That's a huge turn around from my last entry, I'm well aware.
Let's break that down a bit. I didn't just face the possibility of my untimely demise, but also that I have been carrying a lot of fear about losing my faculties and that my behavior of the past few months was the result. One of the reasons I am relieved is because those fears were addressed in the days following my overnight in the hospital.
Medically speaking I am in good health for a woman my age with my medical conditions. The MRI and contrast CT scan show no degradation in the vascular system of my brain. I might not have been in the best mental state last summer, but I am beginning to understand that I was not entirely at fault and that I have been looking at some things from the wrong perspective.
"Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view...The truth is often what we make of it; you heard what you wanted to hear, believed what you wanted to believe.”
With that quote in mind, this is what happened over the past weekend. Lefty Teacher (LT) met me Friday evening with the intention of going to fair on Saturday. (We were originally supposed to meet on Saturday, but due to the hospital stay, it was thought best that I drive as little as possible, so I had a hotel room for the weekend.) I am happy to say that despite the months apart, we were able to pick up where we left off without much awkwardness. We have discussed that intimacy may bring up some emotions and when it happens we look at the feelings and say, "hey look, feelings." When said emotions came up on Friday night, we joked about oxytocin and enjoyed the hormone high until we went to sleep.
On Saturday morning, there was a point when LT just looked at me and sighed in that way. Then he grabbed my hand, held it and made eye contact. I promptly melted. Those are still chemical feelings, but of a different sort. It's more than just chemistry. We tend to express things to each other in songs, so I noted that I was feeling like the song "I'm a Believer..." which I had heard right before I had seen him the day before. I shit you not as we walked into the breakfast buffet, "I'm a Believer" by Smashmouth was playing. We shrugged at each other and said, "I guess we have a song now."
I showed LT around fair and introduced him to anyone who would stand still long enough. We danced, we sang, and he watched the little bits I do throughout the day. I know he is a keeper because not only does he like Edgar Allen Poe, but we share the same favorite Poe poem. We both really enjoyed watching the actor who plays Poe at fair do his thing. All in all, it was just a fun day; there was no stress and no worry. I cannot remember the last time I felt so carefree while at fair!
Spending a good part of the weekend with LT has given me a great deal to think about and process. I believe I have mentioned that LT recently lost his partner of over twenty years. This is part of the reason we've been treading so carefully and that I have been so willing to let him set the pace. While I am not known for my patience, that's the price of admission for LT. I also knew that his experience with relationships was limited, because his partner was his first and so far, last long term relationship. In fact, I have been hesitant to talk about my relationship woes with LT because they felt so trivial in comparison to losing a life partner to cancer.
I was on stage at fair with one of the blokes from another cast (the one I took a shine to last week.) He was a sweetheart. He went out of his way to make LT feel welcome. Later on Bloke and I were chatting while LT was wandering around a bit. Bloke and I ended up discussing growing and maturing. We talked about how going through relationships, breaking up, and finding out who we become afterward are really important parts of our emotional growth process. I know that LT loved his partner. Due to many circumstances, they were his first and so far only partner. Bloke went through something similar, because he married his high school sweetheart.
After twenty years, LT had begun to realize that what he and his partner had together was not the relationship he desired. Before the two of them could address the issue, his partner got cancer. It dawned on me that LT has never gone through a break up; a process I have been through so many times that I take it for granted. Bloke and I were comparing how difficult a break up can be and LT just did not have a perspective.
I can't imagine going through the death of a partner and experiencing the loss of relationship for the first time simultaneously. I understood that I had the wrong point of view. My experience with break ups is something that I absolutely need to share with LT. After fair we discussed a bit about why relationships sometimes have to end or change. We discussed the work he has been doing and I realized that a lot of the work he was doing was not just processing his partner's death, but also he's been working on the person he hopes to be now that he was starting a new chapter. He is figuring out, for the first time, what sort of partner he wants to be and what sorts of relationships he is interested in.
LT is not making the same mistake I did for many years. I would be in a relationship, I'd meet someone new and I would transition to the next one. My mother called it always having someone in the bull pen. The problem is that I was jumping from relationship to relationship so quickly that I wasn't going through the growth process. While I do think I learned from the mistakes I made in my first marriage and didn't make them in my second, I wasn't growing either. My emotional maturity was really lacking in many ways. It wasn't until I left my second marriage that I started looking at who I wanted to be, what sorts of relationships I wanted to be in and where I wanted to go. One of the important realizations is that I needed friends and needed to cultivate my social support network.
I know that DA (which stands for Darth Auxiliary, not DumbAss as some of you asked) is relatively inexperienced with relationships. I don't know his truth, I only know what I can see from my side and talking to Bloke and LT gave me some perspective about what I have gone through. I think (and others have said) that DA is so afraid of being the bad guy and saying something that the other person may not like or find hurtful that being a jackass and driving the person away ends up being his only path out of a bad relationship. The more accommodating I was, trying to transition us to the next logical stage of our relationship, the more of an ass DA had to be. I was just too stupid and stubborn to get the hint and leave.
Is that the truth? I don't know. What I do know is that I feel I can trust nearly everything LT says. It is one of the best thing about him. He doesn't say what he thinks people want to hear. I was on stage when it hit me like a ton of bricks that he means what he says. LT stated that he really likes me but he needed time and space to figure some shit out and work on himself. He wasn't politely telling me to go away and hoping I would get the clue. He was telling me that he really likes me but needed time and space. The smile that LT had when he hugged me after the final show of the day expressed so much acceptance and enjoyment that it blew me away. I couldn't help but sing as I walked backstage.
I have spent the past four years trying to translate, interpret and anticipate someone who couldn't declare a straight sentence if his life depended on it. It's not that I think that DA is a wretched liar. I know full well that he believes he's speaking the truth. That's the pity of it all, what he says is true. What turns the words into a lie is the intent behind them. DA says things that he hopes will make the person hearing them happy. That works fine until there is more than one person. This is why I believe that LT, who is as much as a maladroit as DA, has a deep and supportive social group. When I was dating DA, he only had me and the other person he was dating. One of us was always unhappy with him, because his system did not work.
There are many reasons I put up with the dynamic between DA and me for so long. I feel that growing up with a father who operated the same way probably has a lot to do with it. That quote from Star Wars really resonates for that reason. I believe that my father always spoke the truth when he was talking. The fact that it wasn't true later was beyond him, he clung to the fact that he spoke the truth originally. However, my dad could only make one person happy and I wasn't the person he chose and nothing I did changed that.
I have come to believe that I was not the person that DA was lying to. I am sure that DA believes that he is telling the truth, just from a certain point of view. I also think it's about as shitty as an excuse as when Obi Wan explained to Luke why he didn't straight up tell him that Anakin and Darth Vader were the same person. Why tell the truth today when you can obfuscate and then retcon it away later?
I have watched LT discuss his loss, his process and his grief openly and honestly. He doesn't avoid conflict. He doesn't use words to get him what he wants without him having to directly ask for it (and thus face potential rejection.) I saw LT communicate this way with strangers and I saw him do it with me. When I remarked on it, he noted that when you and someone you love are counting the days until one of you dies, a lot of the bullshit gets put aside. He realizes that it should be that way with everyone.
I will be lucky if I ever can be half as honest and genuine as LT is. However I made a start this morning. I asked for something I wanted, directly and honestly. I accepted that no was a potential answer that that it wasn't a rejection. LT had already proven that to me. He had already put himself on the line, asking things of me and accepting no as an acceptable answer. The best words I have heard recently are, "If you say no, that's ok, I have other people to ask." DA always told me that no was an acceptable answer for him to give me. I don't think he ever quite understood that when I told him no, I felt that I was the only person he could ask. It's one of the reasons that when he asked me for things last year, I acquiesced, who else could he ask?
One of the things that LT commented about as we were walking around fair was the number of people who came up to me and asked me if I was all right. He said that what made getting through the death of his partner possible was the network of friends and family he had to fall back on. He was glad to observe that I had the same. I know that I have been whining and bitching on this blog for months and months. I may not say it often, but those of you who read, who comment, who just accept me when you see me, you make my life wonderful. Thank you!
I have unpacked, learned and figured out so many things. Yes, I was singing "I'm a Believer" because of LT, but I'm a believer because of the friends and loved ones I have in my life. DA proved to me that I could lose one person and still have sunshine in my life. LT couldn't be in my life if I didn't already have friends and family. LT and I both know and accept that it's all right to say something that will make the other person unhappy because we can always ask someone else.
You all know what's the song for this entry is going to be, yes?
Today's Song - I'm a Believer by The Monkees
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