Christmas night. Maybe it will be the last time we all celebrate together, or maybe it will be the last time we all celebrate the holiday in this house. Or both. Or maybe next year we will find ourselves all here again, still celebrating together, wondering again if THAT will be the last year that the celebration will be the same. One of the psychological agonies of living in the same house with my spouse, permanently separated, has been this sense of not knowing what to hope for. The holidays exacerbate these feelings. I resist the sentimentalities pulling at me because I know not to trust them. But I am never immune to them.
Kevin, my one son who doesn't live at home, who lives a half hour away with friends in the city, has been here, but he has to be at work tomorrow at 5 am. His dad offered to drive him by his place first and then to Target, where Kevin currently works stocking in the back. Before going to bed, I wanted to be sure his dad knew the time -- which probably conforms to the stereotype of the mother who worries about everyone, but they don't always communicate well enough with each other about these things. Ryan, my youngest, said his dad was outside, so I opened the door and he called from out there, "Do you need me for something?" I asked if he was out with our dog.
"No," he said, "I'm looking at Jupiter!" He had the telescope out there that the kids and I got him for Christmas in 2006, the holiday right before the semester at the U when all the awful stuff happened during spring break. (He's always loved astronomy, so this seemed to me to be a perfect gift back then. That's turned out to be true. It was our one "big" gift of the year. We don't spend much on the holidays; our gifts for each other are pretty modest, though well-appreciated, but some years we'll buy one person something bigger. This year it was a tablet for Kevin so he could have some kind of computer access where he lives.) I told him the time Kevin had to be at work, and he said, "Okay, I'll wake him up about 3:20!"
A simple thing like that kicked off those connections in my head (our earlier gift to him; the following spring). I don't usually focus on them for too long. If I wasn't writing this, I'd have picked up a book to read to purposefully propel my thoughts onward before trying to sleep. But these thoughts pain me because they bring back the ghosts of those feelings I used to have that surely, SURELY, there must be some way to make things better when, after all, we were both pretty good people, right? There are times when the fuller reality of this other person, this life, distinct from me, worthy it its own right, blows freshly into my consciousness and if I'm honest, I know that this person is far more than whatever reductive role he became in relation to me. That's a good thing - recognizing that truth - but it invariably carries with it the inescapable sense of something wrong in me. I know that's wrong - that binary - the idea that one of us must be wrong and bad so that the other can be right and good. But knowing that intellectually sometimes fails to break through those deeply ingrained ideas about how things are supposed to be.
I was talking to my best friend the other day, who is finally going to marry her partner this coming year, maybe in the spring. She left her spouse in 2004. The relationship had been miserable for her in many ways, but again, some kind of truth gets flattened out when hours and days and weeks of year after year get summed up as happy or unhappy. Still, she left. It was an upheaval of her whole life. She almost didn't make it out, though. Leaving for the new relationship went against so much that she'd believed for her adult life that she felt wrong at her core - no, not her core - she felt wrong because other people's ideas of right and wrong were working on her. She was afraid that many people she loved would turn against her. She considered suicide. So much so that she put the pills in her mouth and laid there, ready to swallow. Thinking of her loved ones is what made her run to the bathroom to spit them out. She knew she couldn't inflict that kind of pain. So she resolved to live, and to try this new life -- to try to be happy. And she has been gloriously happy, though not without pain. Her relationship with one of her sisters has never been the same; her sister believes the choice was morally wrong. Our relationships with other people can hurt us and make us to doubt ourselves, or they can remind us that we need each other, and that we can come through for each other. If we have any "core," maybe it's that love for life in ourselves and each other.
Now, as she gets ready to plan this simple, beautiful wedding, she feels the ghosts of the old beliefs. What if somehow those beliefs were right? She doesn't seriously think that, but when you believe something for so long, it leaves traces in you.
I said, they can't be right. For one thing, these religions act as if Jesus preached a gospel whose primary message was: don't be anything but straight. I said, the scriptures that even seem to refer to that issue are only minimally in the Bible, and I was at a discussion last year where a theologian explained that the translations are more ambiguous than people realize, and that there is so much historical context that readers now don't know. I said that it doesn't even make sense within its own logic. One of the two most important commandments, according to Jesus in the Bible, is to love your neighbor as yourself, and upon this, all the law and prophets are said to depend - yet the same people ultra-focused on gay relationships - who claim to live by the Bible - don't interrogate themselves about how seriously they try to live by that commandment. They can support the wars, the bombs and drones killing kids, parents, grandparents, all kinds of civilians just trying to live their lives, and they can buy the junk our economy produces without even a twinge of concern about how it's produced on the backs of others living miserably exploited lives -- while this peripheral issue is made into a huge focus. How many people live by the command to give someone not only your outer coat if they ask but your inner coat, too, or to invite the person to your home who can't invite you back, rather than only those who have the means to invite you in return? Or, how many people agonize over the scripture that says "greedy persons" won't "inherit the kingdom"? I said, what do any of these scriptures mean in the lives of people who claim to believe in them?
But there's a problem if this slips into saying that "we're all sinners anyway," because it still then may imply that her relationship is nonethelss "a sin." I said, in that religious tradition, part of the meaning of sin is to cause harm. And what harm is this relationship causing? In a world where people's bodies are violently attacked by these mass weapons, how is THIS, of all things, what causes harm? The pain it causes is the cracks it opens up in people's belief systems. When someone they love lives outside of their narrow parameters regarding what is morally right, and they believe God is going to burn that loved one in hell forever because of that, they encounter a tremendous crack in their concepts of justice and love. The same Bible commands them to love even their ENEMIES, and to do good to those persecuting them -- but how are they to go on loving the sister (or brother or son or daughter or other loved one) who their God will burn forever? The logic of these beliefs begins to break down if you think about them too much.
I said, do you really believe that the man is supposed to be the head of the house? It's not just that some men have used that the "wrong" way. The whole premise is faulty. It infantilizes women to the extent that they live by it. But who really lives by it? If they claim to but don't, they sometimes end up twisting and turning their communication into passive-aggressive knots in order to "sort of" conform. If they believe it on some level, but don't live by it, how often do they feel bad about themselves, and how often are they perceived as "nags" or "dominating w/bitches " for not being "submissive" enough? And it hurts men who try to live by it, too. Who has ENOUGH wisdom to dominate others? I've said dumb things and had wrong ideas so many times, and the thing that always helped was if someone went back and forth with me in a dialogue. The believers in man as head of house say it's the best way, that decisions can be made, because the final authority ultimately rests in one person. (That patriarchal mentality manifests at many levels.) I said, is that really true? Don't she and her partner make decisions all the time without either one being the boss? Yeah, she said; they just talk about it, and sometimes they come up with a decision different than either one of them originally thought of, and it comes out of those back and forth discussions.
Rather than causing harm, I believe that her decision to LIVE in a way that embraces love for herself as well as others will help prevent future harm. I read an article the other day that said that 30 percent of gay teens try to commit suicide. A shocking, heartbreaking figure. Maybe her decision will help make a society where people don't try to kill themselves because they don't fit into supposed norms.
That's why some of these ghost feelings can't be trusted. They're remnants of old ideology that hurt us before and keeps hurting too many people.
I try to tell myself that with regard to my own situation. In my case, it's the binaries that haunt me... he is good and right so I must be bad and wrong... Or, people should be able to make their marriages work. Or, sacrifice - don't be selfish. Or, maybe you can't be happy anyway because you're just a miserable person, so if that's true, why mess up other people's lives? Of course, this pretends that I have a choice, when in reality, he wants out of this relationship as much as I do. But that makes me think about how I felt like I tried for so long and soon I start thinking that maybe he is the bad and wrong one, and the truth is that I DO sometimes feel like the victim - the wronged person in all this... And sometimes I just get so tired of trying to think of it all from this BIG omniscient perspective, and I just want to be grounded in my own. Can't I just advocate for myself sometimes, even within my own mind? Or is that thought, too, a kind of self-pity?
I told another friend recently that we do have to take care of ourselves, that we can't always push ourselves to "be the better person," because when we go too far with that, we sometimes get a backlash within ourselves. We might get selfish, cynical, angry... So then what is the balance?
I confess that these perfect balances elude me. But I'm glad to be alive, and glad for the holiday we had together today, despite whatever internal and external tensions I felt. I hope next year's Christmas will be happy for us all, however and wherever we each celebrate it.
***
Rereading this the morning after Christmas Day makes me think about how my friend and I have done this for each other for many years. We've talked each other through so many struggles, even when neither of us had any grand solutions. In our friendship, I learned that sustained, honest dialogue with people who care about you makes life worth living. Real friendship can be the foundation for all kinds of healthy relationships. It's what I've tried to create with my kids. It's what I try to build with others, though it's not at all easy to find. And sometimes you just have to accept that some people either can't, or they don't want to talk with you that way. Some people won't or maybe can't be those kind of friends. She finally accepted that reality with her ex-spouse. I finally accepted that, too.
My friends have always kept me alive. Sometimes I remember how my grandfather used to get mad at me and spout that old cliche that too many adults say to kids: "You don't go to school to make friends! You go to school to learn!" That was supposed to snap me into shape when I hated the new school where I had no friends. And I'd say, "No, Grampa - friends are the main reason I care about school." I guess that's still true for me in many ways. Friends are how and why I learn and do so many things. Without friends, what do all these endeavors matter anyway?
So wherever it is that I'm living next year and however I celebrate Christmas, I hope I'll have lived another year talking with good friends (family or otherwise).
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