I’ve spent most of the last week recovering from a surgical repair to my left Achilles tendon. It had been bothering me all year, but I’d put off seeing ortho about it, thinking it would get better eventually. I was already battling cervical and lumbar spine pain. I was back and forth to Alabama to see and care for Bumblebee while he was undergoing chemo and then surgery and then radiation. I was starting grad school. I was still raising two teenage sons and working a full-time job.
But after a ten-day study abroad in Berlin, I came home limping. The sixty miles I walked during that trip were invigorating in so many ways. They also gave a nasty bone spur in my heel the opportunity to lacerate the tendon. There was no option but to remove it, which happened this past week.
I’ll spend two weeks in a splint, then several weeks in a boot. I have at least four weeks on crutches or a knee scooter. Physical therapy won’t begin for at least four weeks, and I’m told to expect a year for full recovery.
I can’t do most of what I normally do around the house, like laundry or cleaning. I can’t reach some of the cabinets to put away the dishes. Cooking is awkward. Showering is a convoluted chore. The boys have been somewhat helpful. Friends have brought food. Pandy and Cookie came to help get some things situated for us this weekend. Max is old enough to make a run to the grocery store for me. (Delivery isn’t terribly helpful, as I can’t really put a lot of the groceries away.)
Elevating my foot is key to healing during the first few weeks. I have spent days in bed or on the couch, binge watching television. My eyes have been too blurry from the pain meds to try to read.
In the midst of it all, I am still dealing with the emotional aftermath of this fucking breakup.
I am forced to be still in ways I hate. For years, I have walked to clear my head, and the exercise is incredibly helpful at dealing with my anxiety and depression. But physical limitations this year have made me far less active. I’ve lost muscle tone and gained some weight back, and that is going to worsen over the next few months before it gets better.
All of this makes for a perfect storm of self-recrimination and frustration and anger.
I find myself journaling the same things over and over—hurt and anger and confusion at how the hell I ended up in this place again, how anyone could be so consciously and callously hurtful of someone they professed to love. Then I think about the times I have hurt others, and I question at what point I stop paying some karmic price for damage I’ve inflicted.
When will I have worked hard enough and atoned enough that other people stop fucking hurting me as some kind of cosmic penance? Why am I the one left holding the hurt and carrying the blame for anyone else? Why does there seem to be no consequence for their actions, except what I am left to deal with?
I don’t know how to get past what I don’t understand.
Moonshine admonished me not to lie in bed crying over this and not to let it define who I am, to look at the good in my life and not get mired in the bad. “I really believe that everything happens for a reason, but sometimes we can’t/don’t or won’t see the reason. I think the reason for this is that you needed to see how string you can be.”
I don’t want to have to be stronger right now. I don’t want another Nietzschean lesson in my own resiliency. I am fully aware of my tenacity and my capacity. The one thing I wanted was a partner to carry some of that for me, sometimes when I needed it most, so I didn’t have to keep breaking my back to do every fucking thing by myself.
He told me he would do that. I trusted him and believed him and gave him the opportunity to be taken at his word, and he shrugged and dropped it all back at my feet when I was least prepared to pick it back up.
And he told me it was for my own good.
I am viscerally offended by the cowardice. I am hurt in ways I have rarely been—after having been as open and honest and brave as I could be to even engage in that relationship with him. I am now literally trapped inside my own head with no physical outlet for it, and I want to crawl out of my own fucking skin.
But I refuse to compartmentalize it away. I refuse to pretend it didn’t happen or that it doesn’t matter, because to do so it to traumatize myself in the exact ways others have hurt me. It won’t define me, but it will be another marker on my journey, another cautionary tale of another person who made me carry their shame and who dismissed me with little thought in order to justify their cowardice.
Another on top of another on top of another on top of another….
Except this one promised me he wouldn’t do exactly this, just so I would never have to feel this again.
I’m not grieving him. I am mourning the loss of trust and love and faith—and at a time when I need it most. Hope feels dangerous and is not allowed right now. I am lamenting the death of my own passion, again, at the hands of a man who will never face me to apologize for the catastrophe he created.
And I’m doing it all from forced confinement.
The timing is ironic. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of forcing me to slow down and deal with it now. Maybe there’s something coming that will need my attention and focus, so that I need to be free of this bullshit to deal with that.
I am superstitious about a few things, and New Year’s Eve is at the top of that list. How I spend that night is often indicative of the entirety of the following year. I can regale with tales of New Year’s Eve Omens for almost as many years as the Valentine’s Curse.
But New Year's Eve, in particular, freaks me the hell out. There's something about the day or so surrounding the marking of the new year that seems to set the tone for the 364 days that follow. If it's a good night and following day, the year generally goes well. If it's harrowing—a car wreck with friends or a two-hundred-mile distance in the middle of a strained marriage—the rest of the year always seems to follow suit.
For a multitude of reasons, 2018 seemed to be an especially trying year for me and mine. It was a year of upheaval for so many. Pandy lost her grandmother and her father. Cookie got divorced. Queen Frostine survived a Mob hit while we were on vacation in NYC. Max graduated high school, cycled through a few fleeting relationships, spent a month in Germany, and we all survived his first semester in college. Another surgery and back problems for me.
And in the middle of the most difficult year of therapy to date, I stumbled into a long-distance relationship that has presented both unimagined challenges and unexpected joy.
I spent last weekend with him, Bumblebee, and with my girls. We all sat at a restaurant together, laughing uproariously in a back room where we hoped we wouldn’t disturb other patrons (and their children) with our loud, foul mouths. All of us seem to recharge a bit when we are together, whether one-on-one or in little groups of twos and threes. This was actually the first time the Castration Committee had been together in its six-part entirety in the same room.
In fact, Queen Frostine suggested a change in moniker, because “Castration Committee” has, taken on an unacceptable tone of man-hating. One or two of us have managed relationships with good men, and four of us are raising sons to be good men. Ideas were tossed around—from Jugaloons to Side Show by the Sea—and all I can remember for sure from the uproarious discussion is the word Psyrens. So there we are, a group of smart, loud, singing women who just know the others, no matter the distance.
And I needed the time with my girls. I’d just survived my first Christmas on my own, ever. The boys were gone. Bumblebee and my girls were all hundreds of miles away. I’d gone into it with the intention of being brave and calm, my Self leading all of my internal parts calmly and safely through an emotionally-charged 36 hours with mulled wine and good food and the cats.
It ended up being far sadder and more miserable than even I could have predicted, and I am not allowed to be alone like that again.
But New Year’s Eve was looming, no matter what. I’d been worried about it for weeks.
“If something happens,” I told Queen Frostine, “and we aren’t together for New Year’s—”
“Then you aren’t together,” she finished.
It’s not an ultimatum, of You-be-here-or-I-won’t-see-you. It is my perception of an emotionally traumatic history that happens to be cataloged by decades of bad New Year’s Eves (and worse Valentine’s Days).
And I’d been clear, that my coming to visit him for the weekend prior did not absolve him of being with me on New Year’s Eve. I love time with him whenever I can get it, but New Year’s Eve is its own category of agitating for me. We planned a low-key evening—early movie and dinner at the same restaurant we’d frequented since our first weekend together—to just be together. But I could not let go of the possibility (probability) that it would not go well.
“Try to let the fear go,” Pandy said on January 30th. “What if we expect the best?? Do we then invite the best into our home/heart?”
Shaking my head violently, I responded, “I can’t expect that best. I can’t. There’s waaaaaaayyyyyy too much history for that. That’s asking to get shattered.”
But I spent that evening readying the house. I made the grocery list and checked the showtimes for the movie. Bumblebee, of course. I laid out the Princess Bride Blu-ray for our breakfast viewing pleasure. I washed the special glasses I’d bought just for toasting with mimosas.
“I’m afraid I jinxed it,” I told Frostine mid-morning, New Year’s Eve.
“You didn’t jinx anything,” she chided. I could practically hear her blue eyes rolling in her curly head.
And then he texted midday, while I was getting ready to leave work early, that he was sick. He was violently ill, unable to travel down the street, let alone the 200 miles to my house. On top of it, he was upset about how this would upset me.
I understood. I know the illness that was plaguing him. Hell, our Thanksgiving got cut short by my being sideswiped by the flu. Of course it wasn’t what I wanted, but I knew this wasn’t intentional, not malicious or even negligent. Wholly unexpected and unwelcomed by both of us.
If he’d just not shown up, no explanation, or if he’d shown up late, no explanation, or if he’d shown up rude and mean, no explanation, and then expected me to accept it and understand it and not express any confusion or hurt or displeasure, or blamed me outright for it, then I would’ve been let down.
I know, because I have been let down in those ways by men who professed to love me. Over and over and over.
But he got sick, and he told me. We came up with an alternative plan to wear each other’s t-shirts and snuggle under blankets and talk and FaceTime kiss at midnight, to save the champagne until we are together and can get a do-over.
And I was completely cool with that. I was centered and calm, accepting and still felt both loved and loving.
And then the anxiety struck.
Fighting off a nasty cold, I didn’t feel well. A short nap on the couch was discombobulating. Given what had happened just a week before, I steered clear of the wine and sad movies. But by 9:45, I was well-ensconced in my reluctant acceptance that 2019 will be a year of sickness and distance and thwart and tears and anxiety, that we will likely find ourselves frustratingly separated by illness and trying to make up for it when our already-difficult schedules allow.
“Baby, do not do this,” he admonished over FaceTime, his brow furrowed. “This is self-fulfilling prophecy. We are not subject to the whims of a capricious non-entity.”
Of course I know that. I am too smart and too well-educated not to understand the logical fallacy of my fear of being thwarted by fate or Fate or the Ghosts of Relationships Past. But the reality is that I have been conditioned over four decades to expect disappointment. I have learned to set the bar for other people so low that I just need them to show up. I don’t need them to do anything or say anything or bring anything. I just need them to be there, to be present with me.
My entire system is on such high alert, constantly scanning the horizon for potential disappointment:
Is this something that might hurt me?
Is this something that is likely to hurt me?
How much hurt could I feel?
Does that possible hurt stem from a previous trauma?
How do I feel about that trauma now?
How have I successfully dealt with this before?
Can I avoid the hurt altogether?
Is there benefit in feeling the hurt?
Is there possible reward that’s not hurt?
This is how anxiety works. It is a constant cost/benefit analysis of people and experiences and moments, examining how they may impact my emotions and what future influence they may impart. It is eviscerating discernment, and it is neverending judgment of others and of myself, in desperate attempts to stave off hurt.
“Eventually, I have to stop,” I told him.
“Stop what?”
Stop hoping. Hope means the possibility of disappointment, of more hurt, of more agitation, of more anger, of more self-recrimination, of more tears and heart palpitations. Hope is an inherent expectation of good, of not-hurt.
If I have no expectation, then the good that comes can be met with exuberant joy and delight. And I do feel those things, regularly. I love deeply, and I am deeply loved, by my sons and my friends and my boyfriend and my family.
But that is not enough, and may never be enough, to assuage the perpetual angst that all comes down to basic value judgments made about me by other people, before I had clear, conscious memory. I cannot undo those choices others made, and I struggle to rectify my learned responses. At times, it is a gaping psychic wound that may never fully heal, only close over for some indeterminate length of time. I am always on edge, waiting for the next slice into an ever-refreshening scar.
I know: only my reactions matter now. How I choose to treat myself and others in light of my emotional makeup is what matters. And I try, so hard, to be present, to be mindful, to be kind to myself and to others, to carefully bring my concerns into balance before I act on them.
But when you feel like you’re drowning, it’s impossible not to thrash toward the surface with a desperate breath. When the anxiety hits, it is like waterboarding myself over and over with my own tears.
I am not, generally, unhappy. I am not so afraid that I have trouble experiencing the world, as I was when Max was a baby. I do have occasional days, when the benefit of staying in to read and binge watch whatever is greater than the potential cost of detached interaction with suburbia. I am far more than merely functional in my life. I am engaged with my wonderful, active sons, my dear friends, a man I love deeply who loves me just as much, a job at which I am very good, and I just applied to grad school.
Sometimes, though, I trip over a deeply existential crack. Usually, I can right myself and carry on, maybe with a momentary limp or scrape. Every so often, I fall into the chasm. Mostly I’ve learned to hold onto the edge and pull myself back up. I have no interest in traversing those depths ever again.
We missed the midnight countdown. There was a brief FaceTime at 12:02. I fell into a cold-medicine-induced, tear-stained sleep a few minutes later, the sound of raindrops and neighborhood fireworks outside, wrapped in his t-shirt. I woke this morning, fed and pet the cats, started a new book, watched the last bit of Leap Year while I prepped a Gouda-and-bacon frittata, started chicken stock and chicken salad for later in the week, prepped vegetables for roasting this evening, and did the dishes.
I often do more by noon than a lot of people do in a day.
I don’t write about these things to shame anyone else or myself. I don’t write to find sympathy from anyone else. I write, because there is someone else out there who needs to know they’re not alone in feeling overwhelmed, especially at times when we are expected to be happy and joyful and hopeful. I write because it’s cathartic for me, to help me cull so many simultaneous thoughts and emotions into better focus.
And maybe, just maybe, there comes the day when it all makes sense, my Epiphany, when I can close those old wounds for good.
Four-and-a-half months ago, I found myself in a confusing place. I’d just realized the new guy I was head over heels for was dating someone else. I realized the ways in which I used sex to intimate love and exactly what my role was in re-traumatizing myself, constantly exacerbating my fear of emotional abandonment.
I made the decision not to date. Period. Maybe ever. And it was a very difficult thing for a girl who believes so deeply in love to eliminate the possibility of it at all, and to come to some kind of internal detente with that decision.
But then, I met someone. He was someone I’d known tangentially for more than a decade, though we’d never met in person. An unexpected conversation turned into another, and there is a moment (the event horizon, he said) where each of us realized the situation had turned in another direction.
Unexpectedly, and utterly terrified, I fell in love.
I’d spent years, off and on, begging the universe for some relief from my loneliness. Even when I was in relationship, it was always with badly-damaged men who refused to try to be better. Either I’d tire of their inconsistency, or they’d tire of my trying to get them to see how much better their life (and my life with them) would be, if they would just show up. Show up physically sometimes, but mostly I needed them to show up emotionally. Consistently. Reliably.
There were many, many nights on my own, when I would be in tears, prostrate before a god I barely believe in, praying for peace. Yes, I would prefer to be with a partner, because I believe so completely in the beauty and truth of love. But I eventually resigned myself to wanting at least peace in my solo heart, to accept the rest of my life in singledom. I paraded every hurt, in lurid detail, through my mind and steeled myself to not being vulnerable to them again.
But then, he appeared. Bumblebee. Kind, generous, smart, funny. Damaged but speaking to me through song. We meshed so well. He knew all of my shit, all of my fears, understood my ongoing process of trying to rewire myself from the inside out. No one, with the exception of the girls, had every accepted me so fully and completely. So incredibly lovingly.
Of course there was a catch: he was 180 miles away.
I’d just sworn up and down two weeks prior that I could never do a long-distance relationship. My need for physical proximity and regular contact was too great. But he was worth the chance. Initially, we were making it work pretty well. We would visit each other in our respective cities, and we were happy just to be together.
Eventually the logistics—four kids, visitation schedules, family obligations—started to erode our time together. Unavoidable demands on him were preventing us from having consistent connection, and it seemed to only be worsening. I was more anxious about this relationship than I’d been in years. The anxiety could be abated by reliable contact, but his logistics wouldn’t allow for it.
Faced with living indefinitely in a perpetually-anxious state, knowing the damage my response to the insecurity and anxiety could cause, I made the decision to end the relationship.
I don’t expect to do this again. There is no more surface of me to scar or fracture without breaking me open irreparably. My fear of emotional abandonment is consistently reinforced, and I have a direct role in choosing the relationships that undergird my insecurities. I do not trust myself to choose wisely.
It was so nice to be loved for a while again. It was nice to be missed when we were apart. It was wonderful to see my worth reflected in someone else’s eyes, far beyond the value of sex. It was wonderful to able to love someone, actively and deliberately, and to have my efforts appreciated.
But I am back in the confusion. I no longer believe it was an inherent flaw in me that made me unworthy of loving care and attention. I do believe I was a young victim of other people’s failings, and that set the course for how I would see every relationship and exchange and emotion in the years to come. Other people’s actions set in motion consequences that played out in me. I, in turn, made my own decisions with their own consequences, and somehow I seem to be so bogged down that progress forward is tiring and difficult and sometimes illusory.
Today, I don’t believe that I will ever really find what I know exists. It is there to be found, but I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to touch what is perpetually under a veil of tears.
I will stop crying, eventually. I will move through my well-honed List of Shit to Do after a Breakup. I will eventually feel like I can breathe again, and I will be happy again, though I’m not sure that my definition of that will ever be what it once was.
But I hope Bumblebee is able to find the balance he needs. I hope he’s able to establish who he is, within and without other people’s constraints. He is a wonderful man, and I love him very much. I want good things for him.
As I wrote about a few weeks, I have been seeing someone new. I won’t wax poetic here; it’s simply too early to exalt him to the status of Blog Fodder, in and of himself. I hadn’t necessarily intended to get into a relationship—though maybe it’s still too early to even call it that—while also trying to work on my own stuff, much of which was highlighted and exacerbated by the ending of my relationship with Rango. But the fact is he presented as an opportunity worth exploring while I was beginning the process of self-reintegration.
Whether coincidental or due to some meaning I have assigned (or even thanks to that fickle bitch Fate), there are things about him that remind me strongly of Bounder. He is not another alcoholic, though he may well be overcoming a history as a dismissive-avoidant. He is not Bounder, however, and it is unfair of me to make direct comparisons. They are two different men, with different histories and stories, but there are moments that are striking, to say the least.
Because of this thing with Finn (so named because he is my huckleberry) and because of the end with Rango and because I sometimes pass him driving on the road between our houses, Bounder has been on my mind a lot. A lot a lot. It makes sense that he would be, but it set me off on a path of re-analysis and overthinking (again). I think I’ve dissected that relationship for the millionth time over the last few weeks, still looking for where exactly I went wrong. Because his shit is his shit—I can’t control how he acts or reacts or fails to act—all I can do is try to figure out what I screwed up. He told me numerous times that it wasn’t me, and I generally believe that, but I always dissect to the point of vivisection, flaying myself to a bloody, psychoanalyzed mess.
I do remember getting a text from him, a couple of days after we’d met. He said he was glad we could take things nice and slow. Except we didn’t. We started intensely, quickly, and that’s exactly how it continued. Within two hours of that text, I was making out with him in the parking lot of his office, a quick drive-by on my way home.
And that is where I failed him. Hurricane Sassafras was coming, no matter what he did. I didn’t really hear him and slow down. It wasn’t terribly caring on my part, no matter how unintentional the push was.
Finn also said he wanted to go slowly, I have tried to honor that. I have tried to dial back my impulses to forge full-steam into his world. There is something there worth exploring, and I don’t want to do it all in hindsight.
Which brings me back to Bounder.
Working within the IFS model, I have become very mindful of my feelings. I don’t just mean my emotions. When I feel something—anger, grief, sadness, longing, affection, attraction, love—I take note of where in my body I am processing the emotion. There is usually a physical locus of that energy. Because my strongest emotions are often tied up with what a subpersonality is processing in a given moment, I feel them in different places, which is effectively where each of those subparts resides. Harley and Quinn and Stephie and each of the others sits in a specific spot and pulls on my center from her point of reference. When I feel a subpart whose name I don’t know (who maybe I didn’t even realize existed) pull at my center, the emotional and physical feelings are often coupled with anxiety.
Because there has been so much thought of Bounder over the last few days and weeks, my anxiety has been really high at times. It has often felt like a pull from the right of my stomach. Sometimes it has been so bad that I would get nauseated and irritable, desperate to make the pain stop.
“What is that she’s feeling?” my therapist asked. “She may just want you to acknowledge her feelings. Can you tell what she wants?”
“She wants relief,” I replied. “She is hurt and angry and confused. She doesn’t understand how anyone could have something so precious as that kind of love in their damn hand and just walk away. It makes no sense, and it’s infuriating.”
This, of course, is wholly indicative of my fear of emotional abandonment. While that’s rooted deeply in my childhood, the feelings of hurt and betrayal and confusion are never more profound than when I think of Bounder. While I’m still angry at Rango for how he handled the boys during our break-up, I have dealt with my feelings toward him, kept what I needed to keep and shed the rest. Same for DH and Rex and others whose names and memories don’t really matter or impact me all that much anymore.
I explained to my therapist that the feelings are seated in this very specific location, that they can be overwhelming at times. And when I am most overwhelmed by something, I tend to dive into it head first, hoping to reach the bottom quickly and resurface cleansed.
But that never seems to happen with him, and I am forever in a loop of self-flagellation.
“Well,” she said, “first of all, she needs to know that you are simply witnessing the trauma again, a memory of it; it’s not actually happening again. You’re not being traumatized again.”
“And,” she continued, “she doesn’t have to feel that anymore. You don’t have to feel that anymore. That’s a lot of burden to have been carrying around for so long. She can let it go. You can let it go. Let the elements have it—they can take it—they can take a lot more than that. But she doesn’t have to feel that anymore.”
Wait—WHAT?!?
Even I could tell that my facial expression shifted in that moment. I was stunned, utterly baffled by the idea that it was okay not to keep feeling those emotions over and over, effectively retraumatizing myself every time. I have dealt with it repeatedly, and there is no healthy in dragging the futility of it all around, night after night.
And it makes sense. I had stopped feeling similar things for others long ago, in a healthy timeframe and in healthy ways. Why is he so special that I should continue to carry that burden?
In part, I think, it’s because he wouldn’t. Part of what happens during the emotional abandonment is that I’m left to feel whatever with no support, and I’m the only one feeling it. Maybe the other person is feeling something, but it never seems to be anywhere close to what I’m feeling, especially when the other person is a dismissive-avoidant who is so well-versed in compartmentalizing emotions away to protect themselves.
I have often railed against feeling like I was carrying it for both of us, because that was sometimes the only way to prove that the thing had ever happened, with no acknowledgement of grief coming from the other person. I am sure Bounder felt it in the darkest of times, but I know that he never faced me to tell me he was sorry for hurting me. His not acknowledging me and the hurt he created, his ignoring of me when he damn well knew it was the worst possible way to hurt me, made me feel worthless, especially to him. But that flew in the face of his telling me he loved me, of his moments of showing me deep, incredible love, and I could never reconcile the conflict of extremes no matter how much I psychologized him and myself.
But to think, to realize, that I don’t have to do that was foundationally shifting. I could feel the anxiety and the tension to the right of my stomach abate immediately. There was a deep sense of relief. She’s there, and she’s a little antsy about what she’s supposed to do now. If her job was to hold all that baggage, what is she going to do now that still allows her to be of use to the Self?
I had a dream once while Bounder and I were dating, one of those lucid nap dreams. I was standing outside a tall, wide, stone tower, trying to figure out how to get inside. I could hear a knocking from the inside, and I needed to let whomever was in there out. As I looked more, I realized the tower was his face, the details of his mouth and eyes and brows built from each brick. I climbed some scaffolding and began to chip away at this one high, white stone. It was the speck of light in his left eye.
Months later, he told me that I’d been like this force knocking on his walls, over and over and over, until he eventually poked his head out enough to see what was in the light.
I let light back into his darkness, and somehow that wasn’t worth staying for. And it’s not that I wasn’t worth it; it’s that he didn’t see himself as worth me. So convinced that he would hurt me in the end, he made it happen, pushing me unaware into the dark pool so that I felt like I would drown before I could resurface.
But in the same way I did it for him, I must do it for myself. I get to be the disco ball for myself, to reflect light and shine it brilliantly into my own dark corners. Disorienting and distracting at first, yes, but eventually it becomes a beautiful swirl worthy of dancing.
It is odd, a little unsettling, to think of life without the possibility of him. I gave up the possibility of him as a romantic partner long ago. Our life goals are different, and he would never be able to consistently meet my needs. But he was always this driving force of emotion and thought, even when we weren’t together, sometimes in contact and sometimes not. Music, in particular, became a daunting prospect for me, because everything could remind me of him.
And that’s her job now, that’s what she is supposed to do, to dance. She is lightened of her load. And she gets to pick the music she wants to dance to. She’s not trapped by the years-long playlists of Bounder songs. She doesn’t have to be afraid of hearing one of them in the grocery store and bursting into tears. She doesn’t have to listen for him in every new song. She can move freely again, not weighed down by his burden or mine. She can find the path that she lost, can move toward light and laughter and love, because she deserves that.
This wasn’t her fault.
And if we pass him on the road again? I don’t know. I could feel something; I could not. I may well never see him again. I’m not going to dwell on what might happen. Now I have different roads to explore and a different Stephanie to discover.
If I believe in nothing else, I believe in serendipity. I believe in those unexpected moments in life that can lead you suddenly in a different direction, that can force you to see what you were too busy looking elsewhere to notice, that can turn you slightly until you notice a new path you hadn’t been privy to consider before.
Knowing I would eventually want to date again, to feel connected to something deeper and more poignant than myself, I reactivated my online dating profile. I immediately had to find three-year-old messages from Rango and delete them, to find his own reactivated profile and block it. I wasn’t willing to dwell on what was before. There were a few passing new interests, but mostly it seemed like more of the same again. Sometimes Harley found it a useful vehicle to remind me that I could get hurt again, ever.
But then…. But then.
Days of talk. Constant, funny, respectful talk. Flirt but no innuendo, no offers or requests for late night sexting. Just getting to know one another.
And then… a great first date. Really wonderful date.
And, thus, a serendipitous moment of possibility. Of opportunity.
Yes, possibility and opportunity with this man, but also possibility that I am, just maybe, worth time and effort. Opportunity to not be the same and do the same that I’ve done before, to slow my own roll and allow connection to unfold organically. To discover someone else but also to discover things about myself, to examine my own new ways of looking at the world, whether external or internal.
Though I did caution him that a deep Google search for me would reveal this life, of Stephanie Quinn Jackson, the writer who bears witness to the cacophony. It’s a thing, for sure, to have so much of the last seven years laid out for the world to see. Love and joy and heartbreak and fear, the incessant and sometimes brutal self-analysis that is Muchness and Light. He replied that he would rather not search for me. He’d rather learn it all from me directly.
Even if this goes nowhere, even if it ends after a couple of great dates, I have been privy to the serendipity of possibility of future, of opportunity to not be bogged down by the past, sorting and resorting my own baggage over and over in simultaneous delight and dismay.
But I am also fucking terrified. At this moment, there is an unexpected someone with the ability to hurt and disappoint me. Sure, there are other people I care about who could theoretically do the same, but those are people I already love and trust. I made the choice to accept the opportunity to be vulnerable to hurt, believing so deeply that serendipitous moments should not be ignored or taken for granted. I chose to accept the possibility of hurt because it also comes with the possibility of not hurt.
Dating me offers him the same. There is possibility that I will bolt, revolting against fear in reaction to my past. But where I have been plagued by ghosts so many times before, I have come to realize that my ghosts are my own fears, deep inside me, trying to protect me from future hurt. When I let the past fall away and listen carefully, it is variations of my own voice that I hear whispering, cautioning me that hurt is possible and to avoid whatever might feel like an imminent threat.
My insecurities are real, anchored in a very difficult past, and I am still learning how to calm those voices. He, or anyone who may come after him, certainly has his own insecurities. It doesn’t seem possible to be human and not have uncertainties about yourself that can derail you at times.
What I have come to understand is that my partners in previous relationships have blamed me when their insecurities flared. Sometimes in reaction to my shit, and sometimes in reaction to something I was never privy to, they relegated me to the role of villain, of fallen superhero, and made me the patsy for their own emotional shill. They would tell me I was wonderful and that they loved me, while they formulated an exit strategy. They compartmentalized me and rationalized losing what they said they wanted and loved most, rather than face themselves and deal with their own shit.
But what happened before is not what’s happening now. I get to choose what happens next. My future is not necessarily determined by my history. I am not doomed to repeat my past, because I am still, constantly, learning those lessons.
I didn’t stop trying. I didn’t shut down my heart completely and stubbornly refuse to embrace serendipity. I didn’t kowtow to my fears, and I won’t be blamed again for anyone else’s.
I am worth knowing. I am worth talking to and discovering and sharing. I am worth loving.
About three months ago, Rango and I made the decision that he would move out. More than a year of tension and difficulty had spiraled us into a pretty deep pit of darkness, and neither of us could see a way out together. We decided pretty quickly that we still wanted to try to make things work. We continued dating. He still spent time at the house, still called it home, still saw the boys as regularly as their schedules would allow. For several weeks, we both thought we were on track for him to move back home.
But tensions surfaced again about a month ago. Old patterns emerged in both of us, and we find ourselves again in a depressing spiral. We love each other, but our respective needs and wants clash constantly. He feels pressured to give more than he’s able, stressing that I should just accept him the way he his—which he is not going to change for anyone. I think a caring partner makes the other a priority and tries to support their happiness, even and especially when it is inconvenient or difficult. By no means am I suggesting that one partner should kowtow to the other constantly. That’s not healthy at all. But sometimes we should do things that are best for the people we love, even when it requires uncomfortable effort on our part.
The last year has been exceedingly rife with difficulty. After my thyroid radiation, it took months before I started to feel physically and emotionally normal again, due to shifting hormone levels. By the first of the year, it became clear that my chronic neck pain had worsened, and I had a three-level discectomy and fusion in April. I was working full time and finally finishing my bachelor’s degree after twenty-seven years of on-again/off-again, half-hearted attempts. I hoped that alleviating most of those stressors would give us a fresh start toward reconciliation and growth.
I didn’t talk about it much. I tried to avoid it most of the time with the girls. The Castration Committee is amazing, and they will back me up no matter what. But bringing other people into the relationship, even tangentially, can profoundly influence perceptions—and not always for the better. Also, due to somewhat skewed perspectives, my family wasn’t always supportive and could be judgmental. Mostly I found it better to keep it to myself or between me and Rango. Mostly.
But as we’ve come again to a place of incredible conflict, I’m turning back to Muchness and Light. I haven’t written in months. I have barely written for the last two years. Much of that was due to school and work and health and child obligations. Much of it was due to my not feeling it was worth it.
DH told me years ago that I should stop writing, that blogging was nothing more than an echo-chamber. He was vitriolic in his assertion that only my friends cared about what I had to say. I know he was wrong, at least to an extent. But it also became apparent as time went on with Rango that he didn’t care to read what I had to say, although he would encourage me to write. He understood it was cathartic for me—effectively making it nothing more than a publicized diary—but that he had no interest in engaging my thoughts in this forum. This week, I’ve been told that I should just blog what’s bothering me and find a way to fix my messy head, but that he is uninterested in either climbing a wall of text intended for him or in talking about our problems.
At heart, he’s a good man. He is generally kind and generous. He loves me and loves my sons. But he often seems dramatically different than the man I met and fell in love with. Time has passed; we have changed. But where I thought we both wanted to grow and change together, he believes he hasn’t changed at all and that I shouldn’t expect him to.
When I did finally break down and really talk to Pandy, she said I deserve more. She is sweet and whole-heartedly believes I deserve to be in a healthy, committed relationship, receiving the same love I so freely give.
But she’s wrong.
I don’t deserve to be loved. No one deserves to be loved. As I said a few posts ago, the only thing anyone deserves is an eventual death. I used to believe that there was some cosmic force that somehow wanted good things for me, that maybe if I did good things then I would receive them in return. I believed in deep, abiding, passionate love that was reciprocal and maybe (just maybe!) destined. For a little while, I believed that I was worth enough to get happiness, not to be faced constantly with disappointment and hurt.
But I was wrong. There’s nothing up in the sky but air.
No matter how hard I try to be good, to be accommodating, to be considerate, I cannot make someone else do the same. I cannot make someone be or do what I think is ideal—or even what I think is a reasonable compromise. I can’t force them to hear me or try to see anything from my point of view. I can only accept them for who they are or not. I can live with their personality and eccentricities or move on.
I don’t expect perfection from anyone. I’m even learning not to expect it from myself. I have worked really hard to not overreact to emotions, to sit with them and understand their locus, to act appropriately in response to those emotions. But I can’t not respond to them.
So, there is sadness and grief, hurt and probably some anger. I’m sure more will come later. I’m sure it will abate eventually.
But I’m not berating myself that I deserve any of these feelings, either. So maybe I did change for the better, after all.
Since my thyroid radiation in July, I’ve been struggling with still feeling like general crap. Fatigue and brain fog have been intermittently worse. A pretty leisurely two-mile walk with Rango and the boys recently wiped me out for two days. My bloodwork shows wildly-swinging levels of thyroid hormones, indicating that the regrown tissue is indeed dying off, though it may be months before it normalizes.
With that has also come more weight regain and self-recrimination and outright self-loathing.
I have tried to get back into the gym even semi-regularly. It’s hard enough to juggle work and school and kids successfully, and trying to find even six hours a week for myself in that is sometimes unmanageable. Of course I know the exercise will actually help me to feel better, but the fatigue that comes with hypothyroidism can be unimaginably oppressive.
Recently I started a series of virtual races through Yes.Fit. Of course I chose the Alice in Wonderland themed races. After I complete so many miles, as tracked by my Misfit activity tracker, my medal is sent to me automatically. As of today, I’ve completed three of the six Alice races, totaling more than 60 miles.
As it does every day, Facebook was kind enough to remind me this morning of memories from this day in previous years. I find it interesting to see how life has changed over the last few years, but I tend to face those reminders with some trepidation. I love the pictures and funny quotes from my boys from their younger days. Sometimes the memories are useless or now meaningless, or sometimes even too painful, and I’ll delete them. Sometimes I leave the painful ones, knowing those ghosts will haunt me again next year, because I’m either not ready to deal with them or I know they’re so important that I will need the reminders again.
But today, there were two things, from 2010 and 2011. Not surprising, there were pictures from a 2010 concert, of a band I loved then and love now. It was the second in a series of shows that were seminal for the changes that would come over the following two years. A year later, it was the memory that was down 99 of the 115 pounds in total weight loss. Yet another year later, I’d just separated from my now-ex-husband.
I have said repeatedly over the last year that, for a variety of reasons, I felt like I was back in 2010 and didn’t know why I was reliving such similar circumstances. Regardless of the logistical changes and strides I know I have made, I have replayed the past in tandem with the present and come up with only confusion and emotional failure. I have continually grappled with figuring out which choice I didn’t make or should’ve made differently. I’ve tried to re-learn whatever lesson I obviously needed to repeat.
But somehow, I keep sliding farther and farther into the past. Where 2010 may have felt like a rabbit hole, 2016 is feeling more and more like the other side of a looking glass. Where then felt new and exciting and rebellious, now feels reflective and reversed and exhausting.
What is it? What did I miss? What do I need now that can only be retrieved from then?
It just so happens that Alice Through the Looking Glass comes out on DVD this week. Of course I saw it in the theater when it opened--how could I not?--but I really didn’t love it as much as I did the first one. It was beautiful, and I looked for the clues to my missing lessons, but the torment of Time was unsettling to me. I could willingly believe in a lost young woman traveling to surreal place and conquering her fears, but it was almost impossible for me to suspend my disbelief as the same woman mended old wounds.
But maybe that’s it. Maybe my path has been a big circle, and maybe the obstacle is an unturned stone.
Certainly I can pinpoint errors and mistakes and regrettable decisions, but I feel like I have done everything in my power to apologize and make amends for those actions. I would say I have done my best to move on, but I damn well know there are frozen moments that continue to haunt me.
I don’t know what it is, but there is something. It is maddening, appearing and disappearing, always just out of my reach.
So I’m starting back at the beginning, at Alice. I am literally retracing my steps, one foot in front of the other, until I can find a way to the next landmark on this destination. I don’t want to believe that I am personally destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over, that there is literally no way to avoid spiritual repetition. I’ve already seen the White Rabbit, I just passed the Cheshire Cat and am making my way toward the Mad Hatter. There is still the Caterpillar and the Queen of Hearts.
After that, I’m seriously considering the Pac-Man races, where I get to eat a series of brightly-colored ghosts.
Last October, I was recovering from thyroid surgery and pining away for a man who couldn't love me like I needed. Pandy came to stay with me for a couple of days, to help get my head out of my ass and keep me happily entertained. With yet another recent snipe from Bounder, we talked at length (ad nauseum) about what my heart wanted and needed.
Watching movies in the midst of some giggly crazy that always seems to rule our world, Pandy named the next Big Cat to impact me: Rango.
Rango would come from the west. He would rescue the princess when she freaked out and couldn't do it herself. He would be afraid but refuse to walk out on his own story.
Rango would also be big; my ideal was 6'4, 240 pounds, blue eyes, dark hair but balding and shaved, western-European descent. He would be smart and a little geeky, funny and compassionate, respectful and gentle. He would be intense and look at me like I'm precious. He would laugh as loudly as I do and totally get my batshit.
He would not be an alcoholic, and he would not be afraid to love me. He would not hesitate.
Every date I had and relationship I started, Pandy and I would debrief and debate whether or not that one might be Rango.
On May 30th, I received a message on one of the dating sites I'd been trying for ages. The guy was a decent match, very cute, 6'5, and he was asking me about my writing. The conversation went back and forth for a couple of messages, and then I dropped it and forgot about it.
School, kids, work, my grandmother's death. And, as has happened so often in the last year, there was the inevitable back-and-forth with Bounder. I had a couple of dates, but nothing that was quite what I was looking for. I finally (yes, finally!) got Bounder out of my heart. Queen Frostine and Peanut and their kids came to visit for a few days. With so much hectic happening, I decided to screw dating and just focus on school and the kids.
But then last week I received another message from this guy.
"So I've been matched with you in two different places. Knowing that you're not into developing dialog through chat, how would you feel about meeting me for a drink sometime this week or weekend?"
Oh, hell! I thought. I totally blew this guy off for no reason. And I love to write-chat. Seriously? How rude of me!
I agreed to meet for a drink that night, but I also knew that if it didn't go well, I would be done with dating for a while again. He told me he'd be the tall guy in the Superman baseball cap and that he'd be hard to miss. I replied that I was an Amazon with a Wonder Woman tattoo; there was no way I would miss him.
Of course he was late. I was a few minutes earl. I was sitting at a pub table when I messaged the Castration Committee at 8:37.
"My 8:30 drink date is late. You know how I feel about this."
"He better have one hell of an excuse!" Pandy commented.
"There is no excuse! Release the Cuisinart!" added Moonshine.
Queen Frostine is always so direct in her assessments: "Nope. Next!"
But then came a text from him: "I'll meet you inside, assuming I made it to the right place. It's warm out here!"
I was trying to respond to let him know I was already at a table, when I heard a server greet a customer. I stood and turned to meet him at the door when I saw him round the corner.
I caught my breath and watched him do a double-take.
He had been sitting in the 90-degree heat, waiting for me because he was right on time. Three hours later, I'd agreed to go out with him on Saturday night. And Friday night. By 5:30 the next afternoon—after all-day messaging with him—I'm texted Pandy:
He's Rango.
And he is. Undoubtedly.
He got to me by 10:45 Friday morning. We didn't separate until very late Sunday night.
He's from Texas, though he has lived all over. He is 6'5, 235#, shaved head, gorgeous blue-gray eyes that flicker like a storm approaching over the ocean. He kissed me in the park under Independence Day fireworks. He bought two new Doctor Who shirts while he was with me at the mall, including one that is just like Max's favorite shirt. He totally encouraged my need to Instagram the absurdities in my world. We laughed until we couldn't breathe, and we talked for three straight days.
And while I don't like comparing men and relationships, how did he stack up against the Pandy-induced wish list?
He helped me cook dinner, and he cooked crepes for me for breakfast on Sunday. I watched him clean up spilled cat food from the kitchen floor. I lost my wallet on Saturday, and he drove me on Sunday to pick up the boys in South Carolina and paid for the gas and food and fireworks for the kids, because I couldn't. He met my sons and my ex-husband at the same time.
He saw me immediately, clearly. He has lived amazing adventures and wants more, but nothing is so adventurous to him as the possibility of me.
Rango listens to me intently, like my voice and words keep him alive. He is holding nothing back. Every emotion, deep and true, is mine to see and touch. It was he, in fact, who looked me in the eye—not a text or a phone call—to tell me for the first time that he loves me. To my face, with no hesitation.
And from the very first, he bested the kiss that I thought would likely never be topped.
He brought me flowers and a CD when he came for me. He held my hand and breath-sang to me—a country song that, for so many reasons, would have otherwise made me want to stick my fingers in my ears.
Rango is enormous. He has worked to overcome his own weight and health issues and understands mine intimately. His hands and feet are bigger than mine, and I touched his feet with mine the first day, which the Castration Committee knows is a big damn deal for me. He is loud and gregarious, patient and indulging. He picked me up and spun me around and kissed me like no one ever has before.
More importantly, he is present and available and willing. He holds my hand and rubs my cheek constantly. He texts me in the pre-dawn hours while I am still sleeping to tell me he loves me. He sends me links and pictures for things he thinks I will find interesting, and he sends similar tidbits for the boys, who both said he is awesome. He plays my favorite game of sharing poignant songs, back and forth, trying to explain our heads and hearts through music. He is taking me to meet his friends this weekend. He talked to Pandy on the phone and is planning to go with me to see her in a couple of weeks.
He looks at me like no one ever has, and he tells me I am precious to him. I can see and feel my worth to him in every single interaction, in every touch and kiss and look and word.
I had all but lost hope that I would ever find what I staunchly believed had to be out there. I knew in my head that the law of averages said it was likely to happen, but my heart just couldn't connect and was losing faith. I questioned over and over what I had done so wrong in my life that I didn't deserve to have the good I knew was looking for me just as hard as I was looking for it. It felt like my heart was dying.
And in walked Superman.
I am overwhelmed, and I am relieved, and I am grateful. Yes, to know that I was right and to get something really good when I needed it, but also because it's him. It's this man, who is so wonderful.
I see his specialness. I see those unique qualities that set him apart from other men, hiding behind the dork glasses and the badge on his chest. His strength is amazing, but his heart is just as strong.
While it might have been too much for other women, I'm an Amazon princess. I have my own enormous strength, my own muchness that has been too much. I have my own, invisible transportation and don't need him to fly me around, unless I've misplaced my driver's license.
More importantly, we see the humanity in each other, the imperfections and the frailty and the damage that led us to one another. We know we only have so much time, and we have each wasted enough having to rebuild from one destruction or another.
Had I gone out with him in early June, before letting go of Bounder, it never would've worked. I would've thought he was too nice. I wouldn't have thought I deserved something this good. I wasn't ready to accept a blessing.
But I asked for him. I dared the universe to send me something very specific, and just when I thought it couldn't possibly happen, I got what I needed when I needed it most.
I was watching something insipid on television a few nights ago. (It's hard to remember which stupid thing I was clearing off the DVR between sessions of homework.) But I remember watching these characters on a couple of shows, walking through their lives and hoping to fall in love. They'd meet their currently-ideal love interest in some less-than-ideal situation and visibly fight the thought that just maybe that was the person for them. They were all looking for magic but refused to admit when they found it.
I want magic.
I spent a glorious Saturday evening with Pandy (née Hot Pocket) this past weekend. After hours of dancing and laughing and eating and a little too much whipped cream, we settled into the quiet while our babies slept down the hall. Eventually the talk turned yet again to my love life, specifically about what I loved about each of the men who have impacted my life so dramatically.
"What do you want?" she asked. "Not what qualities you want in a man—what things? If you could make a wishlist, what would be on it?"
Pandy knows damn well I've written a couple of times about what I want—the affection, the attentiveness, the lack of addiction. But I know Pandy, and this was her Practical Magic moment of daring me to put my wishlist out there where Fate might get ahold of it and take her chance at offering me exactly what I want.
I started to think about it in terms of these prior relationships—DH, Absolem, Bounder, Katniss, Rex—that had offered me something good in their way but had still not managed to be good enough. Like thinking about what you want in your unborn child, I started to pick and choose from those men.
From DH, I would want the care he could provide. For all of his flaws, he was an exceptionally good, practical caregiver when I needed it. Whether stopping at the grocery store while I was busy with a baby boy or carefully doling out medication and clean bandages after surgery, he took really good care of me. Eventually I learned to care for myself, which was one of the many problems we were never able to resolve, but I would want that active, tangible concern. (Check for both Bounder and Katniss for doing this, as well, in their own ways and times.)
From Absolem, I would want the clarity of vision. He could peek readily through my façade and see me. It was impossible to hide my truths from him, and he never failed to tell me exactly what he saw—even if I didn't like it. Bounder was just as adept, though he often danced around sharing his thoughts. I would also want the fearlessness, the adventure for life, that I have only ever found in Absolem.
From Bounder, there is so much. He set the bar so high in so many ways, though he often let it clatter to the ground—sometimes abrading me with those collapsing expectations. The depth of emotion, both his own and felt with me. The strength and vulnerability that were intricately interdependent. The mischievous, crinkling eyes every time he smiled when I told him I loved him. The ease with which he could cry with me, for me, in front of me, and how he never, ever withheld my emotions even when they were more than he thought he could bear. How he would patiently and without recrimination listen as I unleashed my crazy, circuitous head and heart, but how I never had to actually say what I was thinking because he always just knew. And the kiss that could stop time and turn the seas to dust. That kiss that may never be topped.
From Katniss, the chivalry and the romance. The single red rose the first time we met, and the choice of a perfect book for Christmas. The stories he would weave for me. The way he could calm me with a single word, dropped at the exact, magical moment when I needed it most. The way he would watch me intently while I spoke, and the lullabies he would sing to me over the phone just before I fell asleep.
From Rex, the largess. Not just the physical size—though make no mistake that I loved the way his hugeness felt, wrapping me into a dainty package that didn't feel like it would break. How his hands dwarfed mine. But there was a largeness of character, of dynamic, that was simultaneously gentle and kind. The way he could make me laugh at anything and everything, but also how he could shut down my humming brain and quiet my overthinking with a look. In some ways he did outdo Bounder, and I was thankful to know the bars could be raised even further. And I have never been so immediately comfortable with a man as I was with him.
But my wishlist is missing the one trait that each of these men has in common: their ability to make me feel negligible. The practical, magical one will be there, no matter what. He will call me every day that he can, even if it's just to tell me he loves me and goodnight after a really long day. He will text me random thoughts and pictures and be thrilled that I message him regular love letters, equally romantic and raunchy. He will lie with me in the floor and the firelight, letting me sing whatever song I feel that night, while he strokes my hair gently and whispers to me that I am beautiful.
And he will be there in the middle of the night, when I wake cold and scared, afraid of what comes out of my dreams. He will sleep comfortably, soundly next to me. He will actively, happily love me, and he will fight Heaven and Hell to be with me. He will do what no one has ever been willing to do for me before: he will value me, openly and honestly, and remind me every day that I am worth his fight.
And in return, I will love him like no other. Every fiber of my being, every moment of soul and joy and heartache, every laugh and every tear, every angry word and every whisper of adulation in the dark. To fill in every crack, to give him strength to be vulnerable, safety to be dangerous, acceptance to be who he was meant to be.
Maybe it's foolish to wish these things. Maybe it's childish or naive to hope that I find what I want most, what I seek as doggedly as I have ever done anything.
"Maybe it feels the same way," my 13-year-old son math genius said, when I lamented outloud.
"I wouldn't blame it," I replied. "I've done nothing but badmouth it since I was 12 years old."
That's about the time it started. Pre-algebra. I'm okay with arithmetic, even solving for basic variables. But give me rational expressions, and my brain just kind of shuts down. I'll struggle through the homework, think I have it, and totally bomb a test. The problem is that I never really seem to get why I was wrong. For years my math grades were comprised almost entirely of partial credit.
College algebra is part of the reason I never graduated. Only part, I stress, because I know damn well that my choices had a lot to do with it. But when I was already inclined to blow off class and get into some other trouble, it was all too easy to blame my mutual hatred of algebra for keeping me from doing what I needed to do.
I was complaining on Facebook about my hatred of polynomials. I have three friends who are both geniuses (truly) and math teachers: Moonshine, Boogie Shoes, and Mathilde.
Mathilde, who teaches college math, had this to say in the course of our discussion:
It's true that there are many different levels on which one can "get" it, and you can feel like you've gotten it when you still really have a fairly superficial understanding. (It's a bit like the difference between being able to drive a car vs. being knowing how to fix the engine when it breaks.)
Of course I have some professional expertise here, but lately I've been thinking about this on a whole different level as I watch the different ways that my son and daughter approach math. They're both good at it, but they have totally different reactions when they hit a wall. It's really driven home for me how important it is to PLAY with it, look at a problem from all different angles, see what you CAN figure out even if you don't know how to get all the way to an answer. Don't be afraid to fuck it up, because you learn the most from coming to understand HOW you fucked up, and how to fix it. There are a zillion different ways to approach any particular math topic, and the more of them you explore, the more solid your overall understanding will be. I really believe that that willingness to get your hands dirty and engage with it is far more predictive of success than whatever your innate talent may or may not be.
Don't be afraid to fuck it up, because you learn the most from coming to understand HOW you fucked up, and how to fix it. I really believe that that willingness to get your hands dirty and engage with it is far more predictive of success than whatever your innate talent may or may not be.
Best. Advice. Ever.
It's how I try to live every other part of my life, so why the hell would I let this be my undoing? Why would it be okay to let a required math class or two be the one thing that could stand in the way of completing the degree necessary to move my life forward?
Had I graduated from college in 1994 as originally planned, I would've likely gone on to work in my originally-chosen field—Mass Communications. I would probably have still married DH, though we would've been living a different life. I very well might not have had the boys I have, who could only have been who they are because they were conceived in their respective moments. I might have something different and just as wonderful, but it wouldn't be Max and Tricky, without whom I can't imagine my life.
Just because I didn't get what I'd planned, just because my journey took a different path than anyone anticipated for me, that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile or in any way less than what I'd envisioned. In so many ways, I am more fulfilled as a woman and a soul than I ever thought possible.
I have the very real task of learning the skills necessary to get a real job, to take care of me and my boys. I have to relearn a lot of things I should've mastered a long time ago. To choose not to do it is to be ungrateful, again, for the opportunities I've been given and have made for myself.
So I can't be afraid to fuck it up. I will likely fuck it up. But I will choke down the disappointment and dust my hands off and try again. I will look closely at what I did wrong, which variable threw me off, and I will try it again and again and again until I can pass these tests. Maybe not with flying colors, but certainly with far more knowledge and insight than I had when I started.
And on the other side? There's an entirely different life ahead of me. It's not where I thought I'd be, not where I originally dreamed of being. But it will be goddamn good, because I got dirty and fought like hell to make it that way. I'll still struggle with math. I'll still catch my breath at the sight of a polynomial, and sometimes it will remind me of what my intentions had been when I was 20.
Then I'll remind myself that here and now is the only place I can live—not then and certainly not when. And I'll know that I can, because I bulldozed my own walls and powered through to an unexpected and promising future.
