Coupledom

When our culture promotes a “normal” life as being one that leads to a partner and marriage, the ONLY path…

When girls are encouraged to want the white picket fence and the 2.5 children, husband, dog in the yard, and debt up to their eyeballs…

When toxic masculinity abounds, and “not all men” is shouted from both sides…

Sure, not ALL men. But enough men.

Enough, men. Enough…

…It’s very unlikely that many women will find their way to a different thinking pattern. Some will, and some will halfway, but most will fail. I know I did.

For forty years I failed, off and on. I just didn’t know there was any other way of being. Even though I was always completely happiest alone. Even though I craved the touch of a woman’s softness, and not a man’s. Those simply were not options for me.

So I compromised.

For Jehovah’s Witnesses the (very few) single brothers and sisters in the congregation were pitied. They were an anomaly. I remember one in particular from my childhood, how she craved a partner without letup, how she’d allow her heart to swing toward some older single male if they showed interest, even though it happened only once every ten years or so. How rare those men truly were. How she was devastated when it was clear nothing would come of it. And how us kids watched her desperate race for a partner, and mourned with her when she remained single, alone, a virgin in her fifties. It seemed there was no other fate as bad as this, and we’d sit and giggle wondering whose last names we’d be called when we raised our hands during Watchtower study. Which man would erase our identity with theirs. Who we would have to compromise for, when the time came. And how we craved it.

Dating was difficult in the JW world. There were no times when a male and female were allowed alone together unless they were married. Many times I’d notice an older gentleman in our congregation (Kingdom Hall) refuse to help a single woman with maintenance work because then he’d be in her home alone with her. Chaperones were necessary in any dating situation, whether you were seventeen or seventy.

Apostle Paul in the Corinthians wrote about singleness as a gift, and yet everywhere around me all I saw was coupledom. To Witnesses it’s all too common that singleness was a burden to carry and be shed of as soon as possible.

I didn’t know how distracting and overwhelming relationships were, how they’d keep me from my innermost thoughts. They were what I’d been conditioned for. The girl who would go days without encountering another human if she could. Months, even. The girl who craved solitude like a drowning person craves air. It was necessary for me, and yet I fought it with everything I had, because it just was never an option I could entertain.

But I can see it all for the joke and false promises it is now. It holds no appeal to me.

As much as I thought I loved myself then I can see now that I truly didn’t. My worth was only found in another’s eyes, and some stranger’s opinion could break me faster than I could imagine.

When all I needed was to hug the girl in the mirror I looked for a partner’s arms. How miserable I was, too. Un-endingly miserable, until I stopped looking.

As much as I crave being loved passionately and appreciated, I am not willing to give up and “compromise” anymore. Mine are the only arms I really need, and they are right here.

From “Woman and Nature – The Roaring Inside Her” by Susan Griffin

“He says that woman speaks with nature. That she hears voices form under the earth. That wind blows in her ears and trees whisper to her. That the dead sing through her mouth and the cries of infants are clear to her. But for him this dialogue is over. He says he is not part of this world, that he was set on this world as a stranger. He sets himself apart from woman and nature.

And so it is Goldilocks who goes to the home of the three bears, Little Red Riding Hood who converses with the wolf, Dorothy who befriends a lion, Snow White who talks to the birds, Cinderella with mice as her allies, the Mermaid who is half fish, Thumbelina courted by a mole. (And when we hear in the Navaho chant of the mountain that a grown man sits and smokes with bears and follows directions given to him by squirrels, we are surprised. We had thought only little girls spoke with animals.)

We are the bird’s eggs. Bird’s eggs, flowers, butterflies, rabbits, cows, sheep; we are caterpillars; we are leaves of ivy and sprigs of wallflower. We are women. We rise from the wave. We are gazelle and doe, elephant and whale, lilies and roses and peach, we are air, we are flame, we are oyster and pearl, we are girls. We are woman and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak.

But we hear.”

Fifty-two days, my Son my sun

Today after school is out my son gets to come spend time with me. I miss him like the trees miss the rain, like the earth misses the moon, skies dark without him, only little pricks of starlight to find my way. Every other weekend means twenty-six weekends a year and a few holidays. It seems ridiculous, fifty-two days a year isn’t nearly enough, even with some holiday time thrown in.

I haven’t cried in weeks. The medicine is helping. But thinking about him stings my throat and eyes until I have water coursing down my cheeks. It’s an odd feeling, to be honest. For over a year since leaving my Stardust I’ve cried multiple times a day, and thought it normal. Since getting help with the depression crying is an anomaly. I’m glad for the calmer waters. Yet even happier to know I can feel this deeply still on the medication. I’m glad I asked for the lowest dose possible, so I can still touch the depth of my soul without stretching too far. My toes still like to tickle the surface of the water now and then, after all.

When I left the cult and my marriage they were all I knew. I had no home after I made it clear I wasn’t going to continue being a Jehovah’s Witness. My parents tried to help me many times, even allowing me to move into an RV with no running water, helping me build a cottage, get another old RV for $2,000 to put on their property so that my son could have some balance when he was with me. But I was drinking still, and made poor choices, leaving that security behind. Over and over again. I don’t like to ask them for help anymore, because I threw it away so many times. And well, the shunning.

When I left the marriage his father remarried my best friend in less than a year after the divorce was final. She was my best friend, had known my son from birth, been around to watch him grow for his first five years, I knew that she would be the best stepmother he could ever find, and so I didn’t fight it. I discounted myself. Told myself that he’d be better off without me. That when he was a teenager that he would be so involved with his friends and building his life that he wouldn’t need me. I pushed him away as I pushed everyone way. To protect them from me. I knew he’d be fine when I moved to Idaho with my wifey. He didn’t need me anymore, he was a teenager after all, it would be an easy change.

But it wasn’t. I sit here with hot heavy tears streaming down my face because I saw how very NOT okay he was. He went to therapy, he developed separation anxiety because of the choices I made. I texted and called him daily to try to help, but there is nothing that will replace the love of his mother. Even if I told myself he was better off without me.

The guilt remains. I’m back within reach of him, only fifteen minutes away, and I won’t leave him again until he’s an adult. I know now that even then he will need me still, in his own way. Even with life beginning and exciting new independence in his grasp at last.

He holds my hand when we watch movies and fun shows that he picks. Tucks my forearm under his chin so my hand can lay across his shoulder. When he speaks I feel it in his chest, booming a deep tenor blending with baritone, a voice so different than he had when he was little. And still the same boy. He’d fall asleep like that if I let him, cuddled close but only touching my forearm, as if it’s his safety line and favorite cuddle blanket. He’s fourteen and the beauty of his soul overpowers me on a regular basis, his gentleness is palpable. I tell him it’s his greatest strength. I hope he remembers and carries it with him always.

Getting sober two years and seven months ago changed everything. My mind is clear to see what is truly important. I guard our time selfishly, like a mama leopard with her young I purr when he is with me, my fingers trembling with love for him as I brush his hair back from his face. I’ve no need for any other companion, because he is my focus. Giving him the best mom I can be, FINALLY, is all I want from my days. Gifting him tenderness and closeness of the kindred kind is more fulfilling to me than any lover. I joke that I don’t date because I “date” my child, but it’s deeper than that. I’m selfish with my deepest love now, and know what a precious thing it is. Has always been. Even when I doubted my value in my own eyes and other’s.

I’m not perfect. I still crave time to myself, and know he does too, and that he needs time alone to be a teenager far from his mother. Nights when he’s with me, those precious few fifty-two nights a year, we sit and watch movies together or play chess after a day spent outdoors. When I was drinking I’d tell myself he was fine and didn’t need my time or attention, that he was happier without me entertaining him. I was so very wrong. And I fight that inclination still. It comes from a place that was born in me as a child, being excluded and pushed away by my “worldly” peers until I preferred to be alone anyway. My havens were rooms full of books, or copses of trees far away from that humanity that causes so much pain.

But he needs me. And I’m learning I need him too. Not as his mother, but as someone who genuinely loves him and treasures the limited time we get together. I gift him acceptance and love no matter what he chooses to be. I’m finally seeing that he’s been gifting me the same thing, and I just didn’t know what it looked like. Only twice have I had a love like this, with no agenda or demand for reciprocity. He just loves and accepts who I am with a devoted flame that is everlasting. He always has, I just didn’t see it for what it was, I didn’t know what it looked like.

I had to give him unconditional love to recognize that he held it for me in his hands this whole time, and was simply lifting them to me so I could find it.

From “The Overstory” by Richard Powers

“Talk runs far afield tonight. The bends in the alders speak of long-ago disasters. Spikes of pale chinquapin flowers shake down their pollen; soon they will turn into spiny fruits. Poplars repeat the wind’s gossip. Persimmons and walnuts set out their bribes and rowans their blood-red clusters. Ancient oaks wave prophecies of future weather. The several hundred kinds of hawthorn laugh at the single name they’re forced to share. Laurels insist that even death is nothing to lose sleep over.

Trees even farther away join in: All the ways you imagine us—bewitched mangroves up on stilts, a nutmeg’s inverted spade, gnarled baja elephant trunks, the straight-up missile of a sal—are always amputations. Your kind never sees us whole. You miss the half of it, and more. There’s always as much belowground as above.

That’s the trouble with people, their root problem. life runs alongside them, unseen. Right here, right nest. Creating the soil. Cycling water. Trading in nutrients. Making weather. Building atmosphere. Feeding and curing and sheltering more kinds of creatures than people know how to count.

A chorus of living wood sings to the woman: If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning.

The pine she leans against says: Listen. There’s something you need to hear.”

From “The Overstory” by Richard Powers

“Earth may be alive; not as the ancients saw her—a sentient Goddess with a purpose and foresight—but alive like a tree.

A tree that quietly exists, never moving except to sway in the wind, yet endlessly conversing with the sunlight and the soil.

Using sunlight and water and nutrient minerals to grow and change.

But all done so imperceptibly, that to me the old oak tree on the green is the same as it was when I was a child.”

– James Lovelock

From “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”

“The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.

I am not alone and unacknowledged.

They nod to me, and I to them.

The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old.

It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown.

Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson