Ever since getting in to the habit of writing every day, I’m finding that I want to spend more and more time writing. I will always struggle with the self criticism, and I will always struggle with the question – why should anyone care? I can’t answer that question, other than to say, you shouldn’t care, unless you can relate. What I’m finding, is that the words come more easily, there are more things I want to write about, and it’s getting to a point of feeling like I need to write, I want to write. Just yesterday, I had 3 or 4 topics come up that I’d like to explore. This, I think, is a good thing. I can remember sitting in my college writing classes and hearing that writers can’t not write. That concept was foreign to me. For me it was always the opposite – I wanted to write, but without some external pressure (an assignment) I couldn’t. Now if only I could get in to the habit of not having a preamble (or several) to my topics. As an editor, I always said, this is the warm up, you can probably cut all of it.
On my About Page, I mention that this site, and it’s name, was registered years ago as an attempt to slow down – what could be slower than a turtlesloth? (a turlesloth after Thanksgiving dinner). It was a reaction to twitter and social media and the short, fast paced world of the 21st century. I am a reluctant participant on social media. I have a Facebook account, I have twitter and Instagram. I barely use any of them. I’m on Facebook the most, because it’s how I find out about what people are up to. I remember being disappointed that it was how I found out about my best friend’s son being born (I would have loved a call or a text). And I get it, it’s the fastest way to share news with the outside world… So I waffle between acceptance of how it is and wanting to disconnect and insist on a better way.
I’m quickly realizing this could turn in to a post about my observations about social media – and that’s not where I was going. Stop, turn around, redirect. Where I was going is that, my ex-fiancee, B, recently reached out because she didn’t like that I was blogging about her and us. Specifically she didn’t like that it created an identifiable trail to her, she doesn’t want a digital footprint – she doesn’t want to be connected to me. I can understand her desire for privacy, though she has a blog and can’t fully claim that she doesn’t want a footprint. In fact after reading my blog, and I presume my post about how reading her thoughts from way back when and seeing pictures of her and her husband made me both curious and uncomfortable, she added a post (the first in 8 years) saying it was a different life back then. She wants to move forward, but she doesn’t want to deny her past – those desires are strong pulls in all of us. We all want a sense of permanence – if she didn’t want a footprint, she could have just as easily taken her blog down (she also wants to own her story). She, like me, wants to be seen and wants to be heard. Wants to be accepted for who she was and also who she is. She would sometimes tell me I saw her better than anyone else had seen her. She doesn’t want to be denied her yawp.
One of the things that I admired about her was that she wasn’t on social media. When she communicated with friends and family, it was through text or a call. It was an old school way for sure, and one, that I think had a much greater depth to it. Facebook is weird in that’s it’s a passive way to share and consume. You feel connected, but aren’t really connecting. You post, and people either see it or they don’t. They either react or they don’t. There’s a strange give and take, and lots of people become consumed by the number of reactions they garner. A friend, a woman I dated a few years back, recently recommended that I watch episode 5 of Modern Love. She said the guy reminded her of me, and it seems like a situation she could see me in – one of my crazy dating stories from when I dated a lot. In it, the male character is a bit of a lovable doof (me) who, on his maybe second or third date with this woman, ends up needing to go to the hospital. The female character, we learn is obsessed with attention (she live posts their “adventure”). She’s obsessed with how many likes and shares she gets. Social media has tweaked the definition of narcissism.
What does any of this have to do with Thanksgiving of 2018? My ex-fiancee, B, is one of the people I write for – more accurately, I write to understand the story of us. We had a lot of amazing times, we also had our rough patches. I write to get some clarity on those rough patches, or at least what I could have done differently. It’s a part of my growth, part of understanding the new me that is emerging. I was pretty amazing in that relationship, I did lots of things to show her I loved her (I need to remind myself of that from time to time). I also had my faults….
I’m always striving to be more compassionate – and that begins with understanding myself. I would love for her to be a part of that / this discussion. I’ve always believed that she and I could heal each other through understanding far better than we could heal on our own. We all want to be understood, we all want to be forgiven, we all want to connect. We often told each other that nobody understood us as well as we’ve understood each other.
Last Thanksgiving, she and I got in to one of our bigger arguments. We had spent the day with my family. It was good, but a little stressful – these things often are. She got to meet my ex- mother-in-law and my ex- brother-in-law (we still invited them because they had no other family). We spent hours there. I think it was an exhausting day for B. When we got home, we decided to chill a bit. We snuggled up on the couch and put on the TV, I think we started to watch a movie. Part way in, she started to text with friends back home on the west coast. This bothered me, and I got in a bit of a huff. When I get in a huff, I shut down. I get cold and distant. I felt like she was no longer present, and that I was just waiting for her to rejoin me. What she didn’t know at that time (and neither did I), was that this was tapping in to a trigger for me. I had learned to hate being put on hold. I spent the better part of my marriage exactly like that – on that very sofa watching TV completely disconnected from the person watching with me. It had gotten to the point where I was starting to hate TV – I don’t own one or watch it (ironically, neither does my ex). It was the only time my wife and I spent together, and she often spent it multi-tasking on her phone. She was never present. I wasn’t having a flashback, I wasn’t even thinking about my ex, but suddenly being ignored felt like a waste of my time, felt like I was being disrespected. We went from holding hands and being snuggled to B texting and me sorta sitting there waiting for her to finish. It shouldn’t have upset me the way it did. To this day, I can’t quite figure it out. Lots of couples do that type of stuff, and I think that was also part of what bothered me. B and I didn’t check out from each other very often (and what she was doing wasn’t checking out – though at the time, that was the language I used). We were really good at being present. Our therapist once said we were one of the most connected couples she had met. It’s what I thought made us better than most other couples.
We weren’t kind with our words to each other as we argued this out. I don’t remember what was said by whom, but it created a riff that was never fully repaired. We both apologized. I know I tried to explain my side, I don’t know that I did a good job. She brought this fight up a couple of times over the next few months, and cited it as one of the reasons she had to leave the relationship. She said she hates how she has to ask my permission to talk and text with friends. At the time, what I was in-eloquently arguing for was being present – in whatever she did. What B was arguing for was freedom. What she was hearing from me was that she wasn’t allowed to talk to friends (at least not without my permission). Neither of us were able to show that the other was misinterpreting this whole thing. From that point forward, she always asked permission to talk to and text with her friends and family. It was never what I wanted, it wasn’t what I was pushing for. There were lots of times, I said I appreciate the heads up (I like to plan my time), but she doesn’t need my permission (it wasn’t mine to give). I wanted her to have that space – I liked hearing about her friends and family. In a way, we were both asking for the same things. She didn’t understand why I had to check out while she talked with friends. I didn’t understand why she had to check out in order to talk to friends. The reality is, neither of us were checking out. We loved being around each other, and we were trying to find ways to do that, and also do our own things. We were learning to navigate time and space together.
I can think of plenty of times, when this was a non-issue for us. As I reflect back on that day, I also think about what could have been done differently. How could we have short circuited the argument, or avoided it altogether? I can imagine how it could have played out so differently. I can see a scenario where she begins texting with friends, and instead of being put off by the disconnect, I simply say, “hey babes, we’re not really watching this, I’m gonna go up and fold the laundry” (or something like that). And maybe she responds, “ok, I’ll be up in a bit,” or, “no, I’d like you to stay, I’m enjoying being next to you.” Or better yet, I could have not really noticed, and we continued watching the movie, her texting, us being us, a non-event. I don’t know if, in that moment, it could have played out any differently than it did. For the life of me, I can’t quite say why I couldn’t just sit there, why it got under my skin, why there was an issue. It’s hard to say, “babes, you seem distracted” and not sound passive aggressive. Maybe I was saying what I had needed to say so many times all those years ago.
As I’m writing about it now, I’m thinking back to the countless hours sitting numbly watching TV by myself with someone else (my ex-wife) in the room doing exactly the same thing as I was. I’m thinking about how if I had gotten practiced at just going and doing my own thing instead of going along with it, I might have been more practiced at how I handled such a situation. Or if I had been used to temporary disconnections, maybe I’d have been more comfortable with such things. With my ex, we spent the last seven years of our marriage not connecting. The gradual drift started before that, and became permanent – she always had more pressing things to do and other things on her mind. For seven years, I found myself in this weird space of not being connected, which deteriorated in to not expecting to connect, which deteriorated in to not ever wanting to connect and just being alone, waiting. For seven years, I was alone – that’s a lot of muscle memory to overcome. There was no temporary disconnect followed by a loving coming back together. After this argument, I learned a bit about the damage neglect had caused me.
Thanksgiving…. a time to reflect, a time to be thankful. I wish I had been more thankful that day. I had an amazing partner in my life. She had great friends and family. We had the whole world in front of us. Now, I’m thankful for what I had. I’m thankful for having the time and space and comfort to reflect on what’s been lost and how I might move forward. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s what I have – the here and now.
Happy Thanksgiving. Be loving. Be kind.