The Unconventional Life

When I look at the way my life has unfolded, I realise I've had a push-pull with living an unconventional life.

Some people know they're unconventional, and embrace it.

I knew it, wanted to embrace it, and got the crap beaten out of me for trying to embrace it.

So, I tend to take that same verbal truncheon to myself now, and try, often, to beat myself into conventionality.

I beat myself up with ideas about family and about what I *should* be doing--how I *should* just settle down and get a *real* job and find The Man of My Dreams, who will be everything I want him, and need him, to be. I beat myself up with ideas about friends and friendship and how I *should* just quit the drama (which, at first can be fun but after awhile can be tiring) and be more like other women my age, who are settled down and have husbands and families and real jobs.

When I got into another paroxism over what I perceive as my unintentional unconventionality, my friend Cathy reminded me of the results of my last attempt at conventionality--8 years in an abusive marriage, chronic fatigue, and another divorce.

True. Very true.

Apparently, I don't do *conventional* all that well. I think I have a little problem with the concept. First, I don't seem to pick my partners all that well. Then, there's that problem with family, and how, even though I'd love the acceptance and a place to belong, I end up with people who think I'm a real oddball and want to bully me into fitting in with them. Or,they just don't talk to me--no interest in me whatsoever, but kind of expect me to sit around and listen to them pontificate. Then there ends up being this awful tug of war between me and The Forces of Conventionality that demand that I give up the things about me that seem to work well...those things like not having a regular job, and being chased by guys (even at this late stage of my life) and dressing funny, and talking in 25 cent words because those are the ones that pop into my head during conversation....

I see conventionality as a safe place that, for some reason, I can't seem to reach. It's like an imaginary island in the middle of a fogbank somewhere in the Pacific...for lots of folks it's real, but to me it might as well be Bali Hi (obscure Rogers & Hammerstein reference there--makes sense to me, but probably not to too many other people. see what I mean??)

So, how do I trust that unconventionality is the better place for me than conventionality? I can certainly go by past experience...that definitely shows me that I don't have the wherewithall to figure out conventionality.

Then again, maybe I like the drama and the adventures...the things that other people don't often experience. Maybe I don't see those things as a dead end but opportunities to learn more about the experience of life. Maybe I'm looking for something more in life because the conventional hasn't worked.

Makes me wonder about destiny. Is this mine? or am I strong-willed enough to change a destiny I was able to intuit would be worse than if it weren't changed?

I wonder....

and shift in my chair, trying to find that comfortable spot in my unconventional life.