For Christmas this year I was given a Border’s gift card. The thought behind the card was that I would use it to purchase an Australian travel guide. I already have an Australian travel guide. Instead, I went home with the newest PostSecret book, A Lifetime Of Secrets. This remarkable art project asks people to send in anonymous postcards with their secrets on them. I find it enormously touching, and often poignantly sad.
I leafed through the pages of the book on the subway, headed home with Maymay on New Year’s Eve. On the lower right-hand corner of one page, written in blue ink above a snapshot of a couple clapping, were the words I miss when you were just proud of me.
I started sobbing right there on the subway. I had to laugh at myself, I felt so foolish.
I spent eight days visiting family members during the Christmas holidays. I had enormous trouble organizing my thoughts while I was there. Much of my time with my family was nourishing, and content. I enjoyed Christmas. I ate cinnamon rolls and watched my cat pounce on wrapping paper, high on catnip.
I spent some time alone with the family member I shared that painful conversation with back at Thanksgiving. Seeing them was both relieving and difficult.
We did not have the beautiful, moving conversation one might have thought we’d have. I was not expecting us to. There’s a part of me that is amazed we talked at all. We sat in a crowded lunchroom over chili and hot chocolate, and built a small, sparse bridge of words.
“I’ve put passwords on my blog,” I offered, uncomfortably.
“That’s good, I suppose,” they answered. “I know you’ve been writing, but I haven’t read it.”
I wasn’t sure what to think of that. I turned a spoonful of chili over, contemplating. Eventually I answered. “You don’t have to read what I write, you know.”
“I know that,” they said. “But I’m always going to want to read what you write. You’re a part of me, what you do is going to last.” They paused a moment. “Your dust is going to be my dust too.”
I smiled at that.
“It was very painful for me, saying those things to you,” they said.
I teared up a little. “I know it was. I wrote about that.”
“This isn’t a good place to talk about it,” they said.
“I know,” I answered.
Later we drove home together. I watched the trees meld together in blurred shapes as we passed.
I drew a helpless gesture in the air with my hands. “I don’t know if you want to talk about . . . all this, if you want to learn about it or have me explain things to you.”
“I don’t think . . . I’m never going to think that violence is okay,” they answered. “I told you what I think, and I know you’ll do what you want.” They paused, staring at the road ahead. “I’m trying to let you go,” they said.
I thought about that for a little while.
Finally they spoke again. “Is there anything you really want to say?”
I turned the question over in my head. Was there anything I really wanted to say to them? About violence, or kink, or being an adult? About decision making, about work and energy and dedication? About criticism, constructive or otherwise? About Maymay, about how much I love him and how good he is for me?
I’m trying to let you go.
“I really think you could have handled the situation better,” I said at last.
“Maybe,” they answered.
We drove on, for a little while, in silence. Eventually I fell asleep with my cheek on the window.
Is that it?
I don’t know.
I think I’ll always disappoint my family in ways, and there will always be things we just don’t talk about. I think I will always live, as I have always lived, with this undercurrent of criticism and distance, and love.
I think I’ll relish the day I can see in the distance, the day I make decisions without my family.
I think that right now, just in this moment, that’s okay. I think that it will still hurt. I will cry on subway cars sometimes, and then occasionally, and then, hopefully, not at all.
Like I have been every other time my life was broken, in the end I will be okay.
Have I brought this painful span of words and weeks to an end?
Perhaps I have. I don’t know.
I do know that for the first time in weeks, I want to write again.
7 Comments
y’know, I’d be really interested to find out, not which family member it is, but which family member your readers are guessing it is. You’re describing the shape of a relationship and leaving us to put a label to that, if we want to.
*hug*
I’m trying to let you go.
I was going to write that that must have been an extraordinarily painful thing to hear. What if you don’t want to be let go?
And then, I realized that, in some ways, being let go could be very empowering. As long as there’s some chance you could choose to come back.
I’m very glad you’re writing again. I’m sorry your hurting, but once again I’m impressed by your ability to find the positive moments and remember that they do love you and you them. Even though you’re both having a hard time.
It is sad that the family member interpreted your actions and equated the lifestyle with violence when it has nothing to do with that in the traditional sense. My heart hurt for you hearing those words, “I’m trying to let you go” and yet in some ways, you will have to do the same thing. It is that letting go of our perceptions of that person that has to go so we can move on. Hopefully that process will allow you two to find some neutral ground in the future, after all there is blood involved. I am glad you want to write again Eileen.
Thene,
I have heard a lot of guesses. It might interest you to know that they’ve been almost entirely, consistently wrong.
Rona, Robin -
Thanks.
I was going to express the same ideas Rona did (though she did it better), so I’ll just say that I’m very glad indeed that you feel inclined to write again.
I don’t need to point out to you how far the “violence” remark misses the point. For violence to exist there needs to be a victim. Where is the victim in consensual SM? A willing person who consents every single step of the way is not a victim of violence. In fact it can happen that people who engage in SM in their private life, without pretexts and for no other reason than that it is part of their sexuality, might choose a deliberately nonviolent approach in other contexts.
To be a member of a sexual minority in which we practise, according to Alison M. Moore’s words “a playful, sexualised parody of non-consensual abusive dynamics” at times may even give some of us a keen perception of pretexts under which actual violence disguises itself.
The offer to answer questions honours you. However it could be that being the person to provide basic education on SM to your family member may be too much to ask of yourself. And especially under these strained circumstances.
Has someone perhaps already suggested Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt’s book “When Someone You Love Is Kinky”? Sure, your family member has no obligation whatsoever to read such an introductory text, but freeing oneself from prejudices may be a liberating act to anybody. This offer may not be taken up either, but my impression is that offering the means of self-education is really all you can do in this situation.
I agree with Ranai, that a book might be another way to offer information about what your relationship actually is. Your family member may not be willing to talk about it with you, and you might not want to explain it in these circumstances, but IMO a book is something he/she could read bits of without even telling you she/he had, and that might make it easier for them. That said, if you don’t want to, you don’t have any duty to educate your family. That’s their job, and unfortunately you can’t do that for them/he/she.
I love Postsecret too.
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