onomatoblog

I rather frequently hear people talk about the innocence of childhood. The “I want to be six again” poemesque thing is a well-known, nostalgic declaration of loss of innocence. People grieve that they have lost the ability to be happy over small thing, to have no real worries. The weight of income tax, getting groceries and affording a vacation is heavy on their shoulders. To declare that one wants to be a kid again, though, is ridiculous. Not only are a child’s problem as real and terrifying to them as income tax is to an adult, but that “innocence” if always topped with a fundamental powerlessness related to fundamentals of life.

I am glad I am an adult.. I live among mostly civilized individuals; if someone attacks me on the way from work, they are breaking the law and the police will, hopefully, recognize that. When I was in primary school, I was afraid of going home from school every day. An older girl, perhaps by four years, had decided it was a fun sport to catch me and pull my hair. All her friends, and mine, agreed. After all, I reacted. I cried and whimpered. And the teachers and my mother sighed and said I oughtn’t encourage her by reacting. Who would say something like that to an adult? “Well, I know your neighbor meets you in the stairwell and hit you every evening, but it’s basically your own fault, you oughtn’t be such an amusing person to make fun of.”

I’ll take income tax before that any day.

I get to cook and choose my own food. I never have to eat spare ribs or liver again, and if I don’t feel like pasta today, I will eat something else. I discovered a year or two ago that it wasn’t as exciting to eat certain meals as it used to be, and it took me a while to realize that it was because I didn’t have to suffer two weeks of food I didn’t like (yes, I am a picky eater) before getting my favorite. I make that choice now, and although I might have to compromise with a partner or friend, no one puts a plate before me with “eat this, or go to bed without dinner.”

I wear the clothes I like. Perhaps not to work, but no one makes me wear the itchy, blue jumper that I hate.

It’s worth cramps.

I pick my own bedtime. Granted, not always with the best result (getting up at six after a night at the computer? Not so great.) If I can’t sleep, I can stay up. If I want to nap, no one will ask if I am feeling sick. And related, I can stay indoors on nice days, or take a walk in the rain. I can midnight run to Crispy Creme. Well, I can’t. But if I had a license and a car, and if I was in the US, I could.

I can read. I don’t know what I did before I read, but I must have spent hours looking into empty space. Books are my friends, and I don’t rely on others to read them for me.

For the most part, people take me seriously even when they can’t help me. When they don’t, I generally have somewhere else to turn. Personally, I find that worth the price of not being able to see, that that chair is really a spaceship.

This is going to be a text about how Lucas is fantastic.

(For new readers, Lucas is my boyfriend of almost four years, fiancé of almost three, and come September 20th, hopefully my husband. It depends a little on whether immigrations have finished their paperwork by then.)

Now, he really is fantastic. I’ve often been told by friend (and acquaintances of both me and him) what a catch I’ve made, and I have. The guy is fantastic. If not for other reasons, for putting up with me and my somewhat confusing and chaotic existence and prickly personality.
I am what one would call high maintenance. I am very emotional, I pout when I don’t get 100% of people’s attentions, and while I don’t have diagnosable anxiety attacks, it’s pretty damn close. Of course, I am not exactly sure what it is to be ‘low maintenance’; I associate the expression with someone who leaves her boyfriend alone with a beer and Monday night football, gives him his weekly fuck and a few blow jobs, cooks his dinner, otherwise leaving him alone. That’s not the girlfriend I’d want to be, and nothing could make me, barring a lobotomy. But as a rather rabid feminist, I have set the requirements for a good partner rather high, and yet Lucas manages to fulfil them. He isn’t into porn (for, I think, the same reasons I am not) and he washes his own socks. Granted, he was about as spoilt as I was when he started college, bringing his dirty laundry home when he visited over Thanksgivings, but I think it was less due to laziness and more in order to save those magic quarter. During our almost four years, I have washed for him twice. Both times because I was doing laundry anyway. Both times he thanked me for it. I don’t imagine that it will stay that way once we live together, as it would be ridiculous to keep separate laundry piles, but it’s a good sign. Four years of doing his own laundry will hopefully save me from the forty years of slave labor I see my mother perform.
When he was in high school, during a trip to Seattle, most of the guys in his group went to a striptease club. Lucas and another guy decided that they weren’t interested (I can’t remember what they did instead, but I imagine it had to do with video games.) He told me about this in the beginning of our relationship, and I can’t explain how many points he won there. Fantastic.
Three years ago, I went on the birth control pill. However, I got off of it fairly soon, and it fucked my body up quite bad. Most of my mucus membranes were damaged, and I couldn’t sit properly for half a year. Sex was completely out of the question for almost a full year, and still has to be limited; in fact, the psychological consequences of the pain still leaves me with issues. I only just recently could start wearing tight pants. If this would have happened now, I would have been less surprised by Lucas’ resilience, but it was when had only been together for a year. He could have ditched me within a month; how many twenty year old guys stay with a girlfriend from whom they’re getting no sex (if they don’t have religio-ideological reasons)? Not many.
I spend hours and hours at the computer, reading and writing blogs, talking to people, and reloading my LiveJournal friends list. Checking email. Designing something. Reloading my livejournal friends list. Lucas puts up with it, even when it annoys him. After he has spent five more minutes than I’d like on a video game, I pout (I should mention that we most often manage to cooperate on this; he plays his video games while I am online, and they don’t often collide.)
I fangirl, and squee, and freak out over ridiculous, geeky thing. He thinks it’s cute. I’ve never heard him loudly proclaim that some chick is hot, or caught him giving anyone a once-over while we’ve been out.

He doesn’t bring me flowers. He gives me teddy bats, DVDs and action figures. I’ve never ever received a generic present from Lucas. Well, he has given me flowers twice; two black silk roses in Valentine’s Day, and a bouquet of white lilies as a welcome-back present my third fall in the US. But never, ever, anything generic. When I was doing volunteering for a class, and got home around 1 p.m., tired and cranky, he had been to the mall to pick up a t-shirt I had been coveting for quite some time. He feeds me skittles. He calls me his lady Stardust. I tell you, he’s fantastic.