In my experience living in Georgia, especially in winter and spring, the weather always acts like the twanging of a rubber band. I think of it as the meteorological manifestation of Newton's Third Law of motion: every action entails an equal and opposite reaction. Millions of years ago, when the Appalachian mountains looked more like the mountains outside my window, much of the American South was underwater. The humidity of the air there is a remnant of that time, So when the air becomes saturated with water vapor, it condenses and falls back down in many different forms, from mist to torrential downpours, especially where I used to live, right within the Tennessee Valley. In the winter and spring, this rubber band effect is most obvious, considering the short-lived spans of warm weather, followed by rain and then subsequent cooling and drying of the air.
In my heart rage similar weather patterns. For a time, I'll bask in the warmth of the happiness I've managed to find in my life, but not too long after, it'll start raining inside me again. And because I'm in the spring of my new life here in Colorado with Lalita, I feel that southern rubber band effect. I swing back and forth between these two states more often than usual, so there's definitely no reason to assume that my life hasn't been interesting.
However, in the midst of all this, I often find myself wishing that I would even out. That I'll finally begin to fall into a more balanced rhythm, something that makes a little more sense. But my mind's always turning, so of course that means my feelings are always following suit.
Foot upon the stair
Shoulder to the wheel
You can't tell yourself not to care
You can't tell yourself how to feel
That's how it is
Today I discovered that I'm a little ridiculous: I want what I'll achieve in the future now, before I've even had a chance to work it all out: my interpreting job. A new place to live in which I'll be able to claim a few square feet of my own space. A new SSD for my derelict computer. Another car. Some new friends. That trip to Japan I always talk about with Lalita. To be okay with one of my former friends throwing me out of her life. To be okay with Lalita being in love with a man I don't know at all. To be okay living out here. And, ultimately, truly understanding and accepting the fact that my new life is beginning and all that entails.
I suppose I should explain some of these things I just mentioned.
An old friend and ex-girlfriend picked at an old scab from years ago recently, and then dumped salt and vinegar into the wound. To clarify, it's one person--this person was a friend, then an ex, and then a friend once again. I'll call her Jane.
Almost ten years ago, I met Jane while I was in my junior year in high school. She was an eighth-grade marcher, wide-eyed and having no clue about what she was doing. I saw myself as I used to be when she made painfully obvious mistakes on the field. After I'd heard my band teacher yelling at her, I'd had enough. I took it upon myself to help her and gently remind her of the things she was still learning. I began to see her as my little sister, someone I took care of and looked out for. I felt responsible for her success in band. After about a year, she and I became closer friends. She and I had A Jazz Band rehearsals after school together when I was a senior and she was a freshman. We would work on our part together, hammering out the phrases and solos so we would be ready for festival. Little did I know that she was harboring a major crush on me at the time.
Festival, the spring concert, and graduation slipped by and I soon found myself in my first semester at college. In December of that year, I went to Jane's Christmas concert. I stayed after the performance to wait for her. I had only just realized how much I actually missed her since I graduated. We hugged for longer than usual and then, for the first time, I saw her differently: my feelings for Jane had evolved to another level. We had been friends for almost three years and I found that I felt something approaching love for her. Of course, I was barely nineteen then and was incredibly far from even beginning to understand the nature of love. But my feelings, nonetheless, were still real. From that point, she and I grew closer and by mid-January in the next year, we began dating.
Dan dan kokoro hikareteku (Slowly you're capturing my heart)
Sono mabushii egao ni (By that brilliant smile)
Hatenai yami kara tobidasou hold my hand (Let's escape from this endless darkness, hold my hand)
We had no idea what we were doing. It's safe to say that we shared the same level of maturity and experience in romantic relationships regardless of our ages. She was only fifteen and I had been deprived of the experience I should have gotten in high school. No one wanted to date the bookish Star Wars nerd who listened to only classical music. To this day, I still hold that it's their loss.
Eventually, that lack manifested itself increasingly as our relationship failed to endure its death throes. The fact that she was a devout Christian and that I was a staunch atheist gouged the deepest rift between us. We went round and round endlessly as our worldviews clashed. She wished desperately to save my soul from burning in hell for the rest of eternity. I wished to break her free from the prison of her oppressive faith. After too many of these fights, it was obvious that we weren't going to end up together.
I don't have faith in faith
I don't believe in belief
You can call me faithless
I still cling to hope
And I believe in love
And that's faith enough for me
That was six years ago. Not too long after, I met Lalita for the first time, met someone new on OKCupid, moved in with that girl, experienced some of the very worst relationship-related pain of my life, and then moved back in with my parents. Back then I dug deeply into Radiohead. I trudged through the empty, charcoal-black wastelands of Kid A and found peace in the naturalistic solitude of the sounds on The King of Limbs.
However, two months before I moved back in with my parents, Jane sent me an email asking me if I wanted to start talking to her again. It had been more than a year since she and I parted ways and she missed me. Because I also missed her, I couldn't refuse her request. She and I shared the experiences we'd had in the time we spent apart, and through that, we became closer than ever before. I found that I had loved her more than when she and I were dating.
But I don't care
'Cause I love you baby, that's no lie
I love you more than I did when you were mine
The girl I was living with at that time would get so incensed when I talked to Jane. At this point, I cared very little for my girlfriend's feelings because our relationship was in such a protracted stage of free-fall. So every time Jane called, it was that much more gratifying. I was learning to stand my ground and that I could still love people I used to date. In fact, the seeds of my polyamorous nature took root during those days. Jane, like Lalita, became a close female friend I could confide in. And like Lalita, Jane saw me through the pain I would endure from that point.
To get to the point, I'll push the rod on my time machine forward about three years. Susan had just left me and Jane was the only girl I could still talk to. I was still far too angry with Lalita to even consider reaching out to her. In the wake of the horrible events of 2014 and my recent breakup, Jane gave me four hours of her time with no reservations or complaints. I was so happy and relieved to still be reaping the benefits of my friendship with her. As always, Jane helped me focus on the important things in my life and to feel better about myself and my future.
A few months passed and my life totally changed again. Lalita was back in my life again and we were free to love each other openly for the first time during our entire friendship. I could not wait to share the news with Jane. I told her that I had reached the highest level of happiness I had ever experienced and that I would be moving to Colorado to live with Lalita. I explained poly to her and all I got was the stock response: "I could never do that." The overwhelming wave of disappointment with her response totally displaced the excitement I had about sharing that news with her. Despite that, though, I asked her if she would be willing to spend about five minutes with me before I left Georgia. She gave me the impression that she would see me when the time came. During the week leading up to when I would pick Lalita up from the airport, Jane evaded any question I posed about the time we had planned to see each other. I was familiar with this behavior from her, but I didn't expect it to come crawling out of the past. I confronted her directly and then she took more than a whole day to tell me that she didn't want to see me. She went further, telling me that she likes the person she has become and that she was no longer the person I had known while she was in high school. We could no longer be as close as I wanted to be, according to her.
You could see me reaching
So why couldn't you meet me halfway?
You could see me bleeding
And you would not put pressure on the wound
I found that to be perfectly preposterous: we had been doing quite well as good friends since that time she had emailed me and she knew that I had changed and improved as a person in the years since. It was like none of that meant anything to her. It was like she didn't know me anymore, and furthermore didn't care to know me anymore. I should have known, because I had solely been responsible for maintaining our friendship through the years. Maybe the fact that I'm a polyamorous vegan atheist who was moving to Colorado made her recoil at the thought of remaining my friend. So there it was again: we still could not cross that old rift. I had honestly thought that we agreed to disagree, so her rejection hurts even more. And that rejection certainly did not help me endure the pain of leaving my family and friends in Georgia.
Despite having lost Jane again, I can still say that I gained from this experience.
1. My real friends don't allow matters of religion and faith to interfere with our friendship.
2. Even if I lose friends because I stand up for my convictions, that makes me stronger.
3. My real friends accept me unconditionally, even if they disagree with me on some issues. Scott still believes in a god, but he loves me regardless. Lalita was my friend for years even though I wasn't vegan for most of that time.
4. I know how to be the better person when conflicts like the one I had with Jane arise.
Though I'm still feeling the pain of Jane's rejection, something happened recently that provides a much-needed counterbalance:
Julie (whom I formerly referred to as Susan) is finally talking to me again.
Because I unblocked her from this blog, she was able to find it and read through the entries I wrote since we broke up. She emailed me and after four days we were talking again. I cannot describe the immense relief I felt when I heard that familiar smile through the phone that night. I finally had my friend back. Moreover, she apologized for the way our relationship ended. It still means the world to me, and as I told her in a conversation we had today, those words will carry me a very long way. We found that we love each other even more now that we've had time apart to think about everything that happened between us. I am deeply grateful for her friendship and even more so for her reaching out to me. I've been exceptionally lucky in the last six months: two women I love deeply are in my life again and I cannot express how much gratitude I feel right now.
The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect
So hard to earn, so easily burned
All my life I've been workin' them angels
Overtime
Riding and driving and living
So close to the edge
Workin' them angels
Overtime
As for coming to terms with the relationship Lalita has with her other partner, that's still very much in progress, and as I mentioned, it's one of those things I want now that are too difficult to achieve right this second. It sounds like a cop-out, but after thinking about what's really bothering me and then separating those issues out, I've found that it's okay to take a little longer to arrive at that point. She and I talked about it and she understands and is willing to support me through this. I know for a fact that the issues lie with me and not them. And that I need to have a number of things work out before I can even try again to resolve this issue. I need to have some kind of income again, to work out how I'll get my license to interpret for the deaf in Colorado, and then make some friends around here. No one can replace Scott, Andrew, or David, but I've got to try to become more involved.
Leave out the fiction
The fact is this friction
Will only be worn by persistence
Leave out conditions
Courageous convictions
Will drag the dream into existence
A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a soft filter
Everybody need reverse polarity
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Which would bring me to the title of this entry, which is the seventh track on Rush's 1981 album, Moving Pictures: "Vital Signs."
I've shown this song to Lalita and a few other friends and it's always for the purpose of illustrating human imperfections, especially those involving articulating feelings, sorting them out, and helping others understand where we're coming from. The norm in our society is to ignore people and their feelings, and how we elevate from it is to fight against those impulses. Like Lalita always says, we're in this together. That's why the first stanza of the song I shared on this entry means so much to me. Anything is possible as long as we trust ourselves and each other, leave out lies and conditions and just address the things that really bother us. I'll leave you with a passage from Dune by Frank Herbert that echoes the sentiments in "Vital Signs."
"Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us."
--Jessica speaking to Thufir Hawat
I've been guilty of that. I believe that it's my responsibility to identify that and then deal with it. I have the strength for it.
I'm the Heretic and I can learn to persist with anything but aiming low.
