Full Health

For the past six years, I've been playing the real-life RPG called "Poly Adventures." I was pretty good at it too, until last year. I started coming upon harder levels and meaner monsters. I found my weapons cache to be sorely empty, and my emotional health bar always empty or nearing empty. I had a lot of people trying to help me play through those levels, but for a while, nothing seemed to work. I never lost any lives, and I never thought I'd stop playing, but there were times in there that I didn't see how my health could ever get back to full. I lost interest in activities and almost lost friends.

But like many games, it takes time and practice to get through those hard levels and onto better ones. I started finding things that gave me more health, like therapy, medicine, and activities I enjoyed. I especially found art, which I had dabbled with for a long time but never really put the time or effort into getting better. Suddenly, I became enthusiastic to better myself at something, and the health just kept coming back. The better I felt about my own emotional health, the more I felt I could tackle the challenges I had with friends, and everything started to fall into place. 

Yesterday, as I sat around the living room with two of my closest friends, I realized this was the most fun and easy level I'd played in a long time. The hard levels I'd played over the course of last year, though still remembered, were not affecting my ability to play through this one. In fact, I probably have become better at the game as time has gone on. I'm even ready to meet new romantic allies to play new levels with, and know that I wouldn't have been able to do so without that expert-level experience. 

I'm not actually that good at video games, but this one is thankfully not the kind you need to learn how to beat. You just need to learn how to keep at it, even though the tough levels. Because it's a pretty fun game, and I'd like to keep playing it for years to come.

A million, billion thanks to Make 8-Bit Art! It's super fun and everyone should check it out.

Homesick

For a while now, I've had a blog post in my drafts called "My Poly Family." In it, I gush about how happy I am that I finally feel like I have a community. That I'm so happy to be friends with my partners' other partners, partners of some type with many of my friends, and close with most everyone else involved. But for some reason, that post never got written. I think it was because I knew there was a dark side to such inter-connectivity, and since Adam and I broke up, I've found it: he is still close with our community, I am still close with our community, but he and I are no longer operating together within it. In fact, it's hard to see him in the same contexts, which is why we've both been treading lightly when choosing which social gatherings to attend.

I know a lot of people have already gone through this, maybe in high school or college. Friend groups, especially back in those insulated environments, all dated around, or so I'm remembering from my own experiences. But many relationships in high school were fluid for me, and I only dated one person in college (my ex), so I've never had this experience before. In fact, other than those high school flings, I've never ended a significant relationship in the same town as the other person. So the only way I knew how to get over someone was to have a lot of space from them, which is quite easy when that person is across the country.

It's much harder when that person is in your living room, hanging out with someone you live with and not you.

Everyone is being great about this, though. Friends are being sensitive when talking about hanging out with him, and we've decided it would be best if we all socialized with him outside of our house for a while. I'm also trying to be better about knowing when I do or don't want to know what he's been up to. He and I are even talking and trying to make plans to hang out as friends. But I can't stop thinking about how much easier this would all be if one of us had just left town.

I don't know how to re-introduce myself into my community without constantly bringing up old memories. I know that it will take time, just as it took time to get over those guys who moved to other states. And I know that things are probably already getting better. But as you know from previous blog posts, I suck at patience. I want to be in those photos of my community having fun together with Adam. I want it to be a pleasant surprise when he comes over to hang out with my other friends, not something that shakes me. And most of all, I want to go out with Joel, Adam, and Adam's wife again. I know it will never be the same, but missing that, right now, hurts almost as much as missing all that relationshippy stuff.

I want to enjoy my poly family again. I want to come home. But I don't know how yet.

Love

Space

Postmortem

I've needed to write for a few weeks now, but haven't. It just didn't feel like the right time. Maybe I wanted to wait until my feelings weren't as raw, so that my post wouldn't just sound like a big jumbled mess of pain. Maybe I was trying to spare others' feelings by being a bit more private than usual. Maybe I just didn't know what to say. I still don't. But I know that ultimately it helps me to write about and process experiences, and sometimes it helps others, too, so I'm going to try.

Three weeks ago, I made the decision to break up with Adam. I was visiting my parents at the time, and miserable in the knowledge that I had to wait another week to meet with him to talk about where things stood. I didn't want to do it over email; even though most of our communication happened online, I felt that this conversation should be in person. But the longer I realized I had to wait, the more miserable I felt. So while my mother was out at a meeting one afternoon, I sat at a local coffee shop and typed the email, knowing I was making the right decision but still heartbroken in it. I hit send. It was done.

A week later, I met him on a park bench near the dinner spot where we intended to eat. Neither of us knew if this was a good idea, and for the first fifteen minutes, I was convinced it wasn't. I voiced serious doubts, sobbing, trying not to look him in the eye. But as we sat there longer, and I allowed myself to look at how sad he was too, I calmed down. We decided that since we were already there, and starving, and wanted to still be in each others' lives, we might as well eat.

For two blissful hours, we stopped talking about the breakup and just were. We ate, drank, caught up from the previous few weeks, and laughed. It might have been the beer, but I felt happier than I'd felt in weeks. And it wasn't because I thought we were getting back together, it was because I knew I wasn't losing him for good. I saw a spark of what we should have had all along - an arrangement that was comfortable for both of us, that allowed us to enjoy each other in the moment and not worry about how we were not being fulfilled or not fulfilling each others' wants and needs.

Since then, it's been a challenge. I've always needed space from someone after a breakup, and have always gotten it - my last two significant breakups were a result of distance, so while I missed talking to them, I could control exactly how much I wanted to know about their lives post-me. 

But this is different. Not only is Adam in my friend group, he's close with who I'm close with, in ways I wish I was, and I'm reminded of this even if no one intends to remind me. He is still in the extended poly family of friends and partners I used to feel was a comfort, and now I realize is a double-edged sword. My close-knit groups are wonderful for support through the bad times and fun through the good, but can also deny me the space I badly need to get over heartbreak. 

Because of this, I have to be cautious, withdraw when I'm feeling I need more space, stay in when I don't think I'll have as much fun at that party he'll be at, and request discretion of those who we're both close to. I have to learn how to handle a breakup all over again, and maybe that's why I waited so long to write about it: I have no idea what I'm doing. 

The only thing I know how to do is strengthen other relationships, focus on other interests, make other plans; see Adam when I feel I can see him, talk to him when I feel I can talk to him, and retreat when I'm feeling hurt. Learn as I go. Ask for help. Cry sometimes. And trust that sometimes, the only way to save one type of relationship is to end another one. It's still something I'm only telling myself and not feeling. But I guess if I'd been good at telling myself how to feel, I wouldn't have had to end the relationship in the first place. 

A Formal Letter of Resignation

To Whom it May Concern,

As a wise friend once said, "Epiphanies have different predatorial styles: some construct elaborate spiderwebs which only get noticed when you tug (and have Sarlaccesque digestion times), others swoop down." This one swooped. And so, it is with a heavy heart that I resign, effective immediately, from the Obligation to Become a Professional Fiction Writer. 

To clarify, I'm not resigning from writing. I still love writing, when it's on my terms. I love reading others' writing, and thinking about writing, and constructing everything from haikus to ideas for novels. It is, instead, this position of "Obligation" I need to leave. It has not been a good fit for me for a while, though upon hearing that "Being a writer is hard" and "You just need to force yourself to do it," I thought it was me, not the position, that didn't fit. I thought I wasn't working hard enough, that I could be great if I just pushed myself, that I would eventually find everything more enjoyable if I just dived in head-first and sent out ten stories a day and went to readings and took classes and wrote (at least) an hour every morning. But I've never been able to dive in - I've just been doing belly flops over and over again until my skin is raw, and I feel useless for all the things I don't do, and envious toward my colleagues who do them. 

So, I must go. I appreciate all that you've taught me to do in this position, like how to take rejection and cultivate a local writing group community. And despite my belly flopping, I have become a better writer. But mostly, I appreciate that you've given me the chance to teach college writing, something I still enjoy. I hope that by resigning from this Obligation I can put the energy I've been using to make myself feel bad about not writing toward becoming a better teacher, and a better whatever-else-I-decide-to-be. And who knows, someday it could be a professional fiction writer, but I won't know that until I learn how to dive in myself and not let you, Obligation, push me. 

I know that you will find many other writers who will flourish and be happy in this position, Obligation. I wish them the best of luck. I hope you will wish me the same.

Best,

Kate

Preoccupied

It's been this way for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, before my body started producing hormones that eclipsed all else, it was characters and movies and shows. Peter Pan, then Robin Williams (probably because of Hook and my lingering obsession with Peter Pan), then Twister and anything having to do with tornadoes. They were all I could talk about, think about, dream about. Others called them obsessions, but it wasn't until I grew up and realized what a loaded word that could be that I felt uncomfortable admitting that's what they were. But that's what they were.

And then I got older, it changed from fictional characters and celebrities to real people. After my first boyfriend in 9th grade, I no longer had to occupy my obsessive brain on fiction. I had something to attach to that was real.

I can't even type "something to obsess on," because it makes me feel creepy. Like I'm a stalker, like my thoughts are unnatural and unwanted. And I don't know, maybe I have been creepy. It's not like I've stood outside someone's window, followed someone around, looked for their car in a parking lot, called them at weird hours of the night. But I have definitely annoyed my friends and family by talking about my interests non-stop. I have definitely driven people away by being too enthusiastic about them.

I've also made plans based more on the excitement of these attachments than logic. Like, it's a good thing people don't choose professions at thirteen, because I'd be living in the middle of tornado alley right now doing weather science. I mean, okay, maybe I'd be happy doing weather science, but I wouldn't have turned into Helen Hunt, which is what I really wanted. But even more disturbing to me are the choices I made (or almost made) based on people I was attached to. Because when I'm in one of these phases - when there's something that occupies my brain for more time than other things - my own desires and needs don't matter as much.

As I've gotten older, I've learned the difference between someone I have an obsessive attachment to and someone I have a healthy attachment to. I've developed the ability to step back and go, "This is too much." But at the same time, I still let myself be dragged under, and it is never me who, in the end, says, "I need a break from this to detach." It is always the decisions of others who break me from the spell, and with distance, I am usually grateful that they do so. I just wish I could do it myself.

And most of all, I wish the peaks and valleys of the unhealthy attachments weren't so beautiful that the flatlands of healthy attachments seemed boring in comparison. Because it's hard to plant in rocky soil, and deep down, I know that it's time to grow more things that last.