“The welcome book would have taught us that power and signs
of status can’t save us, that welcome, both offering and receiving, is our
source of safety. Various chapters of this book would remind us that we are
wanted and even occasionally delighted in, despite the unfortunate truth that
we are greedy-grabby, self-referential, indulgent, overly judgmental, and often
hysterical.” Anne Lamott
“You’ve given me everything I need.” Rory Gilmore
The first New Year’s party I ever went to was at my Aunt
Patti’s when I was in about first grade. We didn’t get to go to all of the
family things because we lived three or four hours away in snowy rural
Pennsylvania, and our family cars were not super-reliable. But this magical
year we got to go. We arrived just a few minutes before midnight, banged pots
and pans outside, and then stayed up until four in the morning doing The Alley
Cat and such. It was the most amazing thing that I’d ever experienced—my first
real party.
The next year, we weren’t able to go, and though I’d never
noticed New Years before, I was devastated to be away from the festivities. It
was my first visit from deep dark winter sadness. I thought ahead to all of the
New Yearses to come, and all of the Christmases, and I realized that there’d
only be a finite number of them. I was a mini-Existentialist, and though I fret
less about the shortness of lilac season than I used to, the end of the year
always comes with sadness.
This year, I got home from Christmas with the family on
Saturday and on Sunday I watched the last episodes of Gilmore Girls. The finale
is as wrenching as it is capital-H-Hopeful—instead of a post-college roller
coaster tour with Lorelai, Rory, with her almost-Mary-Sue-like knack for lucky
breaks, is hired for a job reporting on then-Senator Barack Obama’s campaign.
The quirky townspeople decide to throw her a surprise party in the town square,
and when it threatens rain, Luke collects every tarp, tent, and raincoat in
town and covers the square so the party can happen. The moment when Lorelai and
Rory see the surprise is one of the sobbiest TV moments of all time, and it
perfectly suited my melancholy end-of year mood.
Like Rory saying goodbye to Lorelai and Stars Hollow, I feel
full of everything 2014 has given me. I had a major therapeutic breakthrough,
spent a mountain of restorative time with my family, and somehow transformed a
bad marriage into a good best-friendship. When everyone was exploding with
Ferguson grief, I realized I am very lucky to know how to try and be part of
the solution, to get to work for justice even though it seems impossible most
of the time.
But to get to this good, open place, I had to leave a lot
behind. As the trauma left me, so, somehow, did my place in the polyamory
community. Like the poetry community before that, there’s not really a
replacement. The friendships and relationships that buoyed and inspired me for
the past few years were mostly just…gone. I wouldn’t U-turn back there, I’m
relieved to admit who I am, but there’s a void that I don’t know how to fill.
Backtracking all the way to waiting for true love instead of just cobbling it
together out of…opportunities is a pretty big change, it’s a huge leap of
faith.
Polyamory WAS a place. All my life, I’ve wished for a safe
place where I could perfectly belong, where I’d be embraced, accepted, and
welcomed. I had that feeling for a while, of being able to do no wrong. It felt
like a place where every flaw, every foible, every selfish thing about me could
be rationalized and loved, where I could be nakedly vulnerable and still walk
through life unscathed.
But after a while I saw that way we were encouraged to build
boundaries, to be cruel in the name of
transparency, to slough people off when they ceased to fit, was the
opposite of vulnerable, it was a life of constantly constructing
ever-more-elaborate walls to keep everything and everyone contained and
separate. The walls kept crumbling and springing leaks, human messiness kept
flooding through the contracts and agreements until there wasn’t anything I
could do but stop building them. I wanted so much to fit, and it hurt so badly
to walk way.
The dream of the magical fitting-in place is gone. The only
safety I’ll ever know is within myself—the ability to speak up, to go against
the grain, to make room for what’s really important, which right now is family
and work and hugging the cats.
There’s still the Big Missing Thing, but I can occasionally
have faith about it. When I went to Christmas Ever church with my friends and
their new baby, we were figuring out how to arrange ourselves on the pew so
that more people could come in, and I joked that we should leave room for my
boyfriend to show up, just in case we were in a Hallmark movie. Later when I
tried to scoot over to accommodate another family, my pal looked over and said,
joking-but-serious, “No, you’ve got to save that space.”
A saved space is better than a void, don’t you think? I sang
carols and smiled and had the kind of happy certainty that can only happen at
church, that someday my person would be sitting next to me. Until then, I have
a good car and if I want, I can go to every single family party. Happy New Year
to me
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