40

My beloved is on the other side of the world, and yesterday I didn't manage that very well.

Every bit of relationship advice (especially for lesbians!) warns against living in each other's pockets. It says you have to have your own identities, your own interests, your own friends.

I shouldn't be so 'attached.'

I shouldn't be so 'dependent.'

I was on the verge of tears most of the day, but I had to let it happen, and examine why I felt this way.

Was it just because I was missing her? Or was it more about being alone shining light on my own insecurities and it was very, very uncomfortable?

So I worked through it.

Early on in our relationship, when it was still secret, there were a couple of times that she went off on holidays with her then partner, and the unease was palpable. It was a part of what pushed us to leave and be together. "Comfortable with you, uncomfortable without you" was how we described it.

So while Nyah is overseas working, learning, experiencing all sorts of wonderful things, I am still here doing the day to day stuff. I don't feel jealous. Not at all. I think what I feel is that she has stepped out of my world for a while, and I feel a bit lost at sea.

Nyah is a strong personality. She has a clear identity and is so very sure of who she is. And what she is doing on the other side of the world is no more than she deserves after years of hard work, and fits with her skills and aptitudes. And its food on our table. Another tension in my mind after pushing against all the patriarchal norms of being 'looked after.' I vehemently want to be an equal partner in the financial management of our household, but simply do not have the means to be.

I realised that my discomfort while she is absent isn't to do with her absence. Its to do with feeling despondent about being 40 and cobbling together three part time jobs to make enough money to pay the rent and not much else. I read just tonight that how I'm feeling at this time in my life is a symptom of Imposter Syndrome.

How many of you feel discouraged when surrounded by people with incredible accomplishments, not jealous or envious, but sad that you haven’t done much with your life? 

I read this and thought YES! YES! This is it exactly!!

I have friends who will point out the time I have spent with my children is a lot to have done with my life. And they'd be right. But as I talked about in another post, the investment, particularly the emotional investment, in spending time with small children and not being in the paid workforce, is desirable, noble, well meant. But in our world - a consumerist, capitalist society - its at odd with a society that values money making productivity over all else.

Love doesn't put food on the table.

I sit alongside children struggling with learning every day. I get paid close to minimum wage to do it. I have to tag two other jobs onto that time, because nobody gets paid to work with at risk children for longer than 16 hours a week. Its an 'honourable' job. I look into the eyes of children who's parents are disenfranchised, disengaged, disinterested, desperate, and tell them I believe in them. I love their stories. I find them something to eat when there's nothing in their cupboards. I hope with desperate hope that forming a relationship with the boy who has already pushed two of his classmates by 9:30 in the morning will be something he can carry into what seems to be a hopeless future.

Nobody gets paid much to hope, though. 

Nobody wants to pay anyone to relate to anyone else unless there's money to be made.

Nyah's training and extensive experience has given her a mixture of using the right skills, tools, and most importantly, her humanity to be able to make a difference.. It might be that she has to do that under the umbrella of a corporate overlord, but that fact remains that she knows how, and she can.

So yes...I miss Nyah dreadfully. I go through our bedtime routine of turning off the light and rolling over and the nothingness makes my heart drop. But she will be home soon, fired up with all the learning she has done and thinking about how to make that work for everyone she talks to for her job.

I want that for me, too. I want to be able to afford to house and feed my children without help. I want an identity that is outside being someone's Mum or partner or wife. And I want it to be somewhere and in something that helps others. Helps the disenfranchised, disengaged, disinterested and desperate. Maybe it has to be making money for someone else. But if I can bring hope and courage to one person, then its worth it.

All that relationship advice about not being joined at the hip is about independence. Well, whatever. I am proud to be in a relationship with someone who is constantly thinking about people's stories, people's relationships, and how they bring out the best in people.

If Nyah can work her way to a place where those things matter, and those things pay a decent wage, then so can I!

My values are firm but the next step is to make a living from them.

This is my year.

Back to the Future

Today is the anniversary of my marriage. I haven't been able to officially end it yet, so by the time I do in January, I will have been legally married for twenty years.

It is also the the date that Marty McFly arrives from the future, according to the movie Back to the Future II, released in 1989.

In 1989 I was in my first year of high school. With the benefit of hindsight, I was crushing on a girl while at the same time discussing the boy she liked with her. I probably wrote in my diary about dreams I harboured of weddings and white picket fences. I loved trashy pre-teen romance novels.

I never would have imagined that by the year 2015 I would have committed adultery, left the marriage I aspired to as a teenager, and have outed myself as the queer I denied being without saying a word, but by making it clear the woman I live with is my partner.

My view of my future was myopic. Shaped by the narrow circumstances of my life and the lives of those around me.

If I could go back to 1989, what would I tell thirteen year old me? How would I have liked the past to look like for me so that my future wasn't a gigantic roundabout where I feel like I am in the same place at nearly forty as I was when I was eighteen?

I would tell thirteen year old me that marriage and babies aren't everything. That I am smart and resourceful enough to build a future for myself before sharing it with anyone else. That in a neo-liberal economy, looking after babies at home might be honourable, and probably in children's best interests, but it leaves you financially bereft - nobody cares because its not 'productive' work. That I need time to work out what my values are. That I need exposure to different people, cultures, beliefs and lifestyles in order to figure out what will work for me. That I need to go to university, not just for the learning from study, but the learning from people. That I need to read widely. That actually I'm in love with a girl, and its ok.

But then of course the world would have had to look very different, too. In a sea of white, Anglo-Christian, heteronormative nuclear families, where would I have gotten the idea that my life could have looked different?

Part of me struggles with the concept of being married. My belief systems shifted, and so the value I placed on marriage also changed. I still carry my married name around on official documents like a kind of shackle that I can't loosen until January. I doubt I will ever marry again.

But on the other hand, the journeys we go on make up our stories. My marriage was not unhappy. My children are a blessing. But like those knarled trees that grow through the fences that contain them, my growth outstripped my surroundings and I needed a new place to grow.

We look with amusement and derision now at what the citizens of 1989 thought 2015 would look like.

My daughter's parents live apart and her mother's partner is a woman. At school she does most of her work on a computer. She asked the other day what we meant when we made a reference to Moses. She doesn't know who 'God' is. She listens to music on You Tube. She and her friend still know about fairytale princesses and happy ever afters. They might even hope for them. But they know that they are pretend.

As I head towards the end of my marriage, I feel like I'm starting over. I gained a lot over the last twenty years, but I lost so very much as well.

In another twenty years, I hope that I am settled in the authentic me.

And that my daughter is enjoying ambling down the myriad of paths that will be available to her, finding her own way.

Her own future.