Category: Musings

Rants, essays, you know, navel-gazing

I don’t travel well

December 26, 2016

I am a broken shell of a human. Bitter and sickly, and an utter Scrooge when it comes to stepping outside of my house for more than an hour, or further than a block away. But I wish it wasn’t so. Like most, I like to travel, in the sense that visiting new and different places is interesting and stimulating. Unfortunately, I’m not good at travelling. I don’t mean that I’m bad at organizing trips, I mean that I’m too physically fragile to ever really be able to fully enjoy vacationing. I’m not as frail as I was as a child, but I’m still, it seems, more prone to illness than the average Joe anytime I’m confronted with climate change. My body seems to be wholly incapable of adapting to differing environments.

I live in Montreal, Canada, and according to official officialness we have a humid continental climate with severe winters, no dry season, warm summers, and strong seasonality. This is all true except I would change the word “warm” to “hot as hell” to classify our summers, and I call bullshit on this “no dry season” nonsense. Ok, technically, we never experience a season without precipitation but our winters feel very arid for someone with extremely dry skin.

My body has ostensibly adapted to this climate, but I still struggle with nature’s animosity, as my body is extremely sensitive. My eyes are prone to infection, my skin will break out in eczema from the slightest provocation, and will burn after literally five minutes in the sun. I’ve got every seasonal allergy imaginable as well as allergies to all mammals with fur, and even with no allergens in sight I’ve got sinus issues. Anytime I move from indoors to outdoors and vice-versa my sinuses are triggered. In fact, EVERYTHING triggers my sinuses. Eating triggers nasal drip. Working out triggers it. Standing up triggers it. Leaning over triggers it. Reciting poetry triggers it. But I’m used to living this way and have more or less adapted (though my S.O. will tell you I haven’t learned not to complain about it!) But when I travel all of these problems are exacerbated. When my body is confronted with a different climate than I’m used to, it rebels, with snot. And thanks to my super fun anemia, I also have a weak immune system so I’m pretty much guaranteed to catch a cold no matter where I go.

When I was a kid I really enjoyed airplane rides, I suppose because of the novelty. But now airplanes fill me with dread because they are literally just viral incubators in the sky. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a trip and not gotten sick. I can’t blame the planes though, I get sick on road trips too. I get sick no matter where I go. I get sick in Europe, I get sick in the States, I even get sick just going to friends’ houses.

When I was younger, I think I felt like there was nobility in this suffering. Or perhaps I was simply ashamed of my own fragility and felt like it was my duty to suffer in silence so as to accommodate others. But as I get older, I grow less tolerant of this suffering. I’ve mostly reached a point where I’m unwilling to go to certain places because I know they will be lessons in enduring hardship. I still go to my mother’s and my sister-in-laws’ for holidays but I won’t go just to hang out because they have cats and dogs. I refuse to feel bad for not staying at the houses of friends with pets. Stop trying to guilt me into spending the night. When I was young I would put up with other people’s allergen-rich homes because I was poor and polite. Now I don’t give a shit. If you’re insulted by me staying in a hotel, so be it. I will not hang out in your cat-infested house of horrors!

allergies

And I’m done with Airbnb! And regular B&Bs for that matter. Regardless of how nice these places appear to be, they are inevitably crawling with something that triggers all manner of runny noses and itchy eyes. And I will no longer tolerate that “Oh, it’s just allergies” attitude from myself or others. These supposedly innocuous allergies have gotten so bad that they are indistinguishable from a cold. It’s now happened to me more than once that I became so headachy, so runny-nosed, so lethargic and fatigued that I was convinced I had fallen ill, only to have this illness miraculously cured the moment I got home and took a shower.

So even though I’d like to travel, because there are a lot of places in the world I’d really like to see, I don’t always have the energy to face the inevitable onslaught of pain and discomfort that will follow. This is why I’m done with all those listicles and pins advocating the ten places you simply must travel to before you turn 30! (Meanwhile, I’m 40 so according to society I’ve already missed the boat). Apparently, you just haven’t lived until you’ve backpacked across Europe and stayed in these amazing hostels. But I can’t stay in hostels! I can’t even stay in chic hotels! I can only stay in 5-star chain hotels that bleach the fuck out of their sheets and have climate control in their rooms. Stop making me feel bad for not going to the back streets of such and such city. I can’t even go to the front streets of such and such city. I can barely handle the front streets of my city! (Thanks, smokers). And stop asking me where I’m going when I take a vacation. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay locked up inside my condo for two weeks straight because those two weeks without any contact with the natural atmosphere will be the most comfortable weeks of my life.

*Update in lockdown, 2020. Turns out I don’t get allergies if I never go outside. It’s amazing. For the first time in my life, I know what it is to breathe properly and it’s a revelation. I will never leave my house again.

Not so big on the smalls

December 12, 2016

The movie Big came out in 1988, which means I was twelve when I saw it. Actually, I was probably thirteen since I would have likely seen it when it came out on video. I distinctly remember disliking the movie because, though it was fun, I felt it was disrespectful towards children and was offended on behalf of myself and all my fellow kids. The main character was my age and I felt Tom Hanks’ portrayal of a child was horrendously off the mark. I remember reading reviews of the film and being appalled that everyone thought Hanks’ performance was incredible and that he’d perfectly captured the essence of a twelve-year-old. What baloney, I thought! No child of that age would ever behave so immaturely! No kid would act like an idiot when riding in a limo or be so obtuse as to spit out food at a cocktail party. How outrageous!

But then I saw the movie again as an adult and was highly impressed by Hanks’s performance. Children are indeed, exactly that annoying and immature. What a difference adulthood makes.

I did a lot of babysitting when I was a teenager, and I was a favourite of my neighbours’ kids. I couldn’t quite match their energy levels but I enjoyed our games just as much as they did. When I was in my twenties I worked at a children’s library and interacted with children all day, sometimes leading them in storytime or singalongs. And I enjoyed it! In spite of the basically non-existent salary, I thought it was a great job.

Sometime during this era, I remember having a conversation with a friend who was denouncing children, and how awful it was that they were allowed in public spaces such as the restaurant we were currently in. I took her to task, passionately defending children and their right to inhabit public spaces. I don’t remember exactly what I said but I do remember my friend’s reaction, which was surprise that I felt so strongly about the issue. I have a history of coming across as a rather negative person so I guess she assumed I hated kids as much as she did. Turns out all she had to do was wait a couple decades. Because today, she is the proud mommy of a little baby boy, and I absolutely despise those little snot-buckets.

This drastic change in opinion has taken place rather recently but was also somewhat gradual. When I was in my late twenties and early thirties I was seriously thinking about having children of my own. I was never that person who always longed to have kids, but I never dismissed the idea either. It was at this point that my sister had a baby and so did a few friends, and I started to receive encouragement from all sides to join the club. I did a lot of research about pregnancy, and child-rearing, and still could not decide whether or not I wanted kids. I liked the idea of passing on my genes (defective as they are) but wasn’t too thrilled about how much work it would be.

Even though I’d always been good with kids, I’d never liked babies. When my then-boyfriend and I visited his sister, who’d just delivered a baby, in the hospital, his mother insisted I hold the parasite, no doubt hoping this would trigger some maternal instinct in me. It had the opposite effect. I was disgusted and repelled. When my nephew was born I was flooded with feelings of love for him but wasn’t really interested in taking care of him. Babysitting him was boring at best, and exhausting and time-consuming at worst.

I broke up with my then-boyfriend when I was around thirty-three, and started going out with my current boyfriend. He and I were both in similar places: devastated by our breakups and unsure of what we wanted from life/relationships going forward. He, like me, has a history of being well-liked by children. He was the “fun” uncle to his niece and nephew. But as he and I have grown closer, and developed our two-person rhythm, our uncertainty towards children has grown into antipathy. During our relationship, I turned thirty-five, the age at which a pregnancy becomes “geriatric” and high-risk. Being on the sickly side, I’d always told myself that if I didn’t have children by that age, I never would, as I’d never wanted to risk my health just to have a baby. But there I was, on the wrong side of my thirties, wondering if I should extend my deadline. But now, only five years later, I’ve wholeheartedly decided that the answer is no, no kids for me.

I just can’t stand them anymore. Whenever I’m forced to interact with friends’ kids I always find it a loathsome experience, mostly because I’m so bad at it. I used to be so good with kids but now I’m just awful. I barely have the energy to even acknowledge their existence, much less interact on their level. Recently I yelled at my nephew when he was being bratty and he asked me why I was so angry. I was taken aback because it was such a valid question. Why indeed was I so angry? The kid’s only eleven! I can’t expect him to be perfectly rational all the time. Why did I lose my temper?!

So it’s a chicken or egg situation. I don’t know if my distaste for kids has turned me into someone who can’t relate to them or if as I age I become less able to relate and therefore more hostile towards them. I also wonder if it’s a reverse psychology situation, wherein I’ve convinced myself that I hate kids because I’ve never had them. If I wasn’t forty years old, and over the kid having hill, would I still enjoy the grubby little virus-factories? And then there’s the societal pressure to join the mommy club. My boyfriend faces parental pressure as well, but it’s nothing like what women go through. I’m over 40 and yet people still ask when/if I’m having kids. Does this line of questioning ever end? Am I turning into a hardcore child-free advocate simply to counteract the overwhelming pressure that society places on me to conform? Or is it overcompensation for a latent desire to fulfill the most basic instinct of procreation?

My boyfriend is even more hardcore anti-child than I am, to the point where he often tries to convince others that a child-free lifestyle is superior to a child-burdened one. I’ve accused him of overcompensating in this area, perhaps in an effort to truly convince himself. After all, if someone is fully comfortable with their beliefs, do they really feel the need to convert others?

Am I satisfied with the way things have turned out? Or do I mourn the old me, the one who could play with kids and actually enjoy herself? I certainly don’t want to be hateful. But on the other hand, eww, kids are gross. Keep those fuckers away from me.

Am I a bitch?

November 14, 2016

I’ve already explored whether or not I’m a hater and concluded that I must be an asshole if people perceive me as such. So I’m certainly a bitch in the sense that people have called me a bitch, and many people think of me as a cold-hearted Wednesday Addams type.

But is it fair to refer to me as a bitch? What have I done that is so bitchy? What does bitch even mean? Literally, it means a female dog, and apparently, back in the 14th century, it meant a woman with high sexual desire, as in a “bitch in heat”. Today it tends to be used as an all-purpose insult for women. Any woman who is bossy, or uppity, or assertive, or daring to behave in ways that are traditionally considered masculine, is called a bitch. And those sexist connotations are why I take such issue with the word. Calling a woman a bitch means she’s acting like a man in a way that is unacceptable in mainstream society and calling a man a bitch is calling him a woman, which is, of course, the gravest of insults.

So I do bristle when I’m called a bitch, even if it’s usually meant jokingly, perhaps because it is meant jokingly. Why is it funny to call a woman a bitch? But there’s also a part of me that embraces the label, as many feminists do, in a “taking it back” kind of way, because a bitch is a woman in control of her life, and bitches get stuff done.

But there’s also the concern that people are calling me a bitch because they think I’m mean. As I’ve discussed, I often come across more negatively than I intend. But once again, I’m forced to wonder if a man behaving in similar ways would be judged so harshly for such behaviour. When a man acts dismissively, it’s the other person’s fault for wasting his time, but when I do it I’m not being open to other people’s opinions. When a man looks at his phone instead of chatting with people, he’s considered busy, but when I do it I’m unfriendly. Could I stand to be more empathetic to others? Sure. But so could most men who have swallowed our society’s programming on how to be successfully male. Why don’t we have a nasty word for men who are bossy, assertive, aggressive, dismissive, and unfriendly? I guess there’s the word “dick”, which is often used as an insult towards men. And that word is indeed problematic because it implies that penises are inherently bad. I take similar issue with the word “cunt” being used as an insult. And I’m especially annoyed by the word “pussy” being used to mean weak, while “balls” denote courage. How does that make sense? When men are kicked in the testicles they act as though the world has ended, while vaginas regularly excrete one’s uterine lining in a rather painful process, and women just get on with it. And yet women are the weak ones?

Now allow me to return to the word “bitch”, and its casual overuse. I especially hate the insult “son of a bitch” because it doesn’t insult the person it’s meant to be insulting. Instead, it insults his mother. I still, for reasons we won’t go into here, watch Supernatural, even though it is deeply problematic in its treatment of both women and men (I think largely due to poor writing resulting from ignorant sexism, rather than malevolent misogyny), but they throw around the term “son of a bitch” like it’s a meaningless adjective. But it’s a very loaded term. It implies that the person at fault is the mother of the villain, rather than the villain himself. It lets men off the hook entirely and places all blame on women. If you think I’m overreacting to a simple word, then you’ve probably used that word before, without fully considering how hurtful it can be. Or you knew exactly how hurtful it would be and your intention was to hurt, in which case you’re the bitch big ol’ meany pants.