The Metaphors Matter

"Love ends, just like everything else does," I tell my therapist, who nods.  But I still don't understand the words yet, even as I say them.  Everyone else seems to understand.  I'm still word-mapping at the white board.

I've learned that I'm not going to live forever.  That this body is going to die.  And I'm ready to age and laugh through the creaking bones and the disappearing memories.  And I'm ready to be my parents' parent, and graciously help them move toward the finality of their bodies in whatever way they need.  I understand that we are all going to change as we creep, or dash, closer to that good night.

But learning how to love within the mortality of relationships is something I'm still wrapping my mind, body, and heart around.  The grief of loving has hit way harder than this vengeful feminist would like to admit.  And I'm sure it hasn't been fun for my partners as I've talked about such uplifting themes.

Purity culture is not just the church.  I left when I was 19 (cue Tegan & Sara) and became polyamorous.  But sex without love still felt cheap, and love without commitment felt like a lie.  Love ending felt like being ripped in half.

Purity culture is not just the church.  It's also emo music.  It's American Football and Death Cab for Cutie and Brand New (aka my favorite f*cking music).  It's women twisting themselves around the psychoses of men--the best of which are only self aware enough to ask you to sympathize, but not active enough to work on themselves.

Purity culture is not just the church.  It's the fact that weddings are a party and divorces are not.  It's thinking that love is the best thing, and singleness is the worst thing.  It's hearing that one person cheated, and then asking what the other person did to "drive them away."  It's assuming that a partner is the only way to save you from "dying alone."

* * * * * *

I was 13.  A few years away from liking boys (they were still gross), and decades away from figuring out that I also liked girls.  Abstinence was...the only thing adults in the church wanted to talk about with me.

Not my creativity.  Not my struggles focusing in school.  Fuck, not even my relationship with God.

They wanted to talk about virginity and "saving" myself like I was a bottle of champagne for someone to enjoy one day far in the future.  (And honestly, I was one of the lucky ones...check out "Keep Sweet" on Netflix.)

I will never forget how every Christian woman lost. her. shit. when Amy Grant got divorced.  It's all anyone would talk about for weeks.  I couldn't listen to my favorite Amy Grant songs without hearing the following:

Oh oh faithless hearts, be far away from me...

"Yeah, she's one to talk.  She had the faithless heart."

True love is frozen in time

"Yeah, and you froze it."

The same sun / that melts the wax will harden clay

and the same rain / that drowns the rat will grow the hay

"I don't like this song."

"You see Lis, God hates divorce.  He wants us to work it out."

"But what if the husband was really bad?"

"There's always a way to work it out."

"What if the husband hurts her?"

"Sometimes he goes to counseling and gets better.  If he doesn't, and only if he doesn't, then they can get divorced.  But God still hates it."

Amy Grant wasn't abused (though to her critics, it truly wouldn't have mattered).  She merely fell in love with another man who brought her more joy and was easier to be with.  The scandal of the decade.

What did I learn at 13?  I learned that women aren't supposed to pursue their own happiness.  They're supposed to pursue monogamy, which is greater than individual happiness.  It's Divine Purpose.  Truth.  Belonging.  Not-Dying-Alone.  Family.  A structure everyone can understand.

* * * * * * 

I've been talking to my inner child a lot lately.  Because in therapy, I keep hitting these platitudes about love ending, and how I'm supposed to move on from it.

Love isn't simple enough to make any definitive statement about it, and relationships have nearly infinite variables.  But sexual energy and attachment energy are so strong and driving that we need ways to interpret what we're going through.

To quote John Green:  We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors . . . But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.  (Paper Towns)

Right now, love for me is like changing my clothes when I'm tired.  I have to figure out where to put my arms and legs, and I have to think extra hard about it.  Sometimes I just sit there with my shirt half on, my shoulders and back exposed.  I realize there's no way to avoid it.  I can't say, "I'm never changing my clothes again, because apparently the last pair of clothes wasn't good enough."  

We will always have to change clothes.  We're not getting out of that, no matter how thrilling or mundane the task is.  We just...need them.

Can I, maybe, just enjoy these outfits a little more?  Whether they're electrifying and short-lived, or whether they stay in my closet for ages because they're so classic and reliable?  No two outfits are the same; nor am I when I'm in them.  Some of them I'll always remember in ethereal bliss, like the pink fleece dress with pastel hearts and ruffles in which my 6-year old self could nap, play, or rule a castle.  Some of them evolve, like the black and white striped shirt I consistently replace with different cuts and fits.  Some of them I'll keep collecting--no matter how many I have, like the chunky, boyish jewelry.

Some of them were ratchet mistakes, but taught me that I need a little more danger in my life--the olive corduroy mini skirt, the teal bubble shirt, the satin capris.

Some of them are in an astral plane.  The bohemian skirt I got in a Jamaican store in 2012 was a purchase that I felt defined my energy--creative, relaxed, focused, meditative, exuberant, grateful.  When I wear it now, it doesn't seem to fit, even though I'm still all of those things.

Some of them left before I was ready.  The red zip up hoodie left pissed-on in a ditch, in a series of unfortunate events.  I'm angry about its early departure instead of the threadbare age and the gradual oblivion it should have had.  We always want more time, even at the very end.

With each piece, I uncover a new expression of my identity that will always be with me, whether or not the physical cloth is still in my closet.  I guess the goal isn't actually having the perfect clothes.  It's what I do with my time when I'm in them.

Bisexual, Homoromantic

Yes, it's my fifth entry about my sapphic flowering, and by far not my last

When I was 19, I lost my faith in God.  I felt the final crumb of anger float off me, exposed under the crushing weight of nothing.  My last prayer was, "Wow.  You're not even up there, are you.  You're not even fucking up there."  And it became clear that for my whole life, I had been crying on my knees to no one.  

Those were xanga's sunset years, and I blogged every day about that journey.  My page name was called Glass_Web, and I had a total of 12 readers (an astounding number to me; far more than I have now).  For several months, losing my faith was the only thing I wrote about.  As the year wore on, the atomic trajectory of that grief thinned out, evolving into questions that became so familiar, they sort of lost all interest to me.  I eventually came to understand, through long meditations, some breadcrumb basics of atheism: that death is final (for our bodies, brains, and individual self), and that time is precious.

Livejournal, on the other hand, (LizzyLeprechaun, but it’s not public) was my place to process the entirety of my first truly sexual relationship, from start to finish.  My desperation, my addiction, the sensual cage I wrapped myself in, and the eventual crack of my feminist cocoon. 

And so, Yardsale Buddha has become my place to take stock of my 30s.  My hundred-entry farewell to the idea of love I’d been chasing since I hit puberty.  Even through polyamory, and discovering all the things about sex that women aren’t supposed to talk about.

Amanda Palmer wrote the most beautiful post this past Wednesday, and I highly encourage all three of you to read it, after you squander your time reading this garbage.  There was a line that pierced me, as fresh rain to lungs.  She wrote, “everything is divorce-colored…When songs are delivered to my head, they’re divorce-shaped….The TED talks about prosthetic limbs seem to be about surviving divorce. The TED talks about genetic mutations seem to be about divorce. The TED talks about the murmurations of birds seem to be about . . . divorce.”

Do we ever accurately explain how many times our human lives fall into rubble?  

Men are not the only ones subjected to pride.  I cannot express my own grief without rage–rage that I believed in the magic I felt.  Rage that he, that they all, drank until they were full, and left without remorse.  Rage at the concerted effort to keep women mentally and culturally subjugated because domination is easier than communication, and men are terrified of sharing power.

Nothing will soothe the rage, so I just enjoy the beauty of the fire.  “Take your trophy and go,” I tell his ghost, looking up at the stars.

Do I still enjoy having sex with men?

*takes drag*

You know what, I do.  They do it well, and I’ll not deprive myself of pleasure just because they are romantically unreliable.  There is a rush of hunger in the eyes of a man that is unmatched by a woman–whose wisdom, intelligence, and collective grief tamper our flame.  How can you get excited when you already know what’s going to happen?

(Yeah, I know I’m hard-negging men right now.  It’s a step up from all-out hatred.  Hurt people hurt people, my therapist says.  And if I have to live in a world where Jordan Peterson and Christopher Hitchens exist/ed, you can handle some negging)

Desire is different from romance, and that’s not a part of straight-man culture.  Which fucks up a lot of long-term, heterosexual relationships.  Desire blinds me to everything except what I crave.  Romance enhances my experience of everything.  Desire is shutting myself down and doe-eyeing the one thing I want.  Romance is a collaborative dance–seeing that my woman is cleaning, and helping her clean.  Noticing each of our waves, and dancing with each other.  

We need both.

It’s okay to break up.  It’s okay to long for someone who isn’t longing for you.  It’s okay to masturbate to things that will never happen.  It’s okay to not be over your ex.  It’s okay to be over your ex.  It’s okay to get divorced.  It’s okay to be bored.  It’s okay to be broken.  It’s okay to not be aroused by someone you deeply love.  It’s okay to have feelings for your friend with benefits.

We don’t get to determine what we feel based on how convenient it is for our lives.  It’s fine–evolution happens to also be making shit up as it goes.