Planning 20

Song of the Day: Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons

Have you ever seen Much Ado About Nothing? Well, it’s phenomenal and there’s a version by Joss Whedon on Netflix, so you should go watch that. It’s got Nathan Fillion. I don’t know if there is anything else I need to recommend it. 

Much Ado holds a special place in my heart among Shakespeare’s plays. I mean, you got your Romeo and Juliets, your Julius Caesars, your Macbeths, your Hamlets, and those are all good and often read. Then you have all your comedies, like She’s the Man and Ten Things I Hate About You. But (and I know all about this because I wrote a paper about it one time) Much Ado isn’t as lighthearted as the rest of the comedies. I mean, (spoilers) Hero fake dies and there are some serious defamations of character over the course of the play. Plus, Beatrice has this awesome speech where she knows that the lies about Hero need to be avenged and she’s raging to Benedick about how she would do it; if she were a man, she would eat the liar’s heart in the marketplace. Roll laugh-track, am I right?

And Shakespeare, tool-status notwithstanding, definitely goes for a “men kinda suck” theme in Much Ado. Have you heard the song from it? “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more. Men were deceivers ever. One foot in sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never.” Shakespeare would like for you to know that men are inconstant jerks, ladies. Keep that in mind. And not that Shakespeare defines my worldview, but I’d have to say that reading this over and over again in high school may not have been the best in terms of building my trust of the male species. 

Trust is hard. It’s hard to trust other people to get stuff done. It’s hard to trust that people will be there for you when you need them. It’s impossible to trust that you’re getting the whole story about anything and it’s difficult to trust other people with your story. If I have difficulty trusting my friends to be the awesome people I know that they are, how in the world am I supposed to trust a guy for anything when I know that there are just utter scumbags out there, hiding under a layer of relative niceness? And I know that you date people to figure all that sort of stuff out and that you don’t fall in love with someone before you date them, but eventually that end date is there, you know? Eventually, I’m either going to trust this man with everything that I have and hold or we’re going to go our separate ways and knowing that a wall like that exists scares me away from even smiling at someone too much.

(And then watching all these other parents scares me away from ever wanting kids. What if I let my kids become brats and I don’t know how to fix that? What if I drive my kids away and all they can see in me are hateful things? What if I can’t provide for them and they end up in some terrible situation because of my economic circumstance? What if I can’t keep my kids safe? I know I’m being ridiculous, but, you know, we can head off all these worries at the pass if I just keep my head down and rock the forever-alone lifestyle until my ovaries pass their prime.)

I see people starting their joint lives with other people and I don’t feel behind. I’m not really at a loss. I think I say it because it’s expected, but I’m fine by myself. It’d be nice to have someone else in my life, but I don’t know if it’s worth it, what with the busyness and the aforementioned fears. Plus, I’d want everything to be perfect, or at least perfectly imperfect, and then I’d just be disappointed, so until I adjust my expectations, I might as well just wait it out. I’m moving on in a year anyway. It’s not a great time to start a relationship. And I know, a date doesn’t imply a relationship. But why would I go through that horror of a social cluster if I wasn’t going to get something long-term out of it?

Listen, I want a family. If I’m planning my future, I want to plan a future with the possibility of a man in mind. Just… don’t think that I’m wasting my time if the fulfillment of that possibility isn’t on the horizon yet.