The F Word

It’s that word that every woman dreads. It’s the word that compartmentalizes your fantasies, storing them in the Do-No-Open section of your brain, attempting to arrest your dreams and keep them in its protective custody. The angel of freedom guards this room and puts a padlock on the thoughts insisting you let the sentence be served while you roam free. Your thoughts however, are like Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton are to prison – temporary fashionable visitors with bad habits. You sign the release and put your thoughts on parole and as is characteristic, your thoughts stray. Those alarm bells ring rampantly and then the angel flaps its wings as you sift through the shoulda coulda wouldas. 

The word that drives you to this institution is the word friend; where no girl wants to be unless you’re slipping a girl in front of that. We young, confident, desirable women are confused at how after all we’ve done to gain someone’s attention; we end up in the can’t-touch-this file because you’re the buddy, the friend, the mate, the pal. Please!!! This is what our girlfriends are for. Surely you know that we don’t want to discuss you and how poorly you read and receive us with YOU. 

Some men would argue that that in fact is our core problem…that we conceal our emotions and then worry about honesty but the fact is you’ve admitted to liking the chase and a forward woman, while sexually liberated to her gender is less sexually attractive to yours after a while because he masculinity is more assertive than your own and that is emasculating to you and your egos. We stay silent on feelings for fear of rushing you to the f word. You flirt and give off signals and we reciprocate the code but more often than not we’re speaking different languages, reiterating the notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus and collectively, we’re confused. 

I’m in this situation now – the friend with a dream of more…never directly placed there but my behavior marked the spot and my ‘mate’ – not in the copulating sense of the word, danced around the spot till his footprints created a divide. Before we knew it, we were standing in different places. From where I stood, there was only one view, as an onlooker to his life. Stuck in my circle, I could spin around till I got dizzy , dip my toes in the murky water around me or charge through the mud. 

We’re the makers of our own destiny and I often feel we’ll cling to a fantasy for fear of exploring the unknown. If we don’t like X then whatever will our brains do with all of that downtime? The answer? You’ll think of you. That of course is your greatest investment because loving yourself, not in the vain type, but being comfortable in your own skin is your most powerful ammunition. So load that ego!

In every situation you are given two options; to sink or swim.

These days’ drowning in illusive love is not the tale I want to tell about myself so I’ve opted to swim. As dirty and damaged as the mud may make me, I’ll emerge as the heroine of my own story – not like the drug/addict more like the hero and we all know the wonders of a mud bath. After a nice long cathartic mud wrestle and shower, I’ll have fabulous skin and an attractive ‘friend’ that notices.