Anna’s Adventures

I am reading A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom. Though I am not looking for a husband, or a wife, or a partner, I find it enthralling to see how my own attitudes to sex, love and partnership are shaped by very old traditions. My favorite parts are reading about the people who had separate relationships for family, partnership, sex and love.

I wonder what she will say (if anything) about polyamoury, polyfidelity and “swinging”?

I’ve always got by on the minimum support network possible. But now, its becoming less and less viable.

I’ve been reading this book, Bipolar and Pregnant, by Kristin Finn. She lives in a stable middle class marriage where she doesn’t need to work (her husband earns enough for both). Her mother was a nurse. She goes to church and reads the bible. She has a routine. She’s been diagnosed and medicated since her teens. Her family and doctors constantly watch her for any signs of “hypomanic excess”, and confront her accordingly. She takes their advice.

Kristin Finn is so far from me.

I don’t have a support network like that. I don’t have all these cultural markers on what is “normal” behavior.

— correction —

Its not that I don’t have people around me who care. Its that I always push them away. Its not that there aren’t people who will give me good advice, its that I don’t take it.

As I’ve said over and over, my family have always been there for me, even when I’m a bitch.

What Kristin Finn has that I don’t is culture: the bible doesn’t tell me when to be good.