What A Community Can’t Do

Last month, I made the painful decision to leave the Unitarian church that has been my spiritual home for seven years. It was over a philosophical difference that really snuck up on me, a lightning-strike realization that we (the church and I) weren’t on the same page. I try to see it the way it’s best to see dating deal-breakers, that saying no to what doesn’t work makes room for what does, but leaving was a huge loss. I’m struggling with a mix of shame, disappointment, and sadness that is very familiar to be because I seem to hit a wall of it at least every few years.

In her wonderful new book Rising Strong: The Reckoning, The Rumble, and The Revolution Brené Brown says that in order to get out from under disappointment, you have to be brave and really examine the expectations for the situation. So I’ve really given a lot of thought to the conscious and unconscious expectations that keep leading me to be damagingly disappointed by groups, scenes, and communities.

1. A community can’t be a correction for a hurtful family. Just the way I’ve sometimes gone to doms for approval, I go to communities hoping that they can love me into realness, approve me into existence. There’s an underlying hope of “Now that   I’ve found/become/befriended ___________, I will finally be okay, will finally be welcomed into the world and find unconditional love. It’s sad to realize that I didn’t have that with my original family as a child, but I can’t expect healing and wholeness to come from anywhere but within.

2. A community can’t replace my own family, flawed though they may be. I live too far away from my family of origin and I don’t have a family to share a household with right now, and that leaves a hole that nothing can fill.

3. A community can’t fix rape culture, because rape culture is in all of us. It is always easier for groups to be angry at the person pointing out the problem than to face the problem itself. I’ll always have to speak up against it, but I’d love to learn to feel safe doing so.

4. A community can’t erase heartbreak. I’ve realized that, though there were other factors, I left the BDSM scene because I couldn’t process the rejections I’d experienced there. I tried to patch each loss with another person, (and the whole thing was an attempt to patch divorce grief) but the grief kept walking me down the same path. After three years, I’m to the point where I can see the loss for what it is, and I desperately want to stop sponging that pain onto other people. It’s hard not to try and numb the loss of Sweetie and the life we created together.

5. A community can’t stay the same forever, and it can’t change as I change. Just the way that, in dating, I have to walk away from a bad match instead of trying to torture the person into changing for you, I have to let go of situations that aren’t a good fit. It doesn’t mean that I have to fear or fight forever, just that I need to constantly let things come and go.

6. A community can’t replace love. I am sick of being single, but I still have some inner work (and a whole lot of book-editing!) to do before I’m ready to start a life with another person, but I have to look loneliness in the eye, to honor it. I have to realize how much I want my own family and stop trying to shoehorn other things into that space.

7. A community can’t come to my rescue. If I ignore my instincts and walk into something that doesn’t work, no principal, no dom, no friend can be expected to “save” me. I am a grown woman, and I want to train myself to hear and respect my inner voice so that I can stop reliving abandonment or having childlike expectations of “loyalty.” We’re all adults being ourselves, and it’s up to me to find out what actually works, and do it.

8. A community can’t define me, erase me, or absorb me. It can’t give me an identity, and any identity it DOES give will feel constraining. The only thing I know I am is me, and I have to find out a way to be solid within myself, so I can stop expecting others to create me.

This has been a harsh, lonely time. The double loss of J. and the church has made for a very sad couple of months. It’s hard to have faith in anything right now, so I’m just trying little things as they come along, letting joy and connection in whatever little windows they can find. I’m also still trying to find help with the walls and wounds I keep running into. I don’t like being back in this Groundhog’s Day of sadness, this most vexing part of the labyrinth, but I’m doing my best to learn as much as I can while I’m here. 

In Which I Realize I Am Really Lucky to Have Had My Adventure Years, Part Seven

The night before J. was set to stay over at my place, I had one of the most optimistic shopping trips of my life. I really wanted to celebrate my slutty self and all that was joyful between us, what was beautiful in my dripping-wet desire for him. I got a matching fancy blue lace bra and underpants with delicate peach accents. Since I had a toothbrush at his house, I got him one for mine. Buying a 24-pack of condoms seemed so hopeful as to be hubristic. (I’ve since remembered that I’m happy to have them for my own use, too!) I overcame my mental block about buying lube. It felt like as soon as I made these purchases, he might disappear.

I got picnic fare for our Sunday breakfast: nice bread, cheese, chocolate, and pretty little red delicious apples. For some reason I had a twinge of fear about drinking with him, so I didn’t copy his (AWESOME) champagne-in-the-fridge move.

The morning of our date, I felt sunny and expansive. I had been squishily turned on since our picnic and was fully embracing my desire to pounce. He understood that he was to surrender his pants promptly at three. In preparation, I went down to the corner to the neighborhood co-op and got rainbow carnations for the table inside the door and little mum pots for the outside front and the terrace. All of my plants were thriving green and blooming, and the nasturtium seeds I’d bought at our garden date had grown into nice little sprouts. I cleaned and organized my girly apartment until it felt like a perfect welcome. You could certainly say I was trying to hard, but I might call it service. Or art!

I had my pink soft pajamas on over the sexy lingerie and I was full of my lovey-dovey self when he knocked on the door. I let him in, gave him a quick kiss, and asked, “Do you need anything? Are you hungry? Do you have to pee?” When he said no, I pushed him up the steps to my loft bedroom, shoved him down onto my princessy bed, straddled him, pinned his arms above his head, and kissed him hard. He pulled off my top and the lacy lingerie was summarily dismissed. There was an odd moment when he said “I didn’t bring condoms, so…” but I was way to rarin’ to go and stocked up on condoms to be all WTF about it. I opened one with what I hoped looked like confidence, slipped it on him, rubbed his big, hard cock until it was more than happy, and with a relieved exhale, pushed him inside.

He was the one who made me truly love being on top. I felt so at home there, so in control and competent. He sucked and played with my nipples for the longlong time I so enjoy, and when his hands were at my waist or on my back, they felt made for me. I keep saying magical, but those hands were. As we were turning over to switch positions, I asked him to stop and hold me a minute, I felt overwhelmed. I was out of breath and dizzy from emotion and release. After we breathed together for a while, he had me lay back, held my hair, and pushed in, and I looked up into his eyes and loved him. There’s no other way to say it.

We stayed in bed a long time, listening to my makeout playlist (YAAAY for having one again, it’s been since Steampunk Guy!) cuddling, staring into each other’s eyes, and fucking some more. At one point, when he was on top with my legs wrapped around his back, he hit the spot so precisely that I blurted out “If you were me right now, you’d believe in god.” and he said “No, the name’s J___.” and I laughed for like forty five minutes. It was one of the funniest, happiest, silliest moments of my life so far, but all of the laughing had the unintended effect of killing his hard-on, so we went back to cuddling and pillow talking. We decided to consider ourselves a couple, but I was still afraid to ask about the boyfriend word even though I was tired of referring to him as “the guy.”

Eventually we got our clothes on so that we could go to dinner. I was showing him my favorite neighborhood diner, so we decided I would drive. My little car was parked in a tight spot, I bumped the car behind me, and though I laughed and said “that’s why god made bumpers” I felt really stupid. I’m normally an okay driver (not the best, as we’ve established here…) but the dizziness of the day and his razor-sharp attention to my driving made me feel lost and discombobulated.

Sweetie was the world’s worst backseat driver, in the car and in life. Her protectiveness made her chime in over and over on what wasn’t safe and what I shouldn’t do. It took years for me to convince myself that I could drive on my own and to feel competent to drive others. Now I do, I even drive my niece and nephews to the comic shop when I visit them. I want to keep steering towards autonomy, so I have an inordinate amount of baggage about backseat driving. The night might have ended differently if he’d driven, but probably not.

Dinner was fine, lemon meringue pie for and appetizer and mostly pleasant sweet nothings of conversation. We made so many plans—for me to spend weekend-after-next at his house, to go back to the art museum sometime, and the beach before it got too cold for him (instead of Sweetie) to help me pick out an external CD drive. He was planning his next mix CD for me, now that he knew me better. It felt like we were kind of a snowball picking up relationship momentum, except a few little things, like this: He had a sandwich with SO MANY onions and refused a stick of gum after, giving the rest of the night a literal bad taste. Knowing how it turned out, I’m tempted to see that as evidence that he couldn’t really empathize with my side of things, but that seems like a stretch.

Next Time: Taking too long to say goodbye.

Divorce Times Week Five: Jumping Out of My Skin and How We Got Here

Everyone, divorce is booooooring. Well, I guess actually it’s the job hunt accounting for the semi-weekly bouts of crushing ennui. Remind me never to take the summer off again unless I have a really riveting reason, like a more-than-two-person family to take care of or a tour of the French cathedrals. Sitting by myself and being a cover letter factory just ekes away at my soul sometimes-thank goodness there have been smutty blog posts to write!

I’m really worried that this process is not going FAST enough. We’ve been trying to think of ourselves as “living with a friend” to take some of the divorce stigma off our list of things to worry about, but I’m concerned that I’m still being much too dependent on her.

I’ve been financially and emotionally dependent on her since just a few months after we got together. When we got engaged, it was 2002. I may have been craving safety, but so was everybody in the country. Did I just blame my semi-failed marriage on 9/11? No, but it feels like it fits. She and I were actually at the same peace vigil a few weeks before we met. With even my most liberal friends spouting jingoistic threats, Sweetie’s proclivity for tie dye seemed forgivable, almost preferable.

I’d also just moved back to the East Coast from California, and I missed my poetry friends so badly—I really needed the move to have meant something, for the sacrifice to be worthwhile. In the end, of course it was.

It was six months before we moved in together, but we had the emotional equivalent of the old U-Haul joke even earlier on—on maybe our third date (On the couch, where so many of my good dates happen…) I let the phrase “soul mate” slip out. The first time she really opened her mouth and let me kiss her, it was one of my top five religious experiences.

I was literally in the middle of a panic about career and money when she produced a tiny sapphire engagement ring. She’d bought it very soon after we’d started dating. That “let me take care of you” situation is not usually the engagement story we tell—we officially proposed under a meteor shower on her birthday (coming up this Sunday, as a matter of fact) like any respectable poet/philosopher pair would.

So our relationship was definitely about love, but it was about security, too. I had a deep need to finally be taken care of. After my fucked up childhood and ten years of attempted adulthood, I felt like I deserved someone who would seek me out to bring a coat when it threatened rain, who would drive around talking for hours. (Often about boys, little did she know that’d be her life for a long time…) I felt bedraggled and spent, and there was something pure about her that I loved and aspired to—she seemed redemptive somehow, and I guess she sort of was, except I didn’t really need to be redeemed.

The fights started pretty soon after we got together, but she’s also deeply loyal and she supported me while I dawdled through my undergrad years and went on to be a full-time writer, supplementing our income a little with part time retail and teaching artist jobs. She’s worked millions of hours for us, making almost all the money for all but the last six months we were together. During fights, she would threaten me with homelessness from time to time. I felt like I contributed in the usual housewifely ways and I definitely provided us both with a social life, but I’m ashamed that I didn’t build more for myself over the years, that I let myself depend on her so much.

Fast forward to two nights ago, sobbing on the floor because it was one of those grief-sneaks-up-on-me days where I’ve lost hope of ever finding a job or moving ahead or ever being worthy of love. Those days only come about once a week, and they’re getting less intense so I am not worried about my mental health just yet. She helped me through it, telling me again and again that I wasn’t worthless, that our situation isn’t permanent, that it would all work out—all the things I believed so joyously when we first made the decision to split. I feel so guilty for still needing her help. I shouldn’t need her to tell me that it’s gonna be okay anymore. But twelve years is a long time to have been in the habit of needing her, and it’s proving trickier than I’d hoped to get out of the habit, but I am trying.

Eventually the tears subsided and we sat down to an episode of Project Runway. Nothing like an Unconventional Challenge to lift the spirits of two poor sad ladies.

Every dollar I save, every new thing I try, every time I write out the feelings instead of calling her at work or take the bus instead of calling her for a ride, I’m trying to create a more self-reliant version of me. I just feel like it’s taking way too long.