24 April 2011

The Road Scholar - Day 113 (Acting Masculine, Feeling Feminine - with guest blogger The Naked Redhead)

Today's guest blogger is Sarah Storer of The Naked Redhead, another great blog of recommendation. I will be back on doing business-as-usual tomorrow.
The Naked Redhead (TNR) writes under the assumption that life is more fun when you're honest (naked), when things are funny, and when people get together to try to do the Right Thing. 
Her writing has been featured on Smitten, Glamour magazine's relationships blog, and across the great series of tubes that homosapiens like to call the Internetz.  She attempts to blog under a moniker, because there's not too much she likes more than getting tons of traffic from people searching for porn.  (Her favorite search query to date is "gigundous boobies".)  
When she's not writing, TNR enjoys a good beer, a riveting book, a rousing conversation, and relishes the simple things in life, such as coffee, warm socks, and soft toilet tissue.  She has been seen on the stage and elsewhere (she was once cast in a reality TV show that featured, oddly, Joe Piscopo), performing improvstand-up and other such nonsense, and loves nothing so much as hearing an audience laugh (preferably "with" and not "at").  She has two very quirky dogs (who are not, she says, NOT projecting their owner's personality. A-hem) and lives in Columbus, OH, which is quite possibly one of the coolest cities on the planet. Really.



I'm not sure what Doug was hoping for when he asked me to guest post. I'm sure he was hoping for some shenanigans. Today he gets a musing, instead. Thanks to you all for listening as I "soul puke."

The past six months have been a time of great change for me. I left my long-term, live-in relationship because I was drained of any and all capacity to give emotionally of myself anymore. We'd long stopped communicating in any helpful way to our relationship together, and I just reached a point where I knew we couldn't keep having the same fights over the same shit anymore if things weren't going to change.

So, I was done.

And with that doneness came freedom. And with that freedom came a new sense of independence. And with that independence came power.

Now, I'm not talking about being one of those take-no-prisoners career ladies, but I am talking about developing a sense of self where I know that if I put my mind to something, I can do it. In dating, that means I know what I want, and I know what I like, but I'm not necessarily overly analytical or picky. Instead, I'm quite relaxed about meeting and getting to know new people and I'm very, very laid back about where that journey may or may not go.

I assure you, this is a very different person that I used to be in the past. If a situation could have been over-analyzed, I'd be sure to put my Virgo sensibilities right on that shit and worry it like a dog with a bone.

But the problem is, this relaxed attitude gives me a bit of power. I often don't realize that I wield that power until far too late, and after feelings have been hurt.

In other words, in dating, I've become a dude. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Many, many of my smart, determined sisters have paved this path before me, fighting so that I could even know that I had the option to date a little like a dude. But to be sitting on the other side of the fence now...to have acted masculine, but to still feel feminine...well, that feels a bit like a conundrum.

Because it's hard realizing when you've unintentionally hurt someone. At least, for me it is. And it's hard knowing that I wouldn't (...or couldn't?) necessarily do anything differently to lead to the outcome of hurt feelings. And then it's hard because I wonder about the cost of my power, and I hope that it's worth it.

I think...well, I do think it's worth it. At least, at this point in my life I think so. There is something to be said for moving through your days knowing that the buck rests with nobody else but you, that your future is entirely in your own hands. I know we often say these things to ourselves, or hear them elsewhere...but to believe it? Well, it's a whole 'nother level.

I'm pretty sure I like this level. For now.

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