My Multiple Problem, Goodbye to Three Friends

Two topics, a tenuous connector.

First, my multiple problem. Yes, I said problem, singular.  I have a problem of multiplicity.

I am too many people. I write in many of these voices and don't always know how to relate them to one another.

I am a scrappy, ironic East Coast Jew full of edges. I'm a New Age peacemaker. I'm a philosopher of consciousness and human evolution. I'm a witty, naked pornographer. I'm child-centered parenting teacher and advocate. I'm a loyal member of family and community. I'm a sex party host. I'm a patented inventor. I'm a dessert creator. A copywriter. A diversity trainer. A queer activist. A screenwriter. A "cougar." A lesbian. A sugar baby. A dancer. A yogini. A tantrika. A barber. A caricaturist. A coach. A fantastic friend. An absent lover. A great dad. A daughter-in-love. I'm single. I'm together. I'm sleeping alone in my own room for the first time in eight years. I'm still married. And not married. I write my own scripts. Create my own relationships, families, societies, religions. Get praised with words. Occasionally lambasted. Had a young woman say, "Whores and Other Feminists changed my life," with tears in her eyes. Got called a "handmaiden of the patriarchy" on amazon. Too feminist. Not feminist enough. A white-skinned person who identifies with color. A Jew who used to be Christian who now wears Buddhist veils. An average-sized woman who thinks fat women rock and takes up more than my share of psychic space. A catalyst around whom people start changing without me opening my mouth, for years. A quiet witness. A medium-low femme who for years IDed as a fag and who feels inside deeply genderless. Got accused of being a man undercover on an online forum. Give too much information. Go years without saying things central to who I am to people I love. My mother left when I was six. My dad and stepmom don't talk to me. I teach parenting classes. Huh? I think I built myself on a string. I think I am really strong. But too much of my strength is brittle. It's breaking. My softness is calling me into itself. I bought a feminine shirt that didn't feel like me, and things started opening up. I am now even more people. A girlier version of myself. It's too exhausting fighting all the time. It's too hard maintaining this big fat hulking ego. The messy bruised unkempt wrinkled spotted faded me needs to turn herself inside out and say, Good enough for now and always.

It's time to say goodbye to three friends I'm very attached to: Machismo, Impatience, and Knowledge. Yes, there are those who would heartily agree that despite my conciliatory mien and cultivated ear, I'm actually an arrogant know-it-all who wants it all yesterday.  So easy to contact that part of myself. Yet I want to be in choice about when I call that stuff forward, not have it run me.

Hence, my goodbye party, a la Ruth Gendler's Book of Qualities.

Let me then say, farewell, Machismo. So handsome, buff and smooth, you have served me well. I've worn you on my arm like shiny charm, and wielded you instead of being real, so much so that you became real. You've huffed and puffed through my body so I didn't need to breathe, didn't need to just feel myself being here, on the planet, quaking with whatever terror had me in its grip.  Without you, I might have felt a lot more scared a lot of the time. Thank you for being my bodyguard. I'm happy to say, I don't need you anymore--you are free to go.  I'll be cozying up to my new chum, Vulnerability. She and I go way back, and it's feeling really good to trust how much she has to offer.

Oh, Impatience! You've been such a great carrier for my anxiety for so long, convincing me that time is always of the essence, and speediness next to godliness. You're like the needle in my vein to keep me going: when everyone else moves at their own pace, you kick in to make sure I'm there to kick them up a notch. You place a veil over my eyes so the world--especially the Northern California world--appears to be caught in a haze of thick gelatin.  You make it impossible to relax and slow down.  Thank you. You've gotten me more places on time--or shortly thereafter--than I could ever hope to properly repay you for. But I have another friend who I want to rely on from now on, and that's Groundedness--a feeling of being in sync with what's needed, and a trust that there is plenty of time for life.

And finally, Knowledge. As Dorothy said to Scarecrow, I think I'll miss you most of all. It's been so comforting to think I know things, most especially about other people. To assume the truth based on scant perception, and order the universe by those scraps of thought. I'll still see you walk by everyday, wave, refer to you as is convenient, oh for sure. But I now want to remember to live in much closer proximity to Curiosity and Observation. In humble obeisance to all that I do not know, and in clear relation to what I see, hear, and feel. My senses perceive. My ego knows. I feel the difference. 

Saying goodbye to friends doesn't necessarily mean they'll go away.  In fact, sometimes friends linger because, well, they know you better than you know yourself. Or, they think they do. So they hang out and try to relate to you as the person you were, and can't see that you've grown beyond them.

So you firebomb them, starve them out, or maybe cook them bad food in hopes they'll get tired of your schtick and move on.  But in any case, the power of intention already has them burning off in flakes of dust and ash.  Goodbye and good luck, Machismo, Impatience and Knowledge. You've gotten me this far, and left indelible imprints.  And if you ask those close to me six months from now if I'm still an arrogant know-it-all who wants it all yesterday, my hope is that they'll say, "Well...she has gotten a little softer." Now where's that sweet little blouse?

Comments

[Rosemary]

Jiiiiill! After way too long, I drop in on your blog and find you as insightful and prolific as ever.

All this growin' and a changin' sounds good--I'll be ruminating on this post of yours for a while. With spring in the air, I'm also ready to be out with some old and in with some NEW.

Give Cainan a squeeze from us!

[Mer]

You fcuking rock. God I love how you weild words...and your intellect. Kiss kiss.

[Tallon]

Ah mawmaw, ain't you just so very fine a woman. I'm so glad you can see and honor those things as tools which you no longer need, instead of judging them, and thus yourself. love yew.