Two 02.14.10

My eyes twitch open violently as if someone just whispered into my slumbering ear "FIRE!" I start awake, flopping violently like a choking fish out of water. Disoriented for a moment I am not sure where I am. My awareness comes rushing in on the back of a frenzied heartbeat. You are no longer with me. I am lost. This has been my life the last three days and it will be yet for, I fear, quite some time.

I am crying before I know it, the tears spring from my wide awake eyes. I attempt to sigh, but it comes out more of a choked shudder. I roll onto my side, pressing my swollen eyes into the pillow trying to will myself back to sleep. But sleep is a merciful bitch that will not come and cloak me in its deep black embrace. No, try as I might to fall back asleep I am awake, although reason for it escapes me as I have also gone to bed the last three days at 4:30 AM. This seems to be the time my body finally runs out of power and the ability to do anything but carry my thoughts through my head on an eternal loop like matchbox race cars on amphetamines.

Suddenly I reach for my phone, nearly diving out of my bed grasping for it. I flip it open and stuck in a breath....no word from you. Not one. I know that is all I have now - words. Words that never fully portray the way I feel for you no matter how hard I try to bend them to my will. Just words. These become nothing more than silly meaningless words when they are viewed side by side to my feelings for you. I stare blankly at the ceiling through clouded watery vision. The salt is staining my lips, the fat tears roll down endless tracts until I can no longer feel the burn and sting of my eyelids swelling nearly shut.

I wrestle with myself. "Don't do it, leave her alone" I have to keep repeating to myself. "You said you wanted to respect her need for space and time, let her have that gift from you at least, don't be so selfish" I chastise myself. I look over at the time. An hour has passed already? Soon, it will be 10 AM. The birds outside sing lightly, unobtrusively, as if they are being sensitive to my needs. Bless them. I text a few friends, I attempt to call my sister in vain. My dog snores loudly on the bed, she is crushing my foot, sending pins and needles tingles up my calf. No matter. I'd just as soon not wake her up, I've grown so sad each time the door bell rings and she looks up expectantly. She will miss you terribly. She will not understand your absence. There is no way for me to explain this to a simple dog.

My forehead knits together sharply in the fissure of my brows. Pain, this is pain like I have not felt. Hollow bones, aching panicky skin that almost itches with tension, and a paradoxical feeling of terrifying weightlessness mixed with a heavy sagging feeling. "Fuck it. It's god damn Valentine's day" I spit out as I flip open my phone and scroll down to your name, a name I have now added a pre-fix to "DO NOT CALL." It's not like I don't want to; I want to with every heart beat, with every swallow, with every inhalation of air into my lungs. But I know, that for this to work out well in the end for you, for me, for both of us, we are going to need that space respected at least as much as I can possibly muster. Before I know what I have started I've composed a 5 message series to you.

It says NOTHING and everything I need to at the same time:

"I am not trying to hurt you, I just want you to know since it is Valentine's day you are in my heart and in my soul. I am letting you go so we can both grow now. I will honor what you have taught me about love by carrying those emotions with me while I grow towards being more present and healthy for myself and others. I wish you adventure, joy, and just bliss baby. Always always always. I will stop bothering you now and be strong enough to respect your space and journey. I could never hate you, not ever. I respect you so much for doing what I could not. If you ever decide you want to or are ready to come back and see that we can love each other and be healthy for each other - I will ALWAYS keep a door in my heart unlocked for you. I love you. So long for now."

I send it before I know what I am doing...I mourn the fact that I will not receive a response soon enough to ease my trapeze artist heart. I roll out of bed and pull on clothing slowly. The rest of the day is a blur. A maze of experiences a mixture of unspeakable beauty and the rest get more difficult than the last. I have learned SO much in just the last 48 hours about me and about us. Just keeping on the move has its benefits, it keeps me from doing stupid things like stopping to think if you are home right now and what you are doing. Instead I can't help dawning on new revelation after new revelation. I keep wanting to share them with you as much for their cathartic nature as for their interesting subtext.

I am starting to know what it was about everything that was scaring me shitless. I am starting to see the areas I really avoided. I am confronting them, getting up in their face, turning over ancient stones. I am slowly putting the odd puzzle pieces together. Everything is taking shape in a most peculiar way. Would you like an example? Ok.

Let's try just this one for now, the issue with my relationship with your parents. Or should I say, lack thereof. But for once, for once in my life, this lack of a relationship was not to blame on the parents. This time, the blame rested squarely on my shoulders. The sensation of the weight lifting with realization was enough to see how much I should have valued them more while I had the chance. I don't know if you read the Thank You card I left for them yesterday along with your house key, but I meant every word in that letter. There's no bullshit ass kissing contained in those lines of very badly written sentiment. Your parents deserve my gratitude. They are human yes, they make mistakes like the rest of us, and I don't always understand them, but they are great wonderful people and I love them for that. I started realizing today as I walked everywhere until my feet were throbbing and sore, you were right all along. What was my problem? How could I be so selfish, stupid, and immature??

The epiphany is just too great. Aside from just differing personalities (which is actually a good thing) the thing that caused me to withdraw the most from your parents was the way they treated me. My whole life I have wanted certain things from my own parents. Certain kinds of attention, of affection, of acceptance. But those things are given out in sparse doses for the most part within the dynamic of me and my parents. I have always wanted us to be friends as well as family. But my mother when I was younger said something to me I've never been able to forget. I told her I wanted her as my friend and she said point blankly, "I CAN'T be your friend. I can either be your friend or your mother. I can't be both, Blythe, and I am never going to stop being your mother." She isn't terrible for this admission, it's my task to accept her the way she is and mature past her benchmark as a person and a parent someday. Where neglect, perfectionism, and hypercritical focus replaced the friendship, nurturing, and affection I desperately wanted from my parents, they provided me with alternative values. They cared for my health and groomed me in a hard but loving way. Whatever fears kept them from realizing the emotional connection I needed with them fully, they made up for in providing me with opportunities of independence, absences that caused me to learn to fend for myself, and an almost fanatical dedication to my health and well being.

Then I met you, and you brought me home. I wanted to impress your parents at first. I think I was surprised so much to see that it was really them that impressed me. We have totally different lives in this regard and you'll excuse the comparison here, but my experiences with being gay and interacting with parents are completely fucked up compared to yours. My own parents were really difficult with it, adding conflict to an already tumultuous relationship. Then there have been the parents of my partners. I can tell you now without a doubt, not of a one of them made it easy and enjoyable for me trying to get to know them and find my place in their family. If they weren't totally dysfunctional, they were just downright bigoted towards me. Despite my best efforts to woo them and connect, they wanted nothing to do with me, and wanted me to have nothing to do with their daughter. When I was younger, I tried really hard to win them over, and one family in particular really came to mean something to me. When the relationship ended I mourned not only the loss of my ex girlfriend, but also the loss of her family as I was finally making some headway in connecting....I thought.

After that I walled up, the pain was really awful, I felt like I had lost a second family that was nothing like mine in all the ways I found interesting and gratifying. I shut down further attempts in the future to connect with my partner's parents. If I did interact with them, it wasn't anything that would have made the ground swell: polite appearances, authentic expressions of my character, and a completely aloof attitude towards them otherwise. It made sense to me when I met your parents, to keep up this set of tactics. Especially because in the beginning, I did not intend to go falling in love with you and discovering you're all I've ever wanted. They were merely the gatekeepers I needed to get past if I wanted to continue to see you and indulge in my growing addiction to you.

I tried at first, like I said, to impress them. Then I think I starting a growing gnawing habit of needing to assert myself with them more and more. To put more distance between us. And marvel of marvels, the more I pulled away the more they reached out to include me. It infuriated me. How dare they invade my privacy and personal space! But that's not why it was bothering me in truth, that was just the shell I put up to solidify and justify my insolent ridiculous behavioral outbursts. No, I wasn't adverse to their attention entirely. They both seemed genuinely interested in getting to know me, really know me, and the way they practically married me off to you from the get go made my palms sweat and my throat constrict. What the hell was going on here? These are the kinds of parents I'm used to....How do I do this now?? Oh right, guards up, don't let them get you by the balls, then they'll walk all over you. In hindsight, I don't know what the FUCK my problem was, and I know exactly what it was. I think the breaking point for me was really when they took me with you guys on that family trip to San Francisco for the holidays.

Can I tell you, that was the first time that any family of any girl I have ever dated has invited me anywhere like that? It was always the girlfriend convincing, or fighting the family in the past to include me. It was always a suggestion on her part, NEVER on theirs. Your family was welcoming me in, pulling me into their embrace and it was too difficult for me to process and feel comfortable with. When they came to that LGBTQI protest rally with us, I was blown. JUST BLOWN. I have been prodding and pushing my parents, ANY of my family for YEARS an entire 11 years to be exact, to come to a single Pride event or protest rally and not ONCE has any of them attended. They don't even say they would want to. It is something that deeply wounds me, because I want nothing more than for them to come and stand by my side and display their pride, support and love for me unconditionally in that extremely political and exhibitionist manner. It is a dream that I probably will never attain. And your parents, after only a short time, fulfilled that dream for me that day.

I was so confused. It couldn't keep being like this....the talks with your dad, the easy joking, the ability for me to debate him on various topics and not meet with blank silence but an active willing participant in the debate...not one that simply either threw up their hands at me and my weird viewpoints, not one that met me with blank expressionless apathy, and not one that didn't see me as adult enough to have the conversation in the first place. The punny jokes, gardening advice, the attempts to lend me books and music, to share with me his traveling experiences and learn mine. No this was something all too new and frightening. There had to be a catch. There had to be some boundary, otherwise I might become too close to them too, and if I lost you, I'd loose my second home....my second family. I immediately sought out or manufactured or inflated flaws within him to focus on. This was my walling up, guarding off, shutting down. But he kept coming and trying to reach out to me...just like your mother.

Ah man your mother...so much like my mother in some ways...the love of cooking and food, the way they both love to educate and share with people, the way they light up when they play hostess and fuss and fret over every little detail. But your mother, unlike mine, was vastly different in one very profound area. It was the way she loved you, and I suppose, loved everyone else around her I found so very threatening. Sufficed to say I am sure she would blush and frown at me for insinuating this but, she is the perfect Jewish mother I never had and never knew I wanted.

Your parents treated me the way I always wanted mine to. They wanted to be my friends, they wanted me close, they wanted to connect on a totally different level than mine have ever been able to. It was terrifying. Your mother wanted to cook with me and didn't criticize me for my contributions, even when that meant slicing off the tip of my finger into the chiffonade lettuce. She ALWAYS offered me food and never said anything negative about my weight, a stark contrast to my own parents whom have focused on my weight yo-yo tricks over the years enough to breed serious body image issues into me. She even kept things she knew I liked around the house for me...what was that?? WHY? I wondered...It's like she wants me around. She was always genuinely excited to see me, to hear me, to LISTEN. She asked me how things were with my mom, not to gossip and gawk like I mistakenly assumed, but to advise and attempt help me bridge the gap with my mother. And what's more, she accepted me the way I was. She LET ME be ME. She did more than that, she encouraged me. I found her excitement and wish to be close off putting because it is everything I have hungered for from my mother and never received in that same way. She wanted to be my friend, truly my friend, and I squandered it because I tried to view it as manipulative and invasive. Only an insecure Scorpio child like me could turn that into a threat. What a fool I have been. What a waste.

The irony of the situation is, I walled myself off and convinced myself I didn't need them , didn't want them, didn't like them to protect myself and spare the pain of loosing them too should we not work out. The reality is, I came to love them, because they were everything my parents were not. Instead of accepting my parents' limitations and embracing the fact that I got to receive what I always wanted in the friendship and intimacy of my connection with your parents I threw it away because I was so hurt that my parents couldn't be more like that. Idiot, idiot, idiot. Silly little arrogant child, how you cast your pearls before swine. My only real complaint....the health issues, the fear mongering there, the safe coddling attitude. The reason for that unrelenting criticism from me, when it is clear your parents are just trying to care and provide for you in the best most consistent way they know how?? Well...that's natural. Outstanding, over the top, overkill health care and a tenacious force of will to press me into independence and autonomy are two of the corner stone constants in my relationship with my parents.

Because it was these two things I got the most readily from them it was the thing that I learned to judge all families against, all parents held to that standard. Since this was the base function of my relationship with them, then all parents must meet this standard first and never waiver. Wrong, petty, ridiculous. How can I hold anyone else's parents to the standards of my parents? Automatically a loosing battle....Still, try as I might to get through to them about it, I used the wrong means to communicate. And when they did not follow up on my suggestions the way I wanted them to, and left your health hanging in the balance, it was the perfect scapegoat for me to hang all my fears and insecurities upon.

Truth is, they love you like I haven't really seen parents love a child. You're a walking gift so it makes total sense. But despite all their human flaws and imperfections they love you totally and completely, enough to welcome anyone you deem worthy into their hearts as if it wasn't even a question. Remarkable people you three, flawed, lovely awesome people who even though you don't always get along and your bonds have ebbed and flowed over the years, you ALL commit yourselves to change to be closer together. Something else I cannot understand, because it is another one of my deep unanswered needs from my own family. There is not bridging together for long extended periods of time, just individuals working independently to heal and grow and hope it works out with holidays and birthday parties to seal the deal.

That is why leaving my family for the holidays is a huge deal for me, its the ONLY time I get to see my family act like anything resembling the family I would like it to be. Each year is a new chance to connect, grow, change, love, bridge, build, foster. But even this year, when we lost one of our own, we still tore at each other and picked. Disappointed is how I feel now, desolate, and so very sad. I am mourning not only my loss of you sweet girl, but of the family I could have had and was too pussy to committ to for fear of being hurt. The truth suprising as it may be for you after all my rigamaroll: I do love them, just the way I love my own family. How else in the world could the irritate and confound me and cause me to protect myself with meaningless measures if I didn't care so deeply??

I keep wanting to reach out more to the two of them, not to get to you, but to let them know how much they rock. Their drive to improve, even if it's "slow" compared to my hyper-charged sense of urgency, dosen't make them villians. It makes them people. Just like me, I struggle to understand, embrace, and adopt change overnight. I don't know why I expected them to be any different. And, they don't have ot be perfect. They can just be them and I can accept that they provide me with certain things and not others. It's too bad I couldn't see this before but my own selfish pride and my deepest insecurities and hopes and dreams were caught up in the balance.

There was one more lesson that dawned on me today becuase of all this....I should not sacrafice the things I want and need because I am not getting them from exactly where i want them. Better that they come ot be at all than not. Now that I learned that lesson from them, I will honor it by not squandering human connections like the one they tried time and again to foster wtih me should i be lucky enought to recieve it. Amazing isn't it? The difference a little viewpoint change can give you? I'm sorry to say, I'm kind of looking forward to this....it's gonna hurt like hell but then again, combusting and rising from the ashes in a triumphant moment of rebirth is never truly all that comforatble I suppose. Lord knows I 've done it enough times to know. But honestly, I'm writing this with a smile on my face and in my heart, because no matter what happens to me, I know you three have each other and that is enough to help me get to sleep each night for a very, very long time.