And the Living's Easy

I'm tired.

Physically, sure--it's almost midnight, after all--but most of the fatigue is emotional.  I'll try to explain, but some of the details aren't mine to share.  I apologize if this post seems to have gaps as a result.


"I don't know," I say.
I give a slight shake of the head for a few seconds, and then pause.
"Just give it time," my friend says.


And he's right.  But things are falling apart, and it's hard to pretend like they're not.

You might be confused, and rightly so; I'm a little confused myself.  It was only just last month that I was writing about how well things were going with "Jack."

Our differences are coming out, though.    Even more than the differences between us, the differences between the worlds we live in is becoming abundantly clear.

Dating "Jack" has made me appreciate my own upbringing and friends and work and support network more than I ever have before.  Growing up, my parents presented a constantly united front; there has never been a day in my 29+ years of existence that I didn't know absolutely without a doubt that they loved each other and that they loved me.  That I was a top priority.  That they had my back.  Their successes and encouragement inspired me to be successful.  Their stability and even-keeled attitudes kept me calm.  Their lack of drama set up a pretty easy life for me.

Last night, after drinking too much and listening to "Jack" be honest about his own selfishness (which he expected me to think was endearing), two people I know almost got into a fight.  When I got up to go the bathroom, everything seemed fine.  When I got back from the bathroom, there was shouting and cursing and people holding people back.

I don't fight.  The people I know don't fight.  I have never seen a family member throw a punch.  I have never seen a friend throw a punch.  Perhaps that makes me sheltered, but it's true.  After it all went down, I had to step up to help my friend process what happened, but honestly, I just wanted to sit and cry.  No one actually fought, but simply witnessing almost-violence and seeing how normal it was to the people around me, it made me deeply sad in a way that I couldn't articulate.  "Jack" thought I was mad.  And I was, at least mad that people would be stupid enough to fight over nonsense.  But I was more disturbed.  It's out of my comfort zone, and as I was trying to give advice, I was realizing the simple truth: this kind of shit just doesn't happen to me.  Ever.

And that can be said for a lot of the things that go on in "Jack's" life.  We went out to dinner for his birthday twice this weekend because his mother and father don't like each other, so there were separate dinners.  Even at each dinner, there was obvious tension.  "Jack" didn't act like his father's son; he acted like a nephew or a cousin.  Someone related but more distantly so.  "Jack" didn't really ever talk to his stepmother.  Apparently there's a history there that runs back to high school, and he's still holding on to it.  And his half-brother and -sister might as well have been non-entities.  "I don't see them much," he said.  "I don't know how to talk to them."  Upon arriving at his dad's house, I learned that my first time there was only his second since last summer.

Dinner with his mother was different.  He's obviously closer to her--likely a result of the fact that she's currently unmarried and without other children to share her attention--but he nonetheless distanced himself from her.  He seems a little embarrassed, in the way that a teenager would be.  But Friday was his 29th birthday.

My parents have been together since 1977, and while they argue, it's over small things.  Dishes have never been thrown, my father has never slept on the couch (though my mom did a few times when he was sick), and my parents have argued but never shouted at each other in my presence.  They talk to each other constantly, and they tell each other everything (much to the dismay of their female children who don't want their dad to know that they got their period, etc.).  They have differences between them, definitely, but they make jokes about them or they discuss them privately and come up with a solution.  I've never seen them hold hands and they don't always sit next to each other--which used to bother me--but personally, I'd rather have stability and love in my relationship than PDA.  And while they do embarrassing things sometimes, I don't mind it because it's them, through and through.  And I love them, without exception.


Over the last week, I've wondered if I shouldn't break up with "Jack."  Not because his parents don't like each other and act weirdly toward him, but because those things have caused him to carry a lot of baggage and differ from me greatly.

Two weeks ago, as I think I wrote about last time, we sat down and had a heart-to-heart.  A real, honest conversation about ourselves and about our relationship.  It was stressful at first, but it was satisfying to be able to speak openly and intimately.  For all its merits, though, the conversation was more of a postponement than a resolution, and since then, I've begun to doubt whether it's worth resolving.

He knows something is up.  This weekend, we were talking about vacation, and he said, "We can do something in June, if you still like me then."  And last night, on the phone, he repeated the sentiment: "I want to take you to Florida one weekend, if you still like me."

I've tried to hide it from him.  To save his feelings and to avoid creating larger problems than already exist.  I'm not convinced that it's not me, that "us" isn't salvageable, at least for a time.  But it's hard to act like you're into something, hard to seem as though you're happy to be with someone, when there's a constant debate in your head: break up?  don't break up?

Friday, I took him to a sensory deprivation tank for his birthday.  We were supposed to grab a light lunch before going, but I wasted time and got there too late to do so.  After the tank, we grabbed lunch and argued about religion.  He's been reading the Gospel of John and was trying to explain to me how Christ's baptism filled him with the spirit of the Earth, that the bread (eucharist) is a metaphor for the Earth and the Sun.  "So, Jesus wasn't God before he was baptized?" I asked.  He responded in the negative.  "Well that's not what mainstream Christianity believes," I said dismissively.  (I'm becoming inconsiderate.  It hurts.)

Friday night at the bar we ended up at, as I said, he attempted to justify his decision not to come to Florida with me and my friends for a tournament, a decision that I had already accepted and for which I needed no justification or explanation.  Work and finances were enough to explain.  But, he continued, "I'm super competitive, and since I won't be able to play volleyball, I'll feel insecure and I'll juggle the soccer ball and be stupid and try to get attention, and I don't want to embarrass you.  I don't want to go if I'm not playing something, too."  "I've gone twice and not played," I said, "and it's still fun; you watch great volleyball."  "I'm trying to be honest with you," he countered.  "I thought it would be endearing."  "It's not," I responded.  (It hurts.)

The almost-bar fight knocked me out of my internal debate for the night, though, and for the rest of the evening, we talked deeply and intensely about life and family and work and everything that was weighing on him.  My maternal instinct kicked in, and I comforted and encouraged him.  I was so busy trying to calm him down and process what happened that I didn't have time to process it myself.  Walking away from the bar, I had almost cried, but quickly I'd had to pull myself together for him.  Which is fine, except that I'm unclear why I'm always comforting.  Why deep, life conversations are ultimately about him.  I mean, I know why.  Because he has something serious to talk about.  Meanwhile, my life has been easy.  My biggest problem at the moment is that no one will fix a small hole on the side of my roof.  But they're still problems, and they still mean something to me.

I went to a party last night at a friend's house, and I was kind of a bitch to the new people that were there.  It was inconsiderate, and I ended up going home early because I felt terrible about the fact that I couldn't bring myself to be welcoming.  I went because being there with them is usually like a warm hug.  I wanted to be with people who loved me and supported me on a daily basis.  And instead it was loud and full of the over-eager remarks of women trying to be noticed by the men they had just started dating.  (Which is a completely normal female thing--I'm not knocking them for it.  They're probably super awesome, wonderful human beings.  It's just not what I was looking for.)  Being there felt foreign, and one of the new girls--in attempting to bond with me--offered me something to drink or eat, as though she'd been in the group forever, and I was the new one.  I felt kind a little like I'd been kicked.  So finally, I pulled myself out of the chair I was in, and I drove myself home, and I sat on my couch with tears in my ears and tried desperately to figure out what the hell was so wrong with me that being offered a drink by someone made me feel excluded.

"Jack" left a message less than an hour later, and I called him back hesitantly.  I tried to explain the party and how it made me feel, but that just made me feel pettier.  He apologized for his friends from the night before and the almost-bar fight; he said that everyone had sat down and resolved everything.  I was happy they'd resolved it, but in my mind, it still wasn't resolved, and I said so.  They'd only quieted things for a moment; they were sure to explode again soon.  He disagreed, and I was angry at him.  Angry that he wouldn't step up and address the real problem.  Angry that his explosive problems were more easily resolved than my petty ones.  Angry that yet again, I was coming off as inconsiderate and selfish.  So I said goodnight, hung up, cried a little, and then texted him, "I'm sorry I left it so weird.  Give me time..."

I'm just not sure that time will solve the problem.  They say, "Time heals all wounds," but I'm not confident that it will.  In this case, time has felt like a band-aid.  It covers up the wound for a while, and then when it falls off in the shower, you realize that the cut is still there, and you wonder if you shouldn't have put some Neosporin on it or taken better care of it earlier, and you wonder if it'll never full heal as a result.

Thankfully, I see my therapist tomorrow.  Hopefully I'll leave there a little better processed, a little more sure of what to do.  A little less inconsiderate.

Love and Leaves

Saturday, I opted to sit with a friend after our volleyball tournament instead of playing pick up.  We drank beers in the warm sun and caught up.  He mentioned that I hadn't written in a while.  "I know," I said.  I'd been thinking about it the day before, but I guess I hadn't really realized how much time had passed since my last post until he said so.  I suppose when you've got work, boyfriend, house repair, and Airbnb renters consuming your life, it's hard to get a moment to yourself.  This weekend, I think I spent more time at other people's houses than at my own.  That sort of thing catches up with you, though, and I'm glad I'll have the house to myself (and myself to myself) this week.

"Is it because things are getting serious with the guy?  Is that why you're posting less?" he asked.

And here's the thing.  I've been thinking about this question of "getting serious" a lot.  I've talked about it with my old roommate Jessica a lot, too, when we went out to dinner last Tuesday.  "People always say, 'you know when you know,'" she postured, "but if you've never known before, how do you know?"  And it's true.  I remember the first time I really had a crush on a guy in college, and I thought to myself, "Is this love?"  And then I remember the first time I dated someone seriously, and I thought, "Is this love?"  And I remember a guy I wanted to be serious with a couple of years ago and thinking again, "Is this love?"  I find myself even now wondering the same thing.  Because what is love?

Last week, I was teaching my fourth graders about matter, and I did a quick activity to get the ball rolling.  "Here's a list of twenty things.  If matter is something that has mass and volume, like we said, then which of these are matter? And if they're not matter, what are they?"  Love was on the list.  When I asked, "Is love matter?"  The kids replied with a resounding no, and one called out, "It's not matter; it's a feeling!"  And I wondered to myself, "Is that what love is?"

In college, I was part of a pretty engaged Catholic group, and I distinctly remember the priest saying, "Love is not a feeling.  Love is a choice."  Others reiterated the thought in countless retreat speeches and homilies.  "Oh yes," I thought at the time, "love is definitely a choice."

But a choice for what?  A choice to care for the person?  To have his/her best interests in mind?  And what are the shades of love that we supposedly choose?  I don't love my mother the way that I love my sister the way that I love my house the way that I love my boyfriend.  Or do I love him at all?

Sometime in the past two weeks, I came to the realization that "Jack" is most likely not my future husband.  We're pretty compatible in a lot of ways, but there will likely come a point when his lack of financial awareness and my overbearingly organized lifestyle and his weird interests and my desire to have kids will make that personality compatibility seem insignificant.  This seems like something that would stress me out (as so many things do), but instead, it was a weight lifted off my shoulders.  Prior to the epiphany, I was unsure of how "Jack" would ever settle fast enough for me to have kids before I'm too old, and that uncertainty kept holding me back.  But I'm realizing now, that's not the point of this relationship.  It's like my mom likes to say when we go furniture shopping, "R, this doesn't have to be a grueling decision.  You're not marrying the furniture; you're just dating it."  I don't have to marry "Jack"; I just need to be willing to learn something from the experience.

It was a relief to "Jack" as well, it turns out.  Friday night, after an uncomfortable discussion between us about pot, we then found ourselves in the midst of a conversation about the future.  "I'm a mess," he said, "and I don't know if I want to have kids or get married.  And you're responsible and you seem to have a plan, and I don't want to waste your time."

"We've only been dating for three months," I replied.  "I'm not with you because I want marriage or kids with you.  I'm with you because I like spending time with you.  Because you're sweet and thoughtful.  Because you're cute.  Maybe it'll be an issue whenever we have this conversation next, but for right now, it's not important to me."

"That makes me feel better," he said.

It made me feel better, too.  Especially because I was pretty worried at the beginning of the conversation that he was leading into a break up speech, and I wasn't ready for that.



This weekend, I also finally tackled my backyard.  It's been clawing at me, always in the back of my mind, and on Saturday, I finally pulled out the rake and heavy duty black bags and got to work.  It's not a particularly large space, but it took two and half hours and something like 15 contractor bags to get rid of all of the leaves, trash, and random shit people had left in that back area over who knows how many years.  Truth be told, it still doesn't look great, but it's a start.  My mom likes to say that house renovation is a marathon not a sprint, but I've never run any further than 4.5 miles, so I'm not exactly sure I'm capable of that sort of stamina.  I just want a nice backyard, and I'd prefer to have it sooner rather than later.  Luckily, I can't afford it, so it doesn't matter what I want.  I'll just have to be patient.

Three months ago

During Clean Up

After Clean Up