Make Me Better

I have thrown no fewer than five temper tantrums on the boyfriend in the past two weeks.

The rational part of me (the part that can ask questions better than my therapist) knows the reasons for it. We've started talking about what's coming next in our relationship, and none of it is the easy ohmygodyou'regoingtomeetmyparents stuff that seemed so daunting a few months ago. Now it's starting to talk about leases and shared season tickets to roller derby.

In conjunction I've discovered (much to my chagrin) that maybe my OCD isn't anywhere near as under control as I thought it was. For so long it was about locked doors and hot stoves that I didn't realize that my obsessions could be about my emotional safety as well. I assumed that once I conquered the obsessions/compulsions about my physical safety, I would be in the clear.

Holy hell, was I ever wrong.

It sorts out simply enough. Loving someone and its attendant vulnerability is really, really hard. It's hard, I think, for psycho-typical people. But for people with the kind of control and attachment issues that manifest as OCD, it feels impossible. Like I will never be perfect and consequently, don't deserve to be loved.

As a result, I've been rocketing back and forth between joy and terror, alternately being the greatest girlfriend in the history of the world and a stone cold bitch (my words).

So I throw temper tantrums. Quiet ones, but temper tantrums regardless. The bitch of it is that even when I recognize that I'm acting badly, I can't do anything about it. I keep throwing crazy grenades at the boyfriend. Partially, I expect, to see how he'll react and partially because being alone was so much easier. 

I mean easier in the most selfish way possible. I didn't have to worry about how anyone else felt, when I was upset I could wall myself up in my apartment and not talk to anyone for days on end. My actions, my bad moods, my mental health issues had zero consequences for anyone except for me. My life was perfectly calibrated so that nothing would trigger panic attacks or compulsive episodes.

Nothing fucks your shit up quite like being in love.

Suddenly there's this whole other person who is deeply impacted by your choices, your mental health issues, your rituals and therapy appointments and inability to self-soothe. And because you love them and are trying to do right by them there's so much pressure to be perfect and fixed and not to have any of the issues you maybe haven't worked through on your own yet.

A few weeks ago, in the midst of a conversation, the boyfriend remarked "I think we're out of the honeymoon period."

My instant Dr. Dinosaur reaction was incredible, overwhelming sadness. It was the kind of remark that was casual and devastating and more than anything else I wanted to run away and hide in a room and cry for awhile. 

But in one of those rare moments, I didn't stay with the Dr. Dinosaur reaction. Rather, I realized what a gift it was to be outside of that stage of the relationship. First of all, it's the stage that I've never gotten to with any of my other exes. I have a bad habit of dumping people after my first fight with them (friendships and romantic relationships alike), so to have arrived at the point beyond my normal breakup point is amazing in and of itself. 

Second, it's a bit of a relief to see the boyfriend as a human being rather than an ideal. He has his flaws like anyone else, and it's comforting to be able to see those and have him see mine and know that we're both planning to stick around. I lob a crazy grenade, he covers it with his helmet. We move on. 

Falling in love with this man, at this moment, has been the most grace-filled experience of my life. One of the myths people with mental health disorders tell ourselves is that we are unlovable. Because of the things that are wrong with us, we don't deserve love, affection, or happiness. I felt that way for a long time, and it's something I continue to feel as our relationship deepens. He reminds me (almost daily) that this isn't true, that I am totally, eminently lovable. 

More than that, though, he has made me see the way my untreated mental illness has a profound impact on my relationships (ours and others). While being single and holing up in my apartment when I get upset or freezing people out of my life were the easy solutions, they had consequences, even if it didn't feel like it. 

He's made me want to get better. 

Not in the unhealthy ohmygodIdonotdeserveyouandhavetoearnyourlove kind of a way, but in the "you help me to understand how my actions impact other people in my life, and that I've spent a long time as a pretty selfish person" way.

I wish I could say that after coming to these realizations, I hit the "self-actualized" button (that exists, right?) and have instantly achieved Enlightenment. Or that I've at least managed to become a bitch^2 as opposed to a bitch^100. Who knows? On my good days, maybe I have. But there are still enough off days that I know I should be can be better. And I find that I'm now, at least, willing to try. 

Earned

"Yeah, but speaking from the perspective of someone who has a partner with anxiety issues, you don't stick around if you don't want to stick around."

"I understand what you're saying, I mean, I hear it with my rational brain, but my lizard brain sometimes has a hard time believing it."

"Your lizard brain?"

"Yeah, the irrational side of me that goes from zero to crazy in 1.2 seconds. I nicknamed it Dr. Dinosaur, from the Atomic Robo series because that's what it feels like."

She laughs out loud. "Dr. Dinosaur is seeing a therapist?"

"Along with the rest of me, yeah."

"Okay then." She waits. "It gets easier, you know?"

***

I can't stop thinking about Jane Kenyon's "Happiness."

It's a beautiful poem, one I've been reading almost daily for weeks. The opening stanza is the kind of thing that makes me cringe to think that I used to write poetry: 

There's just no accounting for happiness

and the way it turns up like  a prodigal 

who comes back to the dust at your feet

after having squandered a fortune far away. 

Can you think of a better description of happiness? 

***

Here's the thing that no one ever tells you about happiness. 

It's completely terrifying. 

At least, it has been for me. 

For years I've told myself you don't deserve to be happy.

Happiness was always something that I had to earn, and once I found my ideal job or lost twenty pounds or sorted my OCD, then I would be allowed to be happy. But I had a long, long way to go before I earned it and in the meantime I might as well make myself comfortable as slightly miserable. I mean, it couldn't be that bad.

I know, I know. I go therapy, trust me, I know.

But two years ago, happiness showed up on the same day I was unpacking my boxes after the failed North Country Experiment. It was okay (non-terrifying) for a bit because it just seemed like a houseguest.and I had earned a few months of it by taking this new job and moving home. When it stuck around I became a little . . . unsettled. It felt fraudulent and I spent a lot of time waiting for the bottom to drop out.

It didn't. And it hasn't, despite my apparent best efforts to make myself the most persnickety, least loveable human being on the planet. It stuck around and multiplied and sent Dr. Dinosaur on a rampage and landed me back in therapy wondering am I the only person who can be the happiest they've ever been and still need to see a shrink at the same time? 

Nope.

The reason for the therapy, I think, is that for the first time, I want happiness to stick around. Many of the best things in my life--my close group of friends, life in a city I adore, my boyfriend--there is no possible way I earned any of these things. And I don't want to feel like I have to earn them anymore. The therapy sucks, there is no way around it. I dread appointments the way most people dread the dentist, and I never feel quite so ohmygodthebottomisgoingtofallout Dr. Dinosaur-y as I do when I leave my appointments.

But it gets easier. Bit by bit, it seems like happiness might now be something I have to earn.

Some Conversations With Women II

"That's not that young."

"It is when I'm trying to date someone between 35 and 40!"

I suck in a quick breath through my teeth. "Oh, yeah. In that context, he's just a baby! What were you thinking?"

"That he was a super cute 24 year old and that I wanted to make out with someone."

We dissolve into laughter.

***

"What do I do?"

I'm sitting on the tiled floor of a not-quite-public, not-quite-private bathroom, texting my best friend and waiting the longest three minutes of my life.

"Well, you can make an appointment. I'll take the day off of work and take you."

"I honestly have never loved you more than this I do in this moment."

"I know."

"Three minutes is a long time."

"I know."

"Do I say anything? I mean, if it is . . ."

"I wouldn't. But you probably would."

"Fuck."

"I know."

We wait.

***

"I mean, I'm settled now, but there's no way I would ever date a guy under the age of 35 again."

"Do you really think it makes that much of a difference?"

"Yeah."

"What is it?"

"Well, the sex."

"Yes of course the sex, but is there anything beyond?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"It's cliched."

"What is it?"

I pause. 

"You know how guys in their 20s don't know what they want?"

"Yup."

"Guys in their early 30s know what they want, but if it's not you they don't mind using you as training wheels for their next relationship."

We sit quietly.

Plural

"Well, I mean, Kelly is plural now and we have to start taking that into account."

I start laughing and end up with beer up my nose. It's been a really long week, and I'm--we're, I suppose--hanging out and having pizza and beer with one of my old roommates. She's tired and a little frazzled, talking to her husband about how we need to see one another more often and the difficulty of coordinating schedules.

After coughing the carbonation out of my lungs I say: "What a funny way of thinking about it."

She shrugs. "I always thought it was kind of nice."

***

I'm going to be sad to see 2014 go.

It feels like a selfish sentiment, given the general fucked up-ness of the past twelve months. But the truth is that grim global realities aside, 2014 has been the best year of my life. 

Independent of the whole ohmygodLOVE thing, this year has been fantastic. I celebrated a year in the Twin Cities, packed suitcases, took cross-country flights, and crossed finish lines and things off my  my 30x30 list.

This has been a great year. 

Here's the funny thing. 

All of those things felt really good. I love marking things off of to-do lists and travel is always deeply satisfying. 

That's not what made this year wonderful. 

During the course of the past year I've felt less and less like I was waiting for the bottom to drop out on me. Work has felt manageable, my family is healthy, I live in a city I love surrounded by people I cherish. Things feel more stable now than they have in a long time. Until this weekend, I had a really hard time pinning down what, exactly, was so different about 2014.

***

I'm happy. 

That's it. There are no qualifiers or addendum to the statement. That's what changed in 2014, and it's such a simple thing, I feel like I should be embarrassed that it took me so long to figure out. But I spent so long with depression and anxiety that I forgot what it felt like to live without them. And even in the process of getting better things were still kind of bad. But over the course of the past year, my worst days have become roughly equivalent to what my best days used to be. 

Happiness has stopped feeling tenuous. 

Partly, I expect, from therapy and sorting out any number of things that I had repressed for awhile. Partly from learning triggers and healthy coping mechanisms and any number of the other tedious grown-up things you learn to do in therapy. Partly from falling in love.

Being plural has a lot to do with it. 

Not just the simple being plural of being in a couple, but the complicated, beautiful, crazy feeling of having a group of people who love you and have your well-being in mind, people who bring you pho when you're sick, let you cry on their couch when you're sad, celebrate your successes and milestones and let you be a part of theirs.  

They make happiness feel like maybe, this year, it might be permanent. 

Grace 2.0

The theological gears in my brain have started spinning again.

It was sort of inevitable after the weekend. We went to go see a play called The Whale on Friday night. I spent most of the week looking forward to it. The boyfriend told me that it was a beautiful show, and he hadn't missed with a recommendation.

Most of the time I know what (and how to avoid) things that I find profoundly upsetting. I flatly refuse to see shows or movies with sexual violence. Ditto domestic violence. Actually, I consume very little violent media, at all. My favorite video games are puzzle based games rather than first-person shooters.

Aside from violence, I tend to do pretty well.

The Whale, though.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I spent most of the play crying. Or that it impacted my mood through much of the weekend. I went to bed sad on Friday, teared up a few times thinking about it Saturday, and spent a solid chunk of today writing and thinking about it.

One of the most interesting parts of the show completely opposite ways the boyfriend and I saw it. For me, it was a show about watching someone commit suicide by tiny increments. For the boyfriend it was a show about redemption and the ability to see grace and kindness in other people, even when they are verifiably rotten.

Either way, the show was a lot to process.

In theology, when we talk about grace, we talk about God breaking into the course of human events. For Christians, the major example would be the Incarnation, but also through sacraments and the liturgy.

One of the things I loved best about my theological education (especially graduate school) was the idea that moments of grace would break into our daily lives, without the sacraments, without liturgy, we could find these little moments of God's love in the everydayness. But more than the in-breaking-of-the-Divine-into-the-world, what appealed to me most was the idea that everyday grace could be transformative. 

The accessibility of God in those moments, or the idea of it, always appealed to me. 

It's been . . . awhile since I've thought about anything even tangentially related to theology. But our differing reactions to a play that was about depression, loss, and redemption, has me thinking about grace throughout the weekend. 

Relationships are such grace-filled things. 

Not in the big born-of-a-virgin or the slightly-less-big-consecration-of-the-Eucharist kind of way, but in the everyday way that has always meant more to me. The chance to see yourself in a different way is no small thing. Particularly when seeing yourself in that different way makes you want, quite simply, to be a better version of yourself. More than that, it's the other person's ability to look past who you are in your worst moments and say "I believe in the person you want to be and want to help you get there." 

That kind of unflappable belief in another person and the transformative power of grace is, I think, what The Whale was about. And it's something I would have missed, had I not had someone there to help me see something that wasn't colored by my own experience. 

Like I said, perhaps not the Incarnation, but in my worst moments, it doesn't feel any less miraculous. 

Drama

Here, in no particular order, are some things I always thought I wanted:

• Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.
• Huge, romantic gestures. 
• Huge, dramatic fights followed by some ridiculous making up including both of the above. 

Needless to say, my adult relationships have all been kind of rocky. 

Someone twice my age? Well, it worked for Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon, why is my life any different? Living half a continent away from one another and communicating mainly by once-a-week letters because our schedules are at odds? It has a faint tang of Jane Austen, does it not? An emotionally abusive genius I can't stand unless I'm wasted? If the waifish Zelda Fitzgerald can do it, why can't I?

Yeah, I know. 

I bought into all of ohmygodtruelovehastobeallconsuming bullshit, the idea that in order for Love To Be Real it had to be Passionate. And I equated Passion with really specific things. Let's get real. I conflated Passion with Sex and Drama. As if eating one another alive was the measure of the seriousness of a relationship. 

We all know how that story ends. Francesca spending eternity in a whirlwind, Cleopatra with an asp at her breast, Catherine locked in her rooms at Thrushcross Grange.

Me, crying in a feminist sex shop in Minneapolis. 

As established, I am a colossal fucking idiot when it comes to relationships. 

Here, in no particular order, are some things I never knew I wanted:

• Texts during the middle of the day simply to ask "How's your day going?" 
• 96 (continuous!) hours in another person's company. 
• A major holiday dinner with a family that isn't related to me. 
• A cat to like me. Well. At least not actively despise me. 
• Flowers. 
• My spare set of keys with someone who would make use of them. 
• The bed to smell like someone else. 
• Sleeping wrapped up in someone's arms. 

These things, these quiet, day-to-day, being an actual part of one another's lives blow my mind almost every day. I am actually amazed by the extent to which I enjoy family dinners, evenings in with the cat, drinking champagne and cheering so loudly during superhero movies that the neighbors start knocking on the living room wall. It feels completely natural in a way I've never experienced before.

I'm astounded by how being a part of someone's life can expose the depth and breadth of their heart, of their capacity to love.

And all of those things, the having-of-the-spare-keys and sleeping-with-his-shirt-under-the-pillow doesn't mean that the other stuff is missing. It turns out your neighbors can hate you because you cheer during Captain America: The Winter Soldier and for the other reasons people hate sharing thin-walled apartments with couples.

Drama, it turns out, is overrated.

Thank God. 

All This and Heaven Too

"Oh, Kel. I know."

I have imagined this situation, the words I've just said out loud hundreds of times over the past two months.  I wrote them down. I practiced saying them in the shower. I ran phrasing and timing past friends of mine. I planned how I could leave, quickly, when things went awry.

This is the one situation I didn't anticipate.

It's a hell of a thing, to tell someone "Here are all the ways that I'm broken" and have them still treat you, well, like a person. It's an even bigger thing to tell someone "Here are all the ways I'm broken" and have them say:

"Yes, I know. I love you anyway."

It leaves me speechless.

In the past I've written a lot about love. About how much I love it, how I feel it for my friends, how I wanted it despite someone tap-dancing on my heart. I wrote about how I need different words for love and how Upper Midwestern parents changed my conception of love.

This blog has many, many entries that fall under the category of "love."

Yeah, they're total crap.

Perhaps that's a bit harsh. Some of them have it right (mainly things about friends and family). A couple of the ones about relationships probably have it half right, but Jesus H. Jones.

I had no idea.

There's a line from a Florence + The Machine song that I've been thinking about a lot lately.

And all my stumbling phrases never amounted to anything worth this feeling. 

I mean, we've all felt this way, right? It's the (almost) universal human experience, and something we know idiomatically if not intuitively. "Love at first sight." "We just knew." "Opposites attract." "Chemistry." "Love is blind." "Lieben uber alles." "Love is the neutrino that doesn't interface with the Higgs Field of Logic."

What, you've never used that last one?

But regardless of all the idioms, all the friends in happy, successful relationships, it still feels unique, doesn't it? Like ohmygodnooneinthewholecourseofhumaneventshaseverfeltthisway. So we listen to sappy pop songs on repeat. We tell our friends how we received a tablet in the parking lot at the Wedge and it was a big thing not because of the gift, but because it was a gift based on something we mentioned in passing like three weeks ago and wasn't it sweet that they remembered? We smile thinking about one another during the course of the day and spend long Saturday mornings cuddling and talking about video games and anime and our families and the books we're reading.

We talk. We talk a lot. 

And those things and the way we talk about them are great. They're better than great, they're amazing. But the stuff that gets to me, what makes me think "I love you" is subtler, somehow. It's the look of understanding on his face when I say "I have obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety and some shit left over from exes that weren't very good to me." It's the way he smells, the messages when I'm stressed or upset, the way his voice sounds when we're up late talking that just . . .

Well, all my stumbling phrases, right?