This time of year has turned me quiet and confused as usual, remembering connections to people who are no longer with me, and maneuvering through the web of connections that do still exist, new and old, trying to find my place. I was having tea with a friend the other day and she said to me something like, “You are family, you know.” Oh no. It’s…the f-word. The word that feels so cozy, like we know it. Of course it feels that way; after all, it lives in the word “familiar”, just as we’ve all lived in our sense of family all our lives. But what the hell is it?
When I was little what I remember about family holidays was a complicated dance through the homes of extended family with multiple turkey dinners. My family was full of odd branches where divorce had happened; instead of cutting off the limb, it had sent off shoots to grow larger and stranger, in funny unexpected directions. My hometown was full of cousins of all flavors, along with the more garden variety relatives, and somehow we had to spend time with everyone. I never thought it was strange; it was just how holidays and families were. As I got a little older and my own personal connections became more important to me, I began to have more of an opinion about how I wanted to spend these times. I particularly remember being around 11 or 12 years old: I had a huge crush on a boy at church and our family had been invited to a party at his parents’ house on the same day we were obligated to go to one set of great grandparents with that particular branch of relatives. One young cousin had received a science kit complete with dissectible frog that day. I can still feel the ambivalence of wanting so badly to be somewhere else, with someone else, that I could barely stay put inside my skin, and at the same time feeling the pleasure of taking my cousin on a tour through the frog, her wonder of discovery and my satisfaction in teaching her.
At those times, I have such a strong sense of these skin and bones as holding in something else, something other. I am a container and what I hold is large and mysterious, terrifying sometimes and not always pretty but worth exploring.
Later at college and into my adult life, things became simpler. I lived far away from family so I made a family of friends. I was glad to leave behind the complications of kin. My friends and I celebrated together and each group of friends felt like a group that would stay connected forever. Until each one stopped being connected.
Then I met my partner. Her family lived close but they didn’t speak to us. My family was still far away so everything was simple again. My partner and I were family, and for holidays we invited stray friends home for dinner.
Later still I met another woman and with her we became a family of three, venturing into a whole new territory with the belief that love is big enough to hold more than two. When I used the word family with her though she reacted like an animal in a trap, panicked, hostile, trying to chew her leg off to get free. I was offended at the time, but I have a certain sympathy with her now after a few more years of experiencing polyamory and the complications it brings to family ties.
This Thanksgiving my partner and I celebrated alone, enjoying the luxury of time together, cooking and eating and watching movies and just being together. But I also felt an echo of that ambivalence that I first felt so many years ago. My chosen family is larger now and local, so where are the complications I remember from my childhood of the multiple homes with the multiple turkeys? Trying to fit in everyone and finding the compromise that doesn’t quite work? Family it seems to me is partly about that feeling that grows out of obligation, that feeling of being here because I have to, even if I don’t really want to, teaching the young cousin when I want to be off flirting.
At the same time, being the obligation is uncomfortable. The young cousin had no sense of herself as obligation because I was family; therefore, I was there with her. She wasn’t aware of being chosen. But in friendship and with polyamory, we do choose, and we know we are choosing and being chosen. And we want to keep being chosen. I don’t want you here because you have to be here; I want to know that you want to be here. And I’m terrified that you might stop wanting to be here. There comes a time in a relationship where I become the frog on the tray. Peel my skin away and what will you find? Will you see only the complicated workings, throw your hands up in dismay at ever trying to figure it all out and walk away? After all, I don’t have to look far to see someone easier, fresher, sexier than I am. Or will you feel that wonder of discovery that holds you even though it’s complicated, and maybe not always much fun? Why are you choosing me? And will you keep choosing me? Family, I think, might have something to do with that choice.
Here we are in family holiday season and I am approaching a surgery. Not a major surgery, but my first since I was 12. My mother has offered to fly out to be with me, but I have chosen to have my family of partners and friends with me. And I am scared. Is that web of connections a safety net or a trap? If I make use of it will it change everything? My temptation when I feel unsure is to make myself small, cut all the ties and drop away.
I wrote a piece for a class where I used the phrase, “…I needed to feel admirable.” A woman in class asked if what I really meant was, “…I needed to feel admired.” I love being admired, but the truth is that what I always want to know is whether I am worthy of admiration, worthy of being loved. I am loved, I have been loved, I will be loved. I am comfortable with that conjugation of the verb and I feel the truth of it. Those are the strings of my web. I wish I could say that I am always so secure in myself that while I am being loved I also know I am worthy of it, but the truth is I need reassurance to tell me that it is okay for me to be there, in that web, to pull the threads when I need help and know that I’m not strangling someone’s freedom, to feel comfortable letting the thread go and know that the attachment is still there even as it’s reeling away from me, to know that I am allowed to be loved even when I am prickly and complicated and exposed. To know that I can accept love and care from this chosen family, even if they have mixed feelings about the obligation, because there is something of worth they can receive only from me. To know that they will be there for me, that I can trust the web of love to hold me safe.
copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
What to do, what to do...
I have this exercise I do every morning (most mornings, anyway) where I sit down and write three pages freehand. Anyone familiar with The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron will recognize the exercise at once, but for those who aren't, this isn't a diary, it's not capital A art, it's just a brain dump...blah, blah, blah basically to just get it all out. I don't keep the pages for long once I've written them; they may hang around for several months and then I recycle them. For that reason, I have no desire to fill up a pretty, expensive journal with these jottings; I try to use scraps, random left over paper, paper already printed on one side, that kind of thing. I've done a lot of scrounging through the house to find paper to use and recently I found a stack of old college notebooks. Being the frugal sort, I had ripped out all my class notes and recycled them (I can't imagine I'll need my notes from Stage Lighting or Neurophysiology from 20 years ago any time soon,) but I couldn't bring myself to throw away the leftover blank pages. And look! It's paid off because now I can use them for my morning pages!
One morning as I was opening my notebook to begin writing, the pages fell open to the very last page and there was a 20-year-old list of things to do left over from college. I am a big fan of to do lists. I write them all the time, and, when I am anxious about something, I write them in a frenzy, adding everything I can possibly imagine needing to do for the next several years. I remember reading somewhere that a to do list can make you feel capable and productive because you can write a list that goes, "Wake up, Brush teeth, Write novel" and feel really good about yourself because you have accomplished two out of three. And we all know that ain't bad. This particular list made me laugh because, out of 18 items, I had crossed off two–laundry and Dance History reading. I laughed partly because those are always two of my favorite things to cross off lists–laundry and reading; laundry because it does not take much effort to gather clothes, throw them in the washer and go do something else for half an hour, but gosh you end up with nice fresh clothes. And reading because reading is easy for me no matter what the topic is. I imagine I probably did them both at the same time, spending a pleasant couple of hours on a Saturday morning. I also laughed ruefully imagining the young woman I was then, stressed out and trying to be healthy (weights, find out pool hours), take care of social obligations (write to parents, Jenna's present), do my homework (Dance History reading, unit write-ups, write seminar paper, Phys Psych lab write-ups, Phys Psych research and rough draft, dance journal), get an on campus job (call about non-print resource center), take care of everyday life (laundry, clean, driver's license) and figure out what to do after I graduate (Career Development Office, letters and forms.*)(*Yes, these were the real items off that 20-year-old list.) Clearly I failed miserably (16 items to go...), yet twenty years later here I am, still alive and functioning, healthy and happy despite not having crossed off those other 16 items. But I still make those same lists, with items that feel urgent now, and they still don't all get done. Twenty years from now will I find one of these and wonder why I bothered?
I was thinking about these things today as I washed dishes because my partner had the day off work and was home with me. I did not have the day off work, but I work at home. Sometimes this creates a little problem. Today I was feeling an anxiety that I recognize, one that is common to me and that I have fought with for all of these years. I know that I have to work and I have to earn an income and this is important. I also know that I have to take advantage of the time I have with the people I love, that time with them is a gift I will never get back, and this is important as well.
What does this have to do with a sense of direction, with getting lost? Only this: I use my to do lists to direct myself, to build a path, but where exactly am I trying to arrive? Thinking about college I remember a particular day in the fall, my first year. My house had organized an apple-picking expedition but I had a long list of things to do. My friends talked me out of my tree with gentle voices and no direct eye contact, lulling me out the door and into the car where it was too late for me to turn back. We picked bags and bags of apples, all kinds of apples. There was no hope of us ever eating all the apples we picked but we couldn't stop. The air was crisp and the trees were beautiful. We brought our apples home, jealously guarding our bags and bags of apples from each other, and the kitchen staff let us make caramel apples in the kitchen. We ate apples until we were sick of them.
And I was relaxed and happy, enjoying my friends, and full of apples and full of my very own self. I don't have the slightest idea what I needed to do, and didn't do, that day. But I remember the apples and the air and the leaves and the friends. I know through my life there have been other times when I have chosen the apples. And times when I have chosen the list. The lists may keep me honest but the apples bring me joy.
I have to remember that the lists are my way to pretend I have some say in my life, some control over what happens, and the direction I take. Once the list is written though I can't let it march me around like a drill sergeant, putting me through my paces. Because I don't think I've ever had "Go pick apples and cherish your friends" written on any list, except on the one in my heart.
copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles
One morning as I was opening my notebook to begin writing, the pages fell open to the very last page and there was a 20-year-old list of things to do left over from college. I am a big fan of to do lists. I write them all the time, and, when I am anxious about something, I write them in a frenzy, adding everything I can possibly imagine needing to do for the next several years. I remember reading somewhere that a to do list can make you feel capable and productive because you can write a list that goes, "Wake up, Brush teeth, Write novel" and feel really good about yourself because you have accomplished two out of three. And we all know that ain't bad. This particular list made me laugh because, out of 18 items, I had crossed off two–laundry and Dance History reading. I laughed partly because those are always two of my favorite things to cross off lists–laundry and reading; laundry because it does not take much effort to gather clothes, throw them in the washer and go do something else for half an hour, but gosh you end up with nice fresh clothes. And reading because reading is easy for me no matter what the topic is. I imagine I probably did them both at the same time, spending a pleasant couple of hours on a Saturday morning. I also laughed ruefully imagining the young woman I was then, stressed out and trying to be healthy (weights, find out pool hours), take care of social obligations (write to parents, Jenna's present), do my homework (Dance History reading, unit write-ups, write seminar paper, Phys Psych lab write-ups, Phys Psych research and rough draft, dance journal), get an on campus job (call about non-print resource center), take care of everyday life (laundry, clean, driver's license) and figure out what to do after I graduate (Career Development Office, letters and forms.*)(*Yes, these were the real items off that 20-year-old list.) Clearly I failed miserably (16 items to go...), yet twenty years later here I am, still alive and functioning, healthy and happy despite not having crossed off those other 16 items. But I still make those same lists, with items that feel urgent now, and they still don't all get done. Twenty years from now will I find one of these and wonder why I bothered?
I was thinking about these things today as I washed dishes because my partner had the day off work and was home with me. I did not have the day off work, but I work at home. Sometimes this creates a little problem. Today I was feeling an anxiety that I recognize, one that is common to me and that I have fought with for all of these years. I know that I have to work and I have to earn an income and this is important. I also know that I have to take advantage of the time I have with the people I love, that time with them is a gift I will never get back, and this is important as well.
What does this have to do with a sense of direction, with getting lost? Only this: I use my to do lists to direct myself, to build a path, but where exactly am I trying to arrive? Thinking about college I remember a particular day in the fall, my first year. My house had organized an apple-picking expedition but I had a long list of things to do. My friends talked me out of my tree with gentle voices and no direct eye contact, lulling me out the door and into the car where it was too late for me to turn back. We picked bags and bags of apples, all kinds of apples. There was no hope of us ever eating all the apples we picked but we couldn't stop. The air was crisp and the trees were beautiful. We brought our apples home, jealously guarding our bags and bags of apples from each other, and the kitchen staff let us make caramel apples in the kitchen. We ate apples until we were sick of them.
And I was relaxed and happy, enjoying my friends, and full of apples and full of my very own self. I don't have the slightest idea what I needed to do, and didn't do, that day. But I remember the apples and the air and the leaves and the friends. I know through my life there have been other times when I have chosen the apples. And times when I have chosen the list. The lists may keep me honest but the apples bring me joy.
I have to remember that the lists are my way to pretend I have some say in my life, some control over what happens, and the direction I take. Once the list is written though I can't let it march me around like a drill sergeant, putting me through my paces. Because I don't think I've ever had "Go pick apples and cherish your friends" written on any list, except on the one in my heart.
copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles
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