note.
when we met i was still in my twenties – the end of them, granted, but still – and i was new to portland and new to the idea of setting up space somewhere and new to the interest in sharing that space with someone else. for the first time i had an idea of a direction i wanted to head in. up to that point i’d been kind of day-by-day. i had found that day-by-day was not conducive to the setting up and sharing of space.he says a little mantra that goes like this. free me from suffering, and from desire, which is the root of suffering. but when we met i was full of desire. more accurately, i was full of a particular kind of desire: not the nonspecific desire i’ve historically been full of for any experience and feeling, but a desire for a certain set of experiences, and for a certain set of feelings. i wanted to try doing things and feeling things with someone else.
and, true to mantra, this desire has brought me a measure of suffering. not the real kind that lots of people live with every day, but enough to make itself known. enough to require attention.
he must be something, if you’ve stuck with it for so long a friend said to me on the phone this weekend. which is true. i think he’s really something. i have met a lot of people and it has been my experience that few of them share the interest i have in trying things out all the time – going to norwegian folk dancing night or moving to rural oregon. it has been my experience that, in relationships, this is just something i have to eat. i end up hearing no all the time – because there are lots of good reasons not to go norwegian folk dancing or move to rural oregon – and eventually i just try hard not to ask.
operaman, on the other hand, strikes me as someone who wants to say yes. alas, we happened to meet just as he was saying a huge yes to something completely crazy and fabulous, something that had nothing to do with me. and now he's following through. and it seems like that commitment has exhausted his reservoir of yes. he wants to do it completely and right, and there is nothing left over for late nights or early mornings or impromptu adventure. there is nothing left for doing what feels unwise or unwieldy.
and how can i judge it? because it comes from exactly the very same piece of him that i admire so fiercely.
but i am so small by now that i hardly recognize myself, so sad sometimes that i am missing the most marvelous fall. and sad is ok, sad is what happens with loving someone. but small doesn’t suit me, and i find myself acting ugly as a substitute for large. we work with what we have.
i wish he would make this as big as i want it to be. i wish we could try things together, and celebrate them when they are successful, and support each other when they aren’t. that sounds to me like everyone getting what they want. but how can i expect him to risk such an important undertaking, in which he's already invested so much, on something as unreliable as another person? i do, of course. i’ve been holding out for it to happen, trying to prove my prescience by my presence. but my presence is increasingly pissy and unconvincing. i’ve undermined my own point.
i’m in my thirties now – my early thirties, but still – and i’ve made peace with my desire. it turns out that it’s not a desire for him but for us, and us isn’t looking like an option. maybe one day it will be. it doesn’t feel like something i can influence at this point. so it’s time to hang out with my suffering, and make peace with it, and figure out what’s next. maybe i can go back to realizing that what’s next is the rest of this afternoon, and what’s next after that is tomorrow.
posted by tortaluga @ 4:14 PM
3 Comments:
aw, son...
at some point, you have to figure out what your plan is, and accept the course that it dictates. if it comes time to change the plan, know that you gave it your all. Which you have...
Sorry to dispense my advice in public.
you, me, and three friends from school is hardly "public."
you're right, time for a change of plan. i just really liked this plan. and man, you try so hard at something... you just want it to work.
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