worker. Even then my mental gears were turning, figuring out how I could someday make it work, how *I* could have it all -- a family AND a job where I felt challenged and valued, all in perfect proportion.

  

This stupid show rekindled a fire in my belly, and as a result I've started to reclaim my past in a way, remembering with pride instead of shame how I much I fought and how hard I worked to be well educated, respected at work, independent and capable and able to make a real impact on the world outside my home.

  

Yeah, I still wish I had a baby too and I haven't totally let myself off the hook of "should've known better," but I'll gladly take any little step towards healing and moving forward with life, and letting go of the burdens of regret. My mantra lately has been along the lines of "we all do the best we can with what we know at the time." I know now that motherhood isn't a career death sentence nor a second class profession, and that just because others have babies into their late 30s and early 40s doesn't mean shit when it comes to what you'll be able to do (at any age for that matter), but this was hard to see then. I had my flaws and made some mistakes but I did the best I could making my way through this complicated thing called life.

  

p.s. goddamnit, as I wrap this post, I'm craving the next episode of Ma.d Me.n. How screwed up is that, masochism anyone? Damn you, Jon Ha.mm!!