GLUCOCORTICOIDS!

OH HEAVENS! I have 2 hours to go on this flight! I have no water for tea or coffee, and I am very tired!

To add to that, my Indian Paramour, we will call him Ishram, has postponed his 7:30 flight today for a 5:45 AM one tomorrow, just to see me! I said to him over the phone “I have had two breakups in two months, so I am probably not going to be ready to commit to a relationship for a long time” and he still will do the 5:45 AM flight to see me tonight!

To make it all worse, I have had a 2/3 dose of antidepressant for the last 3 days, I am out, and if I spend the night at the casino I will have none. And, to really make it worse, my roommate leaves in 2 days, what if she wanted to do something tonight? Oh fuck, I really think she did! She is always feeling sad that her friends don’t live up to her expectations, I don’t want to be one of them (as long as the expectations are reasonable) FUUUUUUUUCK!

Why in God’s name didn’t I call her before verifying plans with Ishram? I was going to! Why didn’t I? UUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHH! The plan is I will bring him, but even then I have to convince him, and if I was being the good friend I want to be, I would stay up as late as she needs me, and Ishram needs me to go to bed at a reasonable hour. My attention should be on her right now. I really wish Ishram hadn’t rescheduled his flight.

GLUCOCORTICOIDS!!!! I just read the FUCKING AWESOME book “Why Zebras don’t get Ulcers” anyone with depression and/or anxiety MUST read it, everyone else should read it. It is very scientific and very accessible. One major message that comes through is glucocorticoids, which are released during stress, are what are bad for your body. For your immune system, growth, sexuality and reproduction, energy level, heart, aging, and happiness. Bad, bad, bad. If you read this book you would never let yourself get worked up about traffic again, stress is BAAAAD.

So I have Ephinephrine and Glucocorticoids pumping through my system right now. OY! I really need to calm myself down. What will happen will happen, and unlike a Zebra, my life is not being threatened by a starving lion, so it is of no use to me for these chemicals to be in my bloodstream, and it can cause a lot of harm. (Including Depression!)

Speaking of Ishram, here is what feels so wrong about it. Here I am dating another man from a patriarchic country. If I am going to date a man from a patriarchic country, shouldn’t it be Charles? I feel, in a funny way, like I am cheating on him. Huh? I didn’t feel bad dating Alan, because he is from the same city, we have the cultural things in common to make it acceptable to date him after leaving Charles. But Ishram is MUSLIM! And Indian. How would his and my relationship be any better than Charles and I? It wouldn’t. In fact, I don’t feel that warm connection with Ishram that I do with Charles. I don’t feel a strong connection with him at all, though he is starting to grow on me. But he is upper class Muslim Indian, just like Hasseem was upper class Muslim Pakistani. So I know some of what is to come, or, I will judge Ishram by the way Hasseem treated me, which is unfair.

And now I am wondering if I am a fucking gold-digger. No, I’m not at all, but financial security is important to me, and I feel guilty for that. I really want to have a middle class life, because it is a lot less stressful than a working class one. I don’t want to raise my kids without security. I don’t feel like I could handle the stress. At this point I am seeing that maybe I should make it my goal to bring myself into the middle class by switching jobs, but I worry that I may be selling my soul. I don’t want to give up the job I love for one I don’t and then regret it, and I don’t want to give up the person I am for one with more anxiety.

The reason I bring up the gold-digger thing is I feel like I am giving Ishram more of a chance because he could give me beautiful Indian children and security. See it’s not money, it’s security. If money was all he had going for him I wouldn’t be giving him a chance, but I have to admit to myself it is one of the reasons.

And why the hell AM I giving him a chance? I have no business having anything to do with men right now. I am really, really hurt about the breakup with Charles. Tonight I was even saying to myself I should get back with him. He feels like my soul mate, and every relationship is going to have problems, am I going to duck out now that one has shown up? The answer to that is no. There were plenty of problems. He doesn’t want to use condoms. I planned to use them until marriage. After a lot of nagging and a lot of soft penis and condom slipping we got tests and I switched to the sponge, with plans to get an IUD. I put off the appt for months, and then when I finally had one they office fucked it up. Then it was impossible for me to get up the nerve again. Anyway, after the condoms, the penis was still semi, and the passion wasn’t there.

Then there is the fact that he has only met a few of my friends. That has some to do with me, but some to do with him too. And where would we live? He didn’t want to stay in my city. I was okay with it early on, but overtime I panicked and didn’t want to leave my apartment.
And children, he believes in spanking, and although this wouldn’t stop me from marrying him, I was terrified of having African-American kids. I’m White, he’s African, neither of us could understand what our African-American children were experiencing. My instinct is “forgive the white people, they are ignorant” but if it happened to MY CHILD…oooh boy. I would just be livid, and wouldn’t know how to support them. But then again, look at Barack Obama, he doesn’t seem wounded from growing up with a White mom and a Kenyan dad. So again, that isn’t an actual deciding factor, just a contributing one.

And who could forget the reason we broke up? He, just like my dad, abandoned me. I told him that I needed him. I told him that I needed him to write me letters, but he didn’t. Why didn’t he? Now that he knows he lost me because of it he realizes it was a mistake, but why wasn’t the fact that I needed him enough? I needed something from him, I was very upset, and he wouldn’t give it to me. THIS is fundamental. Lets say one day I am adamant about something regarding our children, and he disagrees, will he listen or just keep pushing his side? The condoms were this way, and sex too maybe. I told him I liked it more aggressive, he would huff away at me for a minute, but then stop. And he didn’t look into my eyes, when he did he looked like a caveman grunting away, like he was looking right through me. I really wanted him to look lovingly into my eyes! (Side note, Ishram looks DEEPLY into my eyes. But it isn’t lovingly, it is intensely and lustily.)

And of course didn’t this bring me back to where I started. The sex. From the day I met Charles I didn’t feel the physical chemistry. I felt the connection, I really did, but not the chemistry. In the end I just need that. I need it as the glue to make me want to work through him being a stubborn asshole. Isn’t that it? The sex makes you so you can’t hate them, even though they inevitably prove themselves to be hateable.

And so I am back to where I was mid-January. Charles and I are not meant to be. I wish he would shut the fuck up and stop saying he has “the audacity of hope” that we will get back together. He pisses me off that way. But if I were the dumpee I may feel the same way. Why would he want to give up a girl who the only effort he has to put in is to say “I love you BAYBEEE” and she is bending over backwards to praise and love him, even giving him regular sex without condoms that she really didn’t enjoy? He had no reason.
And although I SHOULDN’T be entertaining the idea of a relationship with Ishram at a tender point in my life right now, what does he have that Charles doesn’t? So far he has been passionate in the sexual sense, even though we haven’t gone all the way. He could give our children and me security, so I could be a stay at home parent without added stress. He was born in India, which I have so much interest in. He is very pleasing to the eye, Charles was too, by my eyes, so I guess that isn’t a reason. But if I am going to list what he has that Charles doesn’t, it is only fair that I also look at it the other way around. So maybe I am just making excuses for having someone in my life right now when I probably shouldn’t. At least I was honest with him that I don’t see myself wanting a commitment.

I think Ishram is enjoyable to be around and pleasant, so I am going to let myself just enjoy myself without the guilt trip. (I did write down that I told him how skeevy I felt about just coming to his hotel room, and he seemed to understand and be cooperative) and I am really touched that he is going to wake up at 3AM tomorrow morning, and then be at work at 10:30 in Chicago, and he is doing it just to see me, so let it be Diana.

But one thing I will really mourn, is Charles and my baby girl. Whenever I see a young biracial girl I melt a little inside. I had bonded with her for months, and she will likely never be born. I guess if I ever decide to become a single mother I will ask Charles for some sperm in a turkey baster.