Airing your scruffy feet.

Women are complex creatures. No, let me rephrase that, women, other than myself *smug look included*, are complex creatures. No one wants to be lumped up in the generalities. No one wants to be normal. It’s boring. It’s usual and who wants to be that person? Certainly not me. We may wear the same plastic shoes on Saturdays and buy the same back street mbalass (weaves for the unschooled. :) ) but in truth we still want to believe that we are truly, unique creatures who’s opinions need to be heard because we are different, even revolutionary. Maybe that’s why we talk so much. While men have come to appreciate that all of them, generally of course, are clueless, simple being, glad to be left to their own devices, we, women have refused to believe that we could possibly have similarities with other people who are not our friends.

I have come to appreciate the complexity of men and women separately and together and this complexity increases exponentially when the two species are combined into some sort of relationship. Who opens the door, who cooks, who says what and goes where? At first, it’s this complicated web of things we think we will never figure out then eventually, maybe half a century down the line, you fall into a comfortable routine where you don’t step onto each other’s toes too often and you know exactly what you eat and dislike. Where you hang out and why you and your chama are forever running off to one village or another.

The things that scares me about this complex endeavor called a relationship isn’t what happens 50 or even 100 years down the line, when you finally realize, that you are too old and have no more fight in you. It’s not even that part where you are too busy fighting with your kids that all you have is each other for moral support, it’s the part between the honey moon period where none of you can do any wrong; and that point when you discover there are some serious flaws with the other person. He scratches his crotch in public, she picks her nose in traffic, he loves watching sports butt naked, she wears her grandmother’s oldest night dress (no, not even a t-shirt!!) to bed.

That’s when all the complexities come through and I can never seem to figure out what to do. In all honesty, I never want to hear him fart in front of me. Much as I know he enjoys it. I never want him to see my morning face. Even I don't like seeing my morning face. *gasp* I do not want to explain that I am not always over excited to receive his phone calls and I do not need to know that sometimes when he is hard at work, he even forgets my name from time to time. His over simplistic behaviours will definitely show through all the bravado he’s been putting up and my over-complications will rush out like the morning sun in mid-January. And no matter, how much I try to wrap my head around these two will clash and fight for space until both persona's find a comfortable niche to sleep in.

So, do I sit awkwardly showing my smooth legs forever, when I want to wear jeans and let the hair grow in the cold season? Do I pretend that I do not enjoy burping after my coke? Putting the best foot forward is tiring but I believe it is easier for men to show the scruffy feet underneath much easier and much sooner than women. I don’t want to show my scruffy feet. I never want to show my scruffy feet. Those things need to stay hidden where I can mull over them in the privacy of myself.But the truth remains that those feet shall eventually without warning, demand their day in the sun.

But that said and done, I think a relationship really grows when we stop hiding who we really are. When we let the complexity that the world created shine through like a wayward star. When we accept that we occasionally enjoy chewing with our mouths open, that our favorite hang-out joint is in bed with a jumper and earphones, that we listen to our music at maximum volume like teenagers and that we still hold onto our old blankets and tracks because thare are no garments that will ever be more comfortable in the whole world. That is when we truly breathe, we truly live. Only then do we truly appreciate the individual parts of a twosome. Then we can allow it to develop towards that place where we hurdle at a corner together pretending our children don’t exist and eventually to the place where you conspire to spoil your grand-children rotten in revenge.

That’s what holds it together for that half century. That brutal honesty. That stark nakedness of the body and soul. The fact that because however complex or simple we are apart, we become more dynamic together and so the world only gets better and more exciting. That is what I’m praying for myself. That I can get to a point, where I can air my scruffy feet, I can wear my tracks and slouch on the couch with my greasy, salty food and it will feel natural. Mostly because,I am hoping he will be there airing his good while watching a game of something I wouldn’t care about sipping noisily on some foul drink I would never put my dainty mouth on. And none of us will have a care in the world.