Spinning Plates

Dear Leigh,

I love your plate-spinning metaphor.  Reminds me of a Radiohead song...I'll come back to it.

For now, I have to focus on the strange tension between wanting to be left alone and not wanting to be alone at all.  I can't really expound on being happy flying solo, because (though I found plenty to do with my time that I don't do so much now) I wasn't happy on my own from the day I understood that each person is supposed to have somebody.  Even in first grade I pined over some boy or other.  It's acculturation.  Occasionally over the years I've hit points where I felt content on my own and proud of what I did with my time, but always I returned to a place where I felt bitter toward people yet ultimately wanted to be a part of the successful heterosexual partnered group.  I never could help myself, and I recognized that as a weakness of sorts.

Back to the spinning plates.  My parents were supposed to come visit this weekend, but, due to weather, have canceled the camping trip whose return route would lead them directly past Blacksburg.  It's rescheduled for two weeks from Sunday, when my friend Laura has planned for me to go visit her in Atlanta.  Part of me looks on this rescheduling as a blessing, because it's one more reason for me not to go see my friend.

I'll explain.  In August, she and I tried to plan a time that we could see each other.  Fall break seemed like a good time, so I said all right, if I have enough money.  The thing is, I don't have enough money.  And my tires are balding.  And a week ago my car wouldn't start, opening my eyes to the catastrophe that breaking down on the road would be.  And, because of Jeremiah, I'm suddenly more concerned about my own mortality.  And I don't like talking to Laura much anymore... Yet, in spite of several good reasons to not embark on a 6 1/2 hour drive to Atlanta, I can't bring myself to tell Laura I'm just not going.  The dynamic of our relationship has always been "do what Laura wants."  Which was fine, since I'm a generally passive and eager-to-please kind of person.

So I feel guilty that I don't want to go on this trip, because it will put me further into a debt I've finally started to repay, because my vehicle is aging quickly, because I honestly can't afford to spend the time away from my desk.  I feel guilty that part of me is glad my parents rescheduled for the 12th.  I feel guilty that I've changed so much that when Laura talks about how one of her goals is to be making six figures in X years I feel disdainful, which isn't fair...

All of this reminds me of a letter my mom wrote to me when I was six to be delivered when I turned 17 (we lost it; she found it again this year).  In it, she tells the story of a day when she was cleaning the house.  I'd asked a few times recently to take a walk on the trail in the neighborhood park, but she kept saying "later."  Then, she said, while watching me play quietly on my own as she cleaned, she realized she had her priorities all wrong.  She asked if I'd like to go for a walk, and, she says, my eyes lit up.  We walked, and she listened and enjoyed my six year-old's excitement as I chattered about everything I saw along the way.  Her advice, based on this and my continual deference to my brother's wishes, was to not be afraid to do what I want now and then.  It's good to want to make other people happy and to go along with their plans, but sometimes it's also good to have your own or to say no to an idea that you don't like that much.

It's the best letter I've gotten and reveals a tendency we have in our family to not want to inconvenience anybody, to the extent that we'll be visiting in the same town and not call to say hi, because we worry we'll just bother or interrupt (my brother, aunt Brenda, and Uncle Michael were all in Blacksburg a few weeks ago...I found out halfway through the weekend in which they visited...never got a call.  My response: to also not call and risk bothering them).

So, right now, Laura is the plate that is slipping.  I think, however, that it may be okay to let that one fall this time.  I want to see my parents; I haven't for more than an hour or so in months.  Seeing her that weekend would also mean not seeing them until...Thanksgiving?

I hope you're doing well.  Life seems to get stressful this time of year.

Love,

Kate

Side Show in the Circus

Dear Kate,

It is interesting, this thought of independence. I was mulling on it more this morning, and many of the thoughts I hatched were alluded to in your letter. I have been slow in my response, still allowing some time to heal old wounds. But I feel on the fast track back to my ol’ self, regaining some of my tough outer skin, disallowing silly remarks to stab deeper than the speaker intended. Though there are still times when I just want to curl up and cry. For example, just Tuesday some walker with her stupid perfect dog walking leash-less by her side made a comment about my herd walking. Molly went slightly ballistic in her own puppy way at the sight of this other dog, causing my other two to pull each way, trying to determine the cause of an ADD puppy’s excitement. I thought I handled my herd fine, for one who is out weighed and out muscled by the combined hounds. Individually, they are wonderful, fairly well behaved dogs…with Molly’s puppy-ness exception. But together, they feed off each other’s excitement and curiosity. It is tough, but we do well.

But then there are the days I want to shoot them to the moon.

Independence is a funny thing. I am reading the book Into the Wild about a boy going into the Alaskan wilderness to live alone for a while. The deepest form of independence, if you ask me. I sometimes think that is where I would like to be, living in pure solitude with no human contact. However, I believe it would have to be more or less a temporary fix, just a short time sans human contact to defrag from the demands of society… the same as those you highlighted in your letter. Yet I know I will never be truly free of the demands of my kids, my friends, my family, my dogs. So, I do try to find “me-mo’s”: me moments of quiet solitude to ease a troubled soul, tensions pulled tight by social demands, my thin bands of sanity unraveling. Sadly, it is not quite so poetic as a Walt Whitman journal entry, but my quite times are the best I can supply in my current situation.

Basically life is nothing but plate spinning. You sit on stage, spinning a plate on a post. Yet the crowds did not come to see you balance one plate, so you start the next saucer a spinning, then the next, then the next. How many plates can you get moving before the first one falters and you find yourself unable to rush back to keep it balanced. Our social demands are like this. Mom and dad want a visit, brother wants a party, friends want a sponge, kids want a lock-in, dogs want a walk, boyfriends want attention, ex wants a reunion, the self just wants a vacation.

We are never truly independent. There will always be a demand from someone lurking in the shadows. But I think this independence can be healthily embraced if we can find, or demand a compromise from other parties. One of my college youth made a great comment the other day: She is happy when she is single, and happier when dating someone who is compatible. Obvious remark. But the first line is where we falter. Being happy solo. I have been there. Unhealthy relationships have caused me to lose some of this independent confidence. I tend to a personality which would gladly give all and then some for those around me, and often it is to the determent of my own happiness. But I am again feeling stronger these days, and more ready to take on the world, demanding more compromise from friends, work, and dogs. You and I tend to be the same in this, we let others tramp over our strive towards independence. We have to learn to butt in on those conversations to give our own related grievances, to demand the family make the drive for a visit, or, as you have done (kudos to you)…detach from the phone for moments of uninterrupted silence. “Just say no” is not only a slogan for drug use. Independence is not just about being solo, it is about forming healthy relationships, where we can be happy in our solitude, and happier still in our balanced relationships.

Just so long as no one makes a snide comment on the erratic behavior of my puppy…Molly’s an idiot, I know this, but she’s a cute idiot!!

Vivre en Paix

Leigh

"independence" has a price

Dear Leigh,

There is definitely a danger in independence, in that if you choose to be independent in some areas then others will assume that you want to be independent in all areas, or that you are always capable of self-sustainment (monetarily, emotionally, whatever).  Your post came at a time when I'm struggling for a little independence, not because anybody is trying to hold my hand or because my parents are too involved but because I want to prove to myself that I can survive.  Luckily, so far I've gotten along all right with the knowledge that there's help if I need it.

That's where the difference is, isn't it?  I know that, if I need it, I can call mom and dad about rent or car repair or health insurance or any number of other concerns, and they're close enough that I can even run home for a weekend.  They remind me of this every few weeks.  I sometimes wonder, though, about my friends. [segue into slightly new topic]

I have good friends.  They're great people, and I like hanging out with them.  Recently, however, I've begun to tire of the demands of these friendships...one friend always wants to hang out but it's usually at a time inconvenient for me now that I go to bed by midnight and try not to drink (I'm poor, and alcohol's not all that great most of the time), one friend is upset that I'm not at my place much but instead at J's (last year when she started dating her boyfriend she disappeared from her apartment and moved into his), and another is upset that I don't have my phone by me at all times anymore (but how many times in the past years has she really listened to me?  It's always been about her problems).  

I know that my irritation is immature, and that's why most of the time I ignore it.  But every now and then I want it to be about me, and this is where I come back to your original topic.  My theory is that, because I'm a quiet and usually passive person, I've attracted friends who are not, and in so doing had to depend upon myself emotionally for most of the major events in my life.  When plans are made, I usually meet others on their side of the spectrum of compromise, and if I don't feel listened to I don't complain because I really don't care to butt in.  My journal listens to me.  Family listens to me.  So maybe, through all of this, I've given people the impression that I'm fine on my own, that I don't need listening ears, too.  Perhaps you've done something similar.

What's worse than immaturely feeling slighted or put upon by friends who really do mean well most of the time is that, now that I'm trying to do things my own way for once, I don't miss them much.  I don't miss going out on Friday nights with them, because what fun did we have, really?  I don't often miss listening to another problem and being unable to share my own.  Sometimes I'll have a day where I just want to hang out with girls, and then I do...but get pressured to go back to my old passive-listening/passive-partying self when I'm with them.  

I guess what I'm getting at, in a really long-winded way, is that being an independent person is being a contradiction, and that it is difficult to balance both sides of this contradiction.  As people, we occasionally need other people or want other people to care about our needs.  As independent people, we like to be able to function just fine on our own.  I feel as though I'm just beginning to enter the kind of independence you've had for a while, and that I'm leaving another kind of independence (or dependence on others' needing me, depending on how you look at it) behind.  Some embrace the change in me, like my parents, but others (justly) find it difficult to realize that, while I'm happy to listen when I can, I'm not their 24/7 listen-to-my-sob-story or do-what-I-want-to-do person (I don't classify you as one of these people---I'm sure you know that, but I wanted it to be said anyway).

Time to (independently) go to class.  Stay dry, and if you need a place to stay make it known that you need one.  I'm sure people want to help; they sometimes just don't realize you want them to.

Your cousin,

Kate