There are times when I second guess my chosen "occupation" of stay at home wife/mom/unschooler/homemaker/breeder. But, it is not very often. Usually, it's when someone isnults my intelligence or tries to correct my parenting or wife skills. I have no degree for a college or university, I am short, fat, a minority and come from uneducated parents. Admittedly I can be found around 3om watching Real Housewives of...(wherever they are). I will text or chat and use LOL way too much. Instead of working outside the home I have chosen not to, I have chosen this role to enrich my kids lives and because I am a bit paranoid. Day care sucked for my oldest as he was always sick. However, despite my lack of job or degree I am in no way stupid.
I am a very well read person, or so I think. Since I was very young I have read almost everything and anything these brown hands could grab. By ten I was reading Kerouac and Burroughs. When I was entering junior high I had read all of the works of Shakespeare. Yes, I had also read all the fun stuff by Beverly Cleary and Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's in me to absorb everything and make my own opinions on things.
Honestly, sometimes I think too much of whatever think of my intelligence. For some reason it something fretful for me. When I was in seventh grade I tried to fail because my same aged cousin would get mad at me. "Stop being so smart! I am tired of being compared to you!" "Nerd!" "Geek!" "Four eyes!" which came with the mandatory spit infused fingerprints in my lenses. The best and most hurtful of all was "You know, 'Nita boys don't like girls who are smarter than them." In the gut and hear at the same time. Something in me lead me to believe them, I had never had a boyfriend and they were practically engaged at 13. Or so it seemed.
So for years I yo-yo'd with my ability to be both smart and worth of a boy or man. I say boy because I am sorry a sixteen year old is not yet a man. Whenever I would meet someone who seemed to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation with me they'd end up with some girl who bathed in lip gloss and read Cosmo as if were the truth the way and the light to life. Or sometimes they would end up with a friend of mine who was inclined to shake her ass from underneath her skirt. That just wasn't me.
For sometime in my late teens and early twenties I thought maybe those words were correct. Never was I able to have an intelligent relationship. So I really did dumb myself down and became a person I still am not able to reconcile. The old me would still come out from time to time, caught reading a book or writing some poetry made me "intriguing" or "different". But, off to the next girl... Honestly during this time there was maybe a couple of guys who were willing to deal with my brain and eccentricities but, I just could not believe them. I gave up hope. Forget the fact that any women I dated at the time were....possessive NO THANKS!
Some morning I feel like I need a good slap in the face and remember that I am married. I do have some great friends, some wonderful children and am intelligent. This is all okay and I just need to forget what the world thinks of it all. I read sociology books for fun, NPR is on my iPhone and I bake bread. Why do not just I but, women and people in general feel they need to fit perectly into categories?
Like I said lot's of rambling.
Love and The smell of a new book.
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