Dear Sierra Leone, Part Three

If you weren’t so far away and weren’t, you know, a country, I’d have you over to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s my second favorite movie, after Slacker. I used to have it on VHS. I’d watch it after scary movies so I’d be able to sleep. It’s about a scared, lost but fabulous lady and whether or not people can belong to each other. Spoiler alert: they do. (If you watch this movie, I’m really, really sorry about Mickey Rooney.)

The other day I was listening to Danny Lavery’s podcast (https://slate.com/podcasts/big-mood-little-mood) and he was talking about the Relationship Escalator. No one actually calls it that unless they DON’T want it, he said, they’d just call it “commitment.”

What a weird thing to feel bad about, wanting commitment, but it definitely feels like I was telling on myself when I let it slip. In my defense, it was in the haze of beautiful rosy-hued morning goodbye sex, right before he left for you. The Shy Ones wear stretchy bead bracelets instead of wedding rings, and I said with the confidence of the just-thoroughly-fucked that I wanted a bracelet too, a purple one.

I maaaaaaaaayyyyyy have said I wanted a commitment ceremony too. None of this meant marriage, it meant whatever kind of commitment we came up with. He said the bracelet part might be doable, but I wonder.

Is that why he came back liking me less? Did the bracelet idea get vetoed and he just didn’t have the heart to tell me? Or did I know deep down he wasn’t That Guy and push him away? Did he want to keep some of that freedom he felt with you and I was the thing most jettisonable?

It’s far past time to stop wondering, but he did bring something back besides  maybe a little malaria. (Which, I’m so sorry I overreacted. I only know it from novels. I thought he might die.) Maybe he brought back a deeper commitment to his faith, to his family, his eldest-son leadership responsibilities. It SEEMED like he brought back that gift of all families everywhere: shame. I heard it in his radio silences, in his quick zippering.

No matter which, I have a confession: I thought somehow this would be the Last Waiting. I thought I could somehow graduate from the always-missing-him if I got good grades those weeks in Being Self Contained. And I aced the exam, we both did. Unlike the regular text thread, burdened with pain and paragraphs and push-pull logistics, the WhatsApp thread from when he was with you, it was all love.

Thank you for making us that unlikely space to be free together, to belong together before reality smashed back down. Maybe because when he was with you, he was happy. Maybe missing him hurt less when he was across the sea than when he was across town.

There was a bracelet, not a wear-every-day-as-a-symbol one. It’s carved out of coconut shells, dyed beautiful jewel colors. It came with a necklace and red earrings like tiny coins. They live in The Box of Things to be Worked Out Later by Unseen Forces (The God Box for short) in an envelope marked Prayers for a Bigger Life:

Sierra Leone, I can feel myself getting unstuck and ready to be moved forward by grace and love to wherever and whatever. I think I’m finished writing to you, but you have my whole heart. So many, many things do.

Dear Sierra Leone, Part One

 

His face glowed so much there, in the WhatsApp pictures. I didn’t realize he was homesick ALL the time until, for twelve days, he wasn’t. Of all the empathies that came and went and landed or exploded between us, I wish I’d done this one more: Homesick boy. The fishermen pulling in their morning catch. Salone. Salone.

I didn’t know I could have travel compersion, but there it was, there he was. On his own, so maybe he felt a little bit more mine than when he was at home. Or maybe his lightness of heart was my lightness too, maybe we were both shining with you. Maybe we were hibiscus blooms in the dead of winter. Maybe I caught his tropical relief.

On his own, on three-wheeled motorbike cabs, or riskful and free on the back of the motorcycle taxis. (How could you ride one of those without snuggling into the guy’s back? But he wouldn’t have.)

And the beach. Second beach or second river and I didn’t ask where’s the first beach or the first river, but I did understand pink sky. The boyish sunset glint in someone so serious, so often downcast here with me.

Sierra Leone, I don’t exist there, nor should I. But also, I wanted to. And also, I should. Those wedding parades with their bright family-matched fabrics, their brass bands, their waiting outside for the aunties’ permission, where do queer lives go for their belonging? It wasn’t my place to ask but I did of course eventually. In his family, they go to straight marriages, they pretend. Like my own family, maybe everybody’s for most of history, they erect an architecture of lies as old as colonialism—be straight, be normal, be real.

There’s no way out of it. It’s his way to be real.

He told me he wanted to bring me to you someday. “Sure,” I said, “You can be like, mom, this is my girlfriend.”

“And then she’ll fight you.” He said.

“At least I’ll get to meet her,” I said.

I could have avoided it, I guess. The closet, the little humiliations. Becoming an object of fear, both rightfully and not. But then I would’ve missed you, and not known that I’d missed you, and we’d never have had (and not had) New Years together.

Oh my love, a place I’ll never visit. A place I’ll always.

A Brief Gilmore Guy Revival: Part Two (Concern-Trolling Is Gentle Voter Suppression)

We didn’t talk much, at least not in the fun/deadening let’s-discuss-all-of-our-interlocking-relationship-dynamics poly way. After three hours of easy bliss, we lay in the afterglow. I was holding him tenderly as he started to talk, first about his day and then about the then-four-days-away Midterm Election:

“I want to believe there’s going to be this big, sweeping Blue Wave, but I just don’t think it’ll happen. I think we’ll pick up a few seats but…”

He went on to talk about how bleak things were going to be over the next few years. When he got to the part about how the Democrats didn’t have any strong candidates for 2020, my body went from being a sparkly cloud of bliss to being an angry spring. I disentangled from him as if I was disentangling from the entire last three years.

“Who do you want it to be then? BERNIE?!”

“No, actually I don’t really care for Senator Sanders…”

“WELL, you’ve got that going for you.” I hissed.

Part of my reaction, I have to admit, was good old-fashioned daddy issues. Gilmore Guy’s erasure of Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Corey Booker, et al felt too much like the anti-Gillibrand conversation I still felt trapped in with my dad. (OF COURSE dad didn’t acknowledge the letter I sent. OF COURSE he didn’t.)

It was also too much like the role-flipped therapy session I’d had earlier in the week, comforting a clearly-not-a-match therapist by trying to convince her that the Resistance does, in fact, exist and have an impact.

I’m so happy to have the election results to back me up as I continue to un-gaslight myself about this!

It frustrates me so much that they can’t see it, that they can’t see US or our work, even as it slowly but surely lifts the country out of our mess. I realize that as a member of the Resistance, it’s part of my task to HELP people see it, but having my own reality denied so often really hurts—it’s too much. The time theft is too much. The emotional labor is too much.

I’m not here to try and convince anybody of my existence, to convince anybody that the movements I love are not helpless or worthless or stupidly hysterical. (I’m all about reclaiming the word “hysterical” but that’s another post for another day.)

(My off-script textbanking exchanges with Republicans earlier in the Midterm process have really gotten to me as well, but the right is clearly not the only problem here.)

“I’m just worried about voter suppression,” He said. Of course! We all are. We were both up off the folded-out couch and I was angrily putting on my clothes.

“You’re DOING voter suppression when you tell us we can’t win!”

Concern-trolling is definitely not as evil or insidious as governors who purge voter rolls, exact-match laws, or Native Americans suddenly having to root out street addresses from obscure bureaucratic labyrinths, but it IS part of the problem and definitely should be voted most likely to keep me from snuggling.

I argued probably not very well. He said:

“Let me explain why Kamala Harris can’t…”

Perhaps realizing that I will be having some version of this conversation until she is elected, I fucking SNAPPED.

“I told you I don’t want to have this conversation. Do something about it or Shut. Up.”

(That may have been mostly for dad, sorry. But also yes, shut the fuck up.)

“Don’t scream at me in my own house.” He said, apparently out of arguments. My voice was raised, but screaming was an exaggeration.

The saddest thing about writing down that moment is realizing that he was happy to have me raise my voice in all of the sex-wails that I wanted, but not to stand up for myself, not even to defend my own worth.

“Have fun SITTING ON YOUR ASS and criticizing everybody who’s doing the WORK!” I hollered as I grabbed my purse and umbrella from the kitchen and headed for the door.

“Get. Out.” He said in that annoying I’m-the-reasonable-person tone that I know so well from back when I was married to Sweetie.

After I’d splashed through the rain to my car, the dash clock read 12:06. I’d aimed to turn myself into a pumpkin by midnight and he had (inadvertently, I hope) helped me along.

I wish I could say that I feel righteous and free after that, but I just miss him. I feel lonely about it, and sad. I’m glad I blocked his number and deleted his texts, because I keep wishing I could reach out, somehow repair the connection, somehow be in those arms again.

But even causally, I can’t be with someone who doesn’t live, at least mostly, in the same reality as I do. America has changed so deeply since 2016, and I’m one of the lucky many who can see the underlying positivity: The networks of activism, the interlocking movements full of loving, fiery momentum. Resistbot, Pantsuit Nation, Solidarity Sundays. THE MARCH FOR OUR LIVES KIDS, for god’s sake. The way PEOPLE ACTUALLY CARED about the Midterms!

I want a partner who, no matter how bleak and scary things get, can see the goodness and care that’s growing every day. I wish, in that afterglow moment, I’d mustered the empathy and strength to convince him, to bring him into that hopeful view and keep him safe there. I know I can’t keep him safe, can’t keep anyone safe no matter what. So I run when my body tells me to run, fight when it tells me to fight, and I hope for the best.

The End of My Adventures? A Sparkly Festival of…Grief.

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.