Undone, almost, and liberation

Far, far, far from done. So far from done. And almost undone.

Why do the wicked prosper? The question never gets old, although what really makes us insane is the unasked second half: “Why do the wicked prosper while I do not?” And it’s interesting and abstract until, until, until someone I know to be truly, deeply, unremittingly wicked is wildly prospering and I am not. And I am increasingly desperate.

My ex has so much money and is so broadly careless that $20,000 left his bank account in one month last year without his noticing. Another $600 a month has been siphoned off since January, and he didn’t notice that, either. My lawyer discovered that as we prepared for our latest effort at negotiation. I admit I don’t check my transactions daily, and I don’t study my bank statements, but I’d notice that. Meanwhile, I sweat spending $48 (including shipping! including fast shipping which I didn’t even want but there wasn’t an alternative) on a pair of ethically correct pan-gender lip balms sold by a black-women-owned small business. And another $48 on a bathrobe which I don’t need, but I wanted, I just wanted.

I am allowed to want and then to satisfy that want. And I am allowed wants that seem so big they will never be satisfied, or I fear they will never be satisfied.

My relationships are in order, that is my mantra. I am alive, I am in exceptionally good health. I have everything I need to get through the day.

And I’m suffering. And the only real liberation from suffering is death — I don’t care what the buddhists say. But, accepting things as they are in the moment, without needing to change this moment, does take the edge off. Probably more effectively than shopping, but I’m not sure how much I want to test that.

Truth and liberation

The truth is… many of the worst things have already happened, and am I living through, with, around, and in them. Daniel stopped loving me (I think he started, he just didn’t want to see it through, which is the characteristic of his life). I have gained weight, and it’s okay now (“now”= this minute, because I am wearing my skirt high up on my torso, where I am narrowest, rather than where I think my waist is), but if you had said to me in March: in addition to the divorce dragging on, the job search slowing to an imperceptible pace, COVID stretching through the end of the year, in addition to all of that, you’ll gain 10 pounds I would have said, take that one away first. Milo is living in a situation I foresaw with horror, in the house of his father’s outrageous, glamorous, and easeful lies and he is unwilling, unable to grasp the crowbar of truth and crack the edifice– and I don’t blame him.

The truth is, I didn’t get past the first round interview for a job that sounded absolutely perfect, after prepping for 8 hours. No amount of prep revises my professional past, which is nothing to be ashamed of, and also not what they wanted.

The truth is, so much of the world I inhabit professionally is made-upery, which WordPress wants to correct to made-dupery, and that is also correct. It is guesses without standards, assertions of good with no proof, experiences of good that evaporate, a vast, prestigious confidence game.

The truth is, my relationships are absolutely in order, in loving, abundant, generous, truthful, rich order. And my lover says, “Yes, and you can still want more than that in your life.”

The truth is, I am no longer worrying about using this time well. Which might mean I’m using it well or it might not but it doesn’t matter because “using this time well” has no meaning except what I give it.

The truth is, while is painful for me to work unseen, unheard, to wonder if I am disappearing, this deprivation is sharpening my own sight, hearing, and boundary lines. I am developing customized x-ray vision, lenses of self-compassion, clarity of perception of a fuzzy, wobbly, out-of-whack world.

Sign-posts and liberation

There aren’t any.

Well, that’s part of the problem, right? I am looking for a sign that says “Congratulations, D, you are liberated!” Which means someone else put it there, someone else has decided that I am liberated, done, approved, free. When all of these decisions are mine, because that’s the essence of liberation. Along with its ephemeral, ever-unfinished nature.

Dammit.

I say I hate making my own path, except it’s the only thing I’ve ever done. I say I crave the certainty and the landmarks and the milestones of the established way of doing things, except I had no interest in actually working for a law firm, or a consulting firm, or in a system with clearly legible metrics of success, and I had plenty of chances to. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. I’m a desert plant that fantasizes about being a fern. It’s fucking hot here in the desert, and I am so so so thirsty. Shouldn’t I just find some deep, damp, cool woods, maybe next to a nice stream, and root into that nice, mulch-y, wormy, fecund soil and be green all the time?

Sounds lovely, but I’d drown. Because I am a desert plant. Or maybe an iguana. Whatever — I’m not a fern.

Jews like me don’t get tattoos, but if I did get a tattoo, perhaps it would say, “The right place is not the same as the easy place or the comfortable place.” This fact, the facticity of it, seems like a deep design flaw in the world, or in me, or in iguanas.

Here’s a sign. When Will was upset with me last week and used a simile to explain why, I didn’t say, “that’s not the right comparison.” It occurred to me to say that, but then I realized, it was in fact the right comparison to Will, because it spoke to his sense of boundary violation and discomfort. And I could listen and hold that. (I never ceded that ground to Daniel. With Daniel, I could get the guillotine for jaywalking, so I policed his comparisons with great force. It’s not the same. Seducing and sleeping with someone else while your wife is pregnant, nursing, the mother of a toddler is in fact not the same as your wife never buying the birthday and holiday gifts. Cleaning your wife’s hair out of the drain is not the same as honoring her person-hood and behaving with integrity towards her even when it’s hard. Not the same.)

Here’s a sign: Why? Why do I need “an elevator pitch” to describe to strangers the complicated, intricate, relational work I do? It’s important to funders, and I didn’t convince them, so I’m looking for other work. But I was, as I was writing, starting to criticize myself for never being able to articulate what I do and why it’s important. But why? Why is that wrong or bad? The casual vocabulary of work doesn’t fit me, and most people don’t know how to value me or what I do. That’s not my flaw.

Here’s a sign: Why? Why do I need to weigh what I weighed 10 years ago? Health is not a reason. Why do I believe “she’s gained weight” is an appropriate thing to say about anyone except, perhaps, an infant or a person who was ill and is now recovering, something said with relief? In my life, “she’s gained weight” has always been said with mild horror, some schadenfreude — a warning. My lover, whose opinion is (only) mildly relevant here, revels in this body, praises this body, embraces this body, has loads of fun with this body. (That I’m fretting over it all means this aspect of liberation is incomplete… which merely means its an aspect of liberation.)

Here’s a sign: After starting this morning in a state of near elation about tomorrow’s job interview, I now feel depleted, as if everything I’ve written and thought all day about why I am both interested and interesting with respect to this role is trite and boring and just off. And I recognize this as an entirely predictable part of the cycle of creation.

Here’s a sign: Liberation and other life goals are connected in opaque, unpredictable, elusive ways. Getting this job (or the job I interviewed for last week) doesn’t necessarily prove or disprove anything about liberation. What I’m doing to get these interviews is essential and helpful to me whether or not I get the jobs. This is the scary but necessary realization of liberation — it’s compatible with continued economic insecurity, frustration, and other fears. Liberation only ever solves the problem of being unfree. Being unfree contributes to economic insecurity, frustration, vulnerability to the bullshit of others, but they aren’t all the same. I’m not liberated into a perfect life. I’m liberated from the ideal of a perfect life.

And still, I will always be a desert plant or slow-blinking iguana who sometimes thrills to the heat, the intensity, the endless endless sky, and occasionally yearns for a damp, chilly forest floor.