What I Learned by Becoming a Cliche: An Unusually Long Post in a Weird Format

Monday, 10 February, 2014.

1210 hrs: I'm just off work, and have a mile to walk to get to the bank and take care of a paperwork snafu before catching the bus home. I text a single word, "Hi," to PofI because what I really want to text is "I'm going crazy not hearing from you when I know your life is going great, but I know you're still probably upset with me, and I feel like I shouldn't call you an asshole unless we're on the phone actually talking" but "Hi" is less provocative.

Intermission: I take care of my thing at the bank, ride an overcrowded bus back to my end of town, and decide to take a side-trip on my way home to visit my cousin(-in-law, henceforth my cousin) whom I haven't seen in a couple weeks because my work schedule has been a pain in the ass. We sit on the couch, venting and sharing our woes with one another, because we have that kind of friendship. She goes off about grieving lost loved ones, I go off about feeling abandoned by PofI, and somewhere in this, he texts me.

1525 hrs: I see the indicator light blinking on my phone and see that it's a message from him, time stamped 1503, reading "We need to talk." (WTF is that, by the way? I know we need to talk. I haven't heard from you in a week, of course we need to talk.) Instead, I text back "I don't disagree. Can we handle this by text or do I need to call you?"

Intermission: I wait to hear back, vocalizing the stupidity of that four-word phrase to my cousin as she attempts to advise me to keep my head and catch my breath (I'm currently shaking, trying not to scream because her kids are just downstairs and I don't want to frighten them).

1543 hrs: Reply message: "I'll call you after I'm done hanging with <name>."

Intermission: So, we need to talk and yet you're going to take an indeterminate amount of time to hang out with a friend? Nice.

I spend this period of time split into two people. Half of me is still talking to my cousin, half of me is posting "Anticipation" and trying to keep the hyperventilating to a minimum, because "We need to talk" is always followed by a breakup and I'm not great really horrible at handling rejection. I don't want to just get dumped, and I don't want this relationship to end in shambles.

Background: I met PofI five years ago and was pretty much enamored from day one. It's one of those things where even during the periods of time when things had gone down hill and we were actively avoiding each other, we'd still somehow end up in the same place at the same time. (I think I'm going to take a whole other post to try and explain how my views of romance have changed since I first knew romance was a thing.) But this is the longest period of time I've kept up a friendship with anyone in my life, and though there are some people I've technically known longer, he and I have never gone so long without talking that we're total strangers when we get around to catching up. This is a serious investment of time and affection, and the thought of things ending on bad-enough terms that we never speak again or do go so long without one another that we become strangers is . . . unthinkable. Unfathomable. So innately, horribly wrong.

But I keep cool on the surface and try not to fly off the handle. My cousin decides to put on one of the Twilight movies *retching* and it's disgusting how stupidly naively loyal those characters are to each other, how shallow and hollow their "love" is when a real relationship of ups and downs and minimal lying-on-your-bed-curled-into-the-fetal-position-for-semesters-at-a-time can't keep together at all.

And then it hits me: they're going to fail in the epilogue. (If there are any Twi-tards in the audience, I do not apologize for offending your delicate sensibilities; I also haven't read the books since 2008, just after the last one came out.) Think about it for a minute, though:

     ~Edward and all the other vampires in his "coven" just kind of . . . are. He and his "siblings" go to high school after high school after high school, collecting caps and gowns like they're going out of style (and I really wish they would) but they really don't have any direction or purpose in their eternal lives other than not getting exposed as vampires. (Carlisle, the doctor "father," is the only one with purpose, and he has spent his entire living and undead existence saving lives however and whenever he can.)
     ~Bella is two-dimensional. She's a typical teenager who doesn't get along with her parents (having recently been one, I can tell you for a fact this doesn't make her special). She spends half the first book mooning after some guy she just met in a town she just moved to and he spends all that time avoiding her because she smells delicious and he can't read her mind (which would be a bit boring, anyway, but that's hardly the point). She doesn't have life goals: she doesn't ever talk about wanting to go to college or starting a family or traveling the world or any of that until and unless he brings it up, and then she just convinces herself to agree with whatever he says.
     ~They are each the first person the other had any sort of romantic interest in, apparently, and he's been around over a hundred years and she's never been anywhere but Phoenix, Arizona (a nice city and all, but a little stale after a while) and Forks, Washington (which is super freaking tiny). If it took him that long to develop an attraction for anyone, he's quite possibly only with her because he's tired of being the only one of his coven who isn't paired off with someone or he's tired of taking crap for it. She, frankly, has been brainwashed by Disney. Sure, by the end of the last movie they're all married and parents and stuff, but how long do you really think it will take them to realize that maybe rushing into things was a bad idea? Personally, I give them five years, at which point their daughter will be at the "fly the coop" stage of life and that's a little much to be happening all at once, ya know?

But as I'm watching this movie, I realize that that is exactly the direction I'm heading, except I know that's not what I want with my life, which gets me to thinking:

What do I want with my life?

I finally start calming down enough to talk with my cousin like a rational adult and she gracefully puts her own broken heart aside for a while to help me sort out the pieces of mine.

Do you love him? Yes. Absolutely. Without a doubt, he is always the last person I think of when I fall asleep at night, and the first person I think of in the morning when I wake.

Are you in love with him? Definitely. Sharing the same space with someone is never as comfortable as with him, and even the silences are normally pleasant (except when we're both determined to behave like grumpy children).

So where is this going? Eventually. . . Somewhere. Not entirely sure where, exactly, but somewhere.

And where do you want this to go? . . .

Seriously, I had no answer for that one, so I had to stop and rethink my life.

On a personal level, I know I want to do something positive and make an impact on the world. I would prefer to do this through my art, the fine and noble tradition of set-building and light-and-sound design and all other things technical-theatre related. I want to get my Bachelor's degree in Technical Theatre, go to Seattle or San Diego or Chicago or, really, anywhere vital theatre is happening and at least some measurable chunk of the population gives a crap about it. I want to build sets, and act, and direct and make people think about the big issues, and even if they never make a decision about something one way or another, at least they'd know it's something they have to think about, and I will have been part of the spark that started that thought process.

If I can't do that, I think I'd like to teach theatre, or travel the world, or write novels, but I can do all of that in addition to my "Plan A," too. If that doesn't happen, I'd probably become a phlebotomist so I can draw blood and tell people I'm a professional vampire. I always hate getting shots, so the very least I can do is make them less miserable for others.

But that begs another question entirely: Where, exactly, does PofI come into that?

Answer: He actually doesn't have to.

But I want him to.

In the course of this conversation, I finally came to several conclusions I've always been aware of but still been trying not to reach for a while because the full impact of them scare the crap out of me. The conclusions are as follows:

     ~At some point, I want to be a mom. And by some point, I mean several (at least five) years from now, pending the completion of my degree and my (hopeful) eventual worthiness to that most holy of titles. And by mom, I mean either by biological means (ouch) or by adopting into my heart and home any younglings in need of safety and love.
     ~I want to eventually have the kind of home which is the exact opposite of what I grew up in. I want a home that is warm and welcoming and comfortable to be in, the kind of place my friends can come over to and stay if they need a couch to crash on, and the kind of place my not-yet-existent nieces' and nephews ' and childrens' friends can come over to when they need a sanctuary from the awful world. I want the kind of home people can be themselves in, and my family can have dinner together around a table every night and no one feels out of place.
     ~I don't have to have someone to share these things with, but I want someone.
    ~I want a partner to share these things with. Not a husband or wife in the traditional sense, but someone to help me create the kind of home I want to have. Someone to lean on when I need some support, and who can lean on me when they need any. And if our lives are completely separate and all we share is a home and a family and the joy we put out into the world, that's enough. And as much as, at this point, I'd like that partner to be PofI, if it ends up being someone else, or no one else, I'll survive.
     ~These things are more important to me than a career in theatre, and if I have to choose between the two farther on down the line, I'll suffer no qualms dropping the art for the works of heart. (Because rhyming is cute and cancel out the suckiness of epiphanies. So there.)

My cousin's husband comes home, we gather 'round the table for dinner, my cousins and their two children and I, and we talk and laugh and joke and eat and after we finish, we pile into the car to go to their six-year-old daughter's basketball game.

[Sidenote: Have you ever watched eighteen four-to-seven-year-olds playing basketball? It's adorable. If you can manage to pull it off without coming across as someone with an unhealthy interest in chidlers, it's guaranteed to perk up your day. But don't watch pee-wee basketball if it's going to get you in trouble. I don't want you to get in trouble.]

1826 hrs: I finally get that call. PofI is audibly sick, and it breaks my heart that, had he been sick last week, I could have taken care of him and made soup for him (virtually the only thing I can cook and not mess up), and there's nothing I can do right now except get this stupid conversation over with. I hate when my loved ones are in distress and I can't help.

We're on the phone for maybe half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. However long a pee-wee basketball game is, minus the first fifteen minutes and the last five. During the course of this conversation, we are both apologetic. We both admitted our wrongdoing, begged the other for forgiveness, and decided on a plan of action which involves couples therapy eventually, because we both want to make this work, but outlining what we want and need in a partner. For me, it's what I discovered in those realizations I listed above. For him, he needs stability for his child. [Sidenote: that chidler is adorable!] Neither one of us thinks the other is asking for anything irrational, but as we can't really do the whole counseling thing from opposite sides of the country, the current plan of action is all we've got.

The plan of action, by the way, is a five-part series. We each have short- and medium-term goals to carry us through the next five years or so, in the hopes of becoming better individuals. (Mine are to get into school for the short term, and get my degree and start my career for the medium term.) The only shared plan is, toward the conclusion of our medium-term plans, moving closer to one another and testing out being partners when we (theoretically) have our respective shit together, which may or may not work out for the long term, but at least we have somewhere to start, right? We also agreed to keep up with each others' lives and be supportive and open as much as we can, and call each other out sooner rather than later when we mess up, because we're human and that's what we do.

We're on a "break."

I'm not exactly sure how I'm doing. We've talked on the phone since, and texted randomly and liked every other Facebook post the other has made, but it still feels really weird. Actually, I'm not sure whether it's weird not to be "a couple" anymore or if it's weird that we seem to have switched off whatever switch it is that gets us so freaked out about each other. It seems easier now, if that makes sense. Or not.

I keep thinking of a thing a newlywed, ready-to-birth-her-first-child-literally-any-second-now friend of mine said when I asked her how she liked married life. "It's easier, I think. Than dating. The pressure is off. I don't have to be worried anymore that what I do or say is going to upset him, and he doesn't worry about that stuff with me anymore, either. We're married. He's not going anywhere, and neither am I."

Maybe this whole "dating" thing really is a crock, and we as a culture put too much stock into being with another person for the rest of eternity. Not that being with someone is, in and of itself, a bad thing, but that we've kind of made it the thing, the only thing, and the thing that defines us as we get older. I mean, how often do you hear, "Oh, she never remarried." "He's just a bachelor past his prime." "She's an old maid." "He'll never find anyone." or any of those things?

Too. Freaking. Often.

I think that, for me, anyway, being in a "relationship" with someone puts me in this place where I subconsciously start thinking to myself "Okay, now I have someone, and I'm going to keep them forever come hell or high water and this is it, and we're going to be together forever, and I better not screw this up, so-"

And it causes everything to get screwed up.

I'm pretty sure I'm also not the only one who does this, either.

You know who you are.

You have to let go of that.

I have to let go of that.

It's a bad thing to hold on to, and it's messing you up.

Stop trying to force the damn boyfriend-girlfriend thing. Work on the "best friends forever" thing, and if you never put a ring on it but still smile and hug and laugh and try your damdest to make the world a better place together and support one another, why the hell should the stupid label matter?

And why should you only have that kind of friendship the way society tells you to have it?

I'm going to try and be done with that.

I'm feeling kind of down, but I'm not depressed. I'm alone, but not really lonely. I'd give anything to collapse into someone's arms right about now, but I'm still standing, god dammit, and I'll stand alone until being alone no longer scares me because, in becoming the dumped-the-week-of-Valentines-cliche, I've realized so much of what is important to me and what I really want.

And why should anything else matter.

. . .

But the next time I get a fucking "We need to talk" text, I'm going to reach through the damn phone and punch your lights out.