Dear Kate,
I worried as I published my letter that it would induce the knee-jerking defensiveness so common in all human nature. But you are wise to let that instinct ease as you thought through your response.
I agree with you in your image of the coral. Capt and I truly feel our paths, though originally going different directions, have merged. And I do agree with the fact of life where often we make the choice to sacrifice one good thing for another. Decisions are difficult to make, especially when our dreams cannot become reality (your education in Boston to my opening a cafe for example). But we find the next best path. Or an alternative may find us postponing one dream's reality for another. Today, I dream of the day I can leave Pensacola and find a new career path, but today is not the time for Capt's sake, nor mine. Besides, I am still in love with my home town (as you are yours) and am quite content here for a while longer, at least until that next path pulls Stephen and I, walking hand in hand, to our next destination.
I do completely relate to you and your situation, and it excites my mind to hear you describing paths in ways which mirror my life today (your words much more vivid and colorful than my own). I lived through the negative side of my letter, sacrificing what I wanted for the sake of another, loosing the bond of compromise. And I would never wish that upon anyone I loved. It tends to be a blind path: you think you are going the way life intended only to be nose first in a dead end. The only way out is backing up and starting anew...not always a bad thing, but certainly avoidable.
I applaud J for digging your brain to make sure what he wants and what you want are truly on the same page. Sharing dreams is certainly a wonderful feeling! (and just happens to help make dreams more likely to become reality)
Paix, ma cousine sage,
Leigh
Showing posts with label unavoidably decent men. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unavoidably decent men. Show all posts
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Some Coral Imagery for You
Dear Leigh,
It's been a hectic couple of weeks, hence my not checking to see if you'd written back to my last letter til now. My roommate is all married, and I've managed to catch up on all the work I didn't get to do while I was off planning and celebrating.
I also put off replying to your post, because my first reaction was knee-jerk defensiveness, and I've learned that careful thought produces better writing and better decisions, overall.
While staying in this area after I'm out of grad school and building our little piece of country heaven is what J and I have discussed, we've mostly discussed it as what we'll do if I can't find a job I want anywhere else (lately I've been making the assumption that I won't find anything). Your post actually made me bring the subject up with him again, and he said that he imagined us going where I find a good job or, if I don't find a well-paid job that I want, staying in the Southwest Virginia area for a little while so that he can save money for eventual grad school. I'll get a 5-year teaching license, teach somewhere, and when those five years are up...well, maybe the time for J to get his MFA will have already passed, and we'll be living in a new place near his school.
I guess, because I know that it's going to be hell trying to find a job once I've graduated, I wanted to build a dream-future here, too, where the money will likely be. "Plan for all possible contingencies." That doesn't mean that staying is a compromise, for me, because being with J is part of my life plan, too. Having a home with him, wherever it is, is part of my plan. The rest can come when it may--I have no intention of sacrificing anything I want for anything I don't want. I may sacrifice something I want for something else I want--for instance, sacrifice living in this area outside of town (which, I have to tell you, is the most beautiful place I've seen this time of year, and I'm counting every foreign country I've been to) for that dream job in an ugly part of the country, or sacrifice that dream job to live somewhere as beautiful as Meadows of Dan (it sits on the top of a mountain--beautiful hills, covered in fog when the clouds are low). Everything comes at the cost of something else.
My Boston plans were ambitious--excessively so. I haven't got the money. But I still want the adventure. The thing is, I also want this other experience of staying with J.
The way I imagine my life is like that kind of coral that looks like a fan made of veins...do you know the kind I mean? And each vein is a possible path, and each has several paths leading from it, and each path offers the same possibility for fulfilment or whatever. None of them leads backward, really. So, picture J's coral fan intersecting mine, and the intersecting veins not necessarily including Boston, but including dozens of other equally appealing ideas of life that we both have (his fan including some ideas that mine doesn't, and mine including some ideas that his doesn't. It's like a Venn diagram (mixing metaphors; sorry)). I don't see myself following, but rather merging these paths, sometimes taking the detours I want to, sometimes taking the ones he wants to, but always doing what is in the best interest of our security.
I hope that made sense.
Don't worry, I have no intention of following anyone. Walking beside, perhaps, convincing and being convinced to follow routes I/he might not have otherwise taken...but not following.
Though, I admit, I do have the tendency to defer to what others want. J, however, is aware of this, and (almost too often) asks me what I think, what I want, what will make me happy. We'll see how it all turns out...
Love,
Kate
It's been a hectic couple of weeks, hence my not checking to see if you'd written back to my last letter til now. My roommate is all married, and I've managed to catch up on all the work I didn't get to do while I was off planning and celebrating.
I also put off replying to your post, because my first reaction was knee-jerk defensiveness, and I've learned that careful thought produces better writing and better decisions, overall.
While staying in this area after I'm out of grad school and building our little piece of country heaven is what J and I have discussed, we've mostly discussed it as what we'll do if I can't find a job I want anywhere else (lately I've been making the assumption that I won't find anything). Your post actually made me bring the subject up with him again, and he said that he imagined us going where I find a good job or, if I don't find a well-paid job that I want, staying in the Southwest Virginia area for a little while so that he can save money for eventual grad school. I'll get a 5-year teaching license, teach somewhere, and when those five years are up...well, maybe the time for J to get his MFA will have already passed, and we'll be living in a new place near his school.
I guess, because I know that it's going to be hell trying to find a job once I've graduated, I wanted to build a dream-future here, too, where the money will likely be. "Plan for all possible contingencies." That doesn't mean that staying is a compromise, for me, because being with J is part of my life plan, too. Having a home with him, wherever it is, is part of my plan. The rest can come when it may--I have no intention of sacrificing anything I want for anything I don't want. I may sacrifice something I want for something else I want--for instance, sacrifice living in this area outside of town (which, I have to tell you, is the most beautiful place I've seen this time of year, and I'm counting every foreign country I've been to) for that dream job in an ugly part of the country, or sacrifice that dream job to live somewhere as beautiful as Meadows of Dan (it sits on the top of a mountain--beautiful hills, covered in fog when the clouds are low). Everything comes at the cost of something else.
My Boston plans were ambitious--excessively so. I haven't got the money. But I still want the adventure. The thing is, I also want this other experience of staying with J.
The way I imagine my life is like that kind of coral that looks like a fan made of veins...do you know the kind I mean? And each vein is a possible path, and each has several paths leading from it, and each path offers the same possibility for fulfilment or whatever. None of them leads backward, really. So, picture J's coral fan intersecting mine, and the intersecting veins not necessarily including Boston, but including dozens of other equally appealing ideas of life that we both have (his fan including some ideas that mine doesn't, and mine including some ideas that his doesn't. It's like a Venn diagram (mixing metaphors; sorry)). I don't see myself following, but rather merging these paths, sometimes taking the detours I want to, sometimes taking the ones he wants to, but always doing what is in the best interest of our security.
I hope that made sense.
Don't worry, I have no intention of following anyone. Walking beside, perhaps, convincing and being convinced to follow routes I/he might not have otherwise taken...but not following.
Though, I admit, I do have the tendency to defer to what others want. J, however, is aware of this, and (almost too often) asks me what I think, what I want, what will make me happy. We'll see how it all turns out...
Love,
Kate
Friday, June 6, 2008
Tides of early (early) adulthood
Dear Leigh,
I can hardly express how excited I am about next week at the beach, even if I'm not going to be there the whole time. I'm skipping a couple days so that J can come with me...which, for me, is worth it because I so want him to meet the family and vice versa.
Our family really is a solid place in a life full of change and uncertainty. I haven't always felt so blessed, but as I strike off on my own this fall (sort of), knowing that I have not only my parents and brother but our whole family supporting me makes it easier to believe that I will succeed, and makes the thought of failure more bearable. If I should come upon hard times, you'll all still be there the same as ever, and for that I feel incredibly lucky.
Drama has turned its eye away from me and J, as well, and I'm enjoying the comfort of happily living with him, coming home to quesadillas after work, hanging out at Subway while he closes up for the night, and organizing my new apartment with the two people in mind rather than only myself. All of this (and more) is why I want to bring him to the beach. I want to integrate him into that solidity and support that is our family, because he's already taken up that role away from the family.
Sometimes I still have trouble believing how well everything is going. Our only concern is money, and it's not a huge problem. I have enough for now, and will have plenty in fall--enough to (I hope) spare J a thirty-hour work week plus classes, if he'll let me.
I was talking to my roommate yesterday, and we started discussing the way relationships morph as you get older, going from the everyone-dates-everyone-else of high school to the idealism of early college to learning from all of that and choosing something that fits, that takes work, but is worth it all. There is a huge difference, growth-wise, between an 18 year-old and a 22 year-old...at least for us...and I'm so glad of that. Sometimes, though, I wish I could've skipped all the crap in between...
Happy Friday, O cousin of mine.
Sincerely,
Kate
P.S. I really need to start paying attention to current events. This Blacksburg bubble has a thick membrane.
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