To Admire

success, yes, in this family, in this posse of women, a lot does rest on the wrangling of menfolk in order to become housewives and have babies. 

Now, you all would clearly take me for a liar if I said I had no such interest in these things. I want babies. I would love to have the luxury to be a housewife. (Or really, if I were a full-time housewife, it would be more a way of me very much avoiding my own potential harm/success/risktaking; I am very acutely aware of this as my own personal weakness and lack of courage.) But—so— I very much desire to have my own space, and a loving partner to create it with and beside me, and I have a strong affection for lovely linen closets and spice cabinets and baked treats and little… feets. 

but attaining this sort of “success”—of marriage and house and children, as these are things I do want for myself (I want to reiterate these are not my universal ideals to which i judge the “success” of others by)—it is absolutely terrifying.

sometimes I feel so bad and so unworthy I went to melt through the floor, become the dirt, I am mud, I am dead and forgotten and taken for granted. I want to fail fully so badly that I am physically out of this futile toil waste and consumption so many call “life”. i want to be disgusting to you. 

the last thing I want, in my utter fear and lack of courage, is to feel important to someone else. Being wanted to someone else, as through a partner’s love, is, I don’t know if you realize this, a most terrifying responsibility. My heart may be broken or defunct or lost, but I dearly do not want you to hurt if I become physically or emotionally unavailable to you, and that is an impossibility. If I lack the confidence that I will ever really, truly feel meaningfully better and lastingly purposeful, my attempts at personal improvement will fall hollow to me. I can only dissapoint and drag down and sleep.

And children? Oh lord, oh children. How even more terrifying. Another obliging force, to persist because one’s own children must need them. It feels like a very sad trap. A very sad trap for everyone. 

i think my brain is obviously in peril right now, and so I should go to bed

L’Engle’s commentary on marriage reminds me very much of Franz Rosenzweig in Understanding The Sick and The Healthy, and also of concepts I hear he discusses further in The Star of Redemption. Rosenzweig finds meaning in the cycles of participation, the co-creation, between humanity, nature, and G-d. But in order to participate fully in this cycle, one must first stop philosophically vacillating—his apoplexia philosophica, philosophical paralysis—and secondly, as a consequence, make a committed choice in an act of faith. By choosing and committing, we do not give away freedoms; rather, we actively elect our path, and those particular choices come themselves with ever-expanding, ever more-exhilarating new choices, experiences, freedoms.

In Jewish tradition, marriage is a mystical equation of 1 + 1 = 1. But, to many readers, this equation seems to show a loss: “I was once a whole self, but now I am half a unit,” OR even, patriarchy be damned, “I was once a whole self, but now I am dissolved to my husband’s wishes; I am made whole by my husband.”

Instead, Ms. L’Engle (and Rosenzweig, I believe) would argue that the nature of 1 + 1 = 1 is not meant as measurable, denotable units; perhaps it is more proper for us to understand the equation as 1 + 1 = limitless bounds. Both show a defiance of the laws of a typical relationships (as in, two friends come together for coffee, and there they are, two friends, simple math); they are not to be taken entirely at face value, but to hint that the nature of a strong, committed relationship is unique, progressing to a region beyond Martin Buber’s (I and Thou) classifications of I-It and I-You relationships.

Yes. Okay. There you have it. It is time for lunch.

Griffin has been keeping me on schedule for taking my meds at 8 am on the dot, even if we both go back to sleep immediately after this wake up call. Today is either the fourth or fifth day of being on this regular schedule again. I’ve noticed that around this time of day—really just around lunchtime—I start feeling inexplicably gloomy. My brain feels bathed in melancholy, and I want to wimper or sleep it off. And in my throat or belly, a little nervous fish flops and fidgets, and I wish it would just stop, and I don’t know what to do to make either of these feelings go away. Like I said, I think sleeping or wimpering for a bit would help, and I feel so acutely agitated by these feelings that I do not really want to be mentally (or physically) tugged around. It’s hard on Griffin, because he will feel as if his trying to help me or talk to me is just bothering me—which, well, it is, but I certainly do not irrationally hold it against him; I know it’s just my meds. And he gets frustrated because he realizes there really isn’t much he can do to make me feel better. That’s true, too—I’m not even really sure what someone else could do to make me feel better. I guess, what I want would be… if I feel like this, I like quiet, I like writing (increasingly I am feeling a writing bug, it is sort of tickly), I like reading, I like sitting on the porch. Lunch is good. I like napping together more than I feel like snuggling (like napping, but more squirming? I don’t feel like squirming. I want still.) I don’t feel much like conversing unless, you know, I start the conversation. Really, when I feel like this, I don’t want too much attention. Right now, Griffin is packing for school upstairs, and I am typing in the living room. I greatly prefer this—being allowed to have my moment to myself, while he is allowed to get on with what he needs to do—than being coddled. 

And, good, I feel the mood breaking, like a light is being shined into the crevasses of my limbic system. The boy and I are going to 5 Guys. Did you know you can get a sandwich with any of the veggie fillings without a hamburger patty for cheap? I am excited.

I’m trying not to burn through the small bubble of enthusiasm I have for researching jobs for this semester or year too quickly. Breathe. I have bills to pay, weighing on my mind, but first, first I have to make a wedding cake. Okay. Okay. 

Once the cake is made, then I can really start hunting for a job in earnest. I emailed my former academic team coach from high school who is now an assistant principal to see if she is aware of any opportunities for me within my local public school system. I am looking at AmeriCorps jobs, and although I could certainly use an educational stipend to put towards my college loans, I am nervous about making ends meet in paying for car insurance and my phone bill and groceries. Calm down. 

There’s also the issue of, you know, when and where will I finish college, and the other day I haphazardly sent a rambling email to the admissions office of St. John’s College Santa Fe and started a transfer student Common App. I do not know anything; there is so much to decide and press through.

Tomorrow I help my boyfriend and his brother move into their college dorms. This inevitable separation has loomed long enough, we’ve talked about it long enough, that I feel not so worried about the two of us. It is sort of a quiet, casual anxiety that will adjust as we adjust to our differing daily selves. I do not enjoy nor do I have an encouraging track record for long-distance relationships, but I have more faith in myself now, and I know that Griffin and I can very plainly and honestly share our needs and feelings with each other. I want us to continue contented in our relationship even as we are apart.

It will work out. Right? I get so anxious.

But first, cakes.