A few weeks ago…. god, who can even keep track of days or weeks anymore, I wrote a post, “Circle Back.” It was about an ex-girlfriend, D, reaching out, and a woman I know, C, who had gone back to her boyfriend. I ended that post questioning why some of us (I’m certainly in this category) hold on, and others don’t. Some always try, over and over again, and others walk without looking back. Neither approach is right, and somehow the two always seem to find each other (or perhaps get defined that way after the fact). While it wasn’t unpredictable, C posted on Facebook that despite trying her hardest, she is, once again, single.
I want to tell her to take some time off. The last time I made that suggestion, she told me that’s just not who she is. She doesn’t want to do the solo thing – can’t do the solo thing. I appreciate that she “knows” that she needs someone in her life.
I hesitate to suggest solitude because I usually bristle at the people who overemphasize independence – not needing anyone else. The same way I bristle over atheists (and theists) – how can you be so sure? As much as I valued the book Be the Person You Want to Find, my greatest struggle with it has been this notion of the independent self. Much of the book is in favor of developing the self and being ok with being alone. To me, it shouldn’t be either or. I don’t think anyone is ever 100% needy all of the time or 100% independent all of the time (that seems obvious). Some of my recent reading, outside of poetry, have been on this topic: the notion of a self. There’s an interesting article that pits Descartes (I think therefore I am) against Ubuntu (I am because we are). Self vs. community. Dismissive vs. needy. Forever the mediator, I always feel caught in the middle. Both seem essential for our well being.
Furthermore (and maybe a little on the Ubuntu side of things), I think the people we spend time with help define who we are – as do the people we hope to be with. I suspect that we may project one trait to mask the other, and sometimes we demonize one to prop ourselves up (you’re needy and clingy, you’re cold and distant) – the one claiming connection and openness as virtues and the other claiming self-reliance and strength as virtues. Not surprisingly, we often present as the opposite. Read about attachment theory and you see that many dismissive types appear extremely warm and many insecure types appear extremely confident. When those projections break down – or more accurately when the other side (Jekyll or Hyde) also shows up, it leads to the ah-ha feeling of betrayal – that sense of I thought I knew who you were, and then you changed. Maybe both sides were always present.
My ex-friend Jen would often talk about her second marriage – how one day he changed and was just a different person. She never got over the fact that she didn’t see it sooner. While I never told her so, I took issue with the characterization. That’s not to say I didn’t believe her – there are lots of people who are excellent at deception and maybe he was. I just didn’t hear much about how she, too, might have changed. Similarly, I have a friend here in Memphis who very hard on her ex. I don’t know the guy. I’ve seen him once or twice, and he doesn’t look like a nice dude. But, she is relentless in her criticism and never seems to see that maybe he’s doing the best that he can – again, I’m only hearing one side, but I seldom hear what she could be doing better. Relationships are a dance of action and reaction – mutual respect and accountability. Both parties are capable of showing their multitudes, and in the worst circumstances we go in to a defensive reactionary mode. As “misguided” as it is to idealize, it’s equally “misguided” to demonize. I’ve encountered very few saints and even fewer devils in my time. I think we’d do well to strive to see the whole person. Instead, we get caught in a life or death struggle fighting for our own identity, fighting for who we are so certain we are at our core, that the “other” becomes a threat.
Like my friend C, I am fiercely communal. I believe I function better as part of a team. I believe I am at my best with a loving companion. I’ve spent a year alone to prove to myself that I am also independent – that I can find growth on my own and in solitude. And please don’t think that it was some noble pursuit of self-betterment. There were aspects of that, for sure, but I couldn’t have sought someone out even if I wanted to.
I’ve tried to explain to my friend that I was always with someone else until I wasn’t. I spent most of my adult life, from high school until I was 42, in two committed relationships. I never really dated outside of those two people. I then spent two years dating lots of people – in search of someone else and also in search of myself. To some I was needy, to others I was cold and distant. With some I was a ball of energy and with others I was a dud. Some called me an arrogant jerk, some thought I was a weak pushover. Then I found someone who seemed to affirm that it was ok to be all of those things. I found someone who seemed to accept who I was and also challenge who I was.
I went in to that relationship convinced that I wasn’t afraid of being alone – I was just choosing not to be alone. It’s taken me a year to get only a slightly better understanding of that difference and come to the realization that I have very little choice in the matter one way or another. Of course I’m afraid of being alone. Of course I can be just fine being alone. I am both, depending on who is doing the judging.
I began this blog shortly after I accepted the job here in Memphis with a post called transitions and an about me page. I began with a whole lot of questions and a desire to gain a better understanding of who I am. I began with the concept of multitudes. I am the person you chose to see. The path, the blog, has had a lot of wavering (it’s in the title, slow meanderings). That was to be expected. More often than not, it has only brought me back to where I started. A circling back to a person always in transition; a person who contains multitudes; a person who is always framed in the context of time and who exists in the past, present, and future; a person who will often circle back. Since a very young age, I have, at different times, reflected on the saying “the same man never crosses the same river twice.” Both are undergoing constant change – the process of crossing is, in itself, a change to both river and man. Lots of advice on relationships says that you can’t change someone else, shouldn’t want or try to change someone else, etc. etc. For me, that advice is such an oversimplification of the notion of change. It presumes that change has direction or value (positive/negative). It’s why I prefer the Adrienne Rich statement about the truths we reveal to each other – all of these things are already within us, compassion and cruelty, patience and haste, love and hate…. What will we let out of the cage today? What will be coaxed out tomorrow? What sits waiting late at night in the dark? What is happy to greet us with the morning sun?