As my girl Feist said in her recent album, “My hope is a flickering flame, which I’ve found increasingly hard to explain. But I’ll try.” Its been a year of relationships. But isn’t it always? Will I ever stop learning about relationships – how to let love in, how to ask for love, how to receive love, how to love better, how to value all kinds of different love, how to see love when its right before me…. AKA MY LOVELY FREAKING DOG. That’s love.
Will I even want to stop learning about love, when I can?
In January, I went to visit my polyamorous lover in the mountains. I slept in a bed with him for the first time, a tiny bed mind you because he’s a worker in the mountain resort town, and I felt the glittery glow of a teenager getting to be all sweatily wrapped up in him with the twin mattress engulfing us. We can’t sleep in the same bed together in Denver because… well… we’re polyamorous lovers. And he has a primary partner. And I’m not her, by the way. I got to hear his snores and see his eye crust in the morning, and find his little curly black hairs on the pillow case when he left early for work. I got to feel him, someone, holding me through the night. Its been a while.
On that trip, when we weren’t having sex or romance, on the “off” times when he was at work and I just got to wander around looking for celebrities and people-watching rich folks, I wandered into one of Colorado’s oldest libraries, along a very cold winter river by myself, down a main street I once wandered with a huge group of friends, and finally into a bookstore. And I picked up “All about love”. What says midlife crisis more than this? But its by bell hooks, who doesn’t capitalize her first name, so its gotta be existentially deeper than a cliche, and it wasn’t on the self help aisle at least. What I remember from the book, as it sits on my shelf and stares at my everynight now: love is an action, not a feeling. It’s nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth, and encompassing 7 components: care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust, and open communication. I remember picking it up because, well, it was close to my birthday and it was close to valentines day, and it was red covered and it felt like it might give me a nice hug. I remember sending that definition of love to my polyamorous lover after I left, thinking… wow, this non-monogamous relationship might be the first time I’m feeling those seven components pretty balanced with a man.
Luis and I ended our affair last month, after about a year of dating. After he asked me if I would ever consider marrying him for immigration papers and I didn’t have a solid answer. After I forgot his birthday until the morning after, and he was hurt (rightfully so; why do I that?). After we decided that the distance (mountains and Denver), the circumstances (immigrant and citizen) and timing (I want kids?) didn’t work out. I miss him. I wonder if the breakup negates the commitment I felt from him. I wonder if, while I let him in and let love in in this whole new way that I don’t think I ever have before, I also kept him or kept love at arms length distance too. I kept myself safe. It’s safe to date someone who already has a primary partner. I never have to face whether I really love him or not, or whether he is “what I want” or not, or whether I can handle being in a relationship or learn to be in a relationship or not, because, well, he is unavailable. And that unavailability made me ironically, comfortable? And he isn’t the toxic unavailable. He is… Wait, he WAS… loving, caring, affectionate, sexy, attentive, consistent, calling, texting, following up, supporting, listening, pushing, encouraging, sweet, thoughtful. But not mine. What does that even mean. He was never “mine” to lose.
In other news, my (former) best friend just had her baby. Esme Ines Lewis Beltran. She looks beautiful, in the one picture I’ve seen. And my friend looks… foreign to me. She is not mine either. She was never “mine to lose” of course. But I feel like I lost her. She is strong and exhausted at the same time in the photo. She is held and supported by her joyful partner looking at their baby. She is distant from me in the photo as deep as the distance feels of her thoughtful texts that come every couple months now. As distant as she felt when we picked cherries together in my backyard.
She came over a month ago, for the first time in a long while, too long. Its funny how the garden seasons hold time for me, when I can’t, when I’m keeping it at arms length. The garden tells me we picked cherries together, from this same tree, from this same solid patch of dirt beneath our feet, seven years ago. Her belly was smaller, and honestly so was mine. The garden was more prolific then, but so was I. But I think our hearts were just as tender, perhaps, as she learned to welcome grief and death and now is learning to welcome joy and birth. I still stand under the cherry tree loving her, hoping I’m doing the right way of supporting her. We don’t talk anymore, after talking so, so much. There’s nothing left unsaid. There’s no big falling out to be had, or has been had, and there’s no big hurt I wish she could feel the sting of and take her finger out of my wound. Its just… over. Its just… love. Love that was caring, affectionate, respectful, recognized, committed, trusting, and had good communication. But then it didn’t.
Love was a choice, or it is a choice, as bell hooks says, and we chose to love each other. For a good while. But we’re choosing not to love each other – at least in that way – anymore. I’m not recognized in her new life. We don’t have good communication anymore. I don’t trust her with my whole self, and she doesn’t trust me with hers. Most prominently, perhaps, is that I can’t seem to respect her new life as I’m drowning in my own. I’m drowning in envy, or confusion, or anger, or… what is this thing? This thing I always come back to? You. No me. No… “one” is, at the end of it all, all they/we/I have. That’s it. There is no happy ending. There is no conclusion. There is no clarity. Love is moving and changing and evolving… and inevitably leaving.
I’m drowning in the idea that most people choose a partner and a monogamous closed door family most of the time, and single people, or non-partnered people, or non-parenting people, or non-close with your nuclear family (aka siblings and parents) people are…. Left out. I am left out. I’m angered that there isn’t a space for me in that life. I’m annoyed by her partner being “conventional”. I’m angered at whoever the “forefathers” were that set up our society this way a few generations ago. ONLY A FEW. I’m paralyzed thinking that that life is not for me. Or that I don’t know how to do it. Or that I don’t get to do it. Or I’m paralyzed by the data analysis that naturally clicks on (former recovering evaluator here), that gives me spreadsheets and powerpoints and even AI generated (okay only in my nightmares) analyses that say, “yeah, the data shows us that the projection is unlikely you’ll have family”.
And THAT, my friends, is why I keep love at arms length. That, is why its been so much safer and kinder and sexier to be in love and partnership with a polyamorous man for the last year. That, is why I sit here trying to get a little drunk before I go on this third date with a man that could be … anything? Could be love, whatever that means. Could be distraction, which sounds delicious right now. Could be totally available and listening and nurturing and interested in me and … I’ll find a way to keep it from entering that castle of colossal paralysis I have towards love. It’s safer on the outside my friend, just have a beer and swim in the moat, in the sunshine, for as long as we can, until we inevitably find someone else to swim with. I couldn’t even answer what I want anymore. I certainly couldn’t answer what I believe in.
“My hope is a flickering flame, and I’ve found it increasingly hard to explain. But I’ll try… “
Andres came into my life in a flash. In a hot kitchen where I spend all my waking days these days, sweating, rushed, stressed, frustrated at someone for sure for not breaking down the damn cardboard boxes, being a good auntie to a friends’ new baby and feigning a smile for my ex best friends partner trying to show me wedding photos, to a wedding I wasn’t invited to, feigning kind and patient boss to a few young people I’m secretly jealous of because they have more time or something to find the one? Feigning parent by answering texts from my social worker quickly as if I’ll get extra credit. Feigning adult by doing my laundry… half way… That’s when Andres came into my life.
I cried a literal river that night. Before he even got here. Every tear stopped by anti-depressants for the last two years came flooding out. Every one of them onto a sweaty, now snotty tshirt as I ran errands and decided whether to call and tell my mom or not. He came in pajamas. He came with crayons in his hand from the detective in his forensic interview. He came with a nervous system on high that plays out with utter joy – laughter so hard it makes you cry while flying, literally flying, through the air for the first time in your life on a swing. And a nervous system that plays out with anger – biting and hitting so hard at the only thing that can possibly bring you peace and comfort, while being hugged literally held so hard for maybe the first time in your life.
One of the first words he said to me, “what the fuck?” as if he might get extra credit love for speaking a little English. I feel you buddy, What. The. Fuck. What I saw in Andres, is what I see in myself. It feels so good to be loved. And damn, why does it make me so uncomfortable? I think, he doesn’t believe it. He can’t believe it. The data has showed his little 5 year old brain that it doesn’t last, it doesn’t stick around, he’s gotta take care of himself, You are all you have. I am all I have. But I wanted to show him I could love him, even in a lonely way, a given up love.
I wanted to believe that for him. And believe it for me.
