Y.A.H.O.O.: You Always Have Other Options
Post script: the decision written about in this post changed after I burned sage in my house. You can read that post here: the weird reason why I’ll be burning sage
Upon reading the below prompt, I opened my eyes wide and tilted my head back in surprise, as if I’d just received a text message from a ghost.
Is your life today what you pictured a year ago?
writing prompt #2155
I couldn’t imagine my current life a year ago. A year ago I was knees deep in research for a decision regarding a family member’s medical care. I felt exhausted and out of options.
A year ago you could not have convinced me that today my oldest son would have be living with my mother for over six months. I would’ve thought sending him to live with her would be a cruel punishment, not the copacetic situation it is.
You couldn’t have told me that my mother would, in a single year, go no contact individually with all three of her children, one at a time, apparent reason not required.
Last December, if you would have told me that you know a woman who sleeps in a different room than her husband, I would be without-a-doubt certain that she was trapped in a failed marriage.
A second house in Vermont? Surely you’d be dreaming.
That I’m still in the middle of that dumb ol’ studio remodel project after getting scammed? Oof.
In January, one of my lifelong friends had a surprise elopement and I got to play maid of honor in my own way from a distance. Ten days ago another lifer had a surprise baby. I was one of the first people she told, and I hollered in excitement in a way that I’ve only witnessed on viral videos.
I’m not witnessing my son’s senior year up close.
I was in six art shows this year & even rejected from a couple. (That’s progress, too! I did not die!) I’m working on a marketing plan and have landed more sales than last year.
Last year I felt stuck.
Last blog post I felt stuck.
The good news is that You Always Have Other Options (or, Yahoo! for short) In that last post, I expressed daily frustrations as they relate to motherhood, wifehood and womanhood in midlife. I thought that the root of the issue lied with my husband and what he was not doing. I related my son’s indifference to his self proclaimed “making fun” of girls to the overall oppression one may feel in a patriarchal society.
Yet, the following day, I thought to ask another question:
“What do you say to the girls when you make fun of them with the other boys?”
“Oh, we don’t say anything at all. We chase them.”
They chase them! Of course they chase them. That is an entirely different situation. I would be devastated to learn that second grade boys chasing girls on the playground was among the losses of the 21st century. As a girl once chased on the playground, I attest that tradition is making fun in a different meaning of the phrase. Harmless fun.
Where else did I neglect to inquire further?
I created the active solution to that previous post’s problem without asking the right questions and uncovering the answers. Until yesterday.
let me explain.
I expressed that I’m unsure if my husband and I have the same ideas about our future. My recently repeated frustration is that I feel as if, as a wife, I am a sidekick to someone else’s fully expressed life. I felt trapped in dissatisfaction with the roles that a wife is expected to play.
Then, one particular weekend night, my youngest stayed up late watching my husband playing video games and went to sleep in our bed. I didn’t want to move anyone. Instead, I slept in the not-quite-prepared-for-a-guest room that was once my oldest son’s bedroom, covered with scattered canvases and frames on the floor but fitted with clean sheets and a comforter. The following day was the first in the week since my husband’s medical emergency that I didn’t spontaneously cry at 3 p.m.. I tried it again two days later. Like baby shampoo: no more tears.
I knew the unprompted crying outbursts were my body’s way of saying “NOT THIS.” I didn’t know what needed to change: did I need to pack up and move? Start a new life? I was ready to drop all of the conveniences of the life we’ve built. But something made me like going to sleep and waking up on my own, though I never thought I disliked the alternative. So I repeated it. I began tidying up the room and piled on extra affection toward my partner. I didn’t want him to feel less secure in our partnership–I suddenly felt moreso than ever.
I had been:
- frustrated with a lack of change
- feeling like I lacked agency in my life
- wanting to assert independence
if you don’t like what you’re waking up to…
change what you see when you open your eyes.
I acknowledge the inherent privilege of that sentiment, but even those without recently-emptied rooms from a child transitioning to adulthood could change the positioning of their bed, shop their home. I’m sewing some stuffing from deconstructed Halloween costume materials to make some throw pillows.
The point is to change the environment and signal to the self that change lies ahead.
In the room downstairs, I set up a large whiteboard with lists regarding the home environment and my business environment, digital and physical. It’s the first thing I see when I wake up, and as my eyes open in the morning I am no longer greeted by the love of my life and the shrine I’ve crafted to our love, filled with photographs of our elopement and babymoon. No. I see that I’m taking decisive action to pursue what has been tugging at me. That which I can’t not do. My creative life, my career, my calling. And I wake up to the independence that I yearned for, that which I knew was crucial to get those things.
the next chapter
I didn’t want to be with someone else, or alone, for that matter. I wanted to feel myself becoming someone else. I’ve spent my entire life fearful of abandonment & fawning for security. People pleasing. Caretaking.
This next chapter, for me, is about getting to my roots. Learning who I am when I’m no longer afraid of who will stay and who will go. Who am I now that I have received the serenity of detachment?
a new understanding
I was engulfed in conversation with a beautiful soul I lucked into running into a second time yesterday, a vintage stylist that runs pop up shops of thrifted treasures. Wetalking about our teen sons, when I accidentally slipped into vulnerability.
“I understand his frustration. I told him that when he lived with me. In the time of our ancestors, he would have already been a man. He’d be out hunting, building a reputation for himself with his unique gifts. Instead, we live in a society where he’s forced into this same childlike track and ordered into ennui. He saw me as the perpetrator of this oppression, but I am merely a facilitator for understanding the society we live in.”
I repeated a version of this notion later to another woman at a friend’s birthday party, over drinks: mine a mocktail and hers an espresso martini, between karaoke songs in a private room. It was then that it quietly struck me: my anger toward my husband had been misplaced. I often felt angry and alone with his devotion to his ambitions, but my anger was rooted in yearning for women to raise my children alongside, not for him to fulfill the roles of an entire village. My desire is to shuck the corn beside a fire with my sisters, to receive family histories and wisdom from my grandmother as we mend together.
I feel angry and lost because we–human beings–still have the same brains and bodies that we did for millennia but we’re spending our days doing the wrong things: looking at brightly-lit rectangular boxes, swiping and pressing our fingers on smooth surfaces.
This is not it. It’s not what we’re meant to do. This is inhumane.
My partner is a good man, yet I began to see him as a jailer. I would not be in this town, this house, if it weren’t for decisions that I defaulted to him. I understand now that it is not the house or the town that is the problem–it is our society. He’s not the oppressor. Much of my frustrations were not based in his expectations of me, but rather, my expectations of what it means to be a wife and mother in this unjust society. I was angry because I had a burning desire to fall short in those societal expectations so I could, in turn, soar on my own path.
My marriage now looks less traditional and feels more safe, loving, and supportive than ever. I wanted a partnership and this signals just that for me. So much of the minutiae in marriage can feel like expectations, unlike the indulgence of dating. We’re now more intentional with time together and it still feels damn good.
What do you think?