Timing is everything.

In the past I think I was just a little off the beat.

It is amazing to find myself finally in step with another and feeling the world isn’t spinning so fast, that in fact things don’t have to be tough.

Sometimes, my friends, I haven’t listened to my senses.

I remember the smell that made me recoil, the joy that couldn’t be forced or made up. Rather, feeling unworthy I had not heard the messages my body was constantly sending me.

Instead I let others tell me how I felt or should feel because I doubted myself, I demanded little and that was the first time I heard the phrase “high maintenance woman”. I was told that was It was good I didn’t need much because that meant I wasn’t a high maintenance woman. Apparently I could and should be happy cooking dinner alone, bedtime routines each evening with the children solo and with toadstools growing in the bathroom and then gifts picked out for me to be thankful for. Eventually I grew resentful of the little space in my mind and my body for myself and when I asked for more, I was accused of being selfish and becoming a high maintenance woman.

I was tired of my cage.

When my new love referred in an off-hand way to high maintenance women, he felt the full onslaught of my past, and my previous understanding of a high maintenance woman, as defined by my past as a disrupter a woman who was disagreeable who demanded her own time and a nice house and equality. I let forth with an avalanche of,

” Why can’t I be high maintenance?”, He looked confused.

It turns out that he had a different definition, his was of a woman who was so self involved that she couldn’t look out and give. I explained what the past had defined as high maintenance.

He was surprised and when he googled high maintenance was as shocked as me to find whole misogynistic sites devoted to the definition I had known, including tips for guys on how to manage a high maintenance woman! I mean have you have ever heard a man referred to as high maintenance? We agreed it was horrible and his definition didn’t refer to the popular definition of the typical high maintenance woman,

 (She)  “Has higher than normal expectations; has a greater requirement for affection or attention; has more needs and/or demands and therefore more difficult or challenging. doesn’t equate to money or material possessions alone but may be needy in emotional attention and affection; picky, bratty, likes things her way, takes pride in her appearance, finicky. Usually very well put together and usually independent therefore requiring a lot of a man to keep up with her”

“If you have to reassure her through texts email or calls that you’re lucky to have her, she’s so pretty, etc..-she’s a high maintenance woman”.. from urban dictionary 

Try reading that again and see if you could say that about a man without a backlash!?

I am learning that different people understand ideas in different ways.

Now I feel sure of my heart.

This new song has a beat, closer to my own,  I can tune into it, it tells me that things can be easy, it’s worth knowing that love doesn’t cost a thing. It can be freely given, there is no expectation of a debt, love is not high maintenance it is respect and care and kindnesses, it is not a competition. A gentle waltz or a gorgeous salsa; its rhythms allowing for reciprocal kindness.