Liquid runs warm inside my abdomen, a tingle in my right toes. A bare perceptible pulsating in my left lower back reminds me to sit up straight, but still I do not. The quiet in this darkened break room makes me linger.
I'm knitting a sleeve for a sweater, the first of my own design. It waits in a plastic bag, on the shelf to my right. I do not look in it's direction. There is no time to take it out to play right now, not right now.
"As a parent it is our job to protect our children." We've all heard this before, haven't we? But do we agree? For many of us this was the parenting style we go up with, but does that make it a universal truth? I think it is a well-meaning, but misguided belief. I believe that when we tell ourselves that our actions are for the protection of our children or for the protection of anyone else, we are fooling ourselves. The person we are protecting is ourself.
There is a line from a song which says, "your strength makes me feel less strong". Indeed. My role as a parent is not to protect my children, it is to prepare them to protect themselves, to handle their own lives, to equip them with the tools to make self respecting choices when faced with life's stressful moments and disappointments.
How do we do this? I suggest we look to the practice of medicine for ideas. We have discovered that protection from certain illnesses comes from exposure. We need only reflect on polio or pertussis to name only a few of the many examples to know this is true. To provide protection, we must be exposed to that which we want protection from. We protect by not protecting.
A primary role of my parenting then, is to inoculate my children to difficulty by allowing for their exposure to the setbacks, disappointments and grief which occur naturally as a consequence of their own choices and actions. I must not hinder their experience of hardship, in situation or in emotion. Instead of meeting these experiences with grimacing, I can choose to greet them with grateful anticipation for the learning and growth they may bestow.
It's a funny thing how the compulsion to argue with someone who is hurling insults at you is transformed once you have become aware and accepting of your shortcomings. Then it is like they are telling you that the sky is blue, but angrily. It's kinda comical. Only, I recommend you don't laugh at someone who its angrily criticizing you. Yeah, that doesn't go over too well.
I used to think I'd never loved or been loved. Now I see things differently. I see that there is love and loving action. For instance, there is no question. I love my children, but I do not always take loving action. Part of this is because I had not known what loving action was. I'd simply behaved as was modeled for me in the home of my childhood. However, as is typical in an alcoholic home, the behaviors I learned to associate with love were just the opposite and what I learned to associate with helping was actually harming. No wonder I have been confused.
When my thinking began to untwist, my perception of love became more confused. I could identify loving action, but as I reflected on the people in my life who had said that they had loved me, few loving actions were displayed by them or me. I concluded that none of us had known love.
Today I see that both are true. I see love as a paradox. I can love someone and simultaneously act unloving towards them. The unloving action stems from childhood learning, the behaviors modeled and the defense mechanisms I'd learned to employ for self-protection. Perhaps the key to finding a satisfactory love relationship is in finding a partner with the insight to recognize and the humility to admit to their unloving actions when they arise, as they will.
Since coming to view love in this manner, I feel some relief - relief of sadness, relief from resentment and the removal of obstacles to accepting others, others I had hardened myself to. I can trust that their love is or was true, even if our unloving actions made a close relationship untenable. I can simultaneously love them and accept the depth or shallowness our unloving actions allow. I have come to see the act of loving as the act of accepting another exactly as they are right now while maintaining the boundary appropriate for self-respect.
As a passenger in a shuttle today, I realized that traffic jams don't bother me when I am a passenger. So I ask myself, why should it bother me when I am the driver?
I am bothered by traffic when I am running late, as if the traffic were to blame. "If only it weren't for the traffic, I'd make it on time!" Nevermind that traffic is the norm, not the exception.
I am also bothered by traffic when I have passengers because I am worried about their discomfort. It never crossed my mind that they may not be bothered by it or that I am not responsible for either the traffic or how they feel about it. What a relief to know that there is no reason for me to be disturbed by traffic. I can look at it as a reminder that I am not in control.
I was shopping in the downtown Seattle Goodwill last year, which is the biggest Goodwill I've ever seen. The cart I was pushing had a messed up wheel. You know, the type that doesn't spin correctly cause it has a shit-ton of thread caught up in it? So I take out my handy plastic handled pocket knife I bought at my neighborhood corner store and start cutting away the tangle of threads. My girlfriend at the time walks over to me and asks what I'm doing. I tell her the problem and explain how I keep a knife in one of the zippered pockets of my purse for an occasion just as this. She says, "That is so lesbian." I couldn't have felt more proud. Identifying that certain of my characteristics are typically lesbian has been a source of pride and validation. I had no idea that carrying a pocket knife was a lesbian trait. To me, it was just practical, but it makes sense.
When I reflect on those aspects of myself that made me feel like an outsider, off, not quite right, and can connect those those attributes to the fact that I'm gay, it gives me a sense of place, of fitting in, that I belong. I am proud of who I am. I like that I can fix things, that I installed my own car stereo, that I have repaired my lawn mower and a broken clothes dryer. I have replaced my own head lamps, brake lights and hatch lifts on my car. I like that I can pitch my own tent, start my own fire and camp solo. I like that I am athletic, good at math and science, and don't have to wear makeup to feel complete. Most of all, I like that I can now fully embrace who I am. For the first time, I like being me.
Photographs. People. Faces. Curves. Emotion. Desires. Hopes. Losses. Captured in a still frame, a moment in time.
Move with me now. A dance. A feeling. A touch. A moment in time.
In my bed. Blue sky. Bird calls. Cool breeze. Hunger pang. A moment. A choice.
