There was an undertone in my post “commitment, choice, and obligation” that didn’t come through quite the way I wanted it to. In the abandoned paragraphs left crumpled up on a side-street document were concepts and thoughts that might have belonged in that post but I didn’t know how to work them in. At the heart of that thinking and those discarded paragraphs (and three or four additional draft blog posts), was a sense of guilt over how this blog started and a sense of curiosity over what happens next. What happens when… I get another job, live in a different city, settle down with someone new. Ever the optimist, I’m using when instead of if.
In the draft posts, I have a few paragraphs about page view statistics and how every once in a while I’ll see a page view for an old post. This week it was one of my first posts, “Putting It All Out There” and two others from last year “Sometimes on My Mind but in Different Ways” and “The Long and Short of My Tiny Anxieties.” When that happens, I’ll read the old post. Sometimes I’ll think it’s decent and sometimes I’ll feel a little uncomfortable for having written it. I almost always wonder about who it is that’s reading it. Usually, I assume it’s a bot, but sometimes I imagine that it’s an old ex or acquaintance reading my blog as a reminder of why they left or why we’re no longer friends (that’s me not being an optimist). That was another concept I had wanted to work in: how some of us revisit positive memories to reinforce our good feelings and some of us revisit negative memories to reinforce our negative feelings. I can just as easily convince myself I still love you as you can convince yourself that you still hate me – or vice versa. Maybe I’ll save that for a different day…. it seems like fertile ground for a poem.
A funny-ish paragraph that I’ll cannibalize from one of those draft blog posts is:
Quite often, I’ll see a page view for something I don’t fully recognize as my own. With poor titles like “Cooking SoufflĂ© is a Lonely Process,” I can safely assume I was lamenting being alone and cooking for myself, but I can’t rule out that I was trying to draw a comparison between the falling of a soufflĂ© to the collapse of mankind and modern society. Page views on old content tempt me go back and read my old content. Usually, it’s full of hand-wringing and self-absorption. Which may not be that different from my current content. I should probably use that description on my dating profile: somewhat funny, but full of hand-wringing and self-absorbed. I have so much absorption, I’m like an adult diaper… ill-fitting and often full of shit.
Despite my high-minded claims and defenses of my motivations, this blog started as a response to a truncated relationship/engagement. I was tempted to write failed relationship, but I’m trying to be kinder to us because I believe that on many levels we were quite successful and always could have been. Only in terms of happily ever after did we fail, and life’s not over yet. The high-minded claims and early defenses of this blog were usually about practicing my craft, creating space for long-form writing, regaining my attention span, and getting comfortable with being exposed to the world. Those were all true and they were motivating factors. But they were only part of what I was up to. Other driving forces behind my earliest attempts at blogging included continuing the debate that ended that relationship, insisting on being seen and heard, and doing so in a way that I suspected (maybe knew) would get the attention of the partner who left.
I see-sawed back and forth between wanting her attention and wanting to fold my arms and pout, “I don’t need you anyway.” I’m not proud of those less-than-flattering motivations. They make me look petty and petulant – and at times I was (still am or can be). In addition to the Gotye song “Somebody that I Used to Know,” there’s a Stephen Dobyns poem, “Spite,” that I think of when I think of how invisible, cut off, and rejected I felt back then… and how I was almost demanding to be seen and heard. I was, in a sense the person standing in the street yelling at the person who sideswiped my car and drove off. I was the person shouting at someone who shot an arrow into my heart and ignoring the fact that I had an arrow in my heart. The Dobyns poem ends with the lines, “Today, I hang myself / from a greased flagpole / outside your picture window. / Yesterday, I stole your curtains.”
While I may not have stolen her curtains, I built this blog within sight of her picture window knowing (or suspecting) she’d eventually open the curtains. I wasn’t trying to shame her or embarrass her or even win her back (at least not entirely). I was genuinely trying to work through things with a level of compassion and understanding. That process of working through has no road map and few rules. It involved lots of mixed feelings. Part of me felt like if I have to look at and deal with this murder scene, you do too. I had already spent months examining and re-examining my faults and where I could have done better – months trying to apologize and own my role in how things played out. I had plenty of days where I asked myself “who gets engaged and walks out a week after moving in?” I had plenty of days where I was absolutely convinced that she had done this to other people, or was convinced that she didn’t know what she wanted when she said yes, or convinced that she was triggered about her late husband, etc. etc.
And if you know me, you know I’m allergic to the word convinced and I hate pointing fingers. I don’t believe in absolutes (mostly). See what I did there? I shy away from words like always and never in favor of squishier words like sometimes and seldom. So many of those early blog posts were attempts to reconcile what couldn’t be reconciled. So many of those early blog posts were uncomfortable waltzes with reasons or blame or fault. So many of those early blog posts were vacillations between searching for answers and practicing various forms of acceptance. All of those things of which I was convinced about her and her past and us could have been true and I “needed” some sense understanding. I spun myself dizzy in those waltzes. I wanted my intentions to be pure in spirit and I knew they weren’t (at least not 100%). So few things are.
If part of my impetus for starting this blog (at least in those early months) was this reaction to and grappling with a sense of loss, I now wonder what will happen when I find happiness in that domain? What will happen when that happiness hits a bump? Will this new habit of working things out publicly in this space be hard to break? (I don’t really worry about this one – I know when to keep things private). More importantly, what happens if I choose to focus my energies somewhere other than here? In the face of very attractive choices such as being smitten, everything else can feel like an obligation. If my priority is my relationship, my commitments to learning Spanish, or going to work, or writing may begin to feel like they get in the way of what I’m choosing to be most consumed by.
In the years since that relationship, I’ve tried to rediscover this thing that I’ve “enjoyed” ever since I was a child: writing. I don’t fool myself on its value or merit – it’s mostly masturbatory. Nevertheless, ever since feeling its cool, cathartic balm, I’ve struggled to find the balance between work, writing, exercise, and my other commitments. I also know how disruptive “newness” can be – be it the newness of a job, place, passion, or person. Settling in, no matter where or with whom will always be dance of compromise and patience. I suspect, to some degree, I’m looking for that external disruption – which may be influencing my desire to go anywhere other than somewhere familiar. I almost feel the need to shake everything up and let the priorities sort themselves out – see where my attention naturally flows and make peace with what gets put on the shelf for a different day.
But the undercurrent to that blog post on choice and obligation goes deeper than that. If seeing my ex on a dating site triggered a sense of fondness, I couldn’t rule out that it could have done the same for her… and clearly we’re both still single. When things ended, she was adamant about never ever ever never never ever ever coming back ever – and I believe(d) her. I very intentionally took a different approach. I tried to say I’d be a fool to think I know what the world has in store for me. I’ll go back if it feels right and I won’t if it doesn’t. The unspoken question I was grappling with the other day in my post about commitment and obligation and choice was how different am I now compared to back then? Are my priorities different? I’ve spent the past few years alone in my own head and here on this blog. Days of deep contemplation and this writing project have become a part of who I am. But to what degree? Would I stop all of this for someone else? How much does this writing thing matter? Am I capable of losing myself in someone else again? Would I want to? Is it necessary? Is it healthy? Would I tear this whole project down if asked to? Would I have anything to write about without this undercurrent of “strife” and nagging mental anguish? How might my attention shift?
I can remember in the first days of that break up I would text her almost begging her to reconsider and suggesting that I’m capable of giving her more space. She’d reply by saying that my text only proves I haven’t changed. I sometimes wonder if she reads this blog and says, “yep, still hasn’t changed.” I sometimes wonder if she asked me to take certain things down (which she did at one point and I reluctantly complied) would I fight it now? I don’t think so – I’m not as attached to the greased flagpole as I was back then. I don’t care about the arguments the way I did back then. I always wanted to be seen and heard by her because I felt like she saw and heard me better than most people have – but I don’t “need” it in the way I felt I needed it then. Ironically, now, I’m the one worried about having enough space in whatever comes next.
Almost all relationships (with family, partners, friends, and self) are a delicate balance between commitment, choice, and obligation. Relationships require duty to this other person balanced with duty to the self. Good relationships foster a desire for mutual happiness and well-being. Healthy relationships (I think) require growth in ways that are complementary (and sometimes painful). It’s why I like the definitions of love that I’ve discovered and quoted often over these past few years of blogging: Adrienne Rich, Joni Mitchell, bell hooks, M. Scott Peck.
The danger in all of this love stuff is that we begin to seek validation in these other people. It’s inescapable. Effective dependency necessarily means that we get a sense of fulfillment and worth from being in the relationship. We get used to and come to rely on this person who has our back. We begin to trust and we also begin to discover the depths of disappointment. When we lose that external validation, we lose a sense of who we are. Many of my early blog posts were wobbly attempts to get validation from this other person while re-learning how to provide that validation for myself. There was love and defiance mixed in to those early posts. There was a desire to be seen and to hide.
The richness of the Dobyns poem is in what he’s able to accomplish with so few words, the layers he’s able to achieve. Flagpoles are designed to prominently and proudly display those symbols we hold most dear. A greased flagpole, which is difficult to climb, is the perfect symbol for hanging something as garish, ugly, and utterly human as spite. Curtains are the thresholds which we control, unless, of course, that control is taken from us. Love, in many respects is a struggle for and negotiation of control. People frequently describe falling in love as losing all control, losing their mind. All of the narrator’s actions in the poem (that anthropomorphized feeling of spite) require forethought and exemplify this deeply human need and desire to be seen (literally) – to have our existence on display and validated as it hangs on the flagpole where it isn’t easily removed and from which we can’t easily avert our eyes.