Rebuilding a Single Self

It has been almost nine months since I broke off communication with my partner of twenty years and began building a life of my own. I've been doing a lot of rewarding and difficult work. I have joined a gym and a book group, started a writing critique group and have signed on for volunteer work around preserving lesbian history. I've attended all kinds of hiking meet-ups and social groups. There is so much more conscious effort involved in being single than being married. It revolves around scheduling and balancing appointments, emailing, texting and researching activities. Meeting new people requires a great deal of conversation as well. Fortunately, I enjoy this. Having done this before after a fifteen year relationship, I know things will change and change again. I can't help wondering who, among the new folks I am adding to my life, will be there a year from now.

If I had one question to ask my ex it would be are you happy now? But then I wonder, was I happy then? I was content to live with some level of discord in return for dinners together, sleepovers and watching Netflix. I'm the kind of person who never thinks of herself as truly happy, I'm too much of a realist for that. But I’d accepted my life with all its limitations. Now, I have the potential to create a more productive, enjoyable life with folks who genuinely appreciate and look forward to spending time with me. It's taking shape, but it is still a work in progress.

My ex wants to be my friend. I'm not opposed to that eventuality but I believe it's too soon. Do I want to hear about her new partner? To be fitted into a time slot in her new life? If she were also single I could probably do it. But when I think about going to a gathering with her and the one she gave up our relationship for, I can't see it happening. I guess only time will tell. 

I am meeting new women to hang out with to go to music and events. They are invariably single, although not necessarily potential lovers or partners. I am trying to form something more vital, a support system. I have lost friends to the break-up and I grieve for them too. Some chose my partner over me because she was the one they met first. Some try to walk a line between us both, not talking about one with the other. Some were couple friends who have no idea how to fit me in now. Am I a threat or just a hassle? Mostly, I assume that time is limited, and relationships take a lot of work. Genuine emotional intimacy between two couples or three people is nearly impossible. It's hard enough between two.

Now, I can choose to do things with people, or I can stay home alone and write again. For a while it was just too depressing to sit quietly in the space in front of a keyboard. Now, once again, I look forward to it. The time I feel the most lonely now is Sunday morning. I miss company over coffee and the New York Times.

I am starting to feel my age. Time is short and I have no idea where this journey will take me or when it will end. I'm glad for the opportunity to restructure something that wasn't working and to be singularly engaged in the world once more. I have a few pressing things to pull together in my life before that unknown moment when the umpire calls time. So I better hurry. I am finally experiencing the phrase, I'm on deadline, in its most literal sense.

The Stories We Tell

I haven't been posting as much as usual. My writing continues but it has migrated to a more personal level involving poems and stories. Politically, the repression our uprising faced has caused a period of remission, a time for self-reflection and regrouping, a gathering in of forces.

This blog celebrated its two year anniversary on February 10th, 2013. Two years in the blink of an eye. I began it in a time of great change and upheaval as an attempt to support the worldwide struggle against capitalist oppression and economic inequality, not to mention the many other forms of discrimination it engenders. Yes, I know that these ideals are ridiculously high and I wish I actually possessed the power to instigate real change. 

I was also coming to terms with my diminshing rights as a worker as well as my demotion from the middle class to the working class, a status I'd tried all my working life to transcend. The dawning of awareness that this was not a personal failing but a shared predicament illustrates the way that mass social movements are born. 

Blogging is a remarkable thing, it's a kind of open diary and a chronological framework to a person's state of mind, and, through their eyes, the state of the country and the world. It produces something notable, like a time capsule, even if it is not read by many. 

The other reason I began blogging was a story I'd read in the New York Times Magazine called "Cyberspace When You're Dead," about ghosts that linger on the Internet long after their creator has passed on. As a cancer survivor, I'm acutely aware of how quickly that rug can be pulled out from beneath your feet! The idea of an online legacy is an intriguing one, an interesting and provacative way for a non-famous person to leave their mark on society.

In newsrooms, online and printed alike, personal blogs are now utilized as research material after death. Regardless of the quality or merit of the writing, they provide a window onto a person's thought process, the way they percieved their personal universe. 

As a sixty-something, lesbian woman, I am trying to make sense of my time on earth, to turn it into stories and poetry because, just like every one of us, I have a unique and compelling story to tell. My mother, who died at 48, never had this chance to look back on her life from a distance and tell her story. I know these extra years are a gift, one I don't want to squander.

Writing: Safety in Ending Silence

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde the lesbian poet and writer once said, "Your silence will not protect you," I've ruminated over the meaning of this phrase at various points in my life when my big mouth did not provide much protection either! But the benefit of speaking out far outweighs the risks. Exposure of all that lies beneath is an absolute necessity for writers.Writing is like sculpting, as the rock is chipped away and negative space is removed, the truth begins to take shape. Something new emerges, an unseen form arises, something recognizable by all who previously saw only a block of dense rock.

Exposing Anti-Feline Prejudice

Think about a cat. Now imagine a neighborhood bully pulls that cat's tail. If the cat could talk, she might call animal control and describe the boy and tell them that the bully pulled her tail really hard and she didn't like it one bit. If the same cat could both talk and write, she might go around the neighborhood finding out more about the bully and write a blog post saying that not only did little Jeremy pull my tail, the exact same thing happened to Smokey, Puff and Snowball within the last few months. Maybe Jeremy also uses a slur like "stupid pussy" regularly during his attacks. The kitty caucus may now have grounds for a class action lawsuit.

So all you cool cats out there, continue writing, filming, talking and generally sculpting our world. Keep us safe from the bullies whose goal is to scare us into submission and silence!

The High Cost of Being an Artist

Parents are notorious at discouraging children from undertaking any risky venture that involves creativity. Yet when a child of the upper-middle class says Mom, Dad, I want to be a poet, a novelist, a musician or a painter, Mom and Dad are likely to say, "It's going to be an uphill climb dear, but we'll support you."  Even as they stress the idea of having something else to fall back upon, they will often demonstrate their support by offering tuition to good colleges, introduction to friends in that field or just plain encouragement.

On the other hand, when a child of the working-class expresses the same sentiment, Mom, Dad, Auntie, Gramma or Guardian are likely to say, "Just get yourself a frickin' job!" only a slight paraphrase of what my father said to me!

Now, as the Republicans agressively move to defund National Public Radio we must consider the prohibitively high cost of art and what a bleak society we would live in without it.

Artists catapult society in new and innovative directions but too often the necessity of economic survival precludes and obliterates the desire to contribute something beautiful, thought-provoking or gut-wrenching to a regimented world. And that is not only sad on an individual level, it is everyone's loss.

Visualize for a moment, a universe where people are paid to contribute art, writing, music, theater and dance. In Cuba they called them "cultural workers" and they were educators as well, teaching people to think of a larger life beyond the boundaries of humdrum daily existence. A place where people don't have to be retired, disabled, sick or financial daredevils in order to reach for their dreams.

It is a world worth imagining.