The RELEASE Society

I spent time with an old friend, this past Friday. We "DID" lunch at Cholo's in Haleiwa. We had a very interesting conversation. The dominating theme was how both of us felt so trapped by our circumstances in life. She's married with six children, the last one having been born with Downs Syndrome. I'm a working woman, married with two step children that don't live with us. How drastically different our lives are yet how is it that we share such similar feelings.

Sometimes, as women, we are pre-defined. We are set in the roles we are expected to play. With my religious upbringing and my cultural upbringing, my path in life was set the minute my mother knew I was a girl. And I don't quite know who defines the roles for men and women.

Some of the expectations that are placed on me are as follows:

Marry.

Support my husband.

Bare children.

This is marriage number two for me. (The first one didn't work out. Nothing in that marriage worked!) Supporting my husband has probably been the most time-consuming. I'm a free spirit and would probably be off somewhere, traveling, were it not for my commitment to my husband and our marriage.

I feel so confined by the role that I play.

There are often times when I wish I could just smoke a joint and let life roll by in a series of puffs. I feel so confined, claustraphobic even by what I've created for myself. Yet, how do I unravel myself from the web called my life? I can't say that I hate being married because I actually enjoy it very much. However, since my marriage to my husband, it seems that my life is put on hold to support him in his endeavors. What about mine?

I am reminded of the Commodore's classic, Easy:

"Why in the world would anybody put chains on me?
I paid my dues to make it.
Everybody wants me to be what they want me to be.
I'm not happy when I try to fake it.

I wanna be high so high.
I wanna be free to know the things I do are right.
I wanna be free. Just Me!"

But I don't really want to be free from my marriage to my dear husband. I am absolutely in love with him! My friend, the one that started all this talk about being trapped in marriage, came up with the perfect solution to marriage blues. It is the perfect compromise between freedom and my commitment to marriage. She calls it the RELEASE SOCIETY. We joked about how much we just needed to RELEASE; sometimes to just be able to live like we did when we were single; CAREFREE!

Our entire lunch was spent, meticulously planning our first ever annual RELEASE SOCIETY Girls-Only trip. This years trip would include three nights of Anything-Goes in Las Vegas. And when I say anything goes, I mean anything goes.... we just won't tell our husbands about it. What happens in Vegas STAYS in Vegas! Then we would roadtrip it from Vegas to wherever The Price is Right is filmed and be a part of the studio audience. Sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? I find this to be the perfect solution and am looking forward to it.

Okay so the craziest thing about the RELEASE SOCIETY is that I shared this notion with my husband and..... HE'S down!