Goodbye to All That

Contrary to its well-worn title, this post is neither a feminist screed nor an eloquent essay nor an impassioned political endorsement. This is simply more of the truth, as I know it. Or as I come to realize it. Maybe it is a distinction without a difference. Knowledge or realization, either requires me to be hit over the head to accept them.

The cold hard facts? He moved back here. He didn't tell me. He passed me on the street. He didn't say anything (granted, neither did I, but in my defense, I thought it a mirage of wishful thinking as it couldn't possibly have been him. After all, he doesn't live here. So why would he be ambling around the neighborhood -- walking a dog no less?) He lives in my neighborhood -- within a matter of blocks. He hasn't told me any of this. I found out by accident. He may or may not be working with many of my friends. They may or may not be avoiding telling me he is back. He may or may not be attending a party I am supposed to attend this weekend. He may or may not be living with someone (the dog, in my view, seems to be a pretty good support of that idea).

I may or may not be a total fool.

So what to make of these facts? It all just feels strangely familiar.

I have been down this road so many times, and, frankly, I am just tired. Contrary to a longheld belief of mine, I do not actually fall in love fifteen times a day. I am too picky for that. I am too afraid for that. I don't know how to accept love. Rejection and withholding, however, I am familiar with.

"I don't want to start something with you because then it would have to end, and I respect our friendship too much."

"It is like the difference between pizza and chicken breast.... you, of course, are the pizza."

"Someday, I want us to be like best friends, but for now, you are the least self aware person I know."

And those were the ones who sought to explain themselves. Others spoke more loudly without a sound -- my how I love those men of action: canceled meetings, forgotten birthdays, disavowed anniversaries, showing up at non-date functions with dates, ignoring correspondence, e-mailing about their impending nuptuals, finding out about impending nuptuals or other more person things from a third party, and, of course, stealthily moving back into town.

The parade of horribles is not insignificant.

But the saddest part is, that they aren't unexpected. As a wise person noted to me, my choices, for all of their extroverted, ebullient, extraordinary qualities, also beget a certain emotional tin ear. I, like others, bask in the glow of their presence. I derive energy and light from such a presence. I feel energized and ennobled in a way that is so foreign to me -- so rare, and so intoxicating. But I never feel loved. And I made the choice long ago, that the price of residing in the solar system of the extraordinary, might require a more independent-minded affection than that which I had dreamt up in my overwrought head. I would not be clingy and demanding and ridiculous. I would be self contained and ask for nothing, because, nagging as my desires are, they are ridiculous. Indicative of my inherent and unshakable core weakness. Oh the weakness. Oh the shame. Oh the truth: I am needy. I need someone who will look after me and my emotional well being. I need someone who cares what I did with my day, from the mundane to the ludicrous. I need someone who sweats the details. But above all else, I just need someone to hold my hand.

He is never going to hold my hand. None of them ever were.

It is a difficult and onerous job, where the risk/rewards calculus is not evidently a positive one, and I am not sure there are many (or any) out there who really could do the job. So, apparently, I have taken to choosing to bestow my affections on those that won't even try. This way I do not have to be disappointed when they fail -- I can just be disappointed all the time.

Today, I feel a sliding spectrum of emotions -- both heavy and lingering all at once: I feel stupid. I feel foolish. I feel like a dope. I feel angry. I feel rejected. I feel ill. I feel betrayed.

But at least there is this: his actions do not make me feel less than. I have known, but not cared to admit, for a long time that he doesn't care about me as I care for him.

What I did not know (or refused to believe even in my heart of hearts) till now is that he does not care about me at all.

Maybe, Just Maybe

Here is a question: If the only knowledge you had of me was through reading this blog, do you know me? Are the words that appear here the "real" me? Would reading these words give you greater insight into who I am than hanging out with me on a regular basis?

In my lawyerly inherently-relativist way, I think the answer is both yes and no.

To know the cyber-me, is to know the peaks and valleys, but none of the landscape in-between. To be fair, there have been a number of stretches of time in the past few years when there wasn't really any landscape in between to report on. Nonetheless, when I write here, it is because I am compelled. I never write out of duty or regularity or even habit. I try to write when I have something to say, but, oftentimes, it is more like I write because I have something to spill. Feelings that are just spilling over and that I can't process any other way than to spew them forth in print, to try to find some safe place to contain them. Though I had never really thought about it, this has long been my practice, even prior to this cyber-endeavor. Often when putting my hand in a long unused pocket or reorganizing an oft-neglected corner, I find folded pieces of paper documenting some angst of the moment in desperate and shrieking tones. Everything is so serious. Everything is so determinative. Funny how different and how very much the same my little scrap paper missives of my adolescence and my cyber entries of today are in both tenor and pitch.

My writing has always been the primary outlet for my scared little girl, afraid of her own shadow and unsure of how to protect herself in a world that made her feel so helplessly out of control. It is only there where she gets a voice. In the real world, she is only found in wracked sobs or rivers of tears. I guess I have always been loathe to speak out loud about a lot of my dark crevices. Actually, I don't think that I could. Correction: I don't think that I could do so without having written them out first. And that is not a matter of scripting things for more palatable consumption by others, but more so because I can't communicate something I myself don't understand. And truly, oftentimes, I have no idea what my feelings are or where they might be coming from till I read the product of my own furious fingers. Even then, my ability to share out loud is limited. There is a line in the sand that I will not cross. I had been so religious about it for so long that I forgot that there might be anything that existed beyond that line. Hence my laughable belief (and I swear, I wholeheartedly believed it up until last summer) that I was an open person.

I always thought being open was a position of vulnerability. But it isn't, it is a matter of trust. And not even trust in the other person, but trust in yourself. Your trust in your own fundamental goodness, and your trust in your choices of the people with whom you have surrounded yourself. Your trust that even if you disappoint people with what you tell them or that they disappoint you with their reactions, that being open was the right thing to do.

In a lot of ways, to this point, I have failed. My life has been characterized by a lack of trust, a lack of faith. In so many ways, it is such an unfair and unreasonable position for me to take. I have been so blessed in this life with more than my fair share of people who have stood by me from the beginning of our relationship to the present day. Even when things are bad, especially when they are. When I have been less of a friend than I should have been, as well as when I was actually present. It is stunning good fortune. It is a solid platform upon which to believe, to reach out, to trust, to let go of the fear.

But I have always been a glass is half empty kind of gal. Funny thing, that, as it really is not a result of my being a cynic, but rather because I am a closet addict to hope. In the fun house mirror inside my head, I have long been a bearer of talismanic worry. If I worry that the worst will happen, if I squelch my impulse to hope that the best will happen, then at least the worst won't occur. What kind of a desired outcome is that? Seriously? It may head off (at least some) searing pain, but the endgame is, by definition, dissatisfaction.

Despite my contemporaneous protestations to the contrary, to this point, things in my life have actually turned out just as they should. That boy (okay, the many boys) I "loved" that I thought I should have been with "forever", the (numerous) jobs I thought I should have which would have made me "so happy", the (various) schools I just had to go to because otherwise my life was "over." All not true. In fact, the alternative result was so much the better -- in the end. Hindsight is 20/20 and perhaps that same hopeful schmuck inside of me is what makes me want to justify all of the events in my life as "ultimately positive" and "hard lessons learned." But the Oprah-speak, therapeutic culture of which I am a product aside, I can see how certain life twists and turns that I disagreed with so vehemently at the time really worked out to my benefit (though I certainly protested, wailed and rended garments enough at the time). Example: the Cubs Fan "breaking up" with me last summer (which was odd because it was only at that moment that I was sure we were "dating"). It felt like the end of the world. I tried to filibuster the relationship back over the course three hours and as many cocktails. And yet for all his faults, he was (let's give him the benefit of the doubt) intuitive enough to make a point to me as to why he thought things didn't work out (hint: it was me, but simply that there wasn't enough of me. More sharing, less obfuscating.) In many ways the statement was outrageous and out -of-line, but mostly because it was true. And being forced to look at it, was a revelation. My own long held assumptions had blinded me to what others could plainly see. Needed to assume less, trust more. Listen better. Think less, feel more. Act accordingly.

All of these people showed me what is possible, and what I want and what I didn't. My academic life is over (unless I happen to win the lottery), my work life is stable and contented (for once), and I am so lucky for having all of my friends. The last missing component is that romantic part, and it does require me to put some things together.

After all of this -- the wit, the wisdom, the whining encompassed within nearly three decades -- I have concluded that the truth is this: Relationships are in fact simple: Holding someone's heart close to your own requires simply this -- you each must provide constant care and feeding to both of those hearts. That is not neediness. That is not obsession. That is love. Plain and simple. Love survives past the initial phases of giddy chemical attraction and through the mire and muck of life only because you both choose for it to do so. You pay attention. You compromise. You share. You talk. You trust. And you do it all again and again, without question, hesitation (though likely a fair amount of exasperation). All of these done, with love, in the deepest, most difficult and knotty sense. Why do you do this? Because you know you both have someone who "gets" you -- all of you -- and you both remind yourself of the precious nature of that gift every day. Even when they are spiteful, even when you are cranky, even when life rains down cruelty, or when tempers concurrently flare. You are angry, but in your heart you remember. You remember the why of that other person. Difficult and angry emotions expressed eventually evaporate, but (I imagine) the why never does.

Life is a difficult process when you navigate it alone. It is foolhardy to expect it to be easier when navigating together and all of the politics and negotiation that that inevitably requires. It is the pay-off of the pleasure of someone's company on that extended journey, and the trust that they will travel with you, no matter what, that makes the difficulties worth it.

Life isn't easy, but it can be happy. But lasting happiness -- whatever form in which it comes -- requires effort. Life is not static. Adjustments must always be made.

Then again, I guess this is the point where my theory of relationship simplicity begins to falter, and where the complicated part comes in. Knowing you need to make continual adjustments is just half the battle, knowing when and how much adjustment is required is another matter.

And so again, it seems we are back to trust.

Trusting in yourself and the other person, to know when to tighten up and when to grant a little slack.

Equal parts bravery and intuition. And a fair measure of luck.

But then again, it is easy for me to pontificate and make sweeping pronouncements, as, at the end of the day, what do I know? I haven't had any kind of a significant relationship in years. And in a truth I have long been unwilling to admit to myself, for me love is simply conjecture, purely theoretical, as it seems to me that love is more a carpool lane, than a single commuter endeavor, and therefore admission requires two people equally invested in the ride. "One-sided love" is, by definition, simply infatuation, right?

Anyway, in another truth about myself that I have always been unwilling to admit, I really am hopeful at heart. Frustrated and prone to self-pity, but deep down hopeful. The hope keeps me going, but the hope keeps me scared. The hope keeps me feeling vulnerable, In many ways, the hope keeps me alone. But in the end it is hope, and it is a precious and beautiful thing, and, much as it might vex me, it is an amazing gift.

If only I knew what to do with it.

Maybe, just maybe, if we can walk forward hand-in-hand -- the little girl and I -- and, all the while, I can carry the hope -- both woven into my heart and written upon my sleeve -- then maybe, just maybe, she and I can find exactly what we are looking for.

We'll know it when we feel it.