July 21, 2011

“Who Knew?”

            “I just knew,” the old woman says, matter-of-fact. Next to her on the old couch, her husband of fifty years glazes over, stares straight ahead. “I knew, like you know about a good melon.”

            What did she know and how did she know it? It seems I’ve searched for that knowing for years—all my life, even, yearning to know something about someone else, about love, about where I was ‘supposed’ to be.

            But belonging is tricky business. In all my past relationships, that sense only came after multiple negotiations I made with myself—he would eventually get a job, fuck me, stand up for me, not take credit for everything I accomplished, get friends of his own—you get the idea. The list was long, but the benefits outweighed the compromises until they didn’t any more.

            Part of the reason I married was because I could see myself growing old with my ex—I could picture us wrinkled and creaking on matching rocking chairs. I could see the ashen wood porch, and the long grass beyond silver, bending with the wind.

            The problem with this picture is that though it’s a nice sentiment, it wasn’t my idea. It’s from some movie I saw, something I appropriated from John Travolta’s Phenomenon. And like the opening quote from When Harry Met Sally, those were actors—not real people. My idea about relationships is a construct filmmakers (read ‘society’) push to promote order, to encourage assimilation of ‘the American Way.’ 2.5 kids, a mortgage, and a steady job: the trilogy I’ve been consciously trying to escape since I can remember.

            But I never ran from love, believing I could have it without the rest.

            Which is why it’s ironic—hilarious, even—to be exactly where I am right now. I have a mortgage, a steady job, and I’m embarking on a relationship with a man who has two kids.

            After all the fuss, turns out I want to have kids of my own, too. With him.

            For the first time in my life, I just know something. For all the searching I’ve done, I finally get it. Knowing doesn’t mean I’m clairvoyant. It just means we fit. Perfectly. And it feels right, no matter how much I turn it inside-out looking for flaws.

            This time, I look into the future, there’s no sitting on rocking chairs or watching grass grow—there’s nothing orderly about it. Instead, there is chaos—kids with the flu and kids winning football games, playing hooky hiking in the mountains, and finding post-its with messages like “you captivate me” in my underwear drawer. There’s going to bed at 8:30 at night so we can get up to watch the sun rise together, visit farmers’ markets with organic eggs, and seedless watermelon. There are broken sinks, peanut butter fingerprints, and lots of lovemaking.

            There is no script and no perfect words; instead there’s the real me living a messy life. In complete and utter bliss.

July 9, 2011

"Love or Death"

There are endings in beginnings, things we see but don’t speak about: the unnamed things we ignore, preferring to hope. He didn’t want to see me more than once a week, didn’t want to have sex, didn’t open doors, didn’t tell me I was beautiful. And I should have known; I should not have married him.

I ignored the thing in me that knew, telling myself, “it’s not that bad,” and “the differences will work themselves out.” Because he wasn’t me, and expecting everything to be aligned and perfect is unrealistic. But it was there to be seen, had I paid attention. It was there, and I didn’t.

J says she’s leaving her lover, feels “stupid” for wanting him back. P tells me the same, and when I ask why she loved her, she doesn’t know. “When she’s not having a ‘fuck you’ fit, she’s really sweet.”

It’s like this: we never want to let go. We judge ourselves. We hate our instincts. We want things to go back to the way they were because within our unhappiness there was sureness: something we counted on.

The problem is if we ignore, pretend for a while, quiet the thing inside that always knows, that truth becomes. It gains momentum until one day it knocks us over: a tsunami from forever away.

It happens on a Tuesday at the dry cleaners, on a Thursday afternoon walking the dog, after Sunday brunch with our best friends. We come home to find our world saturated with truth. By then we’re up to our knees in it as it continues to rise, knocking us down and dragging us out into the rip curl of loss. We can’t breathe, can’t figure out which way is up, take in so much bad shit we think we’re going to die. Some of us do.

Others figure out how to stand up again, try again, love again.

It took me thirteen years to get over my first tsunami. It wasn’t easy. And I thought I had died. I was sure I did not have the capacity to love fully. My transplanted, plastic heart worked just fine from a distance, and he accepted it, knew it, loved me in spite of it.

But this time is different. The things that concern me have more to do with how very in love we are. I worry about jealousy. I worry about moving too fast. I worry about his children and my lack of mothering skills.

I know these things may bring their own death, their own destruction. But this is the first time in my life I’ve trusted a man completely, and these fissures of worry have more to do with my own capacity to handle all that comes with having an instant family.

I speak my fears to him. Like droplets, they melt into his skin, become part of him. I allow my hope to fill in this brokenness, knowing all the while this love may still kill me.

July 1, 2011

"Ring Shopping"

Don’t get your panties in a bunch. We didn’t even get close to the engagement section. Well, that’s not entirely true; I was sized, and in case you’re wondering, I’m a four and a half. “Skinny fingers,” he grinned.

In Tiffany’s, he promised to show me “the good stuff”—stuff I had always passed on my way to the back to buy gifts—not for myself, of course. For graduations and birthdays. Fifty-dollar key chains and the like.

“You physically jumped away from the engagement ring section,” he said.

I laughed, commented on the pushy saleslady to divert. Because it turns out that I’m not ready to marry just yet, even though I love him. Fuck, it feels like I just got divorced. Comparatively, these past three months don’t quite come close to the seven legal years with my ex, plus the two and a half before we got engaged.

Granted, he is sweeping me off my feet—something I said I would never trust in. Pragmatic to a fault, I’ve always believed in the bricks and mortar of the third pig’s house to the wispy straw dreaminess of the first. It wasn’t sexy, this idea I’ve had of relationships, but it was sturdy.

Take today, for instance: we woke early, went for a run together, then he made-to-order my omelet with mushrooms, spinach, and cheese. At the mall, he bought me Asics and some new running clothes. It’s something he’s been wanting to do for weeks, and finally I let him, even though I don’t need any of it.

That’s how we ended up in the proximity of the place with little blue boxes.

“Do you like that one?” he pointed to a princess cut solitaire with baguettes.

“That’s another kind of ring,” I said, refocusing on the round one with the square aquamarine center.

And though I’ve never been in love like this—where I am standing at the beginning, can’t think of a single reason not to be together, and the little voice in the back of my head that compromises and waits for something to change hasn’t even politely coughed—forever seems like it’s coming too fast.

It’s something we’ve talked about, something he knows—that the word, ‘marriage’ makes my skin jump, that I want to enjoy this nowness of being courted, that there are two huge unknowns I need some practical working knowledge about before we can really think about it. And we’ve got time. We’ve got the rest of our lives.