This week, Theo and I hit a wall. It was a surprise, because I thought things were going pretty well, but, as these things sometimes go, one small unhappiness turned into a larger conversation, which brought tears, and admissions, and it all expanded faster than either of us could keep up with. There were tears during the day, and more at night, and it was made so, SO much worse by the knowledge that she would be leaving on tour in less than 24 hours.
Some truths that came up, without judgement:
- Trust is harder than love.
- Communication is harder than trust, because you can’t ever be absolutely sure you’ve got it right.
- Even in (mostly) monogamous relationships, you’re in bed with everyone your partner has ever been with. Every time.
- The partner who needs less doesn’t go hungry
- Resolving to not be passionate does not make it so.
- We are programmed from our teens to be ashamed of wanting attention. This is a mistake.
Theo and I are very different creatures in many ways, and argument shows it well. I inherited a family tendency to burn hot and walk out – for a long time, I thought it was the right thing to do, to preserve the peace, and so I’ve had a hard time learning to stay. Theo (and Kyle) are both good at staying in it, holding space, and it’s like trying to learn a whole new language to learn to stay in it, too. Not just language – skin. It takes ignoring every signal in your body firing with fear, telling you to leave, to run away fast and far, to sit still instead. It’s like going crazy inside-out, to be honest.
I still kinda suck at it, but this time I stayed in the room, and that’s pretty amazing for me. You’d have thought I had discovered cold fusion, as excited as Theo and I were about it.
I am grateful neither of us is mean. It was hard, and sad, and painful, and full of fears…but not cruel. I am afraid of things I brought with me, inside me, not because Theo does anything scary.
The upshot was that we carefully, over many hours, unraveled the words we were using to try to connect and managed to coax out their meanings. A great deal of human suffering would be eliminated, I think, if we’d all recognize how different our languages are, even when we use the same vocabulary. Theo and I agreed on a common language – almost a safeword, really, a word we both recognize that’s not too difficult to say. (I know I’d be curious, so I’ll tell you. It’s “done,” although I doubt that conveys the full meaning to anyone but the two of us who were in the room at that moment. However, to say more would betray our confidence.)
I’m imagining that cataloging my fears might be illustrative (although I’m not entirely sure I won’t just erase all of this before I hit “Publish”):
- What if she asks for something I can’t give her?
- What if I ask for something? She’ll know I want it, and I’m scared that won’t be ok, whether it’s the thing I’m asking for that isn’t ok, or the wanting itself.
- What if I ask for something, and then she says no? Sometimes it feels safer to be the one not asking, rather than the one not getting.
- What if I’m selfish/mean/ridiculous for asking?
- Hardest of all, and I don’t think I’m completely alone here, I’m scared that I actually really just suck and one of these days I’ll say something that suddenly makes us both realize that I’m no good. (I call this one the “secret suckage” fear.)
Of course I don’t carry these fears with me all the time – they tend to hide out in the corners of my psyche and show up when my defenses are down, which is really frustrating, as they wouldn’t be able to touch me the rest of the time.
Years ago, Catherine introduced me to the Indigo Girls. (Yes, I was a late bloomer.) There was one song in particular that resonated with sweetness and danger:
So were okay
Were fine
Baby I’m here to stop your crying
Chase all the ghosts from your head
I’m stronger than the monster beneath your bed
Smarter than the tricks played on your heart
Well look at them together then well take them apart
…
You know the things that I am afraid of
I’m not afraid to tell
I don’t know about you, but this is really different from how I learned to love. Talking about my fears ranks up there with jumping out of airplanes onto broken glass factories for me. Catherine, Kyle and Theo have all been role models in this regard, and sometimes I wonder if they weren’t born already strapped into parachutes, it comes so naturally for them. For me, it’s more of a struggle/disaster.
But, this time, I didn’t leave. I stayed.
I stayed.
