Fragile bits

I am strong in many areas. I have a strong body...not fast, but long-lasting. Able to resist injury and withstand pressure. I have a strong intellect. I consume information and solve problems, and love a mind-challenge. I have a strong will. I will not compromise on the things that matter, and I can fight when the situation calls for it. I have strong friendships. I can relate to my friends and care about them and support them, and receive their care and comfort.

But there is one muscle which is painfully, obviously weaker than the rest: I cannot sustain or support romantic relationship pressure. It seems that my tolerance for this is (for all practical purposes) non existent. Like someone who has swallowed poison and, for years later, vomits up anything that bears a resemblance to the offending chemical. 

I've found myself interested in "J" and, in spite of my self protection, becoming invested in him. So it feels disappointing when, after this past month, he seems to be looking for something...someone else. 

I am not in love with him. This is not heartache. I know what it is to be deeply and completely in love - and this does not fall into that category. But I did enjoy him. I looked forward to his messages and company. I was intrigued by his mind and his body. And I liked the tantalizing glimpse into a world where I might not be so completely isolated from a "normal" life. And I find that this part of me, this weak and damaged muscle, cannot readily support this experience. I cannot wait to see if he comes back and/or expresses renewed interest. I cannot hope or anticipate or guess. After months and years of waiting for Sjors, that particular ability is gone. 

Instead, the fragile bits crumble. I close the door, and I lean again on those other strengths again. 

Today, I walked ten miles into the city. I read a book on evolutionary biology, and I read U.S. Air Force doctrine for a proposal I'm writing. 

An upsetting encounter

This evening, I attended the beer call for the National Guard tonight in downtown Alexandria. And I had a rather disconcerting encounter with someone I met. 

For all that I consider myself an evolved woman, not in need of rescue - god, I wish someone had pulled me out of that one.  I actually feel a bit fearful and hope that was the last I'll see of him. I can't seem to shake some ominous feeling about the entire encounter.

The fellow was an Air National Guard COL. Early fifties. He pushed his way to meet me, said I was familiar to him, wanted to know where we'd met, and drew me into a conversation that I couldn't get out of easily. He seemed to need to control the conversation and since I was at the event to network and since this is not unusual behavior for military men I let him "be in charge".

I tried to nicely answer his increasingly prying questions about my reasons for conducting operations research, etc. and asked him nice questions in return. Then, suddenly, he dragged me down the path of political leanings.  I said that I was of a liberal persuasion both socially and fiscally, and then he told me that if he had been born after 1970 (Roe v. Wade) he would have been successfully aborted. He showed me a scar on his lip and told me it was from a failed abortion attempt - that his mother had tried to abort him when she was eight months pregnant with him (I can't imagine that this is true...certainly a late term abortion attempt would have caused far more damage than a lip-scar. Most "failed abortions" are in the early stages of pregnancy when the doctor can't properly identify the location of the fetus and fails to remove all the tissue). He seemed to exude a tremendous amount of hatred for his mother (does this necessarily imply hatred for all women?). He said that all abortions were conducted because the pregnancy was "inconvenient". I mentioned that, while I would not personally have an abortion, that there were likely more reasons for this (health concerns, mental illness, etc), and that it was a much more nuanced situation. 

At this, he wanted me to "look me in the eye" and tell him that I thought that a woman's right to choose was more important than his life. I told him it was a false choice, but that I felt it was always a bad principle wrong for the state to legislate women's reproduction. He became very agitated and told me that he would "always know this" about me.  He told me that if I believed that, then I should also believe that he had the right to murder me. 

I told him that he was making me feel uncomfortable and I left.

I can't shake the sense that there is something seriously wrong with this person and that I may have accidentally put myself in his field of targets. There seems to be a lot of anger there. 

Well, for the record, Eve and I were sufficiently freaked out by this that we've closed the blinds this evening. That's FPCON Charlie for us. 

"J"

He's a quiet man. Taciturn. I often can't tell what he's thinking or what he wants. He's operational. The real-deal. His body is rock hard and beautiful, and his intellectual and military work speak for themselves. I read his papers online and am so impressed by what he thinks and how he expresses himself. His career makes my life look uneventful. He's spent several tours in Afghanistan. A man's man, he grunts and mumbles and spits, and leaves the toilet seat up. The first night I spent with him, I had a dream that he was beating the shit out of Sjors (not much room for interpretation there).

I like him a lot. But it's difficult to know what I want when I'm unsettled by someone else's lack of sharing. All of my energies go to empathizing and analyzing.

And I'm gun shy. Sjors was so misleading and deliberately cruel for so long, my emotional self-protection is on a hair trigger. The process of emotional shut-down doesn't seem to require negative feedback anymore. I'm calibrated to turn off when the silence lasts for half a day, or when the response is neutral. And I don't seem to have access codes to my own vault.

There have been some truly nice moments with this man already: holding my hand during the play last night; his almost involuntary observation post-coitus: "I can't believe I found you so soon!" and the way he is so driven to be with me. But I also know that he is in the middle of extraordinary transition in his life.

Two nights ago, while we were together in the dark, I had the strangely powerful recollection of that day when Sjors left Naples after we'd fallen in love. I remember how he laid down on top of me, toes to nose so that I looked directly into his summer sky blue eyes, and said, "there. Now we have the maximum amount of contact." I remembered this moment so strongly and unexpectedly while I was with "J", and I began to sob. I hoped that this would sound like the typical passionate vocalizations. Not wanting to ask if I was crying, "J" asked if I was congested.
"I'm just crying," I said. "Don't know why. Never happened before. It will stop soon."
In the dark, "J" stopped moving, and looked down at my face. He kissed my eyelids and tears from my cheeks.

Later, he seemed contemplative.
"Penny for your thoughts," I said.
"You have things going on with you, too," he observed.

I suppose we all do what we need to so that we can stay alive and keep moving. But I don't like that I'm shut down. And I don't like feeling that any man I choose to trust will betray me to the same degree that Sjors did. It isn't fair to extrapolate Sjors' cowardice on the entirety of his gender.

The return

In Afghanistan, the elections were a roaring success. I watched, concerned, because "J" was in Kabul and I was concerned about his safety, the safety of his friends, and concerned that the Afghan people would be blocked from voting. Apparently, there were 4000 mules required to carry the ballot boxes. Men and women lining up to vote in spite of threats of violence, and actual attacks on the Election HQ days leading up to the elections. 

Sometimes, I'm overwhelmed by the magnitude of what has happened to me. And, sometimes, it seems so small when compared to these things. "J" wrote to me that, after the elections, he sat in the dark, smoked a cigar, and listened to Beethoven's 9th symphony. Ode to Joy. 

"J" returns this week. I'm looking forward to seeing him again. To spending time with him and finding out if he is as interesting and worthy as he seems to be. Unsurprisingly, I'm of the "Trust, but verify" paradigm. But he keeps my attention in a way that I did not expect. I like him. 

I jogged into DC last Saturday. An 8.5 mile route along the Potomac and into the 7th street area where I used to live. I met Shelly for lunch at Rosa Mexicana and ate far too much homemade guacamole. Very nice. I think a person can live off of it. The cherry blossoms near the river were blooming, but those along the Tidal basin were still closed off. 

It is spring. 

Partive Paternity

I remember how frightened I was when I knew I would meet Sjors' children. I worried that I would resent them - because their existence excluded me from Sjors' life. I thought about it for a long time, and I worried.
Sjors introduced us on Skype first. Later, on a trip to Alkmaar, he picked me up at the train station and they were in the backseat. We drove to a park and played together.

It was so interesting to me that none of my fears turned into anything. The truth was: the tremendous love I felt for Sjors simply extended and became big enough to cover them, as well. They looked like him: they were part of him. And because I loved him, I loved them too.

They were too little to speak English and so I spent several months focused on learning Dutch; this was the basis of my Dutch language skills (such as they are). I also considered that Sjors and I might not want to have children right away because I worried that these little boys would feel displaced. It was incredible to me to feel that, far from being resentful, I felt grateful for the opportunity to be a part of their lives. One of my great sorrows centers on this fear that I will never be able to have children of my own. How marvelous it would be to step into the opportunity for partial parenting, to extend love and caring of small people.

I've thought about this in the years since. And I've recently started reading a book that has begun to sort this experience for me into a framework that might make sense. The book is: "Sex at Dawn" by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. In it, they challenge the standard narrative that Humans are (by nature) monogamous and adulterous. Such a narrative (which Matt Ridley does a nice job outlining in "The Red Queen") is based on a system of economic exchange where men own all property and power, and hold the cards to safety, wealth, and happiness. This is a zero-sum game where women exchange erotic pleasure for access to man's wealth, protection, status, and other treasures likely to benefit herself and her children. This dismal Hobbesian view of life and human nature (short, nasty, and brutish) where men and women enter into these monogamous contracts with one another because of economic and social benefit is the one I was raised on and believed (and, for the record, resented). But Ryan and Jetha argue that humans evolved in tribes of hunter-gatherers; where sharing was essential for tribe cohesiveness and survival of the group. This meant shared food, shared sexual partners, and shared parenting. In these groups, it is stinginess, not promiscuity, that is frowned upon. Apparently, there are plentiful examples of this in the animal kingdom, including our closest genetic cousins, the Bonobos. There are also many examples in human tribes who believe that the fetus is conceived through the accumulation of semen from multiple men. For a mother eager to give her child every advantage in life, she would seek out sex with an assortment of men with traits she liked, hoping that her baby would absorb the essence of each. The resultant child is then cared for by numerous adults in the tribe who have a special interest in its well-being. It is far more likely to survive and thrive. Similarly, the Kulina tribe in the Amazon believe that all women who breast feed an infant (or allow it to suckle even on a non-lactating nipple) are the child's mother.  This is called "Partive Paternity". The child is reared and cared for by many parents, not only the single pair of our modern world. I am, by evolution, programmed, to be the mother of children who are not my own. And this is a very lovely thought indeed.

I certainly feel a love and bonding for my nieces. As with the situation with Sjors, my love for Corinne spills over onto her children. I've loved Papouli since before she was born, and the same is true for Zadie. I fell in love with her almost immediately.

The name is still hard for me. I can't control this part. Corinne did her best to use nicknames. We called her Doodle 2, and Z-Bird, and the Zoodles. But her name is Zadie and I tried to use it enough so that I could strip it of its meaning. But it is still so hard. It is linked to the child I longed for with Sjors and never conceived. It was the bullied morning-after pill and all of the fear and lies. I wish I could un-hook the name from this pain.

But I won't force it. It will happen in its own time. In the meantime, I feel like Corinne's children are also mine. I don't know if it would be possible to love them more if they were my own. So I will un-hook from this zero-sum game that we've agreed to with our monogamous, jealous, self-involved nuclear families. I am opting out of that cultural bullshit. I am part of a tribe. And these are my children, too.