When I grow up I want to be Carrie Bradshaw

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When I grow up I want to be Carrie Bradshaw, albeit a an overweight, less fashionable, financially destitute, uneducated version. I have been spending a lot of time watching Sex and the City, mostly to distract myself from something else and I can't decide whether it is meant to make us feel better that even glamorous women have shitty love lives, or make us feel hopeless because if they can't make it happen what chance do us mere mortals have.

As far as role models go she's not what most people would aspire to, but she is neurotic and in that way I feel I have found a kindred spirit, and I won't let the fact that she's a fictional character take away my sense of validation. I watch a thirty something single woman on the flat screen who picks the wrong men, chucks tantrums and can't budget and I feel like giving her a high five. But then she has so much more.

Carrie has my dream life, a professional career where she writes for what appears to be a fairly good living, in a city full of culture and possibilities, with friends who love and support her and never has a problem getting a date. Instead, I have a medial low level part time job that barely gets me from pay to pay, in a tiny town in the middle of oblivion containing only a singular remaining divulge all type friend and I have never been asked out on a official date in my entire life.

Watching the glamorous foursome tramp all over the city I have been fantasising about since Sesame Street leaves me feeling with pangs of jealousy, but that's not why I'm watching it. As 1.30am on a Monday morning creeps up on me and I count down the hours until I have to go to work I still can't stand to turn season three off. Each time I turn it off a new feeling engulfs me, not envy, grief and I remember what I was trying to distract myself from.

The source of the grief I feel is something Carrie Bradshaw will never have to deal with. The complete emptiness and fear that I feel for the three nights a fortnight my son spends away from me. The horrible moments before I drop him off when the terror seeps in that I could never see him again, the  sleepless nights I spend checking an empty bed holding back the tears at the thought that it may remain empty forever. It's the most horrible place to be, a place many shared parent's are spared from. Then my son comes home.

For 11 days a fortnight I have the joy that can be unmatched by any designer clothing, cocktails, fancy jobs and unlimited supply of eligible bachelors. The feeling I get when my little boy puts on a concert, creates something just for mummy and crawls into bed next to me in the middle of the night and tells me he loves me. Somehow it all feels better.

It's 2am on a second Monday and in six and half hours I will have him back. But I still can't sleep, so I lose myself in Carrie's life a little more.

All my ex-boyfriends are getting married

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Correction all my ex boyfriends have already gotten married. Well, I haven’t checked up on the latest one, I have deliberately cut off all contact, because quite frankly I don’t think I could bear knowing. It’s not the type of jealousy that indicates I want them back, it’s the fact that despite what they told me, they were indeed the marrying type, it was me they never wanted to marry.

I know this happens to a lot of women, for those that haven’t experienced it, take the complete feeling of dejection and worthlessness when you find out your ex has a new girlfriend and times in by ten. It’s that horrid complete internal organ back-flip feeling when someone casually mentions that your ex is engaged, the urge to hold in the vomit when you see the wedding photos, especially if they got married at the spot you picked out, and the inability to function as a normal human being when you accidentally run into them at a restaurant on a Saturday afternoon and he introduces her as his wife.

I have had eight serious boyfriends since my prom, seven of them are married. But then it got lots worse. It got to be that every guy who I had a casual fling with was shacking up within days and married or engaged before the end of the year. I was the female equivalent of Good Luck Chuck. As a never married, overweight, single mother, thinking about this fact for too long can be soul destroying.

It’s at this point I usually reflect on the positives of a situation. I've got nothing. I never gave marriage too much thought in my early to mid twenties; I just sort of assumed it would happen. It never occurred to me that it wouldn’t. Now I am approaching 34, living day to day without the opportunity of ever meeting anyone new, let alone compatible, and I am yet to decide whether or not to give up hope.

I watch a romantic movie or some intimate moment on television and I feel like screaming, Fuck you life! That’s what I wanted! The only thing that can calm me down is the realisation that the only common denominator in all my failed relationships is me. Perhaps I don’t’ have the required skills, or I don't project myself as wifey material, I might be attracted to the wrong men or have incredibly bad timing. So what to do? I honestly don’t know. I tried online dating, long distance relationships, the works. I may never get married, and maybe I just have to teach myself that that is ok.

She's got an all right job, but, it's not a career

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It’s the one song that makes me cry and it’s not even about love, well it is, but not the particular line that reduces me to a blubbering mess in the middle of the main street. “She’s got an all right job, but, it’s not a career, each time she thinks about it, it brings her to tears.” – Lilly Allen’s 21. It’s ok to be single if you have concentrated on your career, well not exactly but it will be excused. If you have no husband and no career, then you’re just a loser.

So how did I get here? Well that is one long boring story, but suffice to say for some reason at some point along the line I lost the passion required to have more than just a job that pays the bills. I can’t even remember when my thinking changed from one day I will do that, to, I wished I had done this. So why do I want a career so much? I can tell you one thing, it’s not parental pressure, they can barely understand why I bothered with university in the first place and feel that my need to complete a degree and have a professional career is not actually mine, but what I think that society wants me to do. Could they be right?

I am from a mining family, my father is an underground miner, my step father works above ground at a mine, I have three brothers that work underground in mines, even my best friend drives trucks underground and she loves it. They all love their jobs, they award them no status, but they do renumerate them sufficiently financially. Is it about the money then? Could that be the secret to employment Zen? Maybe I am obsessed with finishing a degree and getting a professional career because I can’t drive a truck underground, honestly, I can’t even back a car out of a driveway without hitting something.

The truth is I actually do care what other people think about me. I want them to know that I am intelligent and knowledgeable, and therefore interesting to talk to. Maybe it’s all about making friends. I mean really, who’s going to spend the evening hanging with a part time receptionist that dropped out of a Social Science degree and has never had a job above the bottom rung of her office ladder in her life. And if I can’t make friends how could I possibly ever find a boyfriend. Here, we come to the crux of the matter. I don’t have looks; youth, charm or money so the only thing I have left to attract a potential mate is the allure of independence and sophistication. If all else fails, at least a career would give me financial security.

So what happens if I don’t finish uni and forge a career? I do have a job, and have never really had trouble finding work; I have a home of my own, a rental property and a beautiful son. I might not have a great deal of money, but what do I really need it for anyway. A library is free and the internet is not far off it, I could read if something interests me, I can still be intelligent and knowledgeable without specialising in a profession. Can’t I? But it's not enough, because deep down some of it is for me, my need for personal growth, to be all I can be and to set the best example I can for my son. So I have taken a week off work and I am going to complete the first unit in my diploma, no promises, but it's a step in the right direction.

Saddling up in a One Horse Town

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Sometimes it feels like I live in a town where I have exhausted all my romantic options, come to think about it I have just about exhausted even all my one night stand options also!


I live in a town of just under 20,000, not including surrounding towns, because there are none. In fact you have to travel two and half hours to get to the next town and the only thing to do there is keep driving through to somewhere more interesting even further away.


It's a mining town so you would be excused for thinking that there is an abundance of burly men. Alas this is not the case. Having grown up feeling entitled to a job on the mines young men are often shocked to find that the foreign owned local mine requires qualified and experienced workers, so the young men leave. They are not replaced with men from "away" as the required workers are flown in and out. The end result is that us women often feel that there are just not enough men to go around.


This is not always the case, for several weekends starting in October our town unwillingly participates in the annual drunken arsehole exchange. At this time we send a football team of cashed up bogans to someplace else and get five teams in return. In this respect it is much like the illfated Malaysia deal, and just as succesful. We turn up at the local classy establishment to find ourselves in a sea of young, drunk, unavailable men. And they seem to be standing around wondering where the hell all the hot young available women are. They're at home with their kids.


Now I may be completely off the track but below is how I see the typical small town bogan romance, henceforth known as a bogance, unfolding in more situations than not. Guy knows of girl and girl knows of guy, cause lets face it in a town of 20,000 you're pretty much guaranteed to know everyone in your age bracket. Guy is at pub with mates, girl is at pub with girlfriends. They are both there to pick up, clearly. Guy gets drunk and hits on girl, girl gets drunk and lets guy take advantage of her. Guy takes girl home, girl never leaves, they end up married with two kids by 24. There are other variations, but you get the gist of it.


By the time they hit 40 they are divorced and have split the house, debt, kids time, friends, community in general and what days each one of them can go to the one only pub that happens to be cool at the time. Now looking for wifey number two, the 40+ divorcee wastes no time heading back to the pub with his, also divorced, mates and the system repeats itself only with someone 5-10 years his junior.


The divorcee wife stays at home with the kids, occasionally going out with her single gal pals to get way to drunk, act way to flirty and end up with a bad reputation. The times, they have not a changed that much.


One thing that gets me about this whole awful process is the lack of actual dating. I would like a guy to actually ask me out, on a date, something involving dinner and a wine, with a follow up date and then gradually get to know someone. But the men out here aren't trained that way and as all the guys my age are now entering the divorce phase of their lives and I go fishing for second round offers I can't help but think... do I really want to be with a romantically challenged retread anyway?