Sunday, September 6, 2015
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Here's a thing I've never said
I love the way we met.
We talked a lot about firsts, our many first dates, what preceeded what and what sealed it. How it didn't happen, and how much it did.
Maybe there is discomfort in remembering our meeting. I remember it more, remember feeling something you tell me wasn't there. Maybe what I'm calling discomfort is embarassment. But it was a nice little story, the hot toddy story, one with an unexpected innocence.
So often, I think everything is foreshadowing everything else, a set-up or a sign. I tried to extract you from our meeting, make you real. But I kept failing. I planted it with our friend. I set another out to find you online. I tried to make group plans, but you were busy. Eventually, I gave up. Maybe we met online, half a year later, through a personal ad. But it's not what I remember, it's only where I remember posing the question.
We talk about that, the personal ad, maybe because it's where the idea of us originated for you. For me, the idea of us didn't start as anything close to what we became. But it started so nicely, not with promise but with an unexpected want. Maybe I never gave up on that. Maybe you'd say it's because it was just me there anyways.
We talked a lot about firsts, our many first dates, what preceeded what and what sealed it. How it didn't happen, and how much it did.
Maybe there is discomfort in remembering our meeting. I remember it more, remember feeling something you tell me wasn't there. Maybe what I'm calling discomfort is embarassment. But it was a nice little story, the hot toddy story, one with an unexpected innocence.
So often, I think everything is foreshadowing everything else, a set-up or a sign. I tried to extract you from our meeting, make you real. But I kept failing. I planted it with our friend. I set another out to find you online. I tried to make group plans, but you were busy. Eventually, I gave up. Maybe we met online, half a year later, through a personal ad. But it's not what I remember, it's only where I remember posing the question.
We talk about that, the personal ad, maybe because it's where the idea of us originated for you. For me, the idea of us didn't start as anything close to what we became. But it started so nicely, not with promise but with an unexpected want. Maybe I never gave up on that. Maybe you'd say it's because it was just me there anyways.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
You are proud when you tell me you refused to say hello to your ex, the love of your life, the love of your life during the time our lives intertwined. I am pretty sure you say "refused," that you choose that word. You might tell me to go back in our chat messages, our texts, check and see that you said no such thing. Sex and strength, sex and strength you tell me are what the tattoo is about, one of them. I can't imagine either.
Another time, while we were together, you told me that you think about another ex of yours daily. I am thrown by this, understand the depths of my not understanding you, because she is a woman you speak of rarely at most—I had no idea. I think about how far you can be from her, not mentioning her, so intensely onward with your life, but you say this.
What I had—because we are taught to speak as having, as having had—was having ended it. But your final words count where mine don't, you draw the line and it's declared the more right of the lines drawn. What I have, is loss upon loss.
I learn to talk about having loved you, about the shame, about the beginnings even of the deep hurt you caused and would probably prefer I word as having existed between us. I think about how early and how often you worried that one day I would hate you, that you would be piled on top of a series of exes I despised. How I committed to loving you to death to prove you wrong, essentially. How I didn't think you should get to decide my feelings for you, my future feelings. Whether or not it was a product of this, I loved you with more than I had to give. I loved you beyond what made sense, beyond what was sexy or acceptable, without balance, but not without consideration for it.
My body left me when you did, left with you. Memories of it existed in the memories of you, made me able to recall. In the moments my body returned, it came with you. How boringly monogamous, I imagine you thinking, how extraordinately unlike how you function. Early on you'd tell me you hoped I found what you thought I was looking for, but I wasn't looking. If I had a dream of a future, I was never looking to slot someone into the role, tick them off on a checklist. You were not my future, but you were this urgent immediate; you happened now, and for the first time, I did too, the present as an unrecognizable state. I was never, despite all of my desire for you, planning my future with you, planning my child or possible future child's.
You were resigned to likely not have children, because your partner/girlfriend/unmatchable non-heirarchal love didn't want them. I wasn't looking for that with you, despite being in my future, despite not having time for unknowns in myself. Before you left for Norway, in my friend's house on Ashdale, you told me you wanted me to stay, that you wanted to try, that you wanted—not for me to wait—but for us to continue. An ongoing present, more of the now. At this point, your real love wanted to live together, you wanted to live with her. She wanted to come across the world with you; you wanted her there. You weren't even talking about how much time might lapse before we'd see each other again, how much time you'd have for me when we did. You told me, after I asked, that in two or more years, when you returned, that you only knew you'd be returning to her, that your return may be a move to Alberta, the Arctic, or somewhere else.
You, 1.5 years after the last time we've seen each other, tell me you like the poem I made public for you a year before, that you just came across it. I ask if this was the first time, or if you also read it nearer to the time it was published. You can't remember. You comment on how sometimes you don't remember the important things.
When you decide to move, to Norway, you tell me you shouldn't have $8 pho with my daughter and I, that you need to be saving money. I blame your girlfriend, I blame your friend Alison, I blame your parents, and of course you. We go for stupid soup. Everything is sad and will be from then on. Before you leave you show up at my place, belly wiped with peppermint oil (your girlfriend) that makes me dizzy, turns my stomach. We cry. I give you one of the earrings I wore on an early and important date with you. You, 1.5 years after the last time we see each other (this time, in fact) wear it on another date, with another girl, who has ever been mistaken for me. You mention the earring but not the woman, as though you are being romantic, nostalgic, as though it was meaning. You say your vest pocket and I'd forgotten about vests. This woman is more me than your important ex, though has her sensibilities, her nonchalance, but in this case patience. The day of the earring, the first day in this story, you hide behind my bedroom door when my child gets home. She follows your slushy January boot prints, asks who's there. You say you'll Skype, that you can't handle it, but you never say goodbye to her. (Three weeks after we break up, five months later, you decide this is a thing—one I've known all along. But that you also don't want goodbyes.) My child is newly three and you call her four. She goes from being a toddler into her second year of school. We kiss for the last time.
More than a year before, you texted me from a plane before it took off, off to see your partner/love. You would do this, again from a pirate ship before it departed, and so on. When you contact me from the airport, beyond where your girlfriend and parents can accompany you, it says "sent from my ipad." When I mention this, you say you used your dads. From Norway, your messages are still Sent from [an] iPad. I learn that Finmark is a place, though I don't believe it. Things will be different, but you're not dying, you're not leaving me, you're just going to do something, you tell me to calm down. I next hear from you two weeks later. You are angry when I mention this, and nothing is ever okay again, even for moments. I don't stop loving you for a long, long time.
Another time, while we were together, you told me that you think about another ex of yours daily. I am thrown by this, understand the depths of my not understanding you, because she is a woman you speak of rarely at most—I had no idea. I think about how far you can be from her, not mentioning her, so intensely onward with your life, but you say this.
What I had—because we are taught to speak as having, as having had—was having ended it. But your final words count where mine don't, you draw the line and it's declared the more right of the lines drawn. What I have, is loss upon loss.
I learn to talk about having loved you, about the shame, about the beginnings even of the deep hurt you caused and would probably prefer I word as having existed between us. I think about how early and how often you worried that one day I would hate you, that you would be piled on top of a series of exes I despised. How I committed to loving you to death to prove you wrong, essentially. How I didn't think you should get to decide my feelings for you, my future feelings. Whether or not it was a product of this, I loved you with more than I had to give. I loved you beyond what made sense, beyond what was sexy or acceptable, without balance, but not without consideration for it.
My body left me when you did, left with you. Memories of it existed in the memories of you, made me able to recall. In the moments my body returned, it came with you. How boringly monogamous, I imagine you thinking, how extraordinately unlike how you function. Early on you'd tell me you hoped I found what you thought I was looking for, but I wasn't looking. If I had a dream of a future, I was never looking to slot someone into the role, tick them off on a checklist. You were not my future, but you were this urgent immediate; you happened now, and for the first time, I did too, the present as an unrecognizable state. I was never, despite all of my desire for you, planning my future with you, planning my child or possible future child's.
You were resigned to likely not have children, because your partner/girlfriend/unmatchable non-heirarchal love didn't want them. I wasn't looking for that with you, despite being in my future, despite not having time for unknowns in myself. Before you left for Norway, in my friend's house on Ashdale, you told me you wanted me to stay, that you wanted to try, that you wanted—not for me to wait—but for us to continue. An ongoing present, more of the now. At this point, your real love wanted to live together, you wanted to live with her. She wanted to come across the world with you; you wanted her there. You weren't even talking about how much time might lapse before we'd see each other again, how much time you'd have for me when we did. You told me, after I asked, that in two or more years, when you returned, that you only knew you'd be returning to her, that your return may be a move to Alberta, the Arctic, or somewhere else.
You, 1.5 years after the last time we've seen each other, tell me you like the poem I made public for you a year before, that you just came across it. I ask if this was the first time, or if you also read it nearer to the time it was published. You can't remember. You comment on how sometimes you don't remember the important things.
When you decide to move, to Norway, you tell me you shouldn't have $8 pho with my daughter and I, that you need to be saving money. I blame your girlfriend, I blame your friend Alison, I blame your parents, and of course you. We go for stupid soup. Everything is sad and will be from then on. Before you leave you show up at my place, belly wiped with peppermint oil (your girlfriend) that makes me dizzy, turns my stomach. We cry. I give you one of the earrings I wore on an early and important date with you. You, 1.5 years after the last time we see each other (this time, in fact) wear it on another date, with another girl, who has ever been mistaken for me. You mention the earring but not the woman, as though you are being romantic, nostalgic, as though it was meaning. You say your vest pocket and I'd forgotten about vests. This woman is more me than your important ex, though has her sensibilities, her nonchalance, but in this case patience. The day of the earring, the first day in this story, you hide behind my bedroom door when my child gets home. She follows your slushy January boot prints, asks who's there. You say you'll Skype, that you can't handle it, but you never say goodbye to her. (Three weeks after we break up, five months later, you decide this is a thing—one I've known all along. But that you also don't want goodbyes.) My child is newly three and you call her four. She goes from being a toddler into her second year of school. We kiss for the last time.
More than a year before, you texted me from a plane before it took off, off to see your partner/love. You would do this, again from a pirate ship before it departed, and so on. When you contact me from the airport, beyond where your girlfriend and parents can accompany you, it says "sent from my ipad." When I mention this, you say you used your dads. From Norway, your messages are still Sent from [an] iPad. I learn that Finmark is a place, though I don't believe it. Things will be different, but you're not dying, you're not leaving me, you're just going to do something, you tell me to calm down. I next hear from you two weeks later. You are angry when I mention this, and nothing is ever okay again, even for moments. I don't stop loving you for a long, long time.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
End of [the Jewish calendar year] 5773
Someone suggested I keep a blog the other day. In some ways I feel too old for blogs, or they feel too old for me. I feel like I should only have one if it's connected to a professional website of mine, if it's really focussed, or if it's private. I'm also thinking Blogger is probably a bit old school. In any case, I'm trying to just post some thoughts here for later, because my notebooks and saved drafts and desktop documents feel overwhelming. Digital pileup. The Jewish new year is coming up in a few days, so this timing can be about that and other transitions.
Things on my mind at this moment:
-social justice not being about niceness. Agree! Wanting to give thoughts on the article I read (and maybe you did too) about this, that is not just a reiteration.
-entitlement versus privilege. I've been thinking about this a lot over the last year.
-activist identification, and activism. When I'm not putting my body on the line or attending meetings, what does it mean.
-the most offensive things that have been said to or near me this year. Hurts my heart.
-Fuck you, hard femme. I've been having a bit of a hate/love/hate-on for "hard femme" lately/since I started hearing the term. The other day I said something like this and the friend I was with responded "that's new right?" (speaking about the term being used, not my hate). I appreciated that. I wonder if this is a sign of age. The first time I feel resistant to liberatory language I could identify with. It's by no means the first time, but this feels different somehow (not bigger, but different).
-queer death ritual.
-boyfriend jeans. This is going to be the umbrella term for this whole storm of things I want to complain about re: queer expectations/queer conventions and other language I'm going to claim to mean the queer equivelent of homonormative. Less body, less problems. Sorry/not sorry skinny people.
Things on my mind at this moment:
-social justice not being about niceness. Agree! Wanting to give thoughts on the article I read (and maybe you did too) about this, that is not just a reiteration.
-entitlement versus privilege. I've been thinking about this a lot over the last year.
-activist identification, and activism. When I'm not putting my body on the line or attending meetings, what does it mean.
-the most offensive things that have been said to or near me this year. Hurts my heart.
-Fuck you, hard femme. I've been having a bit of a hate/love/hate-on for "hard femme" lately/since I started hearing the term. The other day I said something like this and the friend I was with responded "that's new right?" (speaking about the term being used, not my hate). I appreciated that. I wonder if this is a sign of age. The first time I feel resistant to liberatory language I could identify with. It's by no means the first time, but this feels different somehow (not bigger, but different).
-queer death ritual.
-boyfriend jeans. This is going to be the umbrella term for this whole storm of things I want to complain about re: queer expectations/queer conventions and other language I'm going to claim to mean the queer equivelent of homonormative. Less body, less problems. Sorry/not sorry skinny people.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Safe spaces for tiny people
I'm thinking about what it is to introduce a young child to people who don't treat you well, who you do not like or would prefer not to work with.
Introducing a kid to an adult, to me, suggests that you are giving this person your blessing. That you're saying it's okay, to go to or with this person, identifying them as a friend, someone that Mama knows. I'm thinking about this mostly in the context of queer and activist space, spaces that have been fraught, hard and hurtful to me, and also important, core.
I've had the experience of feeling like having a child improved my cred, amped up my experience of struggle in the eyes of others; that my doing it in a way that was readable as queer, alternative, non-conformist made me more exciting to people. Ultimately, it's the experience of feeling like people think I've redeemed myself somehow, which implies that I've been waiting for them to accept me and to be forgiven for the sins of high school, mental health, shitty dating scenarios, having feelings and expressing them. It doesn't make the past any longer ago for me, and I haven't been waiting for that. It's certainly easier to have pleasant interactions than unpleasant ones, to know that parents around me in certain spaces hold some version of similar social justice and anti-oppression values-- but as was the case in creating communities and support networks, in fucking and organizing-- we likely have different ways of teaching and expressing those values still.
While I don't want to build my child into my past trauma, put my grudges on her to carry, have her ignore the people around us, there are also times when I don't want to introduce her, don't want her to have an experience of people who hurt my heart or my head to be around or remember. There's an amount I'm willing to let go of, but there are ways our shared past is still with us, and micro versions of those pasts that reoccur in new relationships and dynamics now. It's not all other people, I'm guilty of recreating these patterns too. How I am in a space affects my daughter and I know that.
I used to joke that she had early gaydar, could attatch to the visible queer on any public transit. Truth is, of course she knows those are our people-- they look like the people closest to us, the ones we trust. Now that she is older, that she holds her own memories of our experiences out in the world, I'm even more conscious of who we connect with, who we establish memories or habits with.
Introducing a kid to an adult, to me, suggests that you are giving this person your blessing. That you're saying it's okay, to go to or with this person, identifying them as a friend, someone that Mama knows. I'm thinking about this mostly in the context of queer and activist space, spaces that have been fraught, hard and hurtful to me, and also important, core.
I've had the experience of feeling like having a child improved my cred, amped up my experience of struggle in the eyes of others; that my doing it in a way that was readable as queer, alternative, non-conformist made me more exciting to people. Ultimately, it's the experience of feeling like people think I've redeemed myself somehow, which implies that I've been waiting for them to accept me and to be forgiven for the sins of high school, mental health, shitty dating scenarios, having feelings and expressing them. It doesn't make the past any longer ago for me, and I haven't been waiting for that. It's certainly easier to have pleasant interactions than unpleasant ones, to know that parents around me in certain spaces hold some version of similar social justice and anti-oppression values-- but as was the case in creating communities and support networks, in fucking and organizing-- we likely have different ways of teaching and expressing those values still.
While I don't want to build my child into my past trauma, put my grudges on her to carry, have her ignore the people around us, there are also times when I don't want to introduce her, don't want her to have an experience of people who hurt my heart or my head to be around or remember. There's an amount I'm willing to let go of, but there are ways our shared past is still with us, and micro versions of those pasts that reoccur in new relationships and dynamics now. It's not all other people, I'm guilty of recreating these patterns too. How I am in a space affects my daughter and I know that.
I used to joke that she had early gaydar, could attatch to the visible queer on any public transit. Truth is, of course she knows those are our people-- they look like the people closest to us, the ones we trust. Now that she is older, that she holds her own memories of our experiences out in the world, I'm even more conscious of who we connect with, who we establish memories or habits with.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
I am a buffalo and I can shrug my shoulders
So goes that Eric Carle (Bill Martin?) line from Head to Toe. Anna loves it, shrugs. Problem is lately I can't really un-shrug my shoulders. I've been thinking about this loop I wind up in, chronic denial of my chronic illness. Is it politically correct? Barf. Anyhow. Last night a close friend said, "I didn't know you had a disk thing in your back, I knew it was something but..." and it made me think about how sometimes I don't talk. I reference shit like people should already know it (as I do with my writing) and overtime forget that they don't. It's a degenerative disease, in my back that is, hopefully my brain is fine for now.
So I started making a list of "what Fibro means for me" and am kind of appauled at my life. I have a serious attachment to diners and basically can't eat at them or sit at them anymore. I detest that chronic illness and pain change my identity and personality out of necessity. I have a hard time deciphering what's about growing up and what is about these limitations, and a harder time identifying it to other people. I don't want to be the woman who leaves the birthday party because someone is using cleaner on the table. I don't want to tremble defenses at people who are trying to tell me their natural oils will help calm me, when actually I'm going to be out of commission from the allergies they'll cause me for days. I like "that woman" best in comedy skits and complaints. It's an identity politic I don't want.
So I started making a list of "what Fibro means for me" and am kind of appauled at my life. I have a serious attachment to diners and basically can't eat at them or sit at them anymore. I detest that chronic illness and pain change my identity and personality out of necessity. I have a hard time deciphering what's about growing up and what is about these limitations, and a harder time identifying it to other people. I don't want to be the woman who leaves the birthday party because someone is using cleaner on the table. I don't want to tremble defenses at people who are trying to tell me their natural oils will help calm me, when actually I'm going to be out of commission from the allergies they'll cause me for days. I like "that woman" best in comedy skits and complaints. It's an identity politic I don't want.
Monday, January 23, 2012
the past?
A few years ago I basically had to therapy myself out of journalling because it was making me latch onto things in a way that wasn't good for me then. So much work on The Present but I'm super stuck on the time that was: sperm search, insemination, pregnancy, birth planning and The First Year. It was hell and it was unique and I'm kind of mourning it and missing it and not sure how to best document it, but it feels important to. I also feel like I need to get to the now with my kid and I need to deal with this stuff first, get to some sort of balance between knowing that that is/was mine and that I don't have to forget or unlive it, but that I have to move forward from it. I'm also having a lot of resentment, towards the person I've been involved with/co-parenting with to an extent (for the past 8 months), to friends who are around now but not involved or making things harder in Anna's first months, and around people who are newly pregnant/parents/planning that.
I was having some intense ghost kicks the other day. Then found out someone I know with an Anna-aged kid is pregnant again. I also suddenly am having all this issue-y-ness with giving away tiny infant clothes. I'm not ready to hand off even those mini literal parts of Anna's infancy and I'm not willing to admit that I don't have the same options as others in "family planning" (the condom aisle.) Fuck you money, we were never friends anyway.
The actual Getting Pregnant part of getting pregnant is a story. It's cute and rad and alty and has all kinds of bits and objects to hang onto. But it's a very small moment in the process. I think people think that because I was out of town they didn't know shit, but that's not it. What about when the doctor's thought I'd miscarried? Or when people were so complimentary because I wasn't giant but my midwives were worried about my not gaining? Or the Rabbi. No one ever asks me the story of the fun I had booking an appointment to schedule a naming ceremony for my kid with a rabbi I'd never met, having to explain my single homo broke-ass planned DIY at-home pregnancy and whether we might be able to change the language in some of the prayers to reflect that. I'm actually not the toughest or most shameless, and maybe somebody reading this knows I don't really go for the most radical form of Jewishness when I do seek it out.
So that sucked. I'm trying not to be angry or flaky or, I guess spiritual here, but it's probably not working. I want to say my kid likes The Clash more than Barney as some sort of repentance, but it's not even true.
I was having some intense ghost kicks the other day. Then found out someone I know with an Anna-aged kid is pregnant again. I also suddenly am having all this issue-y-ness with giving away tiny infant clothes. I'm not ready to hand off even those mini literal parts of Anna's infancy and I'm not willing to admit that I don't have the same options as others in "family planning" (the condom aisle.) Fuck you money, we were never friends anyway.
The actual Getting Pregnant part of getting pregnant is a story. It's cute and rad and alty and has all kinds of bits and objects to hang onto. But it's a very small moment in the process. I think people think that because I was out of town they didn't know shit, but that's not it. What about when the doctor's thought I'd miscarried? Or when people were so complimentary because I wasn't giant but my midwives were worried about my not gaining? Or the Rabbi. No one ever asks me the story of the fun I had booking an appointment to schedule a naming ceremony for my kid with a rabbi I'd never met, having to explain my single homo broke-ass planned DIY at-home pregnancy and whether we might be able to change the language in some of the prayers to reflect that. I'm actually not the toughest or most shameless, and maybe somebody reading this knows I don't really go for the most radical form of Jewishness when I do seek it out.
So that sucked. I'm trying not to be angry or flaky or, I guess spiritual here, but it's probably not working. I want to say my kid likes The Clash more than Barney as some sort of repentance, but it's not even true.
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