Fixing It

In a conversation yesterday with a person of the male persuasion, the issue of “fixing” things came up and the manly tendency to try to resolve feminine issues and/or "crises" came back to my mind.  I, as I so frequently am, was addled by Topamax, and I never speak as well as I write, anyway, so I don’t think I articulated what I wanted to.  I kept thinking about what he'd said, the disparity between what men try to do and what I really want, and while I know that I may not be typical, I kept wishing I'd said it better.  Enter the blog.....

Every guy I have ever known (my father notwithstanding) has wanted to “fix” things for me.  That male characteristic sort of fascinates and impresses the hell out of me.  Men seem hardwired to take hold of problems and wrestle them to the ground.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  I used to have a friend, my best guy friend in college in fact, and if I was having a terrible day and I told him about it, he started making master plans to re-engineer my entire life to conquer the problem.  (Since he was/is an engineer by trade, you can sort of understand that, I suppose.  Occupational hazard?)  It was an awesome, scary, and amazing thing he could do.  He built beautiful castles in the air.  While not everything he mapped out for me was possible, practical, or even plausible, I loved him for it in a sort of “it’s-the-thought-that-counts” way, just like I loved my Dad for being able to help me see that all forms of math are not the anti-Christ when I was facing late-night pre-test stress, just like I love my guy friends who power through any odd school committee assignment we’re given with absolute and mind-shattering confidence while the rest of us are still going into “kill them all with edged weapons” mode. 

One of my favorite “fix it” lines came from one of my least favorite people, my samurai ex.  When I was unable to contact someone who was holding up my entire career in Japan and was exceedingly stressed out about it, he said, “Do you want me to kill him?  You know I do have a bamboo sword….”  It was a joke (Well….sort of.  Good God, you should have seen him with a bamboo sword….), but mostly it was just another expression of that “let me fix it for you” mentality that I find a little endearing most of the time.

Notice that I said most of the time. Some of the time I find it really irritating, because that’s not what I want.  

I don’t cling.  I’m not a vine.  I don’t need someone to run out and protect me from the big, bad world.  I’m not stupid or weak.  I don't "freak out" or have a crisis as a subtle mind game or emotional manipulation, and I don’t believe in taking the easy way out, don't believe in taking my problems and going to somebody else and saying, "Here.  I broke it with my silliness.  Fix it."  I’ve never been a Disney princess in a tower.  Or, well, if I am a tower-dwelling lady of any variety, I have always been the type who has always known that she’s going to have to get her own freakin’ self down because all my Prince Charmings have actually been highly unreliable if they've been around at all.  Perhaps it’s a personal failing of mine, but I don’t even take help carrying things in from the car well.  I’m too accustomed to having to carry every burden, physical or emotional, myself.  And yes, I know that’s a type of failing, a type of hubris, too.  I really do try to work on it.

I am, however, a strong woman.  I’m a Scarlett O’Hara/ Boadicea/ Elizabeth I type of girl, and I can hold my own with the best of them.  I’m a blackwinged Morrigan type chick, full of war and death and magic and poetry, and so if I come to a guy and I tell him about something that’s going on with me, it’s not because I expect him to draw his sword and race out there and VANQUISH IT. 

It’s because I’m tired and I’m bloody and I’m worn out from fighting.  It’s because I need, just for a few precious moments, just for a second, a place to rest, to catch my breath, to feel like there is somebody, somewhere who feels that I’m okay.  That I'm important.  That I'm precious.  That I’m the sane one (even though I know that this is somewhat dubious).  I can use my own duct tape. I can change my own tires when I’m stranded on the side of the highway in the dark.  I can slay my own dragons.  What I’m so very bad at is taking care of the wounds left after the fight; I'm so very bad at taking good care of me.  I guess, then, fixers, if you really want to fix something, there’s your starting point.