Still committed, and yet ...
Everything is different
Identity is a curious evolution.
We, us two, we did not necessarily start differently per se, rather it is that the difference is more apparent. Not between us, but inside of each of us as we sit, nearly a decade in, into how our unique affection and excessive affirmation shakes out day-to-day, hour-by-hour in a not unpleasant manner, and yet lands as a soft, consistent challenge in numerous, innumerable, ways.
We don’t talk much about it - directly at least. Not avoiding as much as a quiet acknowledgment that the sky or the wet or the gravity or any other obvious thing need not to be spoken to be. We are parents of it, this odd reality of an agreement, and we feel united and divided around the festering wound of lived dreams invited and this actualized life. Oh, and so we think we are so unique, as if we are the only two married people deep in, deeply holding fast and earnestly thinking, feeling, breathing this: My identity is wildly more demanding then the way this union presents.
Nope, we are not. The experience is for sure special, but certainly not non-representative - I mean, I presume. Be that applying to marriage or career or topic or study or geography or gender, branding, sexuality, debt, fashion styling, taste in music - go to town! Look, I knew I was queer and are - did you? We are honest with strong support networks and find it pretty hot that both of us are the right in real-time and the wrong on paper, and it works and it is weird but - DAMN, you are so super-cute and a great coo, the only person whom I let care for me, and never pulls punches calling out my shit. Me, me, the me that fell for you when you felt hard up and never noticed. I take care of the trimmings that make a lot of “it” part of the everyday, the things that are so small and yet too much to bear. The one who always goes hard and whom you allow to be both oppressive and also rather disconnected.
What we are, and what sustainable affection is, is energetically engaged in the conversation that yeah, it is both what and also very not what we expected. An ‘outing’ that we can survive - allowing the characters in the commitment (you and I, my most affectionate partner) to be how we are and courageous enough to look with candor at the terms by which we are bound.
This is more than marriage. This is more than companionship. This IS the navigation between what we each and all can do well and how we have associated and aligned ourselves within the lives we each lead.
You read that right - this is me coming at you with an invitation to look with a larger lens – wide, if you will - at ALL the things that you tackled yourself down with. Jobs and friendships and the debt you pay, as well as the relationships around and therein.
Please, put your focus on what (and how) you choose to be so shackled? Why and to what end as well. Oh, and shut up if you are answering in a way - any way you presume you should. Nope. Just answer.
For example, if you are thinking about your job -it might or could be:
Is your commute convenient?
The degree paid for or is the institution's name known, and does that matter?
Have you already “invested” so much and it has been “so long” and just sticking with just seems, well, logical?
Do you like your co-workers?
Pay OK?
Great desk location - most especially if it is at home!
For what I began this post with it is this - my partner and I love each other. I respect and admire him in the world regardless of whatever affection he has for me. If it ended or never began, I would still think that dude was just as he is - really fantastic. Oh, and he loves me for things I don’t even fucking care about in myself, or notice. My identity - sexual or otherwise - is a thing I like to control and feel pretty skewed about; I am afraid of just being seen. You all know and know well if we know each other, I push my personality, lovingly I hope, upon the world. That is because, well I love YOU, but also because to step back and be gazed upon crumples me, but that man, he does - he just sees me, and I trust him to do so. Oh, and he is handsome and funny and unguarded about who and what he is and loves little animals like little animals have never been loved before.
Yeah, we came out in a big social sense and here we are, too, in this very normative and easy way that normative and easy people have the choice to do so. An inequality for sure. Yet here we are saying yeah - the bones of this marriage ‘on paper’ may not be ‘me’ but it is here, and it is also good, and I know why I am here too, because it serves. It serves [me/him/us] well.
Back to the job or the freelance gig, or the friendship, or habit, field of study, and/or even your geographic location - how do those line up? To both “who” you are but what the rest of your life looks like? All of it, not one of it, is to be granted credence and accepted. Take an inventory. Use a microscope, or whatever euphemism you prefer, and sit with that. Know that convenience is not a detriment but nor shall it be a determinate.
Add on to that - it may be for a time, and it may not for another. These past few years have shown us that if nothing ever before! So yeah, nothing can be ‘wrong’ but also not right enough and mauve, as much as it bites and stings to think about it - moving on or dropping off may be the thing. The MOST difficult aspect of decision-making, especially once you are forty or nearly as such and own a thing, and have associations and budgets and whatnot, is to ‘pull out’. No level of age or experience waters down the weight or fear of not-disappointing.
OK, true, but what if, what if you did choose - you first, and it second? The career or marriage or brand-solver of what you ACTUALLY like and feel is you - that might be such a sunny idea as it likely will limit you AND be boring as fuck. What if you know what you are aligned to and that impacts what and how you operate in the world BUT is also a second banana to who you are and you? Compared to how we aim for conscientiousness in our voting, how might we choose other aspects of our existences based on independence though vs lock-step allegiance?
Very, very, last: ‘your people’ might have problems if you choose beyond the boundaries of affliction. That can be a tricky dynamic, to say the least, but please, if you are weathering such a situation come on over here - there is a much hearty and healthy community of us over here very, very excited to see you exactly as you are - who, whom, and how.
Xo
Tracy
