Lone wolf-ess?

I am an anomaly, apparently.

“Fight Club” brought out a very interesting discussion in what defines men and what defines women. Men, we decided, are defined by their ability to “fight” – by whatever definition you want to dress it up in. Fight by keeping their families together, fight by getting a good job so they can protect and support their family, sometimes really just knuckle-to-knuckle fight. But they are defined by their external values – strength, power, bravado.

Women, as Zadra pointed out, are defined by their intimate relationships to others, as wife, as girlfriend, as mother, as sister. We are raised by a Puritanical paradigm that teaches us as women that, in order for us to be fulfilled, we must be part of something, usually familial. From a very young age, we’re taught to find the handsome prince or marry rich or find that perfect guy. Films like “Jerry Maguire” just solidify that. Even though he’s the one who says it, "You complete me” sums up a woman’s purpose in life – we’re here to complete the men in our lives, to make them whole, to make their lives fuller and deeper and better while they’re out fighting for us. It makes a kind of twisted sense – you fight for me to protect me and I’ll bake cookies and pop out babies.

But we’re now in a world where women have begun to learn to be warriors. Puritanical society doesn’t allow for women warriors, unlike other cultures. So those of us who are discovering our inner fighter, our inner warrior, who can protect ourselves and don’t necessarily need a man to define that part of ourselves are screwed. We’re left wondering who we are and how we fit into this paradigm that is so narrow and so strict. We don’t need the key relationship to “complete” us or define us, yet we yearn for those protective arms and that secure fortress just as we struggle to escape the tight grip of oppression that can come with that security. Warriors need other warriors that they can keep company with and fight battles together with and this society just doesn’t know what to do with that.

Zadra’s observation was that I am one of the only women she knows that left a long term relationship without doing one of two things – waiting for another relationship to come along to take the place of the one I was trying to leave or to leave a relationship and immediately seek out and plant myself in a new one. I hadn’t thought about that. When I look at the women around me who have left their relationships, they are all in another relationship which occurred as the old one ended or almost on the heels of what they left.

Zadra thought I was in an enviable position because I was defining myself, not allowing myself to be defined by the relationship I was in. In fact, that very definition was what drove me out of my relationship. He kept trying to make me fit into this box he had and I had outgrown it.

The thing was, there wasn’t another relationship waiting there for me. I didn’t necessarily choose to be alone. There just wasn’t anybody there, holding their arms out, saying, “come over here now.” And there still isn’t.

So if we women are defined by our intimate relationships – not necessarily defined by our girlfriends or our workmates – but truly defined by those who are buried deep within our hearts, what does that mean for someone like me who doesn’t have someone to be defined by? Is that why I am so persistent in pursuing this one man, because I feel the need to have someone in my life to define me? And he’s a pretty good one to be defined by. I don’t think he’d have a box on the kitchen table waiting to fit me in. But I don’t know. Maybe the loneliness and the anxiety I feel about being alone is that I am not defined without a significant other in my life. There is no one to reflect my life back to me right now, no one that lives in my heart and protects me and fights for me and makes me feel complete. I have a lot of warrior folks in my life who allow me to be the warrior, but even the warrior needs companionship sometimes.

So while some of my women friends look at my life with a tiny bit of envy that I am alone and am defining myself on my own terms, I envy, a tiny bit, their lives and their loves, no matter how imperfect. At least their bed is not empty, even if it is only occasionally filled. At least their phone rings with the number of someone who makes their face light up and make them want to stop the conversation with me so they can hear the voice of the one on the other end. At least they have someone living in their hearts, or finding a way into their hearts. I envy their complaints about the other person, even, because they have someone to complain about.

I am a true warrior right now, alone and objective. Standing on the battle field, waiting for the war to wage, waiting for the skirmish to begin, nothing to distract me from the battlefield, nothing to keep me from charging fully into the bloody mess in front of me. And that’s powerful. But when the war is over and the battle has been waged and won, when the wounds are fresh and bruised and angry, this warrior does not have a protector to help bind the wounds, to help ease the pain of battle, to help this warrior limp back home and bring in the firewood and light the fire. This warrior has to find the way herself, watching with envy the home lights burning on the way, holding on to her pride and purpose, trying to make that the reason for living. When all she really wants is what she sees through the other windows.