more about me

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I was never what I’ll call a girl’s girl. I don’t have a lot or even a few close female friends. I do have a great support group though.
We call it a tribe. Within the ‘tribe’ there are women who I’d say are very close friends of each other. However, loyalty to the tribe really does exist and as a mother when I’ve needed something it’s been there and when others have needed I’ve done what I could.

I miss having someone who gets ‘me’ though. Someone who I really relate to or feel I understand. At least in marraige, I feel that I have a lot of that in my partner, but it’d be nice to find outside that too.

Up until recently, I’ve been defending our parenting choices (now known as alternative parenting) by saying ‘well, we’re hippies’. Let me state here for the record. I have not now, nor ever been a hippy! I hate patchouli, don’t like the grateful dead at all, could really care less about tie dye, or the shaving thing. I don’t, didn’t and won’t do drugs. (Through most of college I would have said my drug of choice was MEN! But then after I swore I’d never get married or have kids, I found the right one and well, now I guess he’s my drug of choice.) But back to the hippy thing. I really wish the whole baby wearing, co-sleeping, breastfeeding, no tv watching, healthy eating bunch of us had more women like where I came from.

Where I came from was listening to loud music in combat boots and joining mosh pits. I was an art student that lived on coffee for the first part of the day, and screwdrivers for the second half. Mostly I ate veggie burritos or chicken soup; two things I knew how to cook. I had my bed in my living room because it had the best sunlight for photoshoots/ which frequently happened in my bed featuring men without clothing.
funny.
I went on to grad school and did a lot of artwork centering on gender issues and the complexities of growing up a girl. In grad school there was what I called the ‘girls’ club’ I never did make friends with any of them. Though, two that I know of have kids now too. I was always irritated with them because they knew all the feminist criticism/ and art theory but I felt they didn’t walk their talk. I spent most of grad school trying to make ’smart’ art, get laid, stay drunk and become a badass mountain biker chick. Graduate school made me feel really stupid in a lot of ways, but mostly because I never mangaged to make one female friend. I never ‘got’ their artwork which was worse because often it was assumed that just because I was a girl I would get it. It’s been 8 years now since I finished Grad school and I feel like I’m still trying to learn some of the lessons I should have then.