…and love isn’t always enough. This is the first time I’ve truly understood that.
My relationship of the last five years has ended. The timing was my choice, but ultimately it was a joint decision. Which doesn’t make it easier.
But it wasn’t from any lack of love.
I moved out a month ago.
I’m back in Tortuga-the intentional community that just won’t let me go, and am I glad of it! I’m even back in the same unit as before, although a different room. And this time with Ragnar, who is delighted to be here. All these neighbors who want to play with him: friendly people who take him for walks while his person is away at work. It’s good.
It wasn’t easy moving out of the home J and I had been sharing for three years. But it’s become clear, to me certainly, that living together right now does us a disservice.
I am changing a lot, and J… well, J likes everything to be neat and controlled. He doesn’t understand the decisions I’m making. They seem reckless, or inefficient to him.
There’s this moment in the Runaway Bride… Throughout the movie, Gere’s character asks all of Roberts’ exes how she liked her eggs for  breakfast. The answer was different each time, on the surface. Scrambled, poached, sunnyside up… The answer was always that her favorite egg dish was the same as that of her boyfriend at the time. He liked scrambled, she liked scrambled.
There is a scene at the end of the movie where Roberts tries every type of egg dish she can come up with, to learn which one she actually likes.
I feel like I’ve always been living on someone else’s paradigm. Parents, friends, significant others… My identity has always been as part of a unit. Which means changes in me that might change the dynamic of that unit are terrifying. Taking a role other than “daughter” who is “cared for” and “toes the family line”… that threatens not just my sense of myself within the family, but the entire family. Enmeshment, my therapist tells me, is what this is called.
Enmeshment. Strands of identity woven so tightly with those of the people around you, that it’s impossible to tell where some pieces came from. Apparently that scene from Runaway Bride, which is by far the best scene in the movie, is frequently used in psych courses to exemplify enmeshment and the process of leaving it.
So, right now, I’m figuring out how I like my eggs. With no regard for how J likes his, or how my mother and father like theirs. And, of course, I mean more than eggs here. Everything. I’m figuring out what matters to me. What I like.
It’s not precisely the same thing as finding yourself. I’ve been here all along. But I’ve been wound so tight in group identities, I haven’t had a chance to think or make changes.
As hard as this is for me, it’s even harder for J. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. Doesn’t fully get the enmeshment issue. Doesn’t understand why, suddenly, his partner is making choices he dislikes and refusing to give in on them. Not easy to live with.
So I’ve moved back to Tortuga. And J still lives at Church St, as do the cats, as does most of my stuff. And I still go there on a regular basis. But I can’t live with J right now. Not if we want to have any kind of chance of making things work between us.
Cubby Selby used to say that the reason cliches exist is because they’re often true. I think, maybe, we’ve learned that cliche = turn your brain off.
They say before you can love anyone else, you first need to love yourself. Which has always struck me as ridiculous. You can love someone else with a desperate ferocity without ever loving yourself: witness my mother’s absolute dedication to both my brother and me. She never, in her entire life, loved herself. I think she’s learning to, now. I think the cancer made her examine herself and what she wants more closely. If not love herself, I think she’s beginning to at least value herself.
I don’t think my father has ever really loved himself, either. Â But he loves my mother, my brother, me, Uncle Stan, the dogs. It’s a small group, but he would do almost anything for any one of us. I don’t know if he’s learning to love himself or not. It’s a bit harder to tell. But I think he’s learning to accept himself. He apologized to me for the way he treated me during my childhood. Completely on his own, he apologized to me.
To be able to look back and see that about himself, and then not only realize he wronged me, but to actually make the apology unprompted… That’s pretty amazing.
It’s no secret to those who love me that I’m not particularly fond of myself. Remember that sketch I posted of myself at seven? I picked that particular picture to draw because of how much hatred I felt towards that little girl.
Tonight, walking Ragnar, I was listening to the audio version of Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself (which is a pretty damned awesome book). Something Alda said at the end about knowing your own values struck me. I wish I knew what it was in particular that made it hit home. I’ve certainly heard plenty of variations of essentially the same advice. But something did strike me.
I tried to figure out what I valued. Family? Partnership? Dogs? Writing? Which did I spend the most time doing? Well, I spend the most time worrying about things and trying to come up with absolutely perfect solutions (yay OCD!). I don’t want that to be my value. But I was really startled that I didn’t know the hierarchy of the things I valued. And then it occurred to me, well, I don’t much value myself so why would I have even cared what things mattered to me? Of course I didn’t know. Because it didn’t matter.
No, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. But that I’ve felt that way. And then that line of thought went even further. Each of those potential values I listed is a partnership: my parents, my boyfriend, my dog, my (possibly entirely imaginary) audience. In each case, I only value half of the equation. So why would I even care what happened to the other half–in this case–me?
The answer is I don’t. Or I didn’t. Gah. All this self actualization language is so imprecise… can I tell you how much I hate using lifecoach-y sounding terms? I hate it. Possibly as much as Gollum hated Samwise. Or maybe it was as much as Samwise hated Gollum…
Imagine you’re making a meal for two people. One, you care deeply about. The other, you don’t. In fact, the other you may even actively dislike. But you put up with that other because, after all, if they hadn’t shown up there wouldn’t be this dinner. Person A happens to love kale, and brownies, and pasta. Person B likes pasta, but isn’t so much into the dark leafy greens and doesn’t like chocolate (blasphemy!). So what do you make? Pasta, kale, brownies. Hey, Person A gets everything they want while Person B at least gets one thing they like!
(BTW, you’re Person B.)
Aside from this making you a bad host… the math is wrong. Person A isn’t getting what they want at all. Person A is here for dinner with Person B. How can Person A be happy if their friend is getting shortchanged?
Now let’s take away the theoretical dinner and go back to those values. If I value my family but I don’t value myself and take care of myself–my family won’t be happy. Same with my partner, or my dog (I would treat myself like shit, which would affect all of them), or my possibly imaginary audience (which, you know, might not be imaginary if I valued myself and therefore dedicated more time and focus to my writing. And, uhm, sent editors stories when they asked me for them…).
Both sides of the equation need to be considered. A + B isn’t equal to A. It’s impossible to have a relationship with someone who isn’t there, or is intermittently there. And it is impossible, as that person who self negates, to build anything lasting and healthy.
You can love someone else while not loving yourself, but you’re not going to do a very good job at it.
Freelancing has made it even more obvious to me that job hunting and dating really have a lot in common. Even more so if you look at internet dating sites (which I have, that’s how J and I got together. And Rayhawk and I before that, and…. Right. Internet dating, it works.)
As ever, we come back to Communication. Which is how one sets Expectations.
You don’t know very much about the other party when you enter into contact. You have a vague sense:
“Oh, yeah. This company focuses on video games and they’re looking for a copywriter who knows the field. Awesome. That’s totally me.”
Which is a lot like:
“Hey, this guy is an engineer who’s into hiking and looking for a geeky girl who likes old Alec Guinness movies. Awesome. That’s totally me.”
All of which certainly merits some investigation. An email. A phone call. A preliminary interview. But really, you know nearly nothing about the other party. Just some extremely basic info. You have no idea how organized they are, how laid back, how they behave under stress. Nor do they know those things about you; you’re both on your best behavior. Neither of you have any real sense of what to expect.
I’ve found that a lot of companies don’t know how to express what they want. They’ll often just expect you to know. When I taught, I used to call this being writer-based, not reader-based. They know the info so well themselves, it doesn’t occur to them that they need to explain it to anyone else. Communication fail.
When pressed for more details, they might say something like, “It needs more pizazz. Some zing.” Which is completely meaningless. It’s like a girl saying to a guy, “I want you to be more romantic.” There’s nothing actionable in there. Define for me pizazz. Show me a picture of zing. Quantify romance.
I find going to the pinball hall of fame with my partner romantic. A friend of mine thinks going out to a fancy restaurant is romantic. Still another thinks going to a rave together is the height of romance. Good luck figuring out which one of those things to do when all the girl says is “I want more romance.”
So pizazz and zing and romance are all pretty vague. For that particular gig I eventually figured out that if I wrote the copy like it was porn, the CEO liked it. (No, I’m not telling which company).
Heck, I like it when a guy gives me flowers. But not red roses. Try predicting that.
And here’s one of those things that just completely sucks; the other party decides that, because you didn’t get it perfect on the first try, you’re a horrible person or not The One or you just don’t love them enough.
This actually hasn’t happened to me in romance. I think that’s more of a chick thing than a dude thing. Usually. And man, I’ve been guilty of it. Having now dealt with employers who’ve done that (and no, not telling you which company)… It’s awful. And unfair. And totally ignores the fact that human beings are really kinda designed to learn and evolve.
When a company, or a romantic interest, does that, you have to figure that’s a big red flag. You’re getting yourself involved with someone (or something) that communicates like a toddler. Or an 18 year old (amazingly similar, those two). Which means drama. And, you know, maybe it’s worth it. Maybe the perks make the job worthwhile. Or maybe the other person is just so hot, you can’t pass that up. At some point down the line, you’ll end up telling stories about the whole experience and shaking your head ruefully.
So, when J recently got me a bouquet of six red roses and one white one, I thanked him for them. And I felt loved. Because, dude, the effort was there. And I’d never told him, “Red roses, not so much.” And I made sure to tell him that the white rose was my absolute favorite of the bunch.
What do you want to bet I start getting more white roses?
We almost met at this very same party four years ago. But that’s another story.