ode to boy

So, a little over five years ago, I married.  My husband is at least among the only people in the world I could commit myself to, entirely and without reservations, for my entire life; at the risk of sounding overly earnest, he may literally be the only such person.  (As evidenced by: 1. he is the only person I still want to talk to after a fight with my parents, who matter more to me than pretty much anyone I've met since being born and 2. many days, he is the only person I'd rather talk to than read.)

Also: he is the kind of person to whom I would never have spoken in high school. To be diplomatic, my predilection for wearing my father's XXL lumberjack shirts, buzz-cutting my hair, and dragging around petitions demanding justice for Srebrenica would have struck him as exhausting and unsettling, as they ultimately struck me. My about-face from angry and defiant, to still-more-angry and engaged in a bizarre inside joke regarding my sexuality, while met with considerably more "likes" from my peers, would have been equally disconcerting to him. Not to put too fine a point on it, I married him in part because he is the first person I have dated who didn't think it was awesome and liberated, all the sex I'd had.

I like that about him, tremendously, because that was angry, lonely, bitter sex I was having, because I had it to prove that no one could hurt me with sex, because my body meant even less to me than it did to them. No one could hurt me at all, because I hated myself enough to spend considerable time and energy from age eleven on hurting myself in any number of ways about which -- if you lived through the 1990s -- you have already heard more than enough.

As unpleasant as it initially is to hear someone say that what you are doing is not okay, as threatening as it feels to hear that sentiment vis-a-vis a set of maladaptations that have kept you alive for twenty years, it feels much better than having those lousy choices praised as "liberating" or "sexy". To someone who routinely debates whether she "really needs" to replace her shampoo or eat more than a dry bagel for dinner, my husband's total commitment to a particular way of life -- to hair-washing and laundry-doing and the four food groups -- has been lifesaving.

Marriage, for me, has been transformative exactly because of the restraints it imposes. I don't want the option of pursuing every new impulse that crosses the shoddily-upkept threshold of my imagination. However I'm doing now (grateful, blessed), I am so fundamentally an addict that it's hard not to laugh sometimes at my own transparency, like one might at a kid's first attempts at subterfuge. I really will do absolutely anything to avoid feeling bad about myself, to avoid the momentary discomfort that, in a healthy person, is what makes growth possible. The idea that I screwed up feels like such a apocalypse to me that, left to my own devices, I will follow anyone down any rabbit hole for any promise, however shady-sounding, of absolution.

I am not a person who needs more flexibility in life. Every single day, I face down the choice of doing that stupid thing I said I'd do but don't want to (reporting to work, fighting over tooth brushery, doing dishes, working out, eating lunch, and all the things oh my God) or doing what sounds better to me at the moment and losing the things that matter to me most because I have shitty judgment.

Maybe this is a big difference between me and the rest of the world; maybe your average person can do exactly what they feel like at all times and not leave a trail of loss and regret in their wake. But recently, I have spent much of my time interacting with the objects of that loss and regret -- the kids who weren't as compelling as the new boyfriend or pot or job, the parents who did their best but found their mistakes too myriad and convenient once they need someone to change them more than once a shift, the girlfriend who didn't make it clear enough that she was taking one for the team and learned too late that  it doesn't cut both ways, and she should have known better.

It's way more cathartic to delineate all the reasons why the shit you feel like doing is within your rights than it is to look straight at the hurt you are causing and do the inconvenient and un-destructive thing. I have to do a tortured little daily routine involving God and lots of running and volunteer work and more God, just to be a person who I can look at and not want to kill, with my hands, on the daily. This is not because of my low self esteem; this is because my impulses are so entirely out of line with my intentions. You may be a good person -- as I'm getting to, such people exist -- but if you believe nothing else I say ever, believe me when I say that only the most omnipotent of Gods would find something worth salvaging in my character.

But! My husband, with comparatively little fanfare, just... calls people back. Remembers their birthdays. Picks up the check. Remains faithful. There is no drama; there is no wrenching from his balled up fists of every small kindness and act of generosity. I learned well after it would have been useful that if people have to explain to you why their behavior "isn't" or "shouldn't be" hurtful, the odds of their not being worth your time are formidable. This has never been a problem for him -- or, more to point, for me, being married to him.

I feel like this is relevant outside the context of my specific marriage because the pressure is so great to Not Put Up with That Thing, that thing that one's partner does -- or, often in the absence of any real flaw or wrongdoing, to Follow One's Heart.  There's this idea that the feeling that something isn't right -- a la Piper Chapman or Elizabeth Gilbert or whoever -- necessarily bears acting upon, and that changing the situation is necessarily the best solution. There is very little interest in the merits of Toughing It Out, and then it is surprising that we are hitting the middle of our lives and still feel like adolescents.

In my experience, I am frequently malcontent because I am screwing up -- and doing shitty things often makes one miserable. Badgering those around me into affirming my choice -- or seeking out someone who new, who will -- may look sexy and fun when Laura Prepon is involved (I KNOW), but as someone who has managed to ignore any number of idiotic and destructive impulses, I've found that the result is not only the non-dissolution of the best things in my life, but the added bonus of this: I am ever-so-perceptibly less wretched by nature than I was seven years ago.

BOOM. Grace. Often, apparently, the soundtrack gets edited in later.