More of the Same

More of The Same

[I didn't do one of these for my birthday, and I guess I haven't written much in a pretty long time anyway. So! Here!]

2018’s been a weird little year. A year mostly of stabilization, after a lot of change. I feel like I’ve been running since I was 10; 3 years ago I finally starting collapsing. And now, I’m breathing a little and learning how to walk all over again.

It’s all pretty basic stuff. I have a pretty stable job. Parts of it I enjoy a fair bit (mostly the ones involving physical labor or distracting my coworkers from the work they should be doing [a role I have enjoyed since infancy]). I traveled a bit; I dated someone for a few months [my longest anything since starting grad school].

I’m more grounded. I have a couple of good friends. Which, honestly, is so so nice. I’ve always had good fortune to know many great people. But, last Friday, I just hung out with my housemate and we talked about our lives for awhile and then she said we were getting too serious and needed to laugh some so she farted and I died and it was just so *nice*. I have a coworkerfriend I eat lunch with every day and a coworkerfriend I talk about video games and play Overwatch with. And a few area-friends I see every once in awhile and we do fun things.

All pretty mundane stuff. But, for me, it feels really new. Like, I have some pretty healthy stable relationships. I talk to them, *about myself*. Not too neurotically, and with some restraint. I listen and respond to them. We ebb and flow. It feels nice. And sometimes I feel sad, that I haven’t been as successful at doing this with so many wonderful people I’ve met over the years. But I’m glad I’m starting now.

Other things have been pretty hard. A lot of my evenings, I just don’t do anything. Not even Netflix or video games. I just sit there and wonder what there really is *to do*. I have a strong yearning to do something, to make something, to go somewhere or live something. But I don’t know where to direct any of it, so it just kind of… goes in circles. Like I’m starving for something I can’t seem to find, and so am eating myself instead.

I think about things I wish I’d done differently. Sometimes productively, sometimes not. I see people with babies and careers and joie de vivre. And much of it still seems pretty impossible.

But I took an improv class, which was *amazing* (part 2 starts next week). I was honest with myself when dating that person and made some decisions with my mental health (and not my desperation for connection) as my first priority.

And when I visited home, I went on a walk through the woods with my mother. And I met her friends and swept her floor. And when I visited my grandmother (who lives alone in her 90s), I asked to see her wedding photos. And I saw my father at age 2 and my grandparents starting their own lives together. And she seemed genuinely happy I cared and genuinely happy she could revisit these times too.

So there are downs and there are ups. And I have so many things I want to change. And while some moments, I feel defeated by all the things I haven’t done, there are others where I am grateful (like a child who may not know where the next meal comes but is thankful to have one now).

***

I know New Years are generally about resolutions. But honestly, most of the things I want aren’t things I can “pledge to do.” I want more intimacy and consistency in my relationships. Despite my friendships, I do feel pretty lonely and want to have better connections. Figuring out how I’m playing into that disconnect is pretty hard and just work I’ll have to keep on doing. I want to have a more positive attitude and more energy to do more things. I want to watch a lot of movies and have a lot of conversations. I, mostly, want to enjoy life while feeling like I’m moving forwards in a meaningful way.

So, I dunno, pledge to keep going to therapy? lolol

Honestly, I guess, if I’m really looking at what has helped me feel better, I kind of want to resolve to keep trying to just do what I want?

I mentioned going to improv, and what was so great about it was just how much I liked it. I got to be emotive and creative, and I mostly just wished I could keep doing it every day all the time. I, predictably, had some fantasies about where that might go. But I was also just like, “I like this. Yay!”

I’m going to take a class on Gloria Anzaldua with some grad students and other faculty/staff. Because I want to. I’m going to take out trash and rearrange furniture at work, because it’s honestly great to be physically active and not have to think sometimes. Mostly, I just want to find more things where I think “I want to do this!”

So maybe that will continue to be my task. I’m pretty good at reflection and soul-searching and pushing myself to change and improve (to a FAULT). I’m just now learning how to enjoy life.

I don’t know. Here’s to that?

Resolution

Change is hard. It’s hard to shake off the comforts of complacency, hard to take risks, hard to get hurt. It’s hard to fail. To fail and then to keep trying and to fail again and maybe eventually succeed a little bit and fail again and then… It’s hard to know we have limited time, limited abilities. It’s hard to compromise. Hard to try.

But, if I’m really honest, it’s hard because there are not easy answers. If change was as simple as saying “I want to be different,” we would do it. We would change in a heartbeat. We wouldn’t even need to “change,” we would just… be.

But change is hard because in the face of every new direction is a swarm of ambivalence. Part of me wants to message that cute girl on OKC. But part of me is afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t reply. If none of them reply. Worried about what it will say about me, worried about what it means for my life. And then, part of me is afraid she’ll actually respond back! What unique brand of horrors that would be. She might like me. I might like her. We might… god, I don’t even know.

So it is with yoga (and awkwardly flailing about in a room filled with limber angels). And meetups (EVERYBODY IS A PERSON AND I’M A ROBOT). And jobs (you want me to do WHAT for HOW LONG with WHOSE TAX DOLLARS?!).

It’s fear, sure. Of failure. Of success. Of the incredibly stilted pain in between. Of actually trying and worrying about what you might find when you do. Of not being ready, of never being ready. Of everything. It’s the accumulated sadness of decades of disappointment. It’s anger and hurt you buried so deep you hoped it would never rise again, only to find that it’s right there in the way. New faces on ancient monsters born again.

***

But there’s another side, too. This past week, I returned to Knoxville for Christmas. And while I was there, I took a little bit to visit my old elementary school. I walked around the fields we played in, the space where the Playground That Probably Should Have Killed Us once stood. I saw old classrooms, old ball courts. Imagined myself back there, 20 years ago.

And the thing is, it was so different than I remembered. The field where we ran the mile, which had seemed so daunting then, was now so *small*. The huge play spaces we ran in were cramped. The kickball court was half a parking lot. I now noticed the neighborhood it was built in. I remembered safety patrol and friends I’d forgotten and what felt like agonizing waits to be dropped off in the morning which couldn’t have been more than minutes now. I climbed a fence that would have been a wall.

And I did the same with my middle school and high school and college.

I even visited my dad, for the first time in years. And I was still scared. And I was still upset. But I wasn’t as scared. And he wasn’t as bad. And he said some nice, sympathetic things about me. How I wasn’t a disappointment. How he appreciated the choices I’d made. I got to see my old room. And how small it now was. I found my old stuffed animals. Even left a few behind, to keep the place safe.

And I kept on seeing how things were different. How I wasn’t a child anymore. How the people and situations I was in weren’t as I remembered them. How I was bigger, the world was smaller, life less mean. How I could make choices now I could never dream of then.

And none of that is to say that it was great. I still had some distinct periods of wanting to go back to Seattle and swim and swim into Lake Washington until the shore was a dream and I could swim no more.

But it was new. And different. And hinted at a world of possibility terrifying and so so beautiful. That maybe failure wasn’t as bad as I remembered it. Maybe success wasn’t either. Maybe love and touch could be endured. Could be lost and still found again. Maybe I was not so powerless, so broken. Maybe none of us are.

So when I think of New Years and times for new beginnings, I think not of willpower and discipline, but of change. Of reframing the old, envisioning the new. Of persistence while faltering. Of doing things different because I want to. And letting that be my guide.

Maybe all that will mean is going to yoga for a few weeks before I get so self-conscious I can’t stand it. Or it’ll mean messaging two or three people on OKC before disabling my account again and idly wondering “Hmm, what *is* X up to?....” for another year. But maybe it’ll mean more. And many other new things too. And maybe no matter how any of those things go, it’ll be ok. Who knows? Maybe it’ll mean picking myself up from disappointment and trying again. And again and again and again.

At least til 2019. ;)

Last night, I went to a sex party.

I guess, technically, it was a kink party. But mostly it was sex.

I’d never been to something like that before. And I guess, seeing glimpses of such things in movies, I felt like it should have been… something more than it was. Like it should have been dangerous. Or radical. Or perverse. But mostly, it was just people hanging out, and some of them were having sex. And I didn’t really feel much of anything. Some curiosity, certainly. Detached, intellectual curiosity. And, on some deeper intangible level, longing. Not that I could be doing what they were doing, but that I could feel what they felt, could want what they want. That I could just mold myself into a normal person who felt ok through force of will alone.

I thought about that. And then I saw Tennessee’s football coach got fired today. And I thought about how much Tennessee fans care about winning. And about how winning is something we have such ambiguous control over. How in a game like football, one team always wins and another always loses. And there are a million things you can do to try to make that win happen. But, ultimately, it’s not something you can *make* happen. You put in the work, do your best, and then… hope.

And I thought about all these sexual assault conversations. And, like I usually do, I wondered what happens in the minds of the perpetrators. I wonder if they’re happy. Can’t imagine that they’re happy. Trying to force something to happen that you can’t control. That even if the bodies go through motions, the absence of love, of desire, the trying to insert control where none can be, it has to corrode the soul. Or, at the very least, echo inside an emptiness already there.

I thought about a spoken word piece at the sex party. About a woman talking about a new male partner who couldn’t maintain an erection. How, in her story, she validated the man’s experience, said “feelings are not an on and off switch.” How it was ok with her that what is Supposed to Happen, didn’t happen. How not forcing what wasn’t there was just… ok.

And I thought about a metaphor I’ve been sitting with a lot. Of sea turtles hatching. How the mother lays 100 eggs, and they all hatch at once. Minutes old, they all race to the sea. And they race, because they are not alone. Many are caught, many are eaten. Minutes old, babies in the absolute sense of the word. Without protection, thrown haphazardly into life and racing from the moment they first see sky. How do we make sense of it? Who lives, who dies? Do the ones who live just Want It More? Do they work harder? Are they naturally better, stronger, faster, smarter? Do we blame the ones who don’t? They did not fight hard enough? They, only minutes old, fatally faltered? Do we blame the gulls? The dogs? Who eat the turtles, crack the turtles, seeing in this bright new soon-to-be-broken life a day’s more life of their own?

And I think about how we are those turtles. How we don’t get to choose when or how we’re born. How some of us have warm homes and loving parents; how some of us are thrust into cold and barren beaches, birthed by the very gulls who eat us. How some have wealth and status and some have access to education and some are women born a thousand years ago and some are undocumented immigrants born today and some are happier than the rich and powerful turtles born to gulls who were once turtles born to gulls who were-

And I think how the ambition of humanity, the beauty and the tragedy of this human experiment, is that we were all born on that beach and we are striving towards a world where we want every turtle to live and thrive, every single one, how we want to create a world where we all have what we want and need, and how that world is so different than the only one we’ve had.

On Suicide

A few weeks ago, I went to a meditation group in Seattle. It was pretty similar to other meditations I’ve been to: a period of guided/silent meditation followed by a talk afterward. I felt out of place for a lot of it; in the same way I feel out of place in many yoga spaces or out of place most everywhere since I moved from Tennessee, as if everyone around me is more polished and put together than I’ve ever been or probably ever will be. But it was ok. Most things are ok.

During the talk, the facilitator spoke of 3 basic desires that lead to suffering in the Buddhist tradition; specifically, this week, she spoke of the desire to not exist. She spoke of drinking coffee, to make bad feelings go away. She spoke of freeze responses, of her toddler just deciding to stop moving in protest (when he could neither run nor fight). She spoke of fears of public speaking, of wanting vehemently to disappear to make the bad feelings go away.

To me, it all felt… kind of cute. Like, I guess, maybe those are the connections most people might make to the topic that, in retrospect, makes sense. I, of course, didn’t think of most of those things. I thought of dissociation. Of doing whatever you have to do to contort your mind, your body, your words into however they need to be to get whatever horrors around you to somehow go away. I thought of suicide. Because, of course, what is more in keeping with a desire for nonexistence than the action so many people take to make that actually happen?

The thought seemed, in some ways, unwelcome in this space. I’m not really sure why. I guess, when you’ve thought of suicide as much as I have, when a significant portion of your professional work has been about suicide, it feels normal. And that’s probably not true for most people. But, me being me, I thought about it. It seemed on topic. And I was genuinely curious because I had never really given thought to how Buddhism might regard suicide. So I asked.

To my surprise, the facilitator rolled with the question. She looked at me, and she said “In short, they’d say it wouldn’t change much. They believe the soul exists to complete its task of ending suffering and reaching enlightenment and that when we die we pretty much just pick up where we left off. So, in effect, suicide wouldn’t make much of a difference at all.”

I am not usually a person who is surprised. But, when she said this, I was stunned. For 15 years, suicide has been my “get out of life free card.” It’s my go to when things are bad. It’s my escape, my fantasy. And here this person was, saying that it wouldn’t change anything.

To be honest, I think she’s right.

***

I say this not because I necessarily believe in reincarnation (although, I mean, who knows?). But because it really asked me to look at life not as something I’m trying to figure out if I want “to do but as something I have to figure out how to make the best of. Hamlet asked “to be or not to be?” But the facilitator’s response seemed to ask instead “if we have to be, then what?”

The short answer is “I have no fucking idea.”

The longer answer, though, is that it’s really pushed me to change my approach to life. How do I make the best of things? How do I work through my pain and my past, and actually come out the other side?

What does that even look like?  

I’m not really sure. But that’s my current project. To look at loneliness, to look at boredom, to look at my complicated relationship with other people and work to make them better. Because, ultimately, that’s pretty much all we can do.

31

For much of this past year, I've reflected a lot on my life. I think stories are important; particularly the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And, when I think of the story of my adult life, I keep going back to one specific period where I faced a turning point. At the time, it was a challenge that resulted in some really significant changes, probably the biggest I've ever made. But it was also an opportunity that I think I missed. And, in many ways, I feel like I'm being given that opportunity again now. And this time, I want to get it right.

***

In 2009-2010, I was working on my Masters. I was 23 and, until that year, things had been pretty stable. I had only ever really been a student, and I had done pretty well at most of the things I tried. I'd made almost straight A's, been pretty active throughout college (writing for the paper, working on a speaker's committee, doing some side jobs), and I had a really kind girlfriend. I had, of course, had a lot of mental health issues, especially in the teen years prior. Yet for a few years, things were manageable. And it was kind of nice.

But, of course, I got older and approached graduation. And it came time to leave the safe embrace of school, my comfort zone, where I'd always pretty securely been near the top. And I knew. I knew things were going to change. And I knew it was going to suck. And I felt like I had no power to stop it.

In retrospect, it wasn't really a surprise. I had wanted to be a teacher, certainly. But my people skills were pretty limited. I think I liked the “idea” of teaching more than the reality, and even then I mostly chose it because I (inexplicably) hoped it was something I couldn't fail too badly at. Not great reasons. But then, I wasn't really in a great place. I knew I had pretty bad social anxiety and was bad at speaking in front of people. I knew I had a rocky history with depression. I knew a lot of things. But at the time, I didn't feel like I had a choice. I was terrified to start teaching, but I was equally terrified of most of the world. Everything in my life seemed like an invitation towards failure. I had found some peace inside a pretty loving relationship, but I was (unknowingly) codependent and pretty suicidal on my own. Most days of my life, I found it almost impossible to get out of bed unless I absolutely had to. I felt isolated, self-hating. And it was all pretty much just normal. I didn't really have “depressive episodes;” I had a depressive life. Up til that point, I'd managed to somehow hold it together. But it was tenuous. Just waiting for something to change.

And then it did. I graduated undergrad. I started my master's program. I began to teach. And then I fell apart. I was terrified. Terrified to teach, terrified because I felt I had no other choice. I started panicking, I started being almost catatonic. It got so bad my girlfriend broke up with me. And when she left, I kind of just... shattered. Work was hell. My personal life was hell. I felt like the entire world was falling apart. It's probably the worst I've ever felt in my life, and I hope I never, ever have to feel that way again.

So I made some changes. The lesson I learned from that year was this: up til that point, I'd done what I was 'supposed to do.' Not necessarily what I wanted to do. But what it felt like I was 'supposed' to do.' So I changed that. I quit teaching. I decided to transition genders. And I decided to apply to Counseling grad programs (I'd always really wanted to be a therapist, I just felt I was too fucked up to be able to help anyone).

And then I hoped for the best.

The thing is, it wasn't really a bad call. People talk all the time about different things that can change your life. Doing things because you want to instead of because you're “supposed” to is a pretty big step away from depression. Counseling, at first, felt like a great fit. I was very familiar with and comfortable with pain; working in that field seemed natural to me. So too, transition was a huge moment of self-actualization, both because I felt more congruent with my self but also because it required me to take a lot of risks of disappointing people and to see that I could actually survive it. I made some big, well-intentioned changes.

Good decisions, with the right idea. Just limited ones.

The thing of it is, I did made some progress and change. But ultimately, I kicked the can down the road. I covered up the core. Because what I *didn't* do was this:

I didn't explore my depression. I didn't try to understand it, what made it work, what activated it, figure out what I could do about it.

I didn't explore my social anxiety. Or my intense neediness in and for relationships.

I didn't try to understand how my past affected my present.

I didn't try to connect with others experiencing similar things.

I didn't learn how so much of what I was experiencing was about feelings, large hidden disproportionate feelings that were laying havoc upon my internal and external life.

And, most importantly, I didn't take time off to figure things out. Almost immediately, I started researching and applying to graduate schools (without having a clue what I was doing). I had crashed. But instead of looking at the crash and why, I kept running. And running. And running. Hoping that this time, things would be different. That this time, somehow, someway, they might actually work out.

In short, they did not.

In some ways, that's not fair. Grad school forced me to grow and mature in many ways. I made some wonderful friends, had some fantastic mentors, grew into myself much more. I am thankful to have had as positive an experience as I did, all told.

But all that stuff I listed above? Yeah. That didn't go away.

Instead, I buried it. In fantasy, in hope. I buried it and told myself that if I just “got through,” if I just survived and reached some promise land things Would.Get.Better. And, well, they didn't.

Enter 30.

I moved across the country. I was finally done with grad school. I had a pretty good (albeit temporary) job. And I was miserable.

Every week felt like one more crushing realization after another. I was alone. I was scared. Hopeless. I got down to 110lbs in December. I could barely function at work. I felt like I was dying and out of control, every day. And that I had no way to stop it.

It sucked. So bad.

I felt exactly like I had before grad school. I felt like I was 23 again. Miserable, alone, with no prospect for the future. I felt like I hadn't made any progress at all.

It was very bad.

But, somehow, amidst my very familiar flailing and pain, I started doing somethings I hadn't done before, too. I started focusing on myself. I started talking about my actual problems in therapy. I started confronting my hopeless and continuing to try anyway. I started trying to really, truly change.

Continuing from the previous year, I kept going to Al-Anon meetings. I found another great group in Tacoma, Adult Children of Alcoholics, and I went there too. I read their 'Big Red Book.' I read 'The Body Keeps the Score.' I read 'Trauma and Recovery.' I started slowly putting together the pieces of my story. Once, a giant ball of horror. Increasingly, an understandable narrative. Given who I was, where I was, who I was with, could it have turned out any other way? It made sense. Awful sense. Unfair, painful, tragic sense. But it made sense.

And I started owning my part. So you've been single for 7 years? Well, there are some easy answers (you're trans, you're ugly, you're horrible). And there are some hard ones. You're tortured, and that often scares people. You have a lot of pain and a lot of hate, and no matter how much you try to hide or disown it, it's written on every ounce of you. You give up easily. You are not genuine with your feelings, making emotional connection difficult. Your strategy of clamping down and toughing through your emotions works for survival but is terrible for the ambiguous, playful, relaxed nature of a successful date.

You are responsible for your life. You only get 1 of them. You won't live forever. And you lose more of it every single day.

These things are terrifying. But, as I sat with them and started to work through them ("having tea with my demons" as a friend called it), I found something else: they were liberating too.

For the first time, I had to ask myself some very hard questions:

What's important to you?

What kind of life do you want to lead?

What kind of person do you want to be?

How are you doing this or not doing this?

What can you do to change it?

At first, as I've asked myself these questions, I've hated the answers. Hated my dishonesty, hated my withdrawal, hated my control (or lack thereof).

But, increasingly, as I've started to understand where it comes from, I've started coming up with different answers. I've started saying, 'Hey, I want to be a genuinely honest, kind person. I don't want to live my life afraid. I don't want old sadness to hold me back. I want to be open. I want to be connected. I want to look people in the eye. I don't care if I'm not special. I just want to feel good and free.'

I wish I'd done this when I was 23. When I really truly crashed the first time and had a chance to take stock and be more intentional about everything. I wish I'd let my life unfold, reprioritized, and really tried to make some changes not just to the life I lived me but to the ways I was living it. But I am fortunate enough to still be alive. Fortunate enough to have found some programs, found some philosophies, found some healing that is helping me move in the right direction. Fortunate enough to think there's still time. That change really can happen. If I can let it.

So that's 31. 30 was crash. 30 was autopsy. Painful, needed breaking. Burning down the house. 31 is building a better foundation. It's envisioning a better life, and devoting myself to living it. I don't expect it to be fast or easy. If anything, it'll be a lifelong struggle. I have doubts. I see so many people with families and careers, and it deeply saddens me that I don't really have either. I so often envy those people their joy, their life.

But as one of the wise people in my Al-Anon program says, “Happiness is an inside job.” You can have the world and hate life. But you can also have very little, and feel so grateful for every bit. So, here's to 31 and finally trying to figure out how to live a life worth living.

On Love, On Change, On Hope

In seventh grade, I had my first crush.

Her name was Christine Strout and she was the smartest girl I knew.

She had orange hair, and I remember sitting behind her in Math class, thinking about how pretty she was. Back then (meaning, before high school), it was pretty well-established that I was the smartest person around. It wasn’t something I bragged about or even mentioned (even then, I think I considered intelligence more of a “genetic lottery” than anything else, and I didn’t see much to be proud of for natural luck). But it was there. And then, there was her.

I don’t remember much about her (or that time in general). I do remember the thrill I’d get when she would answer questions in class and I would be genuinely surprised by what she said. I remember dreaming. And, I am pretty sure, I remember never talking to her. At some point later that year, she moved away. And that was that.

***

This has not been an uncommon pattern.

For as long as I can remember, love has been practically the only thing I’ve cared about. I have gone through the motions of school, careers, extra-curriculars, this that and the other, but it’s all mostly been that: going through the motions. I’ve wanted love. Love, love, love.

And so, given that, it might be surprising that I’ve had so little of it. I didn’t have my first kiss until 18. Had one long-term relationship from 20-23. Had a few flings and one “star-crossed lovers” episode. And that’s about it.

Since then, for about six years, there’s been almost nothing. For so long, I’ve tried to figure out what to make of it. Am I unattractive? Is it because I’m trans? Am I fundamentally damaged? Too intense? Too _______? It’s almost infuriating, because unlike work and school, it’s largely outside of your control. You can make yourself work harder, you can study more, you can strategize. But with other people, none of this works. You can’t make someone like you. You can’t force love. It’s perhaps the strongest feeling of powerlessness I know. And, for most of my life, it’s kind of ruined me.

***

Then, sometime last year, I turned 30. Existential crises aren’t exactly new to me; sometimes I think my life has pretty much just been one long, existential crisis. But even still, leaving Knoxville and turning 30 was like a punch in the face.

In many ways, it was a wakeup call. I looked around at my life. And what I saw was horrific. I’d just completed a PhD in a field I didn’t really like, doing work that often felt tortuous. I’d been single forever. And although I’d travelled thousands of miles, I still felt haunted by everything I left behind.

What’s more, I saw I was significantly alone in this. At Utah, I was part of a four person cohort [seven, if you add the social work interns]. And, each day for the year, I got glimpses into their lives. They had doubts, certainly. Some days were worse than others. But what I mostly saw were hard-working people who had supportive functional relationships, passions outside of work, and generally decent self-esteem. They were not superheroes. But they were resilient and their lives were rich.

Many of them have gotten or are getting married. They’re thinking about kids, thinking about building upon careers they’re interested in and have worked hard to build, and are excited about all the different places they might go and live. And, again, they weren’t perfect or always cheerful or anything. They had issues and concerns like anyone. But the degree of the disparity still kind of shocked me. I was and had been hopeless, loveless, aimless for most of 15 years at that point. I don’t think I’d really realized until then just how much of a toll my depression had taken. I knew I was depressed; had been depressed (probably since the days of Christine Strout). But I was beginning to see what depression was. And what it could look like if I wasn’t.

***

So, I suffered a lot that year. A whole lot. Every day felt like a Hell I couldn’t escape. But eventually, I suffered so much I decided I wanted to stop suffering. So, I started trying to make some changes. And I started trying to learn.

When you’ve been in a rut for a long time, it’s easy to feel defective. Part of depression, at its core, I think, is a learned helplessness that says “you have no power to change.” And feeling that way, that nothing you can do can help, you really do start to believe that it must just be you. You must be wrong. Inescapably wrong.

But I had suffered so much, was so sick and tired of being so unhappy all the time, that I started learning anyway. I started seeking help. And one place I sought, in particular, was Al-Anon.

Al-Anon probably deserves its own separate post. But I will say this: I grew up in a dysfunctional family. A family divided, a family full of denial, resentment, animosity barely hidden (or, every so often, raging into full view). I did not see people talk to each other, work through problems, be genuinely affectionate. Instead, I saw people say things to “the people they cared about the most” that you would never say to your worst enemy. I saw manipulation, exploitation. I saw people go insane, caustically, violently insane. And I saw people pretend that it never happened or, even better, tell themselves it would never happen again (with no clear plan for that other than wishful thinking and good ole-fashioned “we’ll just try harder).

Growing up, I learned to focus on others. Managing my parents was my full-time job, so focusing upon their thoughts and feelings was core to my survival (and the only control I felt I had in a fundamentally unstable and unsafe environment). But in Al-Anon, I learned about focusing upon my self. I learned that we are probably the most significant force in the ways our lives go. I learned, as our facilitator would say each week, that “so much depends upon our attitudes.” And I learned that even if you don’t drink alcohol or do drugs, you can still have addictions. Even if it’s not a material substance, you can still be enamored with the promise of something outside yourself that will, ultimately, set you free. And that that hope, however understandable, can be the most insidious thing of all.

***

So what does this have to do with love?

Well, remember when I said all I wanted was love? That’s a pretty big sign right there.

Love, for me, has always been that escape. If I can think of someone else, I don’t have to think about myself. I don’t have to worry about myself; make decisions for myself; feel my pain, tolerate my fear, own my past. Love can let us disappear. And, for me at least, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.

It is a fantasy. The kind of fantasy a person comes up with when they feel they have no alternatives. A rescue fantasy, an escape fantasy. When you feel so weak, so powerless that it feels as if only your only hope is someone else coming to save the day, of course that’s what you’ll want. You’ll wish for them. You’ll wait for them. Someday, your princess will come, in her suit of armor with a sword of fire, and she will stop the horrors of the world and you can spend your life focused upon her.

And, again, this fantasy comes from an understandable place. I’m hardly alone in holding it.

But, at the end of the day, it is a fantasy.

And, as I have unpacked it, I’ve started learning some things.

For one, I’ve learned that there are lots of reason for love. There are some people who are afraid to live alone. There are some people who want to save or be saved. There are some people who feel perfectly content apart from all of that noise and fury.

And then there are some people who just like hanging out with somebody else. Some people who don’t seek tons of validation, who don’t need a partner, but who enjoy their partner’s company, who find that while their partner is not their whole life, their love enriches it all the same the same.

In fact, I asked an internet group I’m in about this. And one person said that if her partner died, she would be sad to lose that person. She believed she could be happy in and out of a relationship. But she loved her partner, and would just be sad about losing him. Others described partners as one sphere of many, as a source of joy independent of the sorrows and excitements of other aspects of their live. Some said they’d always want a partner. Some said they’d mostly felt pretty ok without them.

And, to me, this was a revelation. I never knew how someone could be happy outside of a relationship. I never knew how someone could view a relationship, could view love as a complement to life’s joys but not a prerequisite. It felt so secure, so healthy. And it made me want to love differently.

So, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to love honestly. I’m trying to work on my insecurities, to feel comfortable with myself whether or not I have a relationship. I’m still not very good at it (it’s been a particularly deep well to climb out of). But sometimes, I can see a vision. A vision of me with my own feelings, my own identity, walking next to someone I love, enjoying sharing this part of the journey with them not because they complete me, not fearing rejection or abandonment, not feeling like I need to do something or be someway to keep them liking me. But instead, I see me feeling comfortable with myself and, as a result, feeling all the more able to trust and enjoy someone else.

I don’t know if I’ll get there. I still often feel ugly/unattractive, defective, evil, creepy. I think there’s a pretty decent chance I’ll never find love again.

But all the same, it’s a nice goal, a nice vision. And I just have to hope that, if I keep putting in the work, I might someday realize it.

Wouldn’t that be lovely?