I’m slowly falling in love with reading and writing. There are days when I want to call out sick just to have time to read, write, feel, relax. After last night’s post, and this morning’s edits, I realized that I’ll have done work related networking functions four nights in a row (Sunday – Wednesday). And because they’re networking functions – they’re never fully seen as work – there won’t be mileage reimbursement, time reimbursement, or any of that. Being on all the time is a challenge. Today is one of those days I’d like to spend not working.
This morning I read an article by CJ Hauser about tinder dating. Actually, it was more about conversation and what it means to be human (passing the Turing test literal and metaphorical). Dating is so much about proving that you’re real and finding someone else who is real. It’s well-written. It’s funny and honest. It’s what I look for in a writer, but also in a partner (not that I’m looking for a partner – those days are either behind me or on hold, not sure which). Hauser’s article made me reflect on the dating I’ve done. It made me think about the four apps I’m currently on (as a guy who has no interest in dating). It made me think about what it is I really want and need right now – authentic connections with real people. It made me miss the relationship I had. B, my ex-fiancee, and I were as authentic and messy and beautiful as a couple could get. It made me think about my own writing – this long lamentation/apology/reckoning that is my blog. Much of my writing is the “don’t know what you have until it’s gone” type of stuff. I can’t always tell if it’s my realizing that, or if it’s an attempt to get B to realize that, an attempt to eventually show someone else how real and human I am, or a warning to everyone else – when you find it, recognize it, keep it, find ways to keep it real, find ways to work through your stuff together, open a path together.
I never got around to writing the post about being seen and being heard. I suppose the entire blog is about that. I hope to go beyond just being seen and heard, I hope to touch on some small part of the human condition. Hauser talks about what it means to be real:
There’s a passage from The Velveteen Rabbit that my sister asked me to read at her wedding. I thought I was up for the task (it’s a children’s book, for God’s sake), but when the time came, I ugly-cried all the way through:
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt… You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit
I want to pretend that I’m cooler than crying about The Velveteen Rabbit but I’m just not. And if I’m honest with myself, this was what I wanted: for someone not only to prove to me that they weren’t a robot, but that they were real, and would make me real, too. Could I put this in my Tinder bio? CJH, 34: looking to keep it real and love off most of your hair till your eyes drop out <3.
I like the quote, and I like Hauser’s take on it. If I could change one thing, it would be to also talk about how we become “unreal.” I think we all start off as pretty real. If we’re among the fortunate ones, we’re loved as children and cared for…. Somewhere along the lines, we become all the things the world puts on to us. We then spend our lives trying to figure out who we really are, and looking for that one person who understands us best – sees us at our shabbiest and thinks we’re beautiful. I come back to the quote from Adrienne Rich that I posted a few months ago (it’s worth repeating):
An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
Delicate, violent, often terrifying. Most of your hair has been loved off… loose in the joints and very shabby. Yep, that about sums up love and being real. It’s a beautiful mess.
When you can appreciate the messiness of it all, you can use words like terrifying, because you also know that it is part of the deepest sense of comfort, security, and bliss that we can experience. B once said to me “These early months have been infused with passion and pain and real exposure to love. even if I don’t seem to like it or run away, it’s the only kind of partnership possible for us.” B understood the messiness. Being real…. it’s the only kinda of authentic partnership for anyone.
I know I’m reading things that reinforce my view – perhaps intentionally so. As I read and write, I’m also reminded of just how wrong I think my ex-friend Jen was in her approach. She often talked about how she and her long-term boyfriend Craig never fought. She often followed those statements with, “but we didn’t have a real deep discussion about it.” I only knew Jen well for a few years. As best as I could tell, I don’t think she was ever willing to get in to the messiness of life with someone else. She always admitted to running and avoiding conflict. I don’t mean to suggest that she’s not a deep person, I just noticed that all of her relationships stayed on a superficial and distant level. they all ended whenever there was a hint of trouble. She always had an escape plan, and she sometimes lamented (or acknowledged) that she avoided the deeper conversations.
For 10 months, I had someone who I was convinced was real, someone who I was certain was willing to go the hard way, someone who was comfortable enough to show me her shabby side, tell me she was broken, trust that we would be messy and real together. That’s a special kind of connection. It goes so far beyond the chemistry and easy banter and desire to explore the world together – it’s the foundation that builds resilience. We were going to do justice to our own complexity.