How Things Work
(this is the space where I'll expound on the mysteries, eventually...)
As I said, some of us are slow. So when the first "real" girlfriend came along, I decided to make a go of it. Do the "settle down" thing. We moved clear across the country together to start our happy little life in a cozy one bedroom apartment in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. And the first person I met in our new hometown was a woman in a long-term open relationship who wanted to know if I was interested in a fling. Now hold on there, cowgirl. Say what? But the proposition set my mind to thinking... and though I said no to the woman, I am ever grateful to her for that.Which is not to say that I immediately saw the light. After the girlfriend and I broke up I set myself on the lofty goal of becoming a San Francisco socialite, but was doomed from the start by a bad choice of housemates. Trapped in my room by the raging winds of their ongoing drama, I reached out via the internet to an interesting personality who presented herself as non-monogamous. Yes, I thought, here's my chance! But we fell into the old worn-out rut of a Relationship with alarming ease and were doomed. Next came the beautiful blonde whose independent nature promised relief from the same old merging routine, but alas... I somehow lost hold of my hard-won insights and we moved in together, and moved predictably apart.
When that relationship came to its pre-destined end, I felt the weight of far more than that failed pairing pressing down on me. Twenty eight years of cultural brainwashing suddenly threatened to crush me under its accumulated weight, and I wept. Not for the loss of the relationship, but for the loss of myself in the mythology of The Relationship.
The romance of partnership and happily ever after has never been my romance. It was spoon fed to me as a child, and I accepted it without question, without knowing it was possible to question. Shaking free from these illusions was intensely painful, and utterly liberating.
My first and foremost priority is myself. I am my own primary relationship. Beyond that, I welcome love and intimacy when and where they choose to enter my life, but do not mourn their absence. Alone, I am a complete person, concerned with the today I can experience and not the tomorrow I'll never know. And that, for me, brings emotional freedom.
