The gates open in twenty two days. I've assembled and organized no camping equipment, brought out no old supplies and clothing, started none of my intended costume projects, and done no thinking about how to prepare for the event as a single (nor, generally speaking, have I camped as a single for half my life). I've expended enormous amounts of energy trying to build my weird contraptionary vision, and large amounts of time on the house I'll live in. The Jack Rabbit Speaks is appearing in my inbox with increasing frequency, hyping the event, whipping up the panic, and alerting me to endless volunteering activities. My wants-to-help side is keenly aware that this event, like most events, comes off best if everyone volunteers their time and effort to some aspect or other, but the lengthening list of needs for ice carriers, airport security, newspaper deliverers, tea pourers, peace keepers, lamp lighters, and temple guardians just makes me tired.
She just showed me her newest favoritest costume, a purple fake-fur skirt and cape augmented by the purple rainboots I found at a thrift store. Last night we went out for a light meal and drinks at some frou-frou barngrill in El Dorado Hills, a place with moderne fixtures on the inside and deep couches arrayed around braziers on the outside. Flames danced atop piles of translucent pebbles as gas rose through, and the "martinis" had hep names. We talked and argued and laughed and fought as we always do, increasingly fearless, increasingly dynamic, increasingly honest. I have to give her credit for being a remarkably present person, and for having embarked on a sweeping transformation since she discovered I could not be depended on. She is much more herself, more certain, more energetic, and looks better too than she has in years. I am attempting to grasp in how many ways she is no longer the person I spent so many years wanting to get away from.
In a static world the question would then be, in how many ways is she still the person I want to get away from? But she has changed, we have changed, I have changed. My directive now is not so much the passive get-away-from-me that echoed the angry mutters I sometimes heard from her father when her mother was trying to get affectionate, but a more active and ambitious decision that there is much in life I want to explore and experience that I still want or need to get away from her to do. It is tempting to try and be not so mundane and thus justify that in terms that don't include other women. But that would be dishonest. Part of my exploration has to be into the social character I didn't much develop before we met. But there is also much that rises beyond that, spiritual, personal, various seas I feel the need to sail.
And I feel the wind filling my sails even as I roll in the roads, still within the arms of the old home port. Sometimes, as last night, the breeze turns or a sail line lets loose and the wind spills out, and the ship heels alarmingly, and those stable quays suddenly look more inviting than that shadowed horizon. Familiar sounds and smells of home come to me across the waters.
You're waiting for the "but". The plan is to not weigh anchor for another roughly seven weeks. Plenty of time for buts.
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9 comments:
"for having embarked on a sweeping transformation since she discovered I could not be depended on. She is much more herself, more certain, more energetic, and looks better too than she has in years."
I feel that way about my STBX, too. I still don't want him in "that way," and won't ever I'm totally sure. But it's so amazing and great to see him finally starting to BE HIMSELF and... just generally being an individual. I like him so much better this way.
Same here. Mine's been working out a ton and LABELING things. He looks great, sounds upbeat and healthy, and his place is all neat and organized, omfg. But ... as has been said.
Sometimes people just do better apart as good friends. We've been having some great chats and are really in sync about our kids. I'm totally appreciative of this. Hope you end up there, Don. Such a good thing. (Sounds like you already have that, T'Babe.)
It's more like the potential is great. Poor guy, I rip him a new asshole almost every day. I am really bitchy and mean, y'know, and it's just so fucking easy to take it out on him because he drives me fucking crazy. So, still, I'm glad he's happier.
In therapy this week he was all, "When Maya comes over he'll see that Daddy lives differently," and I was thinking, for fuck's sake, man, after years--YEARS--of our discussing the problem we have as "Josh doesn't express Josh and always defaults to Heather" why didn't you be yourself before?
I thought about it, though, and even if he'd been able to, we're still not right as husband and wife.
The man I once called The Spousal Unit is not himself. He has other issues that I've spoken of, though, that are preventing him from finding who he was and can be, so he's not a measure to go by unless your (speaking generally to whoever's reading, not to any one specific) to-be-former partner has those same sorts of issues.
Me? I am more me than I ever was. I had been too shy and insecure as a teen and young-twenty-something to be me. I dreamed of the "me" I am now, and pretended, late at night, to be that woman. Then I married and subsumed myself to the role of wife and then of mother and responsible hardworking career person, homeowner, community member, church-goer. I suppressed the "me" that was growing inside because the roles I had, I thought, required it.
Free from being a wife, past the role-model/responsible role of mother-of-impressionable-children, and no longer letting the other social roles try to mold me, I am now the me I once imagined was unattainable.
Perhaps, after S has mended her broken heart, and as she continues on this transformation back into herself, perhaps she will be willing to be a participant in your life, Don. Care must be taken, though, that neither slips back into the assumed roles of the past.
That's partly where TUFKAS and I go wrong, when we do "date" one another. Aside from the issues that prevent him from being appealing to me, he goes back to the "I am your husband" way of relating to me, and I find myself slipping back into the emotionally submissive wifey roles I had. There's too much baggage there, still.
Dude, you gotta write! Not blog posts either. Write the stories man. Your turn of phrase is ready. Stop farting around with Burning Man and like events and plunge into the novel.
This is your best post in a long, long time.
You so often see this, especially with women, I think, this blossoming after the separation. Did you ever see The Story of Us? Kind of a dumb movie, but Michelle Pfeiffer is in it, so probably still worth watching for the heterosexual man, and the part where she says something to the effect of "Is this the person I am, or is this the person I am with you?" So true. Sometimes you just have to find out.
Thank you, Harry, ol' man. I dunno which turn of which phrase seals the deal. But you know, I got to live a little more before I settle in to the wicker chair and bottle of whisky.
It's these two passages:
"...a place with moderne fixtures on the inside and deep couches arrayed around braziers on the outside. Flames danced atop piles of translucent pebbles as gas rose through, and the "martinis" had hep names. We talked and argued and laughed and fought as we always do, increasingly fearless, increasingly dynamic, increasingly honest."
and:
"And I feel the wind filling my sails even as I roll in the roads, still within the arms of the old home port. Sometimes, as last night, the breeze turns or a sail line lets loose and the wind spills out, and the ship heels alarmingly, and those stable quays suddenly look more inviting than that shadowed horizon. Familiar sounds and smells of home come to me across the waters.
Fuckin' great! I say start now, and watch it develop as life develops you.
Harry's right. I remember your writing from years ago and still, when you write about political things, you get stiff. But this is both honest and elegant. True.
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