The Parable of the Mire

Yesterday… fucking hell.

The details don’t much matter, and the decision to have the Anxious Adventurer move out was already made (planned for April, after winter weather is not a serious risk). I had hoped we’d all coexist relatively peacefully in the meantime. Yesterday evening was revealing, and unfortunately nonnegotiable boundaries were violated (and had been for some time, although I was not explicitly aware of it, yet). I’m disappointed, and honestly still rather angry. The plan is still locked in, that hasn’t changed. How I feel about this third human being under my roof has changed – a lot. I sigh to myself, annoyed to be sitting here dealing with that bullshit at all.

Well shit. I really wanted to make things work comfortably well with the Anxious Adventurer coming to move in with us. There are a lot of potential advantages to shared living, and our society places value on family.

…Wanting something isn’t enough…

I am disappointed that this won’t work long-term, and my Traveling Partner admitted that the downsides and inconveniences outweigh the value for him, too. I know the additional emotional labor, for me, has outpaced the day-to-day advantages to having an additional family member in the household. This shit is hard. I keep asking myself if I’ve done my best, and wondering if I have failed to be… something. If we were each different people dealing with different issues, this totally could work. I keep thinking about that, too. Am I depriving my beloved Traveling Partner of the opportunity to be close to his son? I think I’ve been persistently encouraging and supportive, coaching where I could…

I’ve struggled with having less privacy, with being required to do too much emotional labor, with the lack of personal space, and the frustration of trying to cohabitate with someone who showed up wholly ignorant of some commonplace life skills, and basic manners, but I am not looking forward to the practical requirements of the changes ahead; more g’damned work. I’m simultaneously very much not sorry this will soon be over, and also deeply regretful and disappointed that it didn’t work out.

…If you invite a feral animal into your home, you mustn’t be surprised when it shits on the carpet, but you also don’t have to let it stay if it won’t learn new ways…

I breathe, exhale, and relax. Human beings being human. Communication is complicated. Moving into a strange household in a faraway place where the manners and expectations are new is challenging. I knew going into this that it would present some variety of difficulties, but figured we’d work them out together, as families do. Like an orchestra with musicians looking at different sheet music than the players alongside them, there was little harmony and a lot of wrong notes. I’m fucking over it. I’m annoyed with myself for being as angry as I am. It’s not reasonable to blame a feral animal for not being well brought up. I just also don’t want to deal with the associated bullshit.

We each make choices. The Anxious Adventurer made his. He chose poorly, in my opinion, and in spite of steady support, encouragement, coaching and guidance. I sigh in frustration and disappointment. I don’t wish him ill, but I do wish I weren’t dealing with these circumstances at all. I remind myself how close April really is. I lived in a tent for almost a year with 15 guys, most of whom i barely knew, a couple of whom I actively disliked, and it was…fine. I can endure 60 days more of this crap, too. It will pass.

Once he’s gone, I have no doubt there will be things I miss. He’s my Traveling Partner’s son, and I hope he visits in the future – I just don’t want to live with him, at least not right now, and I don’t think I can persuade myself to trust him again. If nothing else, he needs to take some time and work on the man he wishes to become, and I really can’t help him with that (and he does not know how to accept help yet). Sitting here this morning, listening to the rain falling, and waiting for the sun, I don’t even want to try to help him further than I have. It’s not a useful way to spend my time.

A new day dawns, full of promise and opportunities, but we’ve each got to make our own choices, and do our own work.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I feel settled with myself and my decision making. I feel comfortable in my skin, and accepting of the person I have grown to be over time. The journey is the destination. There is further to go on this path. We each walk our own mile, each having our own experience. I do hope the Anxious Adventurer finds his way.

I turn my attention to this moment here, now. The rain falls steadily. I watch the predawn twilight become the dawn of a new day, and in spite of the dreary gray of this rainy morning, I’m filled with eagerness. I am having brunch with the Chaotic Comic this morning. She shares some of the communication challenges of the Anxious Adventurer (as do many others in their general age group). There is a key difference that limits my irritation with those challenges in our friendship; I’m not having to live with them. My friend is also more receptive to discussion, and more open to considering suggestions for potentially useful changes and able to speak up to explicitly reject suggestions she does not favor. It feels like a conversation – because it is. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised; she’s a comedian and “yes, and…” is an important part of improvisation, a learned skill.

We become what we practice.

… Still… I do wish I could have made things work, for my Traveling Partner and his son. I’d have liked to provide a firm foundation for them to deepen and build on their relationship, and I’m disappointed to have failed. I sit listening to the rain and considering what I could have done differently, myself, but it mostly isn’t about that. I can’t do that work for someone else, only for me. I’m walking my own path.

I sigh to myself and make room for gratitude. I have much to be grateful for, even within the context of this disappointing and aggravating shared living experience. I’ve learned some things about myself. Having some help was… helpful. I truly needed it, so many times. I breathe, exhale, and let my anger go. It has served its purpose and only gets in the way, now. Brunch soon, and a chance to begin again.

There’s this place in life’s wilderness that we sometimes wander into, a deep mire of negativity, doubt, and conviction. The mire of our heart. Few of us would choose to live there, once we understand we don’t have to.

The weather in the mire is a permanent, sullen, bitter gray.

At the edge of the mire is a sunny meadow. The woman who lives in the meadow wears a smile. She has worked hard. She works still. It isn’t about wanting to work so hard, or enjoying the effort, or being without pain and fatigue, but she knows that this is her life, and the enjoyment to be had living in the sunshine, among the meadow flowers, is so much nicer than stagnating in the mire. She knows too well; she used to live deep in the mire, well beyond any place that sunshine could reach. The way out was tedious, the path stony and uncomfortable, the distance was great, and the decision to trudge on down that path one uncomfortable step at a time was its own torment. Her constant companions were doubt and despair, but life in the mire had already made those her companions…so… what was there to lose along the way? She was at least moving.

She slowly exchanged “can’t” for “can”. She began noticing sunrises. She began to consider whether she could feel better, more often, and began choosing to do so, unsure (at least initially) whether it really was a choice. (It is.)

Sunrises came and went and as she reached the edge of the mire, more often “can” than “can’t”, more often saying something uplifting to a passer-by than offering criticism, sarcasm, or a pessimistic observation, and even learning to treat herself more gently. It took years to get to the edge of the mire. It took years to see that indeed there is a meadow beyond the mire, and sunrises for days, and flowers in the garden of her heart. She smelled the flowers, gathered seeds, and began to tend her garden.

She looked back into the mire and saw a friend standing there, mired. Deeply committed to the muck, and the pain, and the disappointment, and the sorrow… only… none of those things were really there. From her vantage point, having stepped into the meadow and looking back into the darkness, it was so clear – there was nothing holding him back from leaving the mire at all. There never had been. Sure, there was a short distance of path to trudge across (how had that felt so infernally long?), and the way never had seemed so clear as looking back across it, but… it was the simplest of journeys, once the journey had begun.

She called to her friend from the meadow, throwing armloads of flowers into the sunshine, casting their petals and fragrance into the breeze, but the breeze doesn’t reach the mire. “Come this way!” she called to her friend. He stood there, ever so motionless. “Look,” he replied “I can’t.” She sighed. Puzzled. “Oh hey!”, she called back “I thought I couldn’t, too – but I did, so I could, which means you can… if you do.” He looked frustrated, bitter and annoyed. “I said I can’t!” he confirmed rather angrily. “Nothing works for me. I have nothing and no one will help me. No one cares. No one will talk to me. Nothing works out.” She wept to discover she was “no one” and paced awhile back and forth along the edge of the mire, feeling sad in the sunshine.

Another sunrise came. Other sunrises will come. The woman in the meadow lives in the flowers she planted, smiling among the breezes and the birdsong. There is work involved in tending the garden of her heart. There are weeds to pull. There is always work maintaining all the sunshine. It’s not artificial light, and even the work puts a smile on her face. The mire grows more distant, and she plants more flowers hoping to make the path from the mire to the meadow easier to follow. Maybe someday the man in the mire will walk a different path.

She can see him there in the mire, any day she chooses to look back. He swears she has always lived in a meadow, and that her life has always been this flower-filled lovely garden. She shakes her head, frustrated and sad that he doesn’t see her pulling weeds, planting seeds, and laboring to create this beautiful meadow from the edges of the mire where she once lived. He refuses even to come to the edge, to see what she has done. He accuses her of luck, and she does not argue that she hasn’t been lucky, because she has; she got out of the mire, didn’t she?

Every mire can become a meadow. It requires only all of the verbs, most of the time, and incremental change. It requires effort and will, and a willingness to care. It requires walking on, and beginning again. It requires practice. It requires that we plant our own flowers along our own way, and also pause to appreciate them when they bloom.

A man who says “I’ll never amount to anything”, doesn’t. Most particularly if he truly believes that, and practices the practices it takes to hold himself back. We become what we practice. Mire or meadow, we make our choice, and harvest from the garden we plant.

Wanting to Make It Work Isn’t Enough

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Wanting to Make It Work Isn’t Enough

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The Parable of the Mire

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