sit next to me

My son, the love of my life, was having sunday croisonts with me. Chocolate almond filled croissonts. He sat across from me but wanted nothing more than to sit next to me. He is eleven years old. He asked if he could move seats. He wanted to fondle my hand caressing each finger one by one. He wanted to play with my hair, taking strands and braiding them or scooping it back off my shoulders. He wanted to snuggle up to my arm, resting his head on my shoulder. He wanted this as an addition to the coffee and croisants. For him, It added to the chocolate filling. I am his mom, he loves me.

The man that says he is not my boyfriend  doesn't consider affection. But don't be fooled by this fact. He is sweet in so many ways. He does want to widdle away his day talking to me about everything under the sun, while laying across from each other on cushions with a view. He wants to teach me deffensive chess moves while cricket casually plays on his mac in the background. He wants to listen to eclectic playlists of spotify music that range from motown to hipster bluegrass. He is content to do this naked in bed under a mosquito net. Why do I care that he is not my boyfriend? Why does all this leave me wanting? Why do I care that he doesn't hold my hand as we walk, or rarely reaches to gently touch my leg? My hair he doesn't twirl around his finger. He never leans over to kiss me. 

In the end he is content to sit across from me. Does he know that his affection doesn't measure up to an eleven year old? 

He doesn't like cats

What does it take to make a match? One that lasts. If he doesn't like cats, and I don't like dogs. If he feels that my politics are worse than jello. Wiggly and unfounded. If I feel that he is still recovering from being 25 even at 36, afraid of breeding and owning houses. 

What are the list of defects that I can tick off about him, and he about me. Like a campaign flyer on election night bashing the oposition. We are both aware of what we are voting against. Worse than repealing the carbon tax. 

He was visibly stilted at the revelation that I sleep naked in the presence of my son, despite his otherwise ambivilance about my nudity. 

I winced as he ate two big macs in a row, no chewing and then farted. 

He frowns as I glance at strangers with my inadvertent bitch face, proving without a doubt that I am simotaniously snobby and socially awkward. 

He is emotionally unavailable, abandoning all forms of intimacy untill I am left a neglected younger sibling in his presence. 

I am emotionally needy requiring hours of cheeck kissing, hair fondling and toe dancing for which my dance card remains empty. 

We are not agnostic about each others defects. 

Neither of us are perfect for the other. We are human and flawed. Cracked and crinckled like the discarded wrapping paper after christmas morning. We lack the new shiny gloss that either of us imagines we should have. 

But as my friend I accept him. As my friend he is just him. Funny, attentinve and relaxed. He cajoles me, is up for any adventure and says sweet and caring things at the best and the worst of moments. As my friend I hold him up to no higher standard than to listen to my boring bits of daily news in exchange for listening to his. We swap, him teaching me chess so I can beat my son, me ensuring he has a rain poncho or teaching him to make kambuca. We enjoy, we laugh, we keep company.

Is there anyone out there who will check all my boxes, fills all my spots, pass my corporate interview? Maybe the key to all happy relationships is acceptance. Unconditionally loving your flaws in exchange for you unconditionally loving mine. 

Lets not decide. Lets not try to pass each others test. No match is required. Let's just be, enjoy, share. The future doesn't exist. There is only now. 

Becoming

When you met me I was a cosmetic girl with harry armpits who smoked, you said. This is true. Now I am many things. Still becoming you said. 

In Indonesian the word allready done is jadi. It is means to have allready become. Your true form revealed. Already become. 

When I was 20 I had not yet become. I dated you because you were nice to me and always smoked out me and my best friend on your unreasonably enormous six foot bong. At 20 I sold cosmetics in a flashy department store. I read the beauty myth to rebell against my superficial job and listened to Ani defranco. We danced to 80's night once a week and I wore heels. 

I now wax my armpits, I don't smoke and my make up routine is mascara and blush. I wear flip flops most days. Have I become? Is becoming something with an end? A point of completion? 

I want still to become, to unfold. I want to keep revealing new parts of myself like petals that unveil soft new fragrant bits as they open. 

In Indonesian if something is unfinished it is blum jadi, not yet become. I have yet to become. My trajectory is only what I make it. A million me's between here and death. I am responsible for my own path. Blum jadi. 

The exchange

You message me. 

"Is it ok if I pick him up at 12:30?" 

You come on your motorbike and leave your hemet on. I can say no more than hello. I have no pleasantries to give you. My news no longer has any purpose in your pressence. 

I have a mild form of distaste that lingers like bad breath on my tongue. I can only feel yesturdays jelousy and anger. It rains and I stand there getting wet as your motorbike runs. I say nothing and barely look your way. Everything is grey.

If I love you it is only in concept. I hate you for choosing her even if I am the one who let you go. I want you to keep wanting me. You don't. No one does. 

We trade this human that we love. We share this love in seperate rooms in seperate houses. You snuggling him and then I in turn. Never at the same time never again in the same bed like before. Never all wrapped up together with a movie and popcorn all the love that he has under one roof. 

He is the only proof of love we have left. Even last month there was shouting at least and the ocassional hug. But now there is no more trying. 

You get him and then I. We swap. Tomorrow you will bring him back to me. You will stand there in the rain with the engine running and let him come to me. He will kiss me and I will only nod in your direction befor you drive off. The proof of love being traded in the rain with the motor running. 

My father used to pick me up at the A&w rootbeer shop. My mom would get out of the car and shake his hand. I would go to him and she would drive off as he bought me a root beer float and curly fries. Root beer wiith icecream tastes like divorce. 

You said you didn't want a root beer float divorce. That you wanted us to keep something of us. We can't. 

Just leave the motor running. Leave your helmet on. Give me back the only proof of love that we share and go about your life. Bitterness is the only thing left. The rain can't wash it away. 

One way love

Morning and evening 

someone waits at monsushema.

One way love

- matsu basho

"I never was that into her" he said. "She was always more into me" he said. They stay like this locked in acceptance of this imbalance. Thirty years pass. Him wanting more, her not getting enough. She gets fat, her a judge, him a lawyer. They both work too much, they both drink too much. One way love. 

He was buying me dinner yet again. For years he did this. Show up in Bali and buy me dinner. My sugar-daddy, he joked. He would call her later to say he loved her. That he missed her. I would sometimes listen to this conversation as he sat in my house. I would not sleep with him, no sex. I liked his company but was not that into him. I wished I wanted him. He owns a vinyard, he likes to travel. One way love. 

I sat over coffee with the father of my child. "I never looked at anyone but you." He said. We stayed coupled for 17 years. I know this fact to be true. I was the center of his universe as he honestly described it. He ate up all my offerings. Like thanksgiving dinner he always wanted what I gave him. I accepted him everyday and appreciated that he loved me. I loved him in return for being my unconditional safe haven. For 17 years I longed for someone I wanted beyond reason. Wanted like cookies and ice cream in summer. One way love?

The man who for six weeks was never my boyfriend returned after a month in Australia. I had forgotten what he looked like I said. His daily white t-shirt, yummy  curly chocolate hair and warm skin. And mostly his eyes, brown and deep. Now I remember. His Australian accent willing me to aknowlede we are not from the same place. 

I sat with him on a plastic wicker couch by the pool in the villa that had been the scenes of our six weeks of sex and friendship. His black newly purchaded samsonite suitcase on the floor holding his only possessions. We talked about everything but the subject at hand. I abandoned my visiting friend in a coffee shop so that I could sit with him on this couch and pretend not to want him. I wondered if anything had changed since a month ago when we had declared ourselves friends. When he said goodbye not wanting me enough.

He grabbed me and pulled me on to him. I burrowed my face in his beard. He kissed me long and hard. There was emotion there. There was longing. It felt good. I wanted him. In that moment he wanted me. I wanted not to think about the consequences, the future aching heart. I wanted not to ask or at least to ignore who he had been sleeping with this past month. I missed this man. I wanted him inside me, naked. Like a moth to the flame. One way love? 

 

Dinner and a kid

Dear potential suitor:

Yes, I am a mother. My son is 11. He is gorgeous, smart and lovely. He has a mother, a father, and many grandparents all who love him. He is mine. He is not yours and never will be.

Don't be afraid. I know that you never settled down enough to have a child and don't imagine that you will. I did, I was married for 17 years. I no longer am. I have a child. So what? Now I want just good company and fun. Don't give me a scarlet letter. It doesn't belong to me. 

To the curly haired belgian who I see every day in salsa. You don't have to stop giving me those long sideways glances of admiration just because I devulged this fact to you as part of casual conversation. 

To the tall swiss with the Seattle area code who I ran into and then liked me on tinder. My whatsap picture is just a photo, and shouldn't make you cancel our date. 

To the overly tan french guy who flirted with me daily until you ran into me and my son in a cafe and your tan instantly faded. You wouldn't get the privledge of spending time with my son unless we were dating for six months anyway. Don't think about it. Enjoy my company. Be my friend even. He is mine not yours. 

Its not complicated. Don't overthink it. I am a mother. Its one of the things I am. Its not something I am asking of you. This description of me allthough possibly my most important title doesn't even show up on my resume. Even employers don't have the priviledge of knowing this about me.

I am the same person you liked before you knew this. Forget it really. Be my friend first. 

Sincerly,

A newly single mom trying to date

the end and mashed potatoes

Today is thanksgiving. It is hard to tell. it is tropical and warm and no one is discussing stuffing. Today I am going to spend thanksgiving with my broken family. Pretend for one day like we are not broken. Like we still exist. Eat mashed potatoes. A chicken instead of a turkey, the real thing is far from possible.

I didn't really know it was over till now. The end of something sounds clear and precise but in fact is a nebulous blur of possibility. Only now do I feel like it is over. The day I asked him to move out I didn't even believe it myself. When I left for Paris and he stayed in my house with our son possibility still existed. When he started seeing her and we spent that sad week floating down the river in Borneo looking at proboscis monkeys it felt over but in fact there would be months of what if's, more tears, a lot of anger.  More pulling than if we had been using a proper rope. 

The back and forth. The I want you, I miss you, go jump off a cliff is constant untill its not.

Now it is clear, real, I know it as well as I know how to make the stuffing. I know we are done. I feel nothing anymore. the sadness is gone and even the anger seems to be drying up like a creekbed in the summer. Mashed potatoes, gravy and divorce. 

He told our son about his new girlfriend and plans to introduce them this weekend were only halted by a stick to the eye, the obvious outcome of sordfighting at eleven. 

I no longer rile in a ball on the floor. I no longer spew tears like leaky faucets. I am hollow and empty like the balinese fire truck which recently showed up to a five alarm blaze totally empty of all liquid. Ironic or just tragic, I am not sure which. 

He seems like a stranger to me, someone I don't quite recognize. His choices that of a foreigner. I look at her and understand nothing. His friend on facebook inviting him to an evening of rainbow shots. His smoking. He has been released to the world. I am no longer there forming him. He is what he chooses to let other people make of him. Rainbow shots. 

I let him keep the leftovers. I had no desire to eat mashed potatoes and stuffing the next day. It was over we are done. Polite conversation and our son is all we exchange. No Turkey. All the searching doesn't produce on on an Island with no Turkeys. Just another day. 

Practice

I drove to salsa feeling light. I felt like the world around me was mine again, not a strange empty place. I felt like I needed no one and plenty would want me if they only knew me. I felt glad, secure and confident. I felt like everything was possible and I needed no one in particular. My only focus simple gratitude for having remembered to drive my motor bike in flip flops instead of salsa heals, making stopping more reasonable. No complications. The night was hot and sweaty. I was happy. I was alone.

I sat on the big backed sofa changing into my salsa heels. Before the band started I ordered my first glass of red wine in awhile. I enjoyed the sips. Each one careful and delicious. I was alone. I was ok. Really ok.

In indonesian there is a word people use to describe not good when asked how you are doing in polite conversation. Lumian. It means just more than enough. For a long time when people asked me how I was this is all I could get out. Lumian, just slightly more enough, just barely alive, just slightly more than ready to jump in front of traffic. I was so much more than that this evening. A lot more than enough. 

Everything requires practice. I believe this as gospel. In order to become excellent or even just ok at something you have to embrace being terrible at it. Keep doing it. Let go. Be terrible. Love being terrible. 

My salsa dancing has progressed from terrible to mediocre to borderline passable. I practice a lot. I look dumb. I step on people 's feet, miss the beat and generally suck. It is less than sexy. I keep trying. 

Being alone or at least not partnered in the world and managing happiness is the same. I am practicing, getting better. I am starting to feel ok, like I can walk thru the world with no one holding my hand. Like I can do it and feel good even. 

I danced all night with different people including a very nice older gentleman who was incredibly generous with dance instruction despite my begining salsa. I had long moments when the dance was fluent. I had other moments when I totally lost the steps or missed a lead and didn't turn when I should have.

I am sure being alone will be the same again. I will faulter, slip up, get scared, feel lonely again. Loose my moments of happiness. 

I woke up this morning under my blue mosquito net, startled to be alone in bed. No child, no partner, no lover. After my eyes focused enough to remember where I was, I regained my emotional footing. The bed is empty and I am still startlingly ok. I am really astonishingly ok. I am no longer looking back with regret. I have let go. He can go on his way, I will go on mine. I am good. I am alone. I am happy. 

She is his girlfriend. You are my friend.

You are my friend. 

You coached me befor I met her. Before I faced the woman over a cappucino who now casually refers to herself as his girlfriend. You sweetly talked me thru it, you told me to hug her, to be nice. You looked at me as you said this with your large sweet brown eyes measuring me, willing me forward. Your wild curly hair defying your seriousness and ensuring that despite the topic at hand you still appeared playful. 

I now find you irresistible, like ice cream. Is this the oxytocin? I try not to appear overzealous as I wait for you to let me into your cracks, like sunlight thru leaves.  

Will you touch my leg as we ride the motorbike? Will you grab my hand as we are walking. When we lay in bed naked for hours as you ply me with music will you reach for me from across the otherside of the bed, grab me and pull you towards you? Maybe sometimes, for a moment. I am mostly left wanting. 

You are my friend.

She told me her life story, sprinkling in details that compelled me to envision this new reality of her and him. The story of her hair being left in his hair brush that she thoughtfully removed to spare its view from my son. Her vision of meeting his parents as the new woman in his life. She doesn't yet realise that she will be eating his mothers chicken divan and complimenting its blandness. I would always be his family she said, as she smoked another cigarette. 

She is just his girlfriend. You are just my friend. 

You called me after I met her and genuinly wanted to know how I was. We got on a motorbike and I rode with you to the dentist. We spent the night withought sex, just naked snuggles, music and conversation.

You are my friend.

The next day over a final cappucino befor you left for two weeks home to Australia you asked me how I felt. Two days earlier we shed real tears at the thought. What would we be missing if we stopped having sex, if we kept our friendship and left the rest behind? We took the question and turned it over and over in our hands. Applying all the logic and reason that you and I could throw at these otherwise fragile human emotions. 

In the end you don't like me quite enough, your want is outweighed by logistical hurdles or subtle inadequacies.

I of course have the same, but some how this doesn't stop me from wanting you.  At least today and tomorrow and the next I really want you. 

You hugged me and I walked away. It hurt. My heart. Enough that I could feel it. 

You are my friend. 

Find another shell, keep sorting.

"You are on a beach sorting thru the same bucket of shells" my friend said. If these are the shells in front of you these are the shells you will sort for. But there are so many, why keep sorting thru the same pile. Go ahead, drop them back in the water. Let them float away. Find new ones. Another beach. 

I will keep looking, keep walking, keep dancing, keep doing. 

I won't think about that one's curly hair or running my fingers thru his beard or wanting his music or his sweet brown eyes. I still want him, I do.

I won't think about my life partner and his new girlfriend or the loss of eating mashed potatoes at thanksgiving as a family. We are done. 

I won't think about the one who would tell me what to do, and buy me unsolicited cake while flashing his smile. He was never a possibility. 

Drop them in the ocean, release them to the waves. 

Today is a new day. Let go of expectations, let go of attachments. In this new reality attachments are not the way. Don't attach, just be. Let people flow thru you and around you. Grab a bit of them hold on tight just for that moment and then release, let go. 

Be budda, he didn't attach. He walked away from his wife and sat under a tree. Find the tree, let go. Don't attach, let go. I like you, you are lovely, goodbye. 

The portugese man with the shaved head and the slight grey stubble, smiles and takes a strong lead, spinning me one extra time out of turn. I can't talk to him. He has nothing to say. Just spin me. I will ablige. 

The French man is very tan and hansom enough that the dance instructer imagines or wishes he was gay. "Do you ever dance in the evening" he says. I help him with his dance steps and he is open and grateful. He is too young, too tan, too short. But sweet and of course French. 

The Belgian won't speak to me in class but keeps asking me to go out in the evening. He is sweet and very young, I might need to lead. 

The older vinyard owner is coming back. I will enjoy his company for a time. A nice dinner, some wine. We can talk about food and building things. I don't desire him. He will always leave. He has a wife. 

Keep sorting. Keep looking. Keep throwing them back to the sea. 

The mute swan, the malagassy giant rat, the prarie vole and the black vulture are all monogomous. choosing partners, attatching, not letting go. They fall and then stay. They find someone and keep them. They do life's work together. 

I spent my life being these creatures. I spent my life monogomous to one mate. So what does the dating process of these creatures look like. How do they keep from latching on to the first potential mate and instead sort thru the options to find the best possible mate or just enjoy a connection for a moment. How do you resist the urge to get stuck with someone if you are a vulture, a rat, a prarie vole?

I am a prarie vole. I am trying to date. I have the urge to latch, to attach, to give up the search.  or a rat in this world. I must resist. Keep sorting. Be buda, drop the shell in the water.  Drop it. Let go. Be buda, find the tree.

Maybe the prarie vole has it all wrong. Maybe this is not what I even want. Maybe an intense emotional connection with another human being is nice in the moment. When the moment passes I should let go. Move on. Find the next one. Appreciate that moment for what it is, a moment. A shell. Enjoy that moment. Drop the shell in the water. Be buda, dont be a black vulture. Move on, fly away. Drop the shell in the water. Let go. Don't attatch. Drop the shell. 

La rueda

La rueda is a cuban form of salsa that is performed in a circle. The men dance and spin thier partners and then swings them on to the next person. As a woman this means that someone is always there to catch you. Each person takes you in and grabs you and holds you only tight enough to keep you spinning in that moment and then lets you go. You spin on to the next partner who catches you in turn. 

I feel so freed by this experience. I am indulging in Salsa to practice this metaphor of letting go. A metaphor for my new life. I am no longer dancing with one partner. I am no longer being held tight. I am being spun and then sweetly caught by the next man in the circle. 

I attended a halloween party last night. The man who was my first went with me. Two days earlier we spent one last day and night together. A day adventuring on sheer plunging beach top cliffs watching the sunset, the night tangled up under the sheets. In the morning we drank a cappucino and declared ourselves friends. No benefits. Just friends. The halloween party was the first to test out this new reality. We started the evening together talking and then slowly spun from person to person seperatly in the crowd. Dancing small talk. I peered at him from across the room as women flirted and chatted with him. We are friends. We ended the evening discussing our options. We would each now spin to the next partner. His choices were clear. A dark skinned girl from london wearing a hat wanted him in that moment. He would take her. I would keep looking. 

May the next person catch me as I spin, may they not let me spin out. May they let me land softly. 

Tomorrow I will rueda again. I will practice in the salsa movements the feeling of being held by strangers for a moment and then letting go. Always letting go. 

I am just a prairie vole

The prairie vole is frequently used in studies to emulate the nueochemical experience of humans. The prairie vole much like humans tends twords monogomous pair bonding. They do ocassionally divert from this, displaying behaviors that parallel that of human's such as divorce, seperation and infidelity. 

One study examined brain chemicals emitted when prairie voles were randomly given a partner and made to share space with them for a specific duration of time. Apparently, bonding chemicals emitted make the prairie vole exhibit a preference for those he spent time with, even when later given the opportunity to choose more genetically suitable mates.

So here I lay, the prairie vole being fed the brain chemicals that nature gave me to ensure successful pair bonding. I don't want these chemicals now. They are no good for me. This is only my randomly assigned partner. I don't want to get stuck.

He was my random selection. A research participant. I chose him to take my virginity. Not my real virginity but to break the spell of seventeen years of monogamy. 

I chose him because he was there, because he was kind, and just funny enough and smart enough. This is what I needed. An emotional respite. A clear understanding that sex and human connection were still possible for me. The brain chemicals were not part of my bargain.

The first time I laughed the whole way thru. Finding it unbearably funny that I was kissing a stranger. The sex was not akward or difficult and was surprisingly normal. I was not insecure or shy in most of the ways I had imagined and worried about. It was good even. 

The second time, the chemicals showed up. I started to feel something deep in my belly for this stranger. This stranger of a different race from a different continent. Who I has only met on five seperate ocassions. 

We layed in bed by the hour contemplating the evolutionary biology of prarie voles and how to resist the chemical reality we were being flooded with. Strategies were discussed. Less time together, no socializing just sex, or maybe a time limit. We settled on nothing.

By the third time I could feel him trying. Pulling away, just a bit. It made my belly ache or was it my heart? It made me realize that the chemicals are half the fun. They envelop you, wrapping you up in closeness and wellbeing. They are why we do this. To feel close to another human. 

I don't know when I will see him again or how I will keep from getting stuck for another 17 years with just some random selection. Four short dates being enough of an entoxicant to render me helpless. 

I have decided not to worry, to let go, to stop thinking and just feel it all. I have learned that resistance is futile. I will just enjoy the high. For now. 

Someone else's laundry

I am wearing a shirt that is not mine. The laundry gave it to me by mistake. I can't give it back to the rightful owner so I am wearing it. 

Not long ago it was worn by someone else. A woman. I maybe even have passed her on the street or stood behind her in line at the supermarket. 

I should be bothered by this proximity with a stranger. The wearing of a strangers clothes just washed. I am not. 

You spent the week with her in another city, sharing a bed, sharing space. You will see me tomorrow possibly. I will hug you, share your space. You may tell me you love me as you did before you left. 

I spent the weekend pondering if you ever wanted me back, would I be able to share you like a shirt worn by someone else, just laundered. Would my phyche be able to ever get past this? This use, this wearing, this closeness. 

Once in the evening you came wearing her sweatshirt. I asked where you had gotten it. It was hers. I cried. Her things on you. It hurt so much. 

You just texted that you are back but didn't invite me for coffee as you said you would, only that you will pick our son up from school. I want to die. I understand why people feel this, that they can't bear the pain and they want to jump off of bridges. I did this damage. I pushed the first domino. I pushed us down this hill. Now I am a divorced mother. We never even were married. 

I went on two second dates today. The spanish guy who owns a vespa shop in Barcelona and the Australian journalist. I like both of them for company. For an hour. For a meal. This is supposed to help, this company. 

It really only reminds me of my loss. 

How do I replace this lifetime shared. I have to trade you in for someone else's shirt? For someone else's laundry? 

Suspension of disbelief and other magical thinking

A friend just told me of her new relationship. That she is in love, moving in, signing a year lease on a vacation house. She informed me that despite having spent only six weeks in his company, despite him having just ended a seven year relationship just two months earlier, despite having had only a long distance relationship for months, she was in love. Because I am a logical person I wanted to tell her she wasn't thinking this thru. I wanted to tell her that in all fact she doesn't know this man well enough to be in love. She can't really even understand the depths and complications of the relationship he just removed himself from, maybe isn't totally disentangled from. Skype doesn't transmitt the smell or feel of dirty laundry left on the floor. She has no idea what the future brings, but she is willing to fall, to let go. To totally suspend disbelief to the point where it doesn't exist. This is what love requires, this magical thinking that makes you ignore the bad in someone. 

The other night I went to dinner at this same womans house. This was the kind of scene one could only find in Bali. The house was oppulent and rustic at the same time. The table was piled high with freshly made balinese food. Classical music playing in the background. There was brief banter about whether the servant cooking dinner would join us at the table. This conversation and its surrounds was a stark dichotomy with the stringy haired hippy sitting in front of me. These were the kind of hippies who had money and servants and time to arrange well apointed sceances. 

The dinner progressed and the conversation quickly turned to gurus. These are people who have them and believe in them. There is apparently a hugging guru. A fat lady from India who is known to hug 1000 people in a day. There is another who gives strict instructions about whom to marry and when. 

Apparently what people want from these gurus is to be told what to do with thier life. Apparently if you give over control to them they will run your life completely.

I understand this need. I understand wanting someone else to take the steering wheel. To drive for awhile. 

Being frozen, afraid to make choices for fear that they will be wrong. This makes everything impossibly hard. I wish I believed in hugging fat ladies as the solutions to my problems. I wish it was that simple for me. 

Believing in fat hugging gurus to know more about life than you or believing the guy you just met could be your soulmate. It is all the same. It takes ignoring most of what is in from of you. It takes selectively liking and seeing only certain bits. This is a skill. One that has been honed by most people. This is how I am broken, this is the ability I lack. I am a realist. I see the messy bits, the trainwreck before it happens. 

I think this is why the romantic beginings of relationships are impossible for me. I will never be able to suspend disbelief long enough to fall. 

Conflicted clusterfuck

A friend described my life at the moment in this way. A conflicted clusterfuck. I can't move forward. There is no backwards. It is a traffic jam, a constipated baby, a dry river bed waiting for rain. There is no movement. None. 

Some one just told me a story about the traffic In Jakarta, the capital city in this country I call home. Sometimes the traffic jams are so bad that they last all night. Women are in the streets crying because they can't return home to thier children. They are just stuck in the street surrounded by cars that can't move. Each can't move because the other is there. I didn't ask but am left wondering, how is this resolved? What happens in the morning? I believe that the cars must eventually move. Slowly inch by inch, and then eventually picking up speed untill everything is freely flowing. 

My life is this right now. Nothing moving and no possibility of escape. At somepoint something has to shift. The morning has to come. 

He is getting on a plane with her today. A visa run to kuala lumpur. He shared coffee and tried to fix my computer befor he left. The strength it takes to accept and even love in the face of this is extreme. He hugged me and told me he loved me as we do. Then he drove away. He is not mine. I have to be strong and let him go. He is becoming something, I have to give him the space to become. 

I have given up on online dating. I deactivated my account. Focusing on my relationship status is the wrong thing. This is too insane. 

I will keep dancing and searching out the things in life that are me. I will try to beat back the aloness with a stick. The morning will come, things will start to move again one day soon. I have faith in this. 

Ours, yours and mine

I made fried rice out of the leftovers in the fridge, added an egg. This is yours, I forgot it was. You reminded me that this is what you used to do last time I saw you. 

I painted your walls butter yellow befor you met her. You still wanted me then. Now these walls are yours. These yellow walls. Other people compliment you on them. You say thank you. No credit given, no credit required. She doesn't even know they are mine. That me and your son picked the color with love and painted them for you, using our own two hands while you were away. 

Remember that city in mexico when our son was a baby? Remember all those yellow buildings? We were there. Can't we return to that moment?

You cook our food for her. It was mine first but over the years it became ours. First when I was pregnant and couldn't stand the sight of raw food. Me lying on that old garage sale couch nautious and directing you in the kitchen. You slowly becoming a cook.  

You have pickles on your shelf that you made. They are my pickles. My recipe. Can I take them back from you? I cannot. 

We have these things that are ours. This is how it is. Now you are sharing them with her.

Is that you outlined in a shadow in her Facebook profile picture holding those pickles next to you and her? She doesn't know they are mine does she? 

Then of course there is our son. He is the perfect equal combination of you and me. Yours and mine. Your face, love for books, astronomy and a dry wit. 

My snuggliness and sense of adventure. 

These things are so intertwined, so jumbled. After this many years, we can no longer pull apart these pieces. I am always a part of you and you are always a part of me. I just have to accept that you are now sharing those parts with her. I have to accept this without feeling like a jealous toddler who is unwilling to share my toys. I have to release you. Release all that was shared. Give you away. Give it all away, to you, to her. 

Date #2 and #3

Date number two was an Australian. Wild curly hair and tall but with a stylish conservative button down shirt. He was the first intellectually oriented person I have met in this small town. We had a lovely debate about capitalism and micro economies that was stimulating. This should have been enough all by itself. After a drought of lonliness one would imagine my brain would have jumped at this dance. It was a good start to feed my hope that someone could be possible but not enough to satisfy me beyond dinner. 

It is strange what you sort for in a friend, a lover or a partner. The right combination of things. I kept looking at this man across the table thinking he is smart, a journalist, he is a bit alternative, we are having a nice intelectual debate. What is missing?

Ironically after my first date with the man I spent my whole life with I wasn't sure. He was just nice. At 20 this was enough, to be just nice, or maybe it wasn't. All these years I was unsure if just nice was enough. Now I think that maybe all relationships are grown. Watered and fed untill shared experience makes them real. Maybe there is always a blank slate from the start. Maybe there is nothing else. 

Date number 3 was different. He was brazilian and alternates between working on oil riggs and surfing. I could have been on a date with Vinnie from the bronx, if I could just ignore the portugese accent. He asked me if I ever wore high heels. He liked really high ones especially.

 "I live in Bali," I replied. Heels? I have not even seen them in years. 

I made it thru my coffee, just barely. He was tan and muscular and I had always liked latinos. I could no longer be in his company, not for a single moment more. How is it that this only makes me feel more alone? 

Is funny and charming with some intellegence, a sense of adventure and fiscal independence too much to hope for in one person? I want my old very flawed life back. It was mine. 

The father of my child, my partner in all things life sat and waited in the school parking for a parent teacher meeting. We had driven on a motorbike together for one hour without talking, thru balinese ceremonies, traffic. Him fuming and smoldering over the fresh knowledge that I had a date, that in fact I was dating. This my only recourse from running into him and his girlfriend while buying bananas. It still felt like a betrayal somehow. 

"Let's just drive to the airport and get on a plane and never come back to this godforsaken Island that ruined our life" he said in a tone that lacked conviction. I imidiatly thought of real life. "We have property to sell first" I said. That was the wrong answer. I am still my practical non romantic self he declared. 

I don't believe its what he wants. I am not sure it is what I want. Not sure the genie can be put back, that the pieces can be glued back together. Would I respect him anymore now than I did then? Would I be able to get over his physical intamacy with another woman? Probably not. How can I be sure?

He is caught enjoying his new life and still missing his old one and feeling guilty about the dichotomy. I am stuck alone with no way forward. I am stuck trying to get thru 15 minutes of coffee and hoping that the next one will make me want to at least stay for dinner. What would someone have to be like to make this true? 

First dates

A man whose profile picture is him sitting at a desk cleaning guns would like to go out with me. We live in Indonesia, guns are highly illigal. No I will not go out with him. I will also say no if you have tattoos, are holding a beer or are flashing a hang loose sign. Also strangely if you are surfing. Odd I know. I think surfing could be fun but somehow if this is your profile picture I don't want to date you. I can't really say why. 

Last night was my first date. Online or otherwise in 18 years. I thought company with anyone would be nice. An attractive gentleman, who speaks three languages, has a masters degree and likes to travel enjoying the sunset with me. This should be preferable to the aloneness that has been stalking me daily for over half a year now.  Turns out I was wrong. 

What makes someone tickle certain spots inside your soul? Spots that makes you want more of them. More just over coffee or more that makes you want to bring them into your bed. This is a topic that now seems so nuanced and complicated as to be unsolvable. I don't know the answer for myself.

This gentleman didn't tickle anything for me. Not my mind, my heart, or my loins. He drove in a taxi for over an hour to have drinks with me based on some photos and a brief description of my life. God bless him for at least making me feel wanted for a minute. 

We each had a coconut. We enjoyed the jungly view that is Bali. It turned out that the restaurant I chose was the location of a speaking engagement and a honeymooning couple joined us at our table. Then minutes later, the genteleman I am scheduled to go on a date with the following night) who I had not met online but in person) showed up. He blindly stumbled into my date unaware that this was my scheduling conflict that made me push him forward another night. Awkward, but I suppose unavoidable when trying date en mass in a small town. 

I sat thru polite resume like converstation with my date and included the honeymooners in smart discussions of religion in Bali. I played by the dating rules that I have been advised of by those that know me too well, flaws and all, and love me anyway. Let them do most of the talking, don't talk about divorce or kids or other relationships. Keep my phone off and in my purse. 

In the end I knew within minutes that there was nothing wrong with him but he did nothing to make me want more of him. He was not funny, or intellectually challenging. He didn't even overpower me with some masculine trait like ordering my drink for me. Something that allthouh my feminist self finds dispicable my hormones find hard to resist. 

So with this, when my phone rang I broke one of my rules and answered it. I faned an emergency to leave. It turned out it was the father of my son calling about kid birthday plans tomorrow. I took the moment to tell him I was on a date and allthough this guys resume was better, he was not funny nor smart. Both of these areas are what make him and I still want time together even now. Funny smart conversations are part of what tickles me and makes me want your company. Unfortunately, there is more too. It was the intangible "more" that started the domino affect that brought me to this first date. I should have tried and and made him jelous but I didn't. It brought the missing back. That dreaded missing. 

Tomorrow night is another night, another date. I allready know how this one will go. But I am going to be generous and contemplate if there is something more there. Eventually with sheer numbers of dates eventually I will want to stay thru dinner, right? 

Lost in grief

Last summer I worked in a refugee camp in the remote mountains of Thailand. The goal of the research project I was running was to understand mental health and coping strategies of the refugee population and ultimately to deliver a tidy report to those paying my salary. 

In the process of wandering around and discussing mental health with the population there, I was brought to a small bamboo shack deep in the isolated jungly part of the camps. There was a woman sitting on her platform made of bamboo. There were no walls and only a roof made from thatching large leaves together. This was her home. She was wearing a beautiful handmade skirt in bold black, red and white that she had made with her own two hands. She didn't speak but sat and rocked, not even looking up when we joined her. I was told by my translators that she had lost all of her family during the terror inflicted on those in Burma. She had experienced so much pain that she was a frozen person. She could no longer move or even just be, she could only rock. 

If she had yarn, she would weave colors together to make a pattern. She lamented in barely audible burmese that the weaving was her only comfort in life but she had no yarn. I imagined the extreme predictabiliry and control involved in taking each string and putting it in its place. Making sense in an otherwise senseless world. I sat there aware that this was what extreme emotional pain looked like. Embodied. I arranged to have yarn sent to her. I did this because intelectually I knew it was the right thing to do. I however could not deeply empathise. At the time I had never experienced emotional pain that was anything more than a surface wound. 

For the past four months, I have become my own version of this rocking woman. I am aware that divorce and the pain of watching the man that I spent my whole life with starting a new life with someone else compares little to loosing your whole family. But for me this is the pinacle of my own personal emotional threshold. 

I am not lost to the jungle, not totally consumed by it and my own grief like this woman. I still go about my day. 

But last week while buying shampoo in the super market I suddenly felt seering pain in my chest and broke down with tears flowing freely. My ten year old son comforted me and said "let's just get home mom." 

The loss of my family as a whole complete unit, the loss of someone that knows me and loves me anyway, who accepts me after everything. This loss does impobilise me for long moments in my day. It stops me in my tracks. It inflicts real physical pain. It takes away my ability to breath. 

Four months have passed since I floated down that jungle river in Borneo crying uncontolbly as I sat company with fresh loss my broken family still in tow. Since then the tears and pain has been unquantifiable. Deeper and greater than I thought possible. After years of no emotion and no tears this grief feels like an infected pimple that burst letting out all of the built up puss of the past. In this way the pain hurts, but also has no choice but to come out. 

Grief is something that you can either let pass thru you or consume you. The burmese woman I met had long ago been consumed. Like a stone statue that had been overgrown she was lost to this grief.

I now have to find a way to let the grief go. Let it pass theu me. I have to find a way to not be lost in this grief stricken jungle. I have to walk out of the forest and look at the sunshine. 

Liminal Space

Liminal Space is a concept often used in Anthropology to describe the grey areas of life. The space between two things, where one ends and before the other begins. This term was originally  introduced by a well-known representative of French positive anthropology Arnold van Gennep. He describes it as a threshold, boundary, passage between two different places. 
 This is the space I find my self in now, in this passage between. At the end of an 18 year marriage, searching for life's edges to gently trace with my hands until some solid form emerges. Looking for footholds to snag a new path, a new way forward. The world has become this grey space, this in-between space, this liminal space. It is appealing to make things black and white, grey is hard. loving someone or not loving someone. Wanting someone or not wanting them. keeping something sacred or smashing the whole thing to the ground to break. In between this is never clear. This in-between space is which I am lost.

Last night I went to a party, the first for me in some while. People were dancing and drinking and smoking. I expected that I may see my partner/lover/baby's daddy/best friend of 18 years there with his new girlfriend/lover/fling standing in a dark smoky crowd, seen only from a distance. I chose to go anyway. I decided to dive into that darkness and let it all sink in. This is all still fresh, I am still wounded by the knowledge that what was, is now not. I almost wanted to see them there, to feel the pain burn, to let it sear the grey space into something more black and defined. I didn't see them. Instead, I danced with strangers, watched people much younger, go through courting rituals of drinking and flirting that seem more foreign than the rituals of animal sacrifice all around me here in this foreign land. I watched and observed and wondered if there would be an after to what feels now like only a before.

There is the before I realized that he was sharing a bed with a woman that I can only see or know  in facebook posts, learning only that she both teaches yoga and smokes. A dichotomy that in the abstract I find both respectful in its duality and pitiful in its contradiction.

There was before I ran off to Paris to cope with my new choice to throw out the person I shared all of my adult life with.  Walking bundled in heavy coats and boots borrowed and scavenged to protect my thin tropical skin. Walking arm in arm in the company and solace of the only person I new who could accept my grief as she had her own. We walked thru grief filled graveyards and wandered the halls of the Louvre witnessing the paintings that kept company with mona lisa. We ignored it all and only wept and walked.

There is before I threw him out of our house and told him that he needed to find a life for himself beyond sitting and drinking and not doing, so I could grow to love and respect him. He wept daily and pleaded for a return to our version of normal, vowing that an absence of a life purpose his only crime could be redeemed. But I punished him with dis-missle to an abandoned building in mid town that once carried a vision of reconstruction that was ours to make together. There he slept alone amid rubble in the dark, trying to piece together a life.

There was the before I spent months contemplating if love could be shared among many, if I could love her and him, if love was big enough for us all. Before the night that she sweetly invited me to sleep all three of us together in their marital bed sideways in a row like children as if nothing could happen that would cause any future damage. Him cleanly showered, eyes sparkling, her soft and sweet and sincere. I wanted to see what it was like to love the two people who had become my family, Love them both at the same time, both together, all abandon to the wind. I wanted this. I declined and instead let her wrap me in his raincoat and drive home on my motorbike in the rain. I did this not for lack of want but because I imagined the grief and anguish I would cause the man sleeping at home in my bed, our bed of 18 years.

There was the before I spent months contemplating if what I had was enough, if there could be more, if love was something beyond shared space, if it had anything in common with sparks and fireworks or if like an old red wine it was content to sit. That man sitting on my couch, sharing space with me, was he happy? Did diving into the sea of chemicals that are created when two new souls who have never met play with pheromones be worthy of some trial in life's long list of experiences? Is there any real harm in letting someone play with my pheromones from across the room? These were questions that ate at my day, and slowly unraveled me and what remained of my relationship. Was anyone responsible for this unraveling? Should I place blame? 

These questions that now seem akin to wondering if trying that first sip of whisky as a teenager might be a good idea or have some larger context in all the experiences in life. In the morning when the dark lifts you realize the whisky just made you drunk and you now have a headache. There is nothing important or meaningful to have come of it.

Before all of this there was just us, together. Together in everything. Together feeling trapped in what must be, enjoying the bland taste of comfort. Not appreciating the simple gift of a warm body that would accept you and hold you and take you every night as the cold set in. Not acknowledging that there is nothing more beautiful or important than ears over coffee that know you and and understood that your words were just theirs to hold and keep and not judge or diminish with opinions. These simple gifts became unappreciated with time and tarnished by the daily wear of life.

I am not yet to after. I am stuck. I am in this liminal space. lost in each of the things that came before. wondering if any of them can be erased. As there is no after,  I left the stable structure of before and I am still not yet to the transformed. I only take solace in the fact that this means the story is not over.