Please send good luck that this therapist will remain a match! The last one I tried used the phrase "sister wives" in reference to poly. She'd said some helpful stuff before that though!
Last Thursday was a two-date day, and I was excited
about both! I was meeting the Guy With a Big Telescope for lunch at Emotionally
Neutral Diner, and then Le Monsieur was picking me up (in his faaaaancy car) in
the evening to come visit his new apartment. I felt horny and shiny and new,
amazing how the optimism always shines through.
GWBT was sooooo cute, just the right combination of
grown-up and boyish. (He’s 39.) I liked him because his profile mentioned the
possibility of stargazing dates, perfect for summer! The big telescope is not a
euphemism, he really sent a picture! He was hesitant about the writing-about-stuff
aspect of things, but otherwise seemed like he might be a lovely match!
GWBT had warm vibes and was such a gentleman, even
offering to have them make me a to-go order in case my French toast didn’t end
up being filling enough. Less charming was when he watched out the window as a
lady parallel parked, critiquing her entire process.
Still, SO cute. He loved to travel and talked about
wanting to whisk me away for a weekend sometime. He was installing a new speaker
system in his car just in time for beach trips. (He mocked his current system
for having not just a CD player but a TAPE DECK, and I felt envious because I
just have a CD player in mine.)
(Side note: Many things are uncertain, but it’s very
clear to me that I would like to not be the one doing all the driving in my
next relationship.)
Anyway, he was a somewhat plausible catch until:
He: I like your first date outfit, can’t wait to see
what you’ll wear on our tenth date!
(Okay I like this line.)
Me: It’s cute that you’d think I’d wear clothes on our
tenth date!
Okay, I was being a little obnoxious, but he literally
said:
“Shhh!” and looked around like we were going to get in
trouble.
I’ve had enough of that particular look-around for this
lifetime and the next. And shushing on a first date!
Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to have paid someone to
say exactly what depression itself would say, so I could hang up on them both.
Toward the beginning of quarantine, constant family
contact, fear about my job, and general everyone-might-die-ness was making me
worry that I might lose any of the mental health ground I’ve gained in the past
few years. Insurance was in flux as I filled out every disaster relief form, so
I took some of the extra money my brother had sent (He felt lucky to be able to
work full time from home.) and subscribed to BetterHelp.
The first therapist I tried seemed insufficiently
invested in science, letting slip some Trumpesque complaints about CDC
guidelines. The second one was better, but I think she was mixing me up with another
of her clients. Suffering from Quarantine Brain myself, I felt compassion for
her, but didn’t think she would help with my growing sense of nonexistence.
The third one, I liked. She seemed sensible, grown-up,
and (I’ve seldom in my life found this appealing, but in-these-times etc.) like
she knew what I should do next. She
recommended The Four Agreements, one of the worst, victim-blamiest self-help
books I’ve encountered, (By the Book sums it up pretty well: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/by-the-book/e/59267477#/)
but
I decided to overlook that red flag. She sent me a so-detailed-as-to-be-sleep-PREVENTING
Sleep Hygiene Diary, but she also seemed fine when I disregarded some of her
advice and took other aspects to heart.
Last Tuesday during an early morning phone session,
still weepy and off-balance from saying bye-sort-of to Quarantine Crush, I was
sharing my pretty boilerplate 45-year-old-single-bi-woman worries when I heard
(not for the first time in my may therapist lifetime.) third therapist lady become audibly annoyed:
“Well, you have this air of desperation,” she said,
and that can be really off-putting. If you really do what you need to do to
love yourself, they’ll be more attracted.”
A.Desperation
seems like a TOTALLY REASONABLE EMOTION TO HAVE when:
1.Tens
of thousands of people are dying.
2.My
work life is fairly decimated.
AND
3.I
was relearning how to write poems with a friend I missed so, SO much.
B.What
did attracting anybody even have to do with it when I had:
1.Fallen
for someone who was both taken and
2.A
dear, important friend and
3.2,500
miles away?!
“I just think you need to adjust what you’re looking
for.” She said.
(Connection? Poetry? A creative spark? A window into
meaning from the past? Hope? Songs? I know what she meant but it seems like she
was oversimplifying.)
“What am I looking for?” I asked, joining her in irritated-voiceness.
“Well, romance might seem really nice in books, but in
real life, you might be too sensitive for it.”
(Note: The Highly Sensitive Person book suggests
this too, but it also suggests that communities with a lot of immigrants have fewer
sensitive people, so I put it in the garbage. Not even good enough for the recycle
bin.)
I tried a little bit to tell her how many different
kinds of relationships I’d tried, certainly more than the average person.
“It’s just that I’m mostly happy being alone,” I said,
“So I’d rather not keep trying casual stuff and then getting mad at partners
for being too casual.” (Basically the theme for years of this blog.)
It really irked my soul that she was reading me as a commitment-hungry
stereotype when I was willing to love someone I’m unlikely to even see any time
soon—seems like maybe it was the opposite problem. I’m still arguing with this
lady I unsubscribed to a week ago.
She told me that AT MY AGE (caps mine, she wasn’t yelling)
I needed to start changing my expectations.
“Men don’t want commitment after they’re divorced, so
you’re probably going to have to go with it and be grateful for the couple of weeks
you might get.”
“Well, that is really…grim. I’m hanging up now.” And I
did.
I called Sweetie and cried out the hurt and shock that
someone who was supposed to be on my side, and also someone who was basically a
stranger, could be that cruel.
That teenage summer, there were just a few moments
between us that genuinely felt connected to sex, at least as I understood it
then. I remember being on top of him, both of us thoroughly clothed, on the
floor of Favorite Aunt’s sewing room, while a family party went on below. It’s
hard not to imagine myself with the intent an evil scientist, trying to pin
down a beautiful and helpless butterfly. I’m not sure if he remembers it that
way, if he remembers it at all. Present-day signs point to no on the
helpless-butterfly-pinning. (At least not in a bad way. But I can only speculate.)
I had sworn off sex as a respite after the Big Trauma.
(He told me a few weeks ago, while having coffee outside a museum on a perfect
sunny-chilly spring day, that I had referred to myself as a “born-again virgin.”
A LOT. That quote both breaks my heart and makes me laugh—of course that person
would become a pansexual sex blogger! I feel really awesome at life right at
this moment!) Anyway, I was doing the reasonable-seeming-at-the-time thing of
blaming my sluttiness, my adventurousness, for the fact that I had been
drugged, raped, and assaulted at a party right before that summer.
I told the Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow that we would
wait until we were old enough to get married (by which I meant, like, when I
was 20 and he was eighteen) and THEN have sex. Silly as it is, that strikes me as
a pretty badass thing to say to somebody, especially someone you’ve only known
a few weeks. Imagine saying that to a 2019 guy! Back then, the idea felt
romantic and like a relief from all of the impersonal sex my body and soul had
been though the previous school year. (Sex which, LET ME MAKE IT CLEAR, I chose
a lot of and some of which I really enjoyed. I wonder if I can write about it in
detail sometime?)
When I found out, years later, that the Boy Who Sewed
Me a Pillow (By then technically the Man Who Sewed Me a Pillow) ended up with a
guy, I imagined he had been relieved by our lack of sex, maybe for the chance
to rest in the performance of heterosexuality before embarking on the road out
of the closet. So many oversimplified assumptions in one sentence! I told
myself this story for DECADES, and maybe it is true, but I’m pretty appalled at
my binary thinking, the ability to write off my own experience as well as the
entire spectrum of sexuality and desire, even in the face of so much experience
and SO, SO many paragraphs.
This seems like a good place to stop and let it all sink
in over the long weekend. Kondo-ing my feelings takes a lot, and right now is
that part where all the emotions are in piles all over the place and I need to
slow down, touch each one, and see what sparks joy. Maybe next week I’ll finish
the story and then everything will be treasured and have a place.
Dear people who are kind enough to read this, enjoy
your Easter or Passover or Cherry Blossom Festival. Eat chocolate and look at
flowers, I love you.
The Cool Room in Favorite Aunt’s house is still one of
the most comforting rooms in the many-roomed house of my heart. It was where
the air conditioning lived in that sweltering, old-fashioned house. It was perfectly
Eighties and all the way comforting, wood-paneled walls, small, curtained
windows, deep-turquoise-blue couch with some kind of white print, maybe
flowers. Pleasantly cavelike, with a glass pocket-door that maybe we slid shut.
It was where the TV lived, and where The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow and I
somehow found ourselves alone. (I still
don’t quite understand how that happened, can’t decide if it was kind of
Favorite Aunt to leave us alone or if it was weird creepy matchmaking—it’s
occurring to me that I never experienced non-sneaky, non-naked kids-being-attracted-to-each-other
situations so I really have no idea how it’s supposed to go.)
How it went was, chaste, beatific, awkward, sweet. I
lay snuggled in his arms for long, quiet stretches of time.
Until him, I had only been kissed by selfish,
careless, insistent (and, by 2019 standards, sometimes pretty rapey) men and
boys, so there is a very good chance that I was a terrible kisser.
My new friend may have had less experience at kissing
than I did, but I think he had much more experience treating others like human
beings. If my kisses were terrible, hungry, aggressive things, he took it in
stride. I can hope that he eventually mellowed me to a more loving and
thoughtful pace. Or maybe we were just teenagers doing our best.
After what seemed like hours of making out but
probably wasn’t, he said “No thank you” and backed his face away. That hurt and
felt like a mystery, but I think (I hope) I just put my head on his heart and
gave it a rest. There were eventually more snuggles and more kisses, but I’ve
always wondered if I or society or Favorite Aunt or all three of those things
pressured him into continuing to kiss me. I didn’t think about any of that at
the time. My heart was floating and selfish and somehow also generous with joy.
I was a blooming little flower of love.
I forget where we were going or coming home from, but
I have a powerful image of laying in his lap in the backseat of Favorite Aunt’s
van, in another highway sunset. Pink sky, low-flying airport planes, lots of
toll booths. I gazed up at his face feeling both blissful and disjointed—was this
the face I would love forever? The answer, as with most faces I’ve been that
close to, is both absolutely yes and not at all.
Unable to stop taking their unease with the Big Trauma
out on me and on each other, my parents, near divorce and overflowing with
violence, sent me to stay with my Favorite Aunt at her beautiful Colonial-era
home, about six hours away from my immediate family’s cramped and feral
suburban home. Favorite Aunt had always been the person who most vocally liked
me when my parents, clearly and emphatically, did not. She was an oasis of hugs, praise, and affection, in a
childhood full of coldness, contempt, and turning to teachers as my only daily
source of grownup approval.
She was also, though, Catholic. That part of the story
makes it hard to not become incoherent with rage. Favorite Aunt’s spirtuality
felt like a bright white escape hatch, a way to clean and simplify myself of
such a dirty and complicated life, a way to escape the pain, trauma, abandonment
and fear of the previous months. Of course now I understand that in being pulled
(temporarily, I’m relieved to say) back into the religion of my upbringing I
was both victim of and complicit in a more effective and insidious factory of
rape than any teen party, no matter how out of control, could ever be.
At the time though, it seemed that the best way to
regain control after a brutal rape and subsequent assault by my dad (https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2018/10/metoo-letter-dear-dad-stfu-about.html)
was
to blame myself, my sluttiness, my sense of adventure. That seems heartbreaking
now, but at the time it felt self-explanatory. Such is the power of an adult
willing to dole out affection. I don’t think my Favorite Aunt was
rape-culture-gaslighting me on purpose, because at the time, blaming myself seemed
as natural and as life-giving as air.
Favorite Aunt’s charisma and generosity of affection
means she often has children as friends. (I share this quality, for which I am
very grateful.) She thought one of these friends, the artsy, quiet son of one
of her church families, would be a perfect match for me, and he was. (All these
years later, she still ships us, in spite of a lifetime mostly apart and a mountain
of evidence. This doesn’t bother me as much as maybe it should.)
I don’t remember how he and I got together, whether we
were pushed or drawn, probably both. I can’t clearly remember my first kiss
with The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow (also, the first truly kind or loving kiss I’d
known) but I know it was postcard perfect. Favorite Aunt and I went to visit
him and his family where they were camping for a week, on a vacation island not
too far ways from Favorite Aunt’s home. We walked (maybe I was holding his
hand, seems like something I would do…) down the beach a little ways away from
the families. We stood beside the water, the tall waves making for the closest
approximation of privacy we were likely to get.
I remember the sea as rough but kind that day, the
dizzy feeling in my throat, the sense of finality, of accomplishment. Having a
sexy feeling that was also loving, with anyone besides myself, was a new and
blissful sensation, as big and reliable and all-encompassing as the ocean itself.
The day went by fast. Favorite Aunt and I had made
homemade poptarts for him and his family (how Emily Gilmore of us!) and we gave
the container to him out the car window as Favorite Aunt prepared to drive us
away. He kissed me on the forehead and said, not unkindly, “You have really big
dandruff.”
All of the beach days and other excursions with
Favorite Aunt meant that my scalp was sunburned and peeling. I was only a
little bit embarrassed. I was a jumble of salt and skin and hot-pink feeling,
riding away from the beach and towards a sunset as pink as my cheeks.
Between my condom struggle with J, newly-admitted motherhood
wishes, #StandWithPP, and Catholicism smothering the infrastructure of major
cities the way it sometime smothers the infrastructure of my heart, I realized
this little almost-a-character from my teen years needed some love. My teen
pregnancy-scare story sheds a strangely warm light on my current adventures.
It was the year after the Bad Thing happened. I’d stopped
being quite as slutty as I had been and purported to only have sex for love.
Sometime in that week of shenanigans, Best Friend decided to introduce me to
Dave. He was in a Misfits cover band, or maybe it was Danzig. It was the
Nineties. She called him up, passed me the phone, and within ten minutes, he
was telling me that he loved me, which I (think I) knew was insane, but the
words had their desired affect. (I would repeat this mistake and lose a Twitter
handle making the same mistake as an adult. *sheepish.*)
He was a teen version Bill, stocky and handsome, dark-haired
and snarly. On the first day, we had angry, vocal sex with the windows open.
Sometimes, when I was having sex back then, it was a simple “Fuck you.” to the
world. Sometimes it still is.
The next day, after the sex, we went for a walk in the
cemetery, the Catholic one that had all of the angel statuary and was therefore
my favorite place to pose people moodily in front of for black and white
photos. We took the bus to the mall and bought a tape, The Dead Milkmen’s Bucky Fellini.
But on the third day, it was off. He treated me like I was
ugly and big, he called me by my first grade nickname, which had the word
“barbarian” in it. I couldn’t make him see me or want me, and after that day,
he was gone.
I desperately wanted him to be not gone. I looked for his
parents’ pickup truck (a red one with one of those cover things on the back
with windows) in every parking lot, hoping that I would run into Dave
somewhere, that he would recognize me.
In a few weeks, I noticed that my period was late. (I
haven’t always been the princess of safer sex that I am now, and I’m very
grateful that the consequences were not worse.) Best Friend and I went down to
the Birthright, the prolife clinic downtown, next to the little bakery where we
sometimes got cinnamon donuts before school. It felt like a very grown up and
important errand to be on.
I peed on a stick but never saw the stick. The nice
Birthright lady, who in my memory is dressed all in pastels like a doll, just
gave me the result: positive.
And I, almost-seventeen and pretty utterly lost in life,
didn’t feel even a little bit of fear. Here’s what I felt: joy. The pressure of
having my life ahead of me whooshed away and I knew what to do. Of course there
was the silly teenage idea that I had made (literally made) a friend for life,
someone who would love me and never leave, but there was also a real sense of
calm and purpose. I didn’t have to worry what I was for anymore, because I only
had to take care of this baby. I named her immediately: Daisy.
It’s seems bonkers now to think that no follow-up doctors
appointments were made right away. There was no
wait-until-third-trimester-to-tell-people rule back then either, I guess,
because after I told my mom, she let me call up the aunts and tell them too. An
amazing thing happened: For the first time in my short life, I felt valued and
accepted. My mom was 100% on my side, and the wall of hatred that had lived
between us for years temporarily came down. No one judged me or said I was bad,
they just asked how they could help. My beach aunt gave me my (then) littlest
cousin’s car seat.
That all of that happened without me even had a doctors
appointment was complete madness, so I can be forgiven for calling the
ambulance when my period came. (It warms my heart to think that my mom, who
yelled at me for every single other thing, never gave me a hard time about that
ambulance bill.) I called Dave, who had never picked up a phone after our third
and last day together) from the hospital waiting room, grateful, if I’m honest,
to have an excuse to call him, and left a message.
I wanted them to tell me it was okay, that I could still
have Daisy, but what the doctors said was that the blood test proved that I had
never been pregnant at all. There had either been a false positive or the lady
at Birthright had tricked me as some kind of abstinence lesson. I always
assumed it was the latter, but I just Googled the organization and it seems
pretty not-evil, so most likely, it was an honest mistake. My main
advice-giving aunt said to tell people I’d lost the baby, since technically
that was true even though I’d only lost the idea
of her. I do still love and miss her, even though she turned out to have been
an imaginary friend.
That was twenty-five years ago and the closest I’ve ever
come to pregnancy. The situation makes really no sense, but I have to take
seriously the way motherhood settled over me like a magic blanket of hope and
purpose. Though it’s unfair that only motherhood could unlock my family that
way, I can still feel that time as an oasis of acceptance and love in those
ugly and violent years.
I want to acknowledge that even as I rail against the
coercions and injustices that come from the patriarchy, from the institution of motherhood, the actual
spiritual fact of motherhood is in me. I felt it in those few teenage weeks, a
white light lantern in my soul that I knew would guide me through it, to shiny
and wonderful parts of myself. It wasn’t
really loss or fear that made me bury that light. It was just life and other
projects. But it sure was a lovely little light, and even if I’m not blessed
with a miracle baby or stepchildren, I would love to look for big and little
ways to shine it.
On the night after the long date, I slept a deep, sad sleep
and dreamed that I was on the island from
Lost, but there was a huge old city at the center of the island with lots of
art to explore. I went into the biggest museum chamber and found the shadow of
a statue of Perseus. This seemed especially important since our flower date was
during the Perseid meteor showers, which were also a part of my shared
traditions with Sweetie. I decided it meant that it was time, past time,
really, for me to slay my own monsters.
After I wrote out that dream and its various implications
that Monday morning, I found myself deeply grateful to J and wanting to, if
possible, leave behind the fears that were getting in the way of enjoying this
messy, complicated, beautiful man and the fun we had to offer each other. So I
did the most me thing possible: I sent him a thank-you note, for my early birthday
dinner and all of the ways he made me feel good. That day as I went about my
bookstore routines and filled in Sweetie (not in too much detail) on the
weekend’s events, a little flower of happiness bloomed in my nether regions and
in my heart. I decided it was okay to just go ahead and like him.
The next day, I got something in the mail back, an early
birthday present he’d clearly sent the second he had my address: a blue canary
night light for the birdhouse in my soul, for the song we’d sung together in
the garden that night. I hadn’t had such a romantic gesture from a man in the
past two decades, if ever. I shrieked and danced around and nearly swooned from
touched-ness. I put on Flood and belted
out the whole thing and got caught up on the dishes, even fantasized about him
maybe wanting to be the only bee in his bonnet. I decided right then and there
to let go of all the things that stop me from not being an Argonaut-murdering
lighthouse. The little bird was too bright to sleep with him on (I was having
horny insomnia and bad headaches.) but I kept him by my bedside.
After a day or so I simmered down and realized that although
it really was a lovely present, I couldn’t be sure about what it meant. J. was
having a vacation week with the kids and therefore (?) wasn’t as frequently in
touch and I started to feel vulnerable, to wonder if maybe I’d been letting my
imagination run away with me too much.
The following weekend was our nondate weekend (apparently he
was unaware of the concept of babysitters) but I was craving closeness so I
proposed that we sext that Friday night. He was hemming and hawing, leaving it
up in the air and being not sure if he had time, and my heart fell. I braved up
and said: “I’m not an afterthought, not someone to be fit in to the margins of
your life.” I admitted that what I was really after was connection, rather than
just sex(t). I am so proud of myself for saying that, and I think that
admission alone proves that I’ve come a long way since being Steampunk Guy’s
“Thing that Happens Sometimes,” his number ten or eleven or whatever I was. Go
me for miles and miles of progress.
I asked for a call instead of sexting and that’s what we
did—as soon as he got the kids to bed, he called and I knew I had to say all of
the things. I told him I didn’t have time to like someone who didn’t like me
back, and he assured me that he did. He told me he couldn’t believe that
someone as perfect for him existed and if he had, he would have gotten up the
courage to divorce sooner. Right now, that sounds like me being rebound girl,
but at the time, it convinced me that we were on the same page, that this
really was a thing. It’s hard to go back through this story and think that he
didn’t like me back; I may have to accept that he did.
That phone call was WONDERFUL, I loved it so much. We stayed
up talking about all different things, about his kids and their adventures that
week, about my birthday plans (He’d convinced me to invite my church friends to
do a birthday brunch, even though I’d been shy to ask since I’d missed the
regular brunch the week before. He did push me to do some very good things.)
all the things we might hope to do together. I gently told him that babysitters
should maybe be a thing, and he said he did want to see me more often and would
look for ways. He offered phone sex near the end but I liked the just talking
so much that I said no. Just like I used to do during long-distance snuggles
with Mr. Sweetheart, I doodled the whole time we were talking and sent him the
drawing afterward.
And I felt brazen enough to send my favorite emoji
Which he diplomatically ignored.
We did sext on my birthday night (after Sweetie had gone home from having cake,
Chinese food, and Bob’s Burgers
episodes) and it was a really good one. He was an excellent sexter, I’m sure
that his erotic novels have their merit! It ended romantically, with us writing
about listening to each other’s heartbeats.
“Is my heart doing a better job of telling you how I feel
than I can?” He asked, and I still don’t know what that meant, but I know that
I liked it. It just turned my insides to mush—I
was officially bonkers about him.
Monday, when I was at the beach saying goodbye to summer
with my cousins and aunts, he sent me a picture of the boys, on a picnic by a
pond. What family-oriented girl could stay cool with something as adorable as
that in her phone? I’m only human.
On the Tuesday after my birthday, in the interest of slaying
my own monsters, I met with a potential new therapist. When I finished the Big
Therapy Project, a lot was left undone. there was another memory that needed
attention, a trickier, more childlike version of me who needed some love. I put
off working on that for all kinds of reasons, mostly being too tired from
teaching to think of anything else. Eventually, though she stuck around long
enough to help me quit the school district, my old therapist moved away and
sent me a list of referrals that sat in my inbox for four months, until J.
became the incentive/trigger that made me realize I needed help. If it works,
I’ll be forever grateful to him. Probably I’ll be forever grateful to him
anyway.
The therapist’s office building was next to a Tiffany’s and
across the street from a pastry shop, which I considered to be a very good
sign. I liked her immediately and she gave me a lot of hope for healing. We
both are people who like to geek out on happiness and wellness, and the
bossiness of her seemed like it could propel me off the Lost island, when I was done exploring, of course. The best part,
though, was that instead of wanting to go home and crawl into bed after
therapy, I wanted to go jump in the pool and make out in the sunshine with J. I
knew he was still off from work so I called and asked, and he said yes, with
the caution that I‘d have to be gone before the kids got home from school.
That afternoon, though so short that we had to set a timer,
was absolutely magical.The sun was hot and bright and the sky
was blue and we played in the pool like kids, like people who had no baggage,
no fear. He kept swimming under me, lifting me up, and kissing me, and I felt
so happy and peaceful and swoony and whole
in his arms. He looked so handsome, healthy, and virile in the sun, and I felt
like a goddess. I pushed him to the edge of the pool, grabbed the wall, and
pinned him there in the most delicious, picture-postcard of a kiss. Right then,
those bodies were in love, I don’t see a way around it.
When it was time to go, it almost seemed like he wanted me
to accidentally meet the kids. His older son had recently stated unequivocally
that he didn’t want J. dating, but J. was slowly trying to warm him up to the
idea, an effort I found encouraging. When it had somehow gotten to be ten after
three, I ran out to my car and was getting in quick but he insisted on saying a
proper kissy goodbye. It felt like he was proud of me, like he wanted to rip
the band-aid off and make me part of his life, and though it was certainly too
soon for that, I took it to heart.
Writing that afternoon makes it so difficult to not to call
him, to try and find a way. I know there isn’t a way, but still. The sunny
optimism of that hour and a half in the pool, the unabashed connection, was
real and I just love it so much.
One Saturday last April it seemed as though a fissure in my
psyche released, healed, and closed, and with it, the door to all I’d
experienced in my three years of adventure. It was a triumph and loss all at
once. As I page and edit through the beginning pages of the blog to start
wrangling it into a book, I miss the person I was at the beginning of the
story, aglow with adrenaline, defiance, and denial. As I face the story for
what it really is, the end of a marriage, a labyrinth path to things generally
being healthier but less exciting, I have to grieve for what it wasn’t, for
what I may never have—a story of belonging.
After I walked away from that festival last spring in what
an uncharitable commenter called a tantrum but what felt like both defeat and
acceptance, I really did walk into a happier life, in almost all ways. It felt
the way I imagine being newly sober might feel—missing the thrills but
welcoming the lack of roller coasterness, the feeling of belonging to myself,
to my own life.
I spent almost every weekend last summer at my aunt’s beach
house, bonding with family, swimming with my cousins. I felt entitled to be
with my own family in a way I never had before. I went to my sister’s for a
no-reason visit, walked along with river with my niece and nephews. I sat in
the yard at my mom’s dream country house and watched hummingbirds for hours.
I didn’t make it as a teacher, didn’t get to be the change I
wished to see. Despite everything I’ve learned here, I never figured out how to
not be blamed for every single thing—in the fall, a student pushed me into a
door, and somehow I ended up being made to apologize to him. Another child
tried to push a locker onto me, and I was told to “stop putting myself in
harm’s way.” Eventually, I started having real panic attacks. On my second to
last day, I went to the emergency room because my heart hurt. A doctor told me
I could stop panicking, if I stopped going there, so I did.
I say this to say, so many times in the last few years I’ve
jumped in with both feet, fallen in love with every single person and thing
around me, then unequivocally rejected the whole thing, the social equivalent
of a bad donor heart. I guess that’s kind of what I’ve been.
As I begin turning the blog into a book, the big emotional
risk, the scary part, is not the scary stories that await me—I feel safe from
all of those fears and panics, perspective and strength did come as I’d hoped,
right on schedule. What’s hard to confront is the love, held in there like so
many bookmarks. Though at time I saw those adventures as a transformative dream,
it wasn’t, it was real love, even in the most baroquely fake situations. And
with real love, real loss. I held every single character in my heart, just like
I loved the teachers and students and entire causes I walked away from this
winter.
In some ways, these two post-teaching months have been the
happiest, but I’m restless not really knowing what I am, having these vast
reserves of unexpressed something waiting
in case true love or vocation
miraculously come along. Though I’m by and large optimistic about what’s ahead,
I get overwhelmed sometimes about the whole population of lost loves behind me,
the series of identities I’ve slipped into and out of so quickly—the loss and
loss and loss.
Today my beloved therapist, whom I’ve seen sporadically
since we finished the project, had to cancel our appointment. She’s been doing
that lately, switching my times around and so on, and today, I was done. She
wasn’t one of my people anymore, somehow. I let her go and I felt something in
my brain heave and swirl, maybe it was the real end of the story, maybe this is
being free.
I’m new to the world again. I’m taking everything slow. I
don’t know what I’m here for, except to write and eat brunch and pet the cats
and take pictures of flowers. My type-A side wants a mission, my creative side
wants to be a kite, seeing where things take me next. I honestly don’t know.
I was excited yesterday morning to pack up and get ready for
the Sparkly Festival of Awesomeness, but I was also grumpy and
space-issuey—even the shower curtain brushing up against my legs seemed invasive.
I was thinking it might be better to stay home and rest and write, maybe even
grade papers. I wanted some time to myself.
But I also knew it was time to start reaching out, and I was
curious about whether I’d even be interested in a naked-outside adventure now
that the Big Therapy Project had been completed. When I arrived, I immediately
felt disincluded—the man at the gate couldn’t find my name on the list, and
neither could the lady at registration, at first. Still, I was glad to be there
and excited to see my friends.
I found Mr. and Ms. Sweetheart right away. Their tent was in
the same place it was in last year, where I’d had all the fun with Mr.
Sweetheart and Mr. Shiny Eyes. This time, all the front tent flaps were open
and it had the feel of a veranda, a porch full of inflatable beds.
I got naked and fell easily in with them on their bed. I was
warm from the gorgeous day and from the adrenaline and had lots of lovely
snuggles and sexytimes in front of everyone, but Mr. Sweetheart got impatient
with me for wanting to stop and put on sunscreen—he deemed it shady enough.
After snuggles they were going to a workshop and he was getting annoyed with me
for making them late, and I wasn’t okay with that. I wanted to go enjoy the
woods anyway.
I felt post-coital tired and cranky as I set off on my own.
I started out naked but kept adding more clothes as I went. My spray-on
sunscreen wouldn’t work and everything all of a sudden felt sore. I added a
skirt and then a bra, but still sure did like the sun on my skin. I found and
walked the labyrinth where I’d had such a meaningful experience last year, then
went to explore the pond. It was teeming with tadpoles, a fuck you to anything
that would interfere with the flourishing of life. I found this vindicating,
since the pond where I used to watch tadpoles as a child has fallen prey to
frackers. It felt like the frogs were still winning.
I saw a tiny turtle and got very, very sad that Sweetie
wasn’t there to see it with me.
I tried to have some self-adventures in the woods, that had
long been a fantasy of mine, but my body felt raw and disconnected, guarded
against touch, even my own. I started to realize that no matter how pretty the
scenery, no matter how much everyone else was having fun, I didn’t belong here,
maybe never would.
On the way back from the pond, who should I see but that
harbinger of go-home-already, Steampunk Girl. She was, as always, perfectly at
home, being chatted up by a guy who looked exactly like a young Weird Al
Yankovic. She was directly in my path and I thought I should go talk to her,
say my sorries and get in over with, but everything inside me finished shutting
down and I found a way to get past them without being seen.
I found some nice grass to lie down in, looked up at the perfect
cartoon clouds and thought about the Steampunks, who were probably here
together and fitting in perfectly the way they always do, like I never would. I
don’t know why I still feel so much pain about them, but there is. I’m still
broken about them no matter how much progress I’ve made otherwise.
I started to sob and a couple of strangers came over to talk
to me, but I couldn’t articulate it to strangers, I needed a real friend.
I spotted the Recurring Character and his wife sitting in
lawn chairs and watching a nice couple fuck in the next tent over. I asked if I
could just sit by them, but they got closed and guarded and he said “We’re
having an alone moment right now.”
I think that was the moment that I clocked out of polyamory,
or whatever community this was. The way they used boundaries as an excuse to
ignore the real need of a hurting human being, this has been the essence of
heartbreak after heartbreak for these past few years. It certainly wasn’t
friendship. Like a child, I sobbed away across the field, in front of everyone,
maybe even in front of Steampunks.
I eventually found the Sweethearts leaving their workshop,
hugged them and told them what happened with Steampunk Girl. I lay down on the
bed for a few minutes and when I closed my eyes, they were gone again. There
was nothing and no one here for me, not even myself since I felt so
disconnected.
I tried to get a cup of coffee in hopes that that would make
me feel better, but even THAT felt exclusive—you had to be a member of the
Coffee Club. Never has the universe been so unsubtle at telling me to get the
heck out of someplace.
I headed home sad and wondering what hobbies would replace
unicorning and nudity, if I’d ever find a place to belong. (Where does one go
to meet monogamous available people, anyway?) I stopped at Gold Star Wing
Girl’s house on the way home, and talking to her confirmed what I already sort
of knew: My adventures of the past few years helped me to separate from Sweetie
and successfully tackle the Big Therapy Project, and now that that’s done, they
just don’t have the same meaning. Being a naked peripheral character feels bad
because it’s already in the past and going backwards always hurts.
I hung onto the Sweethearts the longest probably because
they’re the nicest, but it’s time to cop to the thing I said out loud to
Sweetie in the ocean last summer—I didn’t say I wanted an FWB or a play partner
or a couple. I said I wanted a husband. And because, unlikely as he is for
giving such an insight, Steampunk Guy was the one who helped me realize it,
maybe they’ll always be there to show me when I’m off track.
It’s lonely not belonging, but I can only refocus on ways to
keep belonging with myself and hope the rest works out somehow.
After the last post, all full of accomplishment and yoga-y
goodwill, I was inspired to send a sorry-I-was-a-jerk note to Scrabble Boy—I’d
been thinking of him because our dalliance was an April thing and because our
friendship ended, as so many of mine have, with me getting superpissed. Since
the divorce, I’ve been working my way through the list of people at whom I’ve
misdirected anger.
He accepted my friend request right away, as if he’d been
waiting for it, and was equally apologetic and forgiving. We planned to do a
call after I got back from Easter. (Hey everybody! I drove up to my sister’s
and back without having a breakdown for the first time post-Sweetie! Credit to
my cute little red car, I think. And time.) A funny thing happened when I hit
the road though—all kinds of daydreams started to unspool about him—holding
hands under the flowering trees, throwing him into my pretty princess bed and
finally having my way with him, running away to join his life in Ann Arbor.
(Cue Get Up Kids song…)
Though I loved the idea of reuniting with my poet self
through him and seeing the last three years’ adventures through his eyes, the
adventures seemed to pale in comparison with him. He was, at least in those
daydreams, still the best one for me, the guy I’d choose out of all of them if
I were given a chance. I hadn’t so much gotten over him as put a bookmark in
that day we spent together, and as soon as we were on good terms, love started
bursting out like so many tree-petals.
Easter was SUCH a good trip. I played Mario Party with the
kids and earned almost no mini-stars. I took my niece and nephews to their
local comic shop and bought my niece some manga and my nephew a sonic
screwdriver. After we finished lovingly perusing the old-school Star Wars
figures, we all went out for cocoa. It’s finally sinking in that I can still
have my family, even post-Sweetie.
When I got home, I knew I couldn’t really bear to be updated
about Scrabble Boy’s life. I’ve come too far to pretend that I want to be just
friends with someone I love. (Annoying) gold star for being honest with him
about that, and in the process I learned that he’d found someone shortly after
his divorce and was happy with her. I sent him a perfect, distant, congratulatory
response and that was that, but I was completely devastated by the news. I
don’t know why it hurt so badly, but it did. I sometimes feel like everyone
just pairs (or whatevers) up so easily and it’s still just a mystery to me.
The more I dismantle the defensiveness and fear that came
from The Bad Thing, the more I realize some of that stuff was what’s holding me
up, so it’s hard to hold myself together without it. I will probably find more
of these pockets of feeling that got stuck because I was ill-equipped to face
them at the time—my heart might be a TARDIS ride for a little while.
With that loss added to all the others and my defenses down,
I felt like Wyle E. Coyote when he realizes he’s walked off a cliff. The bottom
dropped out from under everything and for a few days, I was completely lost. I
felt the loss not just of Scrabble Boy, but of my school, of Sweetie, of
everyone I’ve lost in the past couple years’ adventures. I was so
hyperventilatingly sad that I wondered if I did need a Girl Interrupted interruption, or shock treatment like Rory Gilmore
got when she was on Mad Men. I
thought I would never find love the way SB did because I would be tangled in
this web of grief forever.
The feeling only lasted a couple of days—with yoga, sitcom episodes,
and lots of writing, the devastation passed and I was able to get back on
track. The main thing I learned from the Scrabble Boy thing is that hermit time
is over, that reaching out has got to become the norm again. I’ve enjoyed these
months of focusing on taking care of myself, but the loneliness is deep and
wide and it’s time to rejoin the world.
So I did. Last night I joined some friends-of-friends for a
Buffy sing-along and ice cream birthday party. (Can you believe that was a
thing?!) I felt nervous because I’ve almost completely forgotten how to be
social, but singing “Walk Through the Fire” with a bunch of cute near-strangers
was as transcendent an experience as I’m ever gonna have, and I have been
actually set on fire.
So I will. Walk through the fire, I mean. Though it seems
impossible sometimes, I’ll keep moving forward until I work someplace safe and
love someone(s) kind, until vulnerability and lightness and heart can thrive.
Next weekend, everybody, is the Sparkly Festival of Awesomeness, not a moment
too soon.
It’s fitting that I’m writing this right before Easter
because part of my psyche is starting a brand new life. For twenty-some years
my high-school trauma has been a huge, stultifying influence, and I’ve finally
begun to transform and heal away from it.
Last week was a rough one. Though I was already planning to
transfer to a safer, more respectful school, the way my principal decided to officially
notify me of her decision to force-transfer me was this:
Two years of giving it absolutely everything that I had, of
tears and sacrifice and love and Sunday workdays, and all she thought I
deserved was a form letter with seven words. I felt that familiar being-nothing
feeling for a night, but as always the kids and the actual work took me through
to solid ground again.
I can’t imagine why my soon-to-be-ex boss thinks I deserve
so much contempt, but I decided that the way to say FUCK YOU to her without
derailing my goals is to do as many kind and loving things for myself as I
possibly can. So on Friday night, I went to a Yoga Nidra/Kirtan event at the
yoga studio I was enjoying last summer. The Yoga Nidra part was an all-savasana
guided meditation geared toward body awareness. It was an entire hour long. The
lovely yoga teacher said a lot of things, but my favorite part was when she was
focusing us on our chakras. When she said “heart chakra, green” I felt it and
saw it and I’ve felt it and seen it on and off all week.
I spent Saturday in a fancy garden, further unwinding from
the school week. As I walked among the topiaries and fields of tiny blue
flowers, as clear directive came up inside me: “Let things change.”
Therapy was on Sunday, right after church. Each week, I’ve
been telling her the Bad Thing story and each time my anxiety levels have
lessened, like magic. This week, she had me focus on just the part where the
rapist is inside me, the part that’s always been the most difficult to
articulate.
I started off with the usual anger and fear but as I talked,
something changed. I want from harsh, stubborn emotions to pillowy sadness.
Behind my closed eyes, everything inside me went a lovely, soft spring green. I
cried relievingly and gently for the fact that I hadn’t been kept safe, for the
deeper abandonment that led to me being at that party instead of in a safe,
loving home, for the fact that both he and I had to go through something so
inhumane, so disconnected from our divine selves. I tried to address him but as
I did, he just…evanesced, floated up off me as foggy green light and was gone.
I opened my eyes and blew out the candle, full of kind
sadness and relief. I got there. After twenty years of holding on, all of the
kindness and support and adventure and work had finally allowed me to let it
go. The badness and horror I always thought was an essential part of me was
moved to something outside me, something else.
The Bad Story was all about integrating with my inner
teenage self, and I went on talking after story time, I landed on the next
character who needs attention and care: little me. For the next part of
therapy, I’ll find ways to connect with and heal the child in me, who is still
stuck in fear and abuse. I get to care for her and get her all situated, and
now I know I can do it.
To that end, on the way to my family’s today, I’ll stop and
take a walk at my rural childhood home. I’ll look at the flowers and birds and
hear the quiet. I’ll go to the small town where we did church and groceries and
go to the drugstore where my brother and sister and I used to get our allotted
25 cents worth of penny candy every week after church, and I’ll get Little Me whatever
she wants, probably something sparkly.
The best update of all is: last night I had a little gig!
The Cute Church couple had me read some poems at their adorable music night,
and Cute Church Guy backed me up on stand-up bass. Friends came and listened,
and I even sold a couple of books.
I started with a poem that has a singing epigraph:
“There is more love somewhere.
There is more love somewhere.
I’m gonna keep on
‘til I find it.
There is more love somewhere.”
Hearing my whole voice telling me the truth, in a gorgeous
historic room with my adorable friends, I started to believe it. I am not the
nasty things that happened to me. I’m love all the way through, and the more I
can admit that, the happier I’ll be. This feels like the end of a story and I’m
so, so grateful for everything that got me here, especially, dear reader, you.
It's fantastic to know I'm (sometimes) past the part where I'm scared of sex and ready to both whale on somebody and get whaled on. I'm not supersure in the long term about the FWB-ness of my relationship with Mr. Sweetface (I'm kinda in a place where I want to graduate to romance. And, um, my own stuff.) but I am grateful for the kind, tingly way he ushered me back into the world of sexytimes last night.
Last weekend was tough. After telling the story twice this
time to the therapist, I was so immobile as to temporarily be unable to move my
hand across the page. I was scared, jangled, and raw, and I got thoroughly
convinced that she would never be back again, that she would abandon me and I’d
be stuck in that surly, raw state forever. Of course she didn’t; by the end of
the weekend I had two appointments, but the feeling that she was gone was no
less real.
So guess what triggers me now: meditation. Are you kidding
me with this? Sunday morning, I went with Gold Star Winggirl to try out the
mindfulness group at church. I sat for a full twenty minutes (usually I average
about five) and it was lovely—there was an emphatic robin trilling outside and
rain on the window panes.
But then the fucking people started to talk. They talked
about not being disciplined enough in their mindfulness, which strikes me as
not just a first world problem, but a made up one at that—really?! Not enough
of our lives are controlled, we have to make up ways to police our thoughts,
too?
Then the woman to the right of me (I was secretly thinking
of her as the Ignorant White Lady, since the week before we overheard her tell
the anti-mass-incarceration speaker that she’d never heard of such a problem.)
said that mindfulness helps her because sometimes she has feelings that she
mistakes for anger when they’re really just vulnerability or pain. Others
talked about mindfulness as a way to slow down their knee-jerk reactions. All
of those things are reasonable to say, but they filled me with fury. I piped up
(nicely) in favor of feeling all of our emotions and heeding our knee-jerk
reactions sometimes.
Nothing bad happened at all, but after I piped up I felt
like I’d gotten in trouble for something. I was terribly frightened, angry and
nauseous. Maybe it was just that we were in a circle taking turns talking just
like when we were being questioned by the police in the end of the Bad Thing
story, or maybe it’s just what mindfulness brought. By the time we were taking
a short second meditation, I was fully upset and wanted to run out, but stayed
put so I didn’t disturb anyone’s peace.
I apologized to GSW for “letting her down.” That’s how it
feels when I can’t adjust to things, when I can’t fit in. A lot of the time
lately, I feel like I’m failing at some basic and easy human thing. I envy her
her ability to mingle in groups, to take them or leave them instead of always
feeling under attack. This fear of groups is something I’ve always had, but
it’s getting worse and worse as the Bad Thing fights to leave my system.
Though I didn’t speak angrily in the meditation group, I
felt saturated and poisoned by anger there, and strangely this is probably a
good thing. Each time I tell the Bad Thing story and get to the rape part, I
can’t address the anger I feel, it’s too vast. Perversely, I try to tell it as
nicely and charmingly as possible so I don’t scare the therapist or get in
trouble. I guess I’m glad the anger is coming out, even if it is in vexing
circumstances.
Even if I do weirdly try to be sweet when I tell it, it is
the nastiest and deepest anger. The closest I’ve come to actually expressing it
was during the Scary Party fiasco, and though at that time I felt like I would
drown in it, I was still coming at the real issue sideways. I want to look
directly at the anger: I’m pissed off two decades later that someone was inside
me unwanted, that I was too robotlike to fight and kick, that I was used in
such a senseless and pleasureless way, and especially that the experience
stayed there in my hoo-ha, a minefield waiting there for any man kind enough to
fuck me. That someone so vile and thoughtless could inhabit part of my body for
so long makes me frustrated and livid. I’m angry that I may never have a real
relationship with a man, that PIV sex may never feel safe and normal, that I
never found a way to get the experience out of my body before now.
I think I’d like to make friends with the anger that I was
so move to defend in mindfulness class. Instead of being scared and ashamed and
letting it make me feel like a monster, I want to embrace it. I’m angry. I’ve
always been angry. It’s one of the emotions that humans have and it happens to
be one that often motivates real change. Anger deserves just as much care and
love and therapy hours as sadness does, maybe in this case, more.
All those years ago and since, I was so overwhelmed and
terrified and ashamed by the anger that the Bad Story brought that the only way
I thought I could protect myself and others from it was to turn it inwards,
where it lived as self-hate and sadness. But, as we’ve seen from all of my
various reenactments, it’s only making me angrier that way. If I can welcome
it, make it safe, and draw it out, maybe the anger will release me and make way
for other emotions, for the next adventures.
Even though the month often seemed impossibly dark, (Fancy new side-effect to the Big Therapy Project/work stress? Memory lapses that make me feel like my work's own Jerry Gurgitch.) I still overachieved on self-kindness. I hope to do the same next month!
So it turns out there’s one guy I’m not currently afraid of:
Mr. Sweetface! For the last month or so I haven’t known what to do with in. I
was feeling hesitant about poly and we’re both going through a lot at home. For
some reason, I was inspired this week to invite him to join me at the Cute
Neighborhood Music Thing that my adorable alt-country duo church friends run. I
liked the idea of listening to the music with my head on a nice warm shoulder,
sidling up to his faintly leather-scented warmth.
So, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I put on
makeup after work, curled up the ends of my needs-to-be dyed hair into a flip.
I wore red lipstick and my red date-night raincoat, even though it’s still a
little too chilly.
The venue’s a historic Mennonite meetinghouse; the Cute
Church Couple live on its grounds. There are tall candles in all the windows
and Cute Church Girl made vanilla cupcakes from scratch.
After the show (They booked me to open next month! First
time reading poetry in almost two years!) he drove me home and we curled up on
the couch and talked about all the things—his family stuff, the Big Therapy
Project (to tell a guy that story and have him hold me protectively is it’s own
therapy…), our similarly LSD-fond pasts. We compared the perils of teaching
with the perils of parenthood--both involve doing one’s best and feeling like a
jerk a lot, it turns out. He got deeply emotional talking about his son and it felt
good to take care of him a little, to reside for a moment in a story besides my
own. It made me feel true and alive, so gratified that he was kind enough to
share himself with me.
I told him I’m a ways away from sexytimes--he held me tight
and told me to take all the time I need. I said I’d try to make it quick so I
could get back to beating his ass before too long.
His second child is due this fall, so I know I can’t expect
much time with him, but I liked inviting him into this new world I’m building
and that he’s willing to share his world with me too. I think I’m still poly,
given how much I like sharing him with my friend, how much I liked cozying up
to a date with a wedding ring. The Mystery Family thing didn’t mean I’m not
poly, I just meant I prefer sanity, and so far this seems pretty sane.
On the couch, wrapped up in a blanket with my head on his
heart and his (newly beardy, yay!) chin on my head, as he told me his secrets,
I felt the thing I love to feel the most—simple human connection. Warmth. Life.
We’re getting to know each other in a way that makes my pants-on time seem like
even more of a blessing.
Though my heart is still heavy with worry about work, it was
lovely to go to sleep last night with an unequivocal smile, to have these gorgeous
living moments in my heart, to fall asleep and dream in pretty neighborhood
love songs.
I was gonna take a blog break for the privacy, but that felt
too isolating and plus I need the creative outlet. I guess I just have to trust
you to know I won’t always be as bleak as these weeks are.
The big challenge lately is the way that the Big Therapy
Project has been making my work life tricky. As of right now, I haven’t been
assigned a grade next year because the principal has some hesitations about me.
It’s my first full school year as a teacher and she doesn’t feel like I’m
progressing as quickly as I should in some areas and thinks (as will come as a
surprise to exactly no one who reads this blog) that I can be too defensive
sometimes. I wish I were learning quicker and I’m not defensive about my
defensiveness, but it’s kind of hard going in every morning, knowing that I
might have to let the place go.
It’s a hard job in a tough school, there may be someplace
more hospitable and less triggering, where I could learn and grow faster, and
now that I’m breaking myself of the habit of trying to prove that I’m a good
person through sacrifice (now that I know I’m not a masochist) I don’t need to
do the hardest job. I don’t like feeling that I’ve failed there, or that the
next mistake might be the one to make her feel like I don’t belong. I’m really
sad about all of my failures as a teacher, but also about how much time and
energy it takes and how many of my actual talents aren’t usable there.
Life just feels like it’s so much about loss and futility
and shame at work, and the Big Therapy Project, the one awesome thing that I am
unequivocally accomplishing right now, is making the tightrope I’m walking at
work a little harder. On one hand, a new sense of autonomy and groundedness is
emerging, but on the other having The Bad Thing story so close to the surface
often makes me want to scream at everybody to get away from me—I don’t, but I
know I can often come across as anxious, and yes, defensive.
One of the major things I’m confronting about The Bad Thing is
that it wasn’t my fault. All these years, I’ve been telling myself I chose my
rapist, I’ve been beating myself up for the illusion that I somehow could have
protected myself from what happened. But whether I was drunk or drugged, I was
in no position to consent, and I didn’t. I lost my autonomy in that moment and
I’ve long wanted to make sure that never happen again, giving me an inflated
sense of everyday humiliations, a need to protect some imagined dignity. As I
really come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t a choice, a new sense of
being indignant marked IT WASN’T MY FAULT is starting to come out.
But the thing is, teaching means being held responsible for
ALL KINDS of things that aren’t my fault: the child who has nine brothers and
sisters and is so starved for attention that he disrupts or leaves class and
often feels like he might eat me alive, the overworked special ed teacher who
snaps at the grade team because her caseload is so overwhelming, the autistic
child whose parents refuse to get him services, the child who is just now
entering school in third grade and can’t read at all, all of those issues,
along with the general awfulness of poverty violence and inequality, are things
I can’t change, and they are all things that will effect my evaluations—that’s
how the system is set up right now—fewer and fewer resources and more and more
strict ways to judge teachers.
So the whole defensiveness thing kind of feels like a catch
22. I want to take responsibility for the things I can change and tell people
to fuck off about the rest. I think that’s ultimately how I’ll be able to
forgive myself if I end up getting let go. I made mistakes in a hard job, I did
my best, but ultimately I can’t control if I’m a fit.
Anyway, in the course of feeling like I have to fight people
off, (A character flaw that I’ve always had and which the Bad Thing
exacerbated) I’ve had bouts of being very fearful and angry toward men,
especially if they seem to be attracted to me. I asked the therapist about this
and she said that it would probably get worse before it gets better.
My point is that two of the things I’ve found the most
meaning in, my job and my body adventures, are kind of out of reach as sources
for fulfillment for a while, and the work of the Big Therapy Project is slow
and painstaking. Each appointment, (every two week) I tell the Bad Thing story
again, sink a little deeper into it each time, and I can feel it leaving my
body little by little. I take a lot of comfort in writing to/with my teenage
self—I always sleep soundly afterwards and sometimes I wake up feeling like
I’ve just done yoga, even though I didn’t.
I’m accomplishing something I’ve wanted to do for 20 years,
but right now it’s hard to see the good sometimes. About eleven years ago, I
quit smoking, and this is a very similar feeling—I stayed a way from people a
lot because I was afraid I would yell at them, I felt sad all the time, I took
a little too much comfort in sugar. I felt separated from the good parts of my
personality for years. This is an
even more loving thing than quitting smoking, I just hope it doesn’t do too
much damage to my life in the process.
The therapist said to list all of the ways that loss relates
to my current situation and to the Bad Thing, but every time I think about that
list, I feel how big it is and I don’t know where I even could start listing. I
feel blinded by it. I lost 20 years of feeling safe with men; maybe I’ll never
get to feel that. I may be losing my job and all the things I love about it.
I’ve lost so much of my life with Sweetie and I really don’t know which parts
are okay to keep. I’ve lost so many friends from adventures gone wrong. It
seems like I gave myself faith in the Mystery Family just so I could lose that
faith. Dating has a necessary component of loss that I can’t handle right now,
so thank goodness I’ve let that go.
How I’m dealing with it is that I’m doing my best. I’m
chanting every day, taking long walks, eating lots of produce, hanging out with
cute neighbor friends. Church and brunch afterwards have become my big social
occasions. For all the loss, I’m free of the feeling that I’m slipping through
the cracks—turning my attention to my teenage self is what I’ve been trying to
convince myself to do all these years, and now I have. Sometimes it means
staying home from something fun because I’m grumpy or panicky, but it also
means taking responsibility for myself and settling into my own skin like I
never have before. I’m doing my best. I hope I can see myself shining on the
other side of it before too long.
