Lately I've been having a hard time blogging. All the words seem void of poetry and all of my insights seem cliche. Even my grammar and syntax are off, and that's not like me. I don't know why this is happening, but at the moment I'm not concerned with "whys"; I'm more concerned with "whats." If I'm the tree, "why" might be the root, but "what" is the trunk. "Why" might be the start of me, but "what" determines what kind of tree I am. I already know that I exist; now I have to worry about my substance.
My throat's killing me today. I couldn't fall asleep till four in the morning. My brother came home last night. I've officially decided to keep on looking for work even though I've already landed a job. Rob and I are doing well as a couple. The fictional and academic writing are going well. The paperwork for my health insurance should be processed in a couple of weeks. Mom and Dad are dealing with everything maturely and responsibly. My friends are awesome, quirky, beautiful, supportive, talented and intelligent people. I'm over the bulk of my "issues." I aced two finals and handed in a bunch of papers; the semester is going to end on a high note. In truth, my life overall has become pretty boring.
The other night, when I was on the phone with one of my closest and most awesome friends, AJ, we gabbed about her marriage engagement, her cold feet, and her issues of trust. It's not simply that she doesn't trust her fiance to be the man she needs him to be; it's self-trust that's more of an issue. She's so introspective that she knows all too well her self-damaging behavior; whenever she makes a do-or-die decision, she can't tell if she's subconsciously hurting herself or if she's already gotten over that tendency and is making a truly good choice.
Usually, my personality fluctuates from one extreme variation of myself to another, but lately I'm a well-rounded amalgamation of all of my personalities. It's unsettling and takes a little getting used to. So AJ was talking about her relationship with her fiance, and I was finding a million parallels to the problems I used to have with Rob - but I couldn't find anything useful to say. Instead, I was remembering part of a conversation that I'd had with a good friend, JS.
Earlier that day, I'd been telling JS about how Rob seems to have morphed into an amazing and really, really good guy, and she'd laughed. "Maybe he's always been a good guy and you've put on your rose-colored glasses, so now you see it," she'd said. Her words made my skin hot because I knew that she understood exactly what I was feeling. It wasn't necessarily that JS had gone through the same situation; it's that we had found copies of the maps of our lives, and we'd learned to read the signals. Verbal communication is the way we describe the terrain, and since our paths are eerily similar, she was able to offer insights about my way.
Talking to AJ was the same: a story similar to my own was unravelling before me. Instead of trading amazing insights and revelations, however, my brain felt too overwhelmed to compute. I mumbled some vague words of undestanding and acknowledgment, but I knew I was expected to give advice. AJ's problem with her fiance was one I'd had with Rob, and although I'd already completed that leg of my journey, I couldn't verbalize my method. This is what I knew: Like me, AJ's a writer and a very passionate person. Unfortunatley, her fiance doesn't seem to have any passion in his life, and she's mulling over whether or not that's a deal-breaker.
When it came time for me to voice an opinion, I found myslf remembering the words of one of our best friends, DC (she'll ALWAYS be DC, even if she gets married and remarried, ad nauseum). A year ago, when I was going through the "lack of passion problem" with Rob, I'd called DC (my only best friend that's a married mother), and in between talking her oldest child out of banging on pots and pans and nursing her youngest, she gave it to me straight and succinctly:
Everyone has a picture in their minds of what they want their partner to be, and more often than not the person you're with doesn't have all of those traits. But maybe it's not important that your partner have all those traits. Maybe what's important is that he have all the traits that can make you happy for the long haul, and that you fulfill the requirements of a "soulmate" through other people.
When I first heard the advice, it immediately rang as true. Rob will never quite understand the feeling I get when I write something and instinctively KNOW that it's awesome and life-changing, but AJ, AP, SR and JS know what I mean. Rob can't really wax philosophical with me for hours on end, but KA, IS, RM, and KB can engage both spheres of my brain that way. Et al. As much as I stress these parts of my personality, I remain an intact and ever-fluctuating person even when they're not present. It's that vague, unnameable thing that's constantly shape-shifting and evolving which needs to be loved, respected, nurtured, and understood by a partner. Its very ambiguous nature makes it difficult for one person to be its match. But somehow, Rob knows how to be everything that that vague, unnameable thing needs in a partner, and that's more than I can say for anyone else.
So maybe DC's right, and the important thing isn't that Rob satisfy all of my qualifications in a "soulmate"; it's that my life fulfills all of my qualifications for a "soulmate." The important things in a relationship are that my partner knows how to love me the way I need to be loved; that he understands me the way that I need to be understood; and that I feel the way about him that he does for me. Whether or not all of those qualifications are enough, or if Rob and I fulfill them are subject to alteration and interpretation with time and accumulated experiences and knowledge, but for the people we are at this moment, we're the perfect couple.
So that's what I ended up telling AJ - not that Rob and I make the perfect couple, but that those are my words of wisdom. They were handed to me from a trusted source of love, experience and respect, and they've served me well. Opening up to the idea that I can have everything without having it all in one person freed me to see everything that Rob does offer, instead of keeping me focused on the things he doesn't. And little by little, that's how I came to grips with the idea that I don't have to be afraid of trusting him, or anyone, or relationships in general. As simple and cliche as it sounds, he is not the be-all and end-all of what I'm looking for. He does not personify everything that I need to be happy. He has the qualifications to be with the person that I know that I am at the moment, but my ever-evolving ways keep our future a mystery. If Rob does have what it takes to make me happy in the long-haul, it's as understandable as the other option, and I can live with that.
AJ seemed satisfied with my answer, then she laughed and asked how I was doing. "Rob and I are doing good," I said. "I told him yesterday that I needed him to come home early so we could clean up the house for Abie's return. He said he'd be home around seven, and he was. But then he said he was tired and asked if we could relax for a little bit, so we got in bed with ice cream and junk food and watched our favorite TV shows on the internet. Then he said that he wanted to take a nap and that I should wake him up later. When I tried to wake him up, he said it didn't count because I'd been watching TV next to him, so he didn't have a deep sleep. He ended up sleeping for fourteen hours straight. I don't mind because he had a final the next morning, and today he ended up cleaning everything himself while I studied for my final."
Then I caught myself laughing at how much I sounded like a '50s woman with "simple problems." "The only real problem I have is money," I added. "But when I think about things, I have it pretty good. Arguing with my loving boyfriend about a problem that he fixes himself is the kind of problem that I want. If I had to choose a problem, that's the one I'd choose all the way."
My throat's killing me today. I couldn't fall asleep till four in the morning. My brother came home last night. I've officially decided to keep on looking for work even though I've already landed a job. Rob and I are doing well as a couple. The fictional and academic writing are going well. The paperwork for my health insurance should be processed in a couple of weeks. Mom and Dad are dealing with everything maturely and responsibly. My friends are awesome, quirky, beautiful, supportive, talented and intelligent people. I'm over the bulk of my "issues." I aced two finals and handed in a bunch of papers; the semester is going to end on a high note. In truth, my life overall has become pretty boring.
The other night, when I was on the phone with one of my closest and most awesome friends, AJ, we gabbed about her marriage engagement, her cold feet, and her issues of trust. It's not simply that she doesn't trust her fiance to be the man she needs him to be; it's self-trust that's more of an issue. She's so introspective that she knows all too well her self-damaging behavior; whenever she makes a do-or-die decision, she can't tell if she's subconsciously hurting herself or if she's already gotten over that tendency and is making a truly good choice.
Usually, my personality fluctuates from one extreme variation of myself to another, but lately I'm a well-rounded amalgamation of all of my personalities. It's unsettling and takes a little getting used to. So AJ was talking about her relationship with her fiance, and I was finding a million parallels to the problems I used to have with Rob - but I couldn't find anything useful to say. Instead, I was remembering part of a conversation that I'd had with a good friend, JS.
Earlier that day, I'd been telling JS about how Rob seems to have morphed into an amazing and really, really good guy, and she'd laughed. "Maybe he's always been a good guy and you've put on your rose-colored glasses, so now you see it," she'd said. Her words made my skin hot because I knew that she understood exactly what I was feeling. It wasn't necessarily that JS had gone through the same situation; it's that we had found copies of the maps of our lives, and we'd learned to read the signals. Verbal communication is the way we describe the terrain, and since our paths are eerily similar, she was able to offer insights about my way.
Talking to AJ was the same: a story similar to my own was unravelling before me. Instead of trading amazing insights and revelations, however, my brain felt too overwhelmed to compute. I mumbled some vague words of undestanding and acknowledgment, but I knew I was expected to give advice. AJ's problem with her fiance was one I'd had with Rob, and although I'd already completed that leg of my journey, I couldn't verbalize my method. This is what I knew: Like me, AJ's a writer and a very passionate person. Unfortunatley, her fiance doesn't seem to have any passion in his life, and she's mulling over whether or not that's a deal-breaker.
When it came time for me to voice an opinion, I found myslf remembering the words of one of our best friends, DC (she'll ALWAYS be DC, even if she gets married and remarried, ad nauseum). A year ago, when I was going through the "lack of passion problem" with Rob, I'd called DC (my only best friend that's a married mother), and in between talking her oldest child out of banging on pots and pans and nursing her youngest, she gave it to me straight and succinctly:
Everyone has a picture in their minds of what they want their partner to be, and more often than not the person you're with doesn't have all of those traits. But maybe it's not important that your partner have all those traits. Maybe what's important is that he have all the traits that can make you happy for the long haul, and that you fulfill the requirements of a "soulmate" through other people.
When I first heard the advice, it immediately rang as true. Rob will never quite understand the feeling I get when I write something and instinctively KNOW that it's awesome and life-changing, but AJ, AP, SR and JS know what I mean. Rob can't really wax philosophical with me for hours on end, but KA, IS, RM, and KB can engage both spheres of my brain that way. Et al. As much as I stress these parts of my personality, I remain an intact and ever-fluctuating person even when they're not present. It's that vague, unnameable thing that's constantly shape-shifting and evolving which needs to be loved, respected, nurtured, and understood by a partner. Its very ambiguous nature makes it difficult for one person to be its match. But somehow, Rob knows how to be everything that that vague, unnameable thing needs in a partner, and that's more than I can say for anyone else.
So maybe DC's right, and the important thing isn't that Rob satisfy all of my qualifications in a "soulmate"; it's that my life fulfills all of my qualifications for a "soulmate." The important things in a relationship are that my partner knows how to love me the way I need to be loved; that he understands me the way that I need to be understood; and that I feel the way about him that he does for me. Whether or not all of those qualifications are enough, or if Rob and I fulfill them are subject to alteration and interpretation with time and accumulated experiences and knowledge, but for the people we are at this moment, we're the perfect couple.
So that's what I ended up telling AJ - not that Rob and I make the perfect couple, but that those are my words of wisdom. They were handed to me from a trusted source of love, experience and respect, and they've served me well. Opening up to the idea that I can have everything without having it all in one person freed me to see everything that Rob does offer, instead of keeping me focused on the things he doesn't. And little by little, that's how I came to grips with the idea that I don't have to be afraid of trusting him, or anyone, or relationships in general. As simple and cliche as it sounds, he is not the be-all and end-all of what I'm looking for. He does not personify everything that I need to be happy. He has the qualifications to be with the person that I know that I am at the moment, but my ever-evolving ways keep our future a mystery. If Rob does have what it takes to make me happy in the long-haul, it's as understandable as the other option, and I can live with that.
AJ seemed satisfied with my answer, then she laughed and asked how I was doing. "Rob and I are doing good," I said. "I told him yesterday that I needed him to come home early so we could clean up the house for Abie's return. He said he'd be home around seven, and he was. But then he said he was tired and asked if we could relax for a little bit, so we got in bed with ice cream and junk food and watched our favorite TV shows on the internet. Then he said that he wanted to take a nap and that I should wake him up later. When I tried to wake him up, he said it didn't count because I'd been watching TV next to him, so he didn't have a deep sleep. He ended up sleeping for fourteen hours straight. I don't mind because he had a final the next morning, and today he ended up cleaning everything himself while I studied for my final."
Then I caught myself laughing at how much I sounded like a '50s woman with "simple problems." "The only real problem I have is money," I added. "But when I think about things, I have it pretty good. Arguing with my loving boyfriend about a problem that he fixes himself is the kind of problem that I want. If I had to choose a problem, that's the one I'd choose all the way."
***
Years ago, I came up with the idea that we all choose our problems - whether or not it's consciously. We stick to patterns that are harmful but comfortable, people who hurt us but are familiar, addictions which are dangerous but also routine. We are molded by the problems that we face, and become the people we have to be in order to face them. And maybe it's because we're women, or because we're human, or because we're us, but we need problems to get by.
We are untrusting of situations that are "too smooth." We feel uneasy when things have been quiet for too long. We have become too accustomed to being "problem solvers" and feel inept and idle when there are no problems to solve. So whenever life seems too simple, we come up with questions we already have the answers to, insecurities to hang over our heads, doubts that we instinctively know are useless. That's how we feel like ourselves. We're like donuts; the holes are useless and might even take away some of our substance, but without them we feel awkward.
Luckily, there are others like us who know what we mean, have gone through what we've gone through, or feel themselves headed down a path we've already been. Our lives overlap and interlock, and at the end of the day we are each extensions of one great story, a story that's undeniably ours.
Perhaps it's because I'm a writer, but this story soothes me simply because I know that it exists, and that it's getting told in different places, at different times, to different people, and that all the good I could ever do is getting done because I'm doing my part to contribute to the story. Maybe I feel this way because I have a sense of self that includes a network of close friends. Or maybe it's beause I have on my rose-colored glasses. But none of that matters. The "why" isn't as important as the "what."
2 comments:
wow. jesus christ. wow.
I'm glad you like it :)
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