Saturday, October 6, 2007

State of my Single Union

[So there's another long entry below this one, too. Two extra long entries, just for you! Which means if I don't get back here for a week or so, you'll be okay, right?]

I'm working on a project for one of my classes that involves reviewing how-to books on writing a dissertation. I'm finding that a lot of these books are rather depressing. They're all about how hard it is, and how time consuming, and how half the people that start never finish and how that's okay, and several of them have entire chapters on how to dig yourself out of "dissertation depression."

Does this scare me? A little, I suppose. But not as much as you might think. First of all, nothing in these books is coming as a total surprise to me. For the past year or so one of my hobbies has been reading blogs written by various people in the academic world. You know how it goes: find one, click a link, find another, click a link...before long I was up to half a dozen academics' blogs that I read regularly and at least another dozen that I check up on periodically. I don't usually comment, but I take in other people's journeys and so I realize from reading the stories of those that have gone before me that the entire Ph.D. process is hard, particulary the ABD part of it. And the job search is hard. And it's hard if you don't find a tenure track job. And if you do luck into a tenure track job, working against the tenure track clock is still hard. It's all really, really hard.

In other words, by the time I officially committed to a Ph.D. program back in April, I was as well aware as I could possibly be of what I was getting myself into. I know that there are going to be times when I absolutely hate this path I have chosen. I know that it's only going to get harder, especially four years from now when most of my friends will be well settled into their post-college careers, making real money and getting raises and establishing 401Ks while (if I'm lucky and haven't been thrown out of the program entirely or lost my funding yet) I'll still be plodding away on my dissertation and living on less than twenty grand a year. This whole thing is going to get much, much tougher before it gets easier.

But like I said, I knew that going into it. And in my heart of hearts, I believe I am here for the right reasons. I am here because I have a specific goal: I want to teach college students. I want to teach college students, and I can't do that to the best of my ability or in the way I imagine doing it until I have this degree. I have a goal. And I also think I have the tenacity to make it through the program. At this moment, anyway, I feel pretty confident that I will in fact stick this out and earn my Ph.D. And it's because I really want it, because I need it to do what I want to do, and not just because I have nothing better to do.

But sometimes I wonder...what if I DID have something better to do? What, at this point, would count as something better to do? I ask this because one of the books I read very clearly said that you will absolutely never finish the dissertation unless it is your first or second priority in life. And that's where I have an advantage, because not only is this program and my eventual dissertation the number one priority in my life right now, it's pretty much the only priority in my life right now.

Yes, okay, in theory my family takes precedence over school. If someone in my family got sick right now and needed me, I would do whatever I could to be there at home for as long as they needed me there. But on a practical day-to-day basis, my family of origin is not really much of a commitment. My immediate family lives thousands of miles away now, they're doing fine without me, and while I love them all and enjoy talking to them, a phone call once or twice a week is pretty much the only time my family takes away from my schoolwork. When the dissertation books talk about family commitments, they're not talking commitment to your family of origin, they're talking commitment to your husband/wife and children. And I don't have those relationships.
I'm going to go ahead and count my pets as family, too, although I'm not even going to try to pretend that that's any sort of serious drain on schoolwork time.
Other than family, nothing takes precedence over my school work. In theory I would like to believe my friends do, although in practice I am highly unlikely to skip an assignment or cut back on my writing time unless a friend is having a dire emergency or emotional breakdown. I'll always talk when a friend needs to talk, but the fact is that I don't particulary enjoy high-drama people so my friends are pretty low maintenance (thanks, guys!) and as much as I like to pretend I'm an easygoing girl, I'm actually highly unlikely to blow off schoolwork in favor or a social event. These days I can and do try to fit in one or two social events a week around my schoolwork (because I think it's good to stay well rounded) but I don't go out with friends if it means I'm not going to have time to finish an assignment.

I'm sort of beginning to lose my original train of thought here, but I guess what I'm wondering is if I'm really as devoted to the Ph.D. as I think I am, or if I would give all this up for the right reason. Oh, hell, let me be brutally honest with myself: the right guy.

I make no secret of the fact that when I started my MA program, it was mostly because I knew that I didn't want to teach high school for the rest of my life but I also didn't know what I wanted to do. I also make no secret of the fact that I never worried much about deciding what I wanted to do with my life when I was in high school or early college. I pretended to be deciding what I wanted to do, sure, because that's what everyone else was doing. But secretly, I wasn't too worried about it because I honestly thought by the time I was 24 I'd be married and just doing a job to kill time for a few years until I got pregnant. And then twelve years later when I was tired of being a stay-at-home mom, I'd finally worry about figuring out what I wanted to do when I grew up.

Yes, I was a feminist's nightmare. And now, I look at myself and go, "What the fuck were you thinking?" I was basically taking the only model I knew well (my own mother's life) and assuming that mine would probably take a similar track. I was making a lot of assumptions, the most major one being that my husband (at the time I thought it would be Phil, I guess) would earn enough money to allow me the leisure of making the decision to be a stay-at-home mom in the first place.

But then things changed. I fell in love with the academic lifestyle in college. I realized that teaching high school was more frustrating than rewarding and that I definitely wanted some other options as far as teaching goes. I realized that I was not, in fact, going to get engaged and married straight out of college. I realized, much to my surprise, that I didn't really want that after all.
In my MA program, I realized how much I really like theory and research. I realized that I'm good at it. Basically, I realized that I can earn a Ph.D. and once I realized that I realized that I really, really want it.

Now, the life I envision for myself is utterly different than what I was envisioning four years ago. I have learned a lot, and it has changed me in profound ways. Now I feel absolutely driven to get my terminal degree. I can see myself in a college classroom and presenting at conferences and sitting through faculty meetings much more clearly than I can see myself doing anything else. While I know I am suited to other jobs and if this doesn't work out I'll find something else I am passionate about eventually, nothing immediately comes to mind right now.
Yes, I still see myself parenting a child. I can see that almost as clearly as I can see myself in the classroom. Tell me I'm buying into the hegemonic ideals of our society if you want to, but the fact of the matter is I eventually want to be a mother as much as I want to be a doctor. Some women are positive that they never want children. Others waiver for years before finally making a decision one way or the other. I happen to fall into the camp where I have never once doubted that I am supposed to be someone's mother. I don't want it to happen right now, but someday, some way, I know that will happen for me. [All three camps are great, by the way. I feel like people are always surprised when I am so adamant about expressing that I want to be a mother someday. I don't know why, since I'm never surprised to hear a woman say that she absolutely will never have kids of her own. I think in a weird twist of culture that it's actually more subversive now for a young woman--at least a young woman in the sorts of circles I run in--to proudly proclaim that she wants children rather than proclaiming that she doesn't.]
But anyway, this is how my life has fundamentally changed over the past four years or so. Now, the idea of an academic career and the idea of motherhood are equally clear in my mind. Before, all I could imagine was the family and the baby/child/teenager. Now, I can clearly see my academic life, I can fuzzily see a future child, but I can't see a boyfriend or husband. At all.

And I don't know what this means. Part of me wonders how great my resolve actually is. After all, I have clearly changed my mind before. I say I can't see a boyfriend or a husband at all, but is it just because I haven't met the right person? If I were to meet a great guy tomorrow, would things suddenly begin to flip-flop again? If I suddenly had the option of doing something (someone, ha) other than the dissertation, would I do it?

Right now, I feel more satisfied with my single state than I have at any time since Phil ended everything with me a year and a half ago. Part of it is maybe just that my life is exciting right now because everything is still new and so busy. To be honest, I rarely have time to even think about being single.
Part of it is that I have come to terms with a ton of things about the whole Phil situation. I could type for hours about the things I have figured out, but the most important things are
a) I no longer feel any guilt about the break up. Not the first break up (when I supposedly left him for my College Ex) and not the second break up (when he left me for J). For a long time, I felt guilty for a lot of reasons. For not handling the first break up well in how it actually all played out. For screwing things up by not making it clear to Phil that I still loved him and fundamentally wanted to be with him even though I needed to sow my wild oats for a while (what a dumb expression). For being such an over-emotional wreck during the second break up. And mostly, I felt guilty because when I would get very down and lonely in the months just after Phil left me for J, Phil would always tell me that it was my own fault, that I was sad and doomed to a life of being alone because I had chosen my career over him. He would always say, "This is what you wanted. You are the one that wanted to go away to school," the implication being that if I had stayed in hometown, he and I would still be together and I wouldn't be sad and lonely and heartbroken.
And for a long time I worried that I had made the wrong choice. I thought that it was terribly stupid of me to choose a career over love. Who does that?! I'm much more of a brain than a heart person, but even I would never tell someone to choose a career over love.
But now I know better. Now I know that I did not, in fact, make a choice at all. My choice was to go away to school AND stay with the guy I loved. The choice I would have made, had it actually been my choice, would have been to take a year or so off from our committed relationship to do all the wild things you're supposed to do in college and start to establish my career, but then go back to Phil, positive that I was with the right guy for me. But Phil didn't let me make that choice. He made his own choices, choices that involved holding grudges against me and falling in love with someone else (okay, maybe that wasn't fully his choice, sometimes that just happens). I didn't make any choices, not really. I am sure Phil would disagree with me completely on that, but ultimately, it's how I feel. He made the choices. He always made the choices. I just went with the flow because I was unable to have the things I would have actually chosen for myself.
So now I no longer feel like a bad person. I am not a cold-hearted bitch who chose her career over love. I'm just a girl who tried to have it all with a guy who wouldn't let her do that. Which means that he isn't the right guy for me. Because the right guy for me would have taken me back when I was ready to get back together. He would have forgiven me for needing the reassurance that I was with the right person, and I would have been able to forgive him (as I did, actually) when he needed to do some experimenting of his own. In the end, our love wasn't unconditional. And that wasn't a CHOICE that either of us made, it was just a fact that we can't really control.
So I don't feel guilty anymore. I didn't realize how much guilt I was carrying around until I realized it was gone. It's liberating.
b) When I miss Phil, I'm not missing the person he is now. Oh, I still like the person he is now. We have been getting along well ever since we started talking again back in July. But on the rare occasion these days when I'm tired of being alone and I think I'm missing Phil, I'm actually missing a person that doesn't exist anymore.
Like I said, I still like the way he is now. But the guy he is now is not the person I was in love with. Nowadays I realize that I don't know Phil like I used to know him. He doesn't let me into his life all the way anymore. And that's okay, maybe it's even for the best. My point is, the person I miss when I'm missing someone is the Phil that doesn't exist anymore. Or maybe I'm missing a person I haven't even met yet.
Oddly enough, this is a liberating thing, too.

This does tie back into the whole dissertation thing, I promise. Because the other part of why I am satisfied with being single these days is that for the first time in my life I am truly grateful to be single.
I read the scary bits in the dissertation books about how dissertating can ruin your relationship, or vice versa, and I can't help but go, "Well, that's one hurdle I don't have to worry about!" And I never thought I would actually get to this point, but a lot of times these days I'm actually truly happy to be single because for once it's making my life easier, not harder.

But you know me. I always have to worry. And I worry that by the time I finally finish this whole dissertation business I'm just going to want to find someone to relax with for a while but I'm going to be 30 and it's going to be too late. Isn't that stupid? But that's what I worry about.
This whole process is already so solitary, and it's only going to get worse. I don't know how I would even meet a guy these days, to be honest. All of my friends here are already coupled up, so there's not the old fallback of going out with a group of single girls and flirting with single guys at the bars. Nobody can do that with me. And I'm definitely not going to date someone from the department (even if I were attracted to someone in the department, that seems dangerous). So unless I have one of those serendipitous "meet cute" moments, I don't know how I'd end up dating someone in the first place.
And then there's that. I honestly don't feel like I have time for the early stages of a relationship. The early stages of a good relationship can be fun, but it's exhausting. That giddy feeling of infatuation is wonderful, but I seriously don't have time for the beginning of a relationship, the part where you're wanting to go out with each other four times a week and have marathon sex until eight in the morning. Just thinking about trying to do that plus everything I'm already doing right now stresses me out. Pathetic, but true. When I think back to college, I very fondly remember the all-nighters (of the sexual variety) but I also remember that my body felt completely physically wrecked most of the time. I remember that heavy-lidded, headachy, completely worn down feeling. The only thing that kept me going was the stupid infatuated hormones, I guess, and those hormones convinced me that I was giddily happy. And I suppose I was. But now I feel both content and really healthy, and I have no real desire to mess with that.
So if I did somehow manage to stumble into a relationship, I'd want to stumble into the second year of it. The part where I can sit on the couch with my computer and he can lie on the couch with the remote and we can grunt at each other once in a while and then we can go to bed and probably fool around for a bit but then sleep 6 to 8 hours like normal people before getting up for work. And we're not trying to impress each other at all so we only go out once or twice a week but mostly we just sit at home in our workout clothes. That's the sort of relationship I would want to be in.
But I don't think you can fully skip the early stage, can you?

So yes. I suppose I am a bit still conflicted about all of this. I'm not saying that all of these convictions wouldn't fly right out the window if I met a fascinating guy tomorrow. I really don't know what would happen. I have no idea.

But primarily I'm feeling happy these days. I'm in a really good place. And if this is all it is for a long time, just me and the hound dog chillin' on the couch on a Friday night while I procrastinate instead of finishing my book review, well, I am actually okay with that.

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