Tag Archives: questions

In the Shadows (Letter from Reader)

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Dear Ruth,

So, hi, my name is [Jane]. Although for reasons that will become clear in this letter please could you not publish my name if you do anything with this piece. Thank you and sorry. I think I just apologized to myself. I am so ashamed to say how I wish I could say yes publish my name everywhere. Let everyone hear it. But I’m not there yet and that leads me on to why I am writing this letter.

I have a lot of admiration for you. I have been reading your blogs for many years. When I still lived at home and deleted the history on my computer in case they figured out what a “fish out of water” meant. So much of what you have written was echoed in my life.

Yet in the same breath we live such different lives now. I’m 26. I live in a small town in the UK. And I am still burrowed in the closet. Your posts meant so much to me those years ago. You were my outlet and my link to a life and community I longed to be part of but was, and am, shutting myself away from.

I have known that I was gay on some level from about 14. Before this I didn’t even know it was an option otherwise I might have known sooner. This seems late to me. But it’s definitely late now. I’m 26. In your recent blog you described your new love. I know it’s uncouth to say, and I don’t mean this in the way that it’s going to come out, but I am so jealous. That is all I have ever wanted and you described it so perfectly. Like you no longer exist alone but are part of something bigger. Everything is brighter. I have had this only once with a girl, let’s call her Tilly. My very best friend is what we told others and ourselves. Actually we had such a deep connection and it was beautiful and painful.

It changed everything in me, everything about me. I’ve had relationships after this with men. But no feeling ever compared to simply holding her hand.

Sounds ridiculous but it’s true. We don’t speak now, haven’t in a very long time. She was in my life for such a short period of time but look at the impact on me. That should have told me the truth about myself a long time ago.

I am currently on holiday in Milan staying with my sister. As I sit on her balcony looking at the mountains I realize how beautiful life is and how much I want to see as much of it as possible. But something’s stopping me. I don’t want to experience the world alone. That might be the saddest thing I’ve ever written. But it’s my truth. I can do it, I have been doing it. I have a great life, I’m a teacher in the UK. I have bought my own house, a tiny cottage with beams from my dreams. I have my dream car. The most fabulous best friend a girl could ask for. Excellent colleagues (most of them anyway, you can’t have everything! haha) and have recently secured a massive promotion meaning that I am now Senior Management in my school. On the face of it I am successful. My parents are proud of my successes.

But I have failed at the most basic part: being who I am.

I am my job. And within my job I am who I think I should be. This of course means that I have not found a partner. What’s that famous saying ‘you have to love yourself before you can expect others to’. Well here’s the proof.

This holiday has given me a lot of time to think. If I am going to live authentically I am not sure that I have much time left. I am getting older. I know I’m not ancient but I am getting older. Your 20s are meant to be the highlight of your life, yet I am in the shadows. Safe in the dark, afraid of the rainbows. Funny how life works isn’t it.  Part of me knows that what I am doing to myself and what I have been doing to myself for so many years now is not fair. Who is it benefiting? No one. Perhaps my father? But would he really be happy knowing how unhappy I am? I honestly don’t know the answer to that one. Is this the lesser of two evils?

The biggest question I suppose is when is the right time to tell everyone as I think, to be honest, that I have missed it. No one knows. Everyone has assumed I am straight which is 100% my fault as I too have gone along with this. I have not stopped them. I didn’t know how to. I didn’t know if to. Now I see I should have for their perception of me is fixed yet so is who I have known I am for a very very long time. And as much as I have tried to ignore it, it has not gone away. It has built.

It is all I ever think about. Well that, and pizza and chocolate haha. It consumes me. It’s me. Yet it’s hidden. And I am living a life I don’t want or understand, and can’t change.

There are some people in my life that I feel will be totally accepting of me. My sister, my best friend of 10 years. But I don’t think it’s fair for me to tell them and expect them to keep it to themselves as I know others won’t be so welcoming. My mother accepts gay people openly but my father is not so forgiving. He and I are very close. He is the person I call when my kitchen is flooded or when I want to go out to dinner & celebrate a success or drink away a bad day at work. Is it selfish to not tell to preserve our relationship? Or even to take away from my relationship with everyone else as I’m not being myself merely to keep intact this father daughter one. It feels like a double-edged sword again to me. I’ve come to see more and more as I’ve gotten older that life is a balance. I think mine is off kilter.

My father is openly not okay or comfortable with gay people or lives. He has never alluded to violence but it’s the subtle comments that hurt the most when for example I have approached the subject about other people to test the water. It was not well received. My mother and father are still together but should have split up 15 years ago. My mother and I clash, she does not care about either my sister or I so doesn’t actually factor into my decision at all other than she lives with my father. My godmother on the other hand is the person most important in my life. She is the only other person to know everything about me. Everything  but this. She basically brought me up and through all of the terrible teenage disasters she loved me like a daughter. But, I’ve pulled away recently  for she showed me a side to her I would never have predicted. In one moment in our hours long phone calls she changed our relationship forever. She said it made her feel sick when she saw her two gay coworkers kiss. I was on my bed. I remember getting hot. Mumbling.

How do you respond to that when you have so much respect for that person for your whole life but absolutely detest what she has said and feel the absolute opposite.

I wish she could know how much that comment has affected the trajectory of the rest of my life. Back to the risk factor now. How brave am I? Should I tell her in the hope of changing a viewpoint for the better but in doing so risk losing my support, my wonderful godmother?

Goodness I have written so much. This is what happens when you don’t tell anyone, I suppose. When the opportunity comes, it overflows. Really I just would to talk, to discuss the things I care about but no one understands or is interested in. To gain another opinion on what I should do, although in some respects I already know that I have to come out.

I am running out of time to enjoy my life. I am stealing my own time. Perhaps I just need to know someone will be there in the aftermath.

I know no other lesbians. My town is small. I added Tinder recently, bravely ticking ‘only women’ but instantly regretted it when 1 of the 5 local lesbians was a friend of a friend who I am now terrified will out me. I will never be part of this community or have local minded friends if I don’t come out. But of course, like all other LGBT people–how do I do that? What do you wish you had known or done differently when you were going through this? Do you have an opinion? I am open to them all at this point.

Really, I suppose, I’m looking for a conversation. A conversation with a real person. A real person who doesn’t know me but probably knows me better than anyone in my life. Someone who has been through the things that I am afraid to approach.

I am so happy to hear about your new love, how’s it going? While I’m still at this point I may as still live vicariously through others haha. Thank you for what you do and for the opportunity to submit my feelings this way. Sorry for the essay.

Lots of love, Jane

xxx

30 year crisis

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Dear Nora,

I have been thinking about you and Mr. Toby as you travel and move this summer. Any and all updates are welcome! Even when I am the worst, and neglecting you horribly. Know that even when I don’t write, I still am thinking of you and needing to write. I’ve discovered when I’m in uncertain times I get a writing block in my brain of how to sort it.

How long were you in NYC for? Are you in Philly now? Also what day was your birthday?? Tell me about your new digs! Give me a Toby update–I have been so worried about him. I miss you Nora! I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write. I hope you forgive me when that happens.

Also, how was it being in the same city as Cory for a bit?? Also, Abby?

I’m so excited for you and your new adventure. New friends! New poly scene! New things to learn about. All the possibilities!

Hey guess what? I made it to 3 months of celibacy! It was down to the goddamn day, but I made it. More on that in a bit, but I just wanted to pat myself on the back because it was an accomplishment for me.

I had a hardy laugh at myself after reading your letter. “You want to know why you find yourself in this situation? Because you put yourself in this situation.” So thank you for that, and calling me out on my nonsense. I fed the wolf, and that is the wolf that won. No surprise to anyone, I am sure.

Hannah and I began casually dating over a month ago. It has not been an explosion or a tidal wave or anything all-consuming, but a pleasant warmth like the steady heating of coals. She is consistent, attentive, kind and thoughtful. I like not being lost in the sauce. I like just continuing my life as the days get longer and warmer, and gradually getting to know her. Trying to win over each other’s cats, and hanging out for game nights, and sometimes talking about serious things and other times being silly, and sometimes not talking at all and just cuddling so good or laying in bed reading side by side. I think I am falling…but it’s a slow-motion sort of fall–so it is different from what I’ve become accustomed to. And it is too soon to tell anything for certain, so I am working to be patient and take my time. And she is patient, too.

If I learned anything from Lily, it’s that there is no substitute for time passing. And that when I jump to conclusions, it is unfair to all parties involved.

I still feel hesitant for anything very “official”, whatever that really means. But I feel safe and un-judged by her, and in a good place. And very much myself. I want to wait to commit to a “relationship” again until I feel no hesitation, but I also recognize labels are just labels, and the truth is in the thing itself. Neither of us are looking to “get to know” anyone else at the present. We have been calling it “Smart Casual Dating”.

Hannah is a stinker in the guise of a sweet midwestern girl. But deep-down she’s a total shit-starter… but also a compassionate and caring/responsible eldest of four. She reminds me of home. Maybe it’s the midwest, or the family, or the hard-working frugal sensibilities that you gain from a heritage of farmers. I tease her that she is actually a curmudgeonly old man trapped in a 30-year-old cute lesbian. She says things like “swell” and “quite” and “indeed” and “pish posh” and calls dinner “supper”. She lives so much more of her life on the inside that I am used to. I am an introvert as well, but probably an unusually expressive one. And I’ve spent so many years dating extroverts who say the first thing that pops into their head and spill anything they’re feeling. I suspect Hannah is a “still waters run deep” type of person, but I am still discovering what is under the surface. The other day we had brunch with a group of people, many of whom we didn’t know. And when we left, she apologized to me that she was so quiet in the group, and that she isn’t the “life of the party” person. “You know what, Hannah? I really don’t care about that. I used to more, because I wanted to be with someone who did all the talking for me. But now, I like to talk for myself, and so however you are is just fine by me–as long as you accept yourself.”

I have been searching myself and asking some of the questions you put to me last letter. What in me is resisting aloneness? And also, why am I striving for aloneness? And what role does sex play? Why do I want to date, or not date?

I fear settling. I fear selling myself short on something bigger I am meant for. I am mistrustful of my own feelings. I am still drawing comparisons to what I had with Kay–idealizing it in inaccurate ways and worrying I’ll never reach that again.  I am afraid of thinking with my body instead of my brain. I am afraid of hurting anyone else.

I am constructing  wall after wall, thinking it will protect me from all of those things..but perhaps it is only keeping the best possibilities out.

I am afraid of waking up someday, and having it all have passed me by.

Beautiful trip to the Grand Canyon, and hiking trips around OR

And then I ask myself, what is “it all”? What do I want these years to be filled with? What will make me feel like I didn’t settle and that I reached my best potential and found my best “fit” and made good decisions? 30 year crisis, Nora! I’m telling you…

Here is the biggest difference between 20 year old me falling in love for the first time, and 30 year old me now. I used to be “playing to win”, but I feel like now I am just playing not to lose. And that’s really a horrible way to go about life, especially when it comes to love. It’s also time for me to let go of all of my assumptions that just because once upon a time I fell in love in a specific way, that it’s going to look just like that again… so many years later. It cannot look the same because I am not the same.

There are so many ways to be in love.

–Yrsa Daley-Ward

I feel I am making everything into a big jumbled mess but it’s not as complicated as all of that. I want really simple, good things out of life. The things that make me happiest are life’s basic pleasures… making good food, having a cold beer, finding a really lovely flower or lush display of green or taking in a scenic view. A chat with a good friend. A head butt from Magpie or a warm cuddling up under the covers. Weather. Hot baths. Gardens growing. Swimming in the ocean. A handwritten note in the mail. Exploring a new place. Making out and having sex with someone I can snort laugh with. Knowing and loving myself, and feeling like I am adding some good into the lives of others. Getting swept up in a consuming book. Writing thoughts into words. Falling in love… not in a dramatic, flash of lighter fluid burst of flame, but in a slow and steady build of warmth–lit for a longterm burn.  Having a deep friendship and partnership with someone I love and respect, who I am crazy about and who is crazy about me. Those are the things I want these years filled with.

Simple pleasures: cat paws, flowers & chocolate from Hannah, singing with my choir at Pride

Ruth, calm the fuck down and trust your gut.

That is my advice to myself today.

Having a compulsive need to know instantly if the person I’m dating is “the one” is stupid and unrealistic. Holding myself to the expectation that I should know that right away is setting myself up for anxiety and failure. I don’t even believe in the one! I believe in really great fits, and even better fits, and feeling at peace and at home with someone and falling in love and walking through life together, while encouraging and inspiring each other to be your best selves.

Ok, all of my ramblings are done for today. It is late. It is cooling down outside and the breeze is blowing in and Magpie is sitting in the window, looking into the quiet night. Today was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. But the days are still warming up and I am grateful for the arrival of a new season.

Rambling,

Ruth

P.S. Can you please do a tarot card reading for me? Unless it’s something really bad, and then I’d rather not know…

P.P.S. How do you feel about turning 30?! I suppose your 30-year-crisis was considering monogamy again for a bit 🙂

Endings and beginnings.

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Dear Ruth,

Happy International Women’s Day!!!! Being a woman it’s the biggest of blessings. I have followed the poet you recommended and it was the best idea. Thank you.

Happy Leap day!!! I am late af and no, I did not do anything interesting.

I am sorry I did not get back to you sooner. I have been in a weird mental space. Depression returns like a debt collector with a list of my failures and reads them out loud for me to enjoy. I cannot do much internally to fight it other than being grateful for what I have and sending love memos to myself. Externally I play music as loud as possible, listen to podcasts and knit to the sound of Netflix. Anything that is louder than my internal demons helps, temporarily.

And lavender, lavender helps.

I thought it was interesting you mentioned casual dating when I was talking about my Baes. Polyamory is so much more than that. I get bored of casual dating because I do not like hook ups. I rather invest myself in people and create meaningful bonds. Kind of like you, but with one more than one person.  I don’t ever want to feel responsible for fulfilling ALL of one person’s needs. That was so draining for me. Knowing than my partners have other partners that can provide things I lack lowers the pressure to be everything they need.

Although not all is well in poly-paradise. I recently broke up with Jayne due to some irreconcilable incompatibilities. I am a sarcastic smart-ass and she’s a Hippie. We could not see eye to eye in things that were actually important. Like depression. She tried to provide support for me in a way that I did not respond well to. At times she would just sit with me and bring me fried chicken. Those are the good days, that is the support I need. I need fried chicken in my life. On other occasions I would try to talk to her, like comment on what I was feeling and her response is always positive and optimistic which is the WORST thing to offer to someone in depression.

You cannot present happy alternatives to someone who is in pain. You must wait for the pain to pass and keep them IMG-20160209-WA0009comfortable, like an emotional hospice patient. Seeing others provide love and allow you to sulk (for short periods of time) is the best kind of support. A depressed person is negative and miserable and unpleasant and not by choice. In my case, it really helps to have a loved one sit  in the hole with me, it gives me strength to rise up. But if someone stays on top and throws me a rope, instead of going down the misery road with me for a bit, I feel judged.

Fortunately I have wonderful friends and one other partner who are being supportive. I threw a pity party with $5 wine and some take out and watched Mockingjay for the umpteenth time. It helped and thanks to that I am now able to reply to you.

Romantic dates with my ex, NO!!!! They are not romantic at all. They are fun though. And we try to stay in each other’s lives although it is hard. We know each other too much and tend to pick up fights rather often. I would say the thing that allows us to stay friends is humor. Not taking things too seriously. I make fun of her obsession with drums and the gym, she makes fun of my “bae collecting” and lack of exercising. She sends me snaps of her working out at gym, I send her one back of me knitting with the hashtag #workout. We realize that we were growing apart in general and we are better humans apart. She has more time to invest in things she loves and I have more time to NOT hang with her friends and actually make my own, which was really hard here in California.

I am happy about you and Elise’s year. What is the plan for the anniversary?

I hope that this “m” word you speak of is “massage”. I hope that you are giving each other deep tissue aromatherapy massages to deal with the relationship things. I hope this “m” word does not require a trip to the courthouse and a ring, because OMG that a scary thought.

As a person who was separated from her family at the age of 16, I have a hard time gathering the idea of permanence. The concept that someone stays forever, like your family is supposed to, has been broken for me and it no longer exists. When I think of long term relationships I think of stability and companionship for a long time (like ten years). When someone says things like FOREVER I tend to slowly turn around and then run as fast as my dog runs to steal the cat food from the neighbor.

So let me ask you this, what is it that you envision yourself getting from this union? What is it that marriage has to offer than a partnership (minus legal contract) cannot?

You talked in your letter about the both of you recently getting off the infatuation cloud and landing “here”. What is here? What’s in that place? Does it smell good? Is it comfortable? Is it sustainable?

I am full of questions today.   

I am going to buy some paint and a few lamps to re-decorate some rooms of my inner house that have not been used in a while. This transition is going to be rough but I am always ready for a challenge that promises a happy ending.

The West Hollywood Public Library is closing soon and I must send this letter.

Being in a library is such a wonderful feeling. Just look at this heart of books, reminds me of mine and yours. 

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Love,
Nora