Waiting to Collide

Not too long ago, a coworker at the hospital found a Buddha on the side of the road with both arms broken off. He later gave the figure to me. At times like now, I not only do my best to curb the tendency to want, but try to remember that succumbing to the inability to control circumstance may be the only way to tolerate uncertainty. Impotence is, at best, an uncomfortable feeling. For someone who thinks in terms of possibilities, chronically speculates, and plans as if it were a symptom of OCD… Being powerless is waterboarding for the mind.

Over the past six months, I have managed to disentangle myself from an identity that no longer serves me now that I am not accommodating my illness. No longer obsessed with embracing transience (relationship, mood, location, etc.), I’m starting to make progress in the direction of a suitable career, contributing to a cause that I care about, developing close relationships, taking better care of myself physically, and contemplating starting a family of my own. These goals are obtainable, and I’m obtaining them with an ease that I would have found impossible a few years ago.

I recently became involved in a long distance relationship. My first serious relationship since March of 2009. With every passing year — every passing relationship — I get closer to knowing not merely what I desire, but what I need. This person has the potential to be both. It is exciting, terrifying, and baffling.

When one sits down to conjure their perfect mate, they imagine his or her physical features, interests, personality, sexual proclivities, life goals, domestic compatibility, and so on. As a planner, I do this in extreme detail — almost to the extent that the standards would be impossible to satisfy. So, imagine my surprise when I came across someone who satisfies them extraordinarily well on paper. Even more surprising when there is mutual attraction.

He has obligations tying him in one city for the next few months, then will be abroad for a year. I have obligations here in Austin for the next two years. The timing lines up neatly; there’s even an active plan. Hoops to jump through. Compatibilities to test. If things go well over the next few months, we go on to the next six-month round of waiting and correspondence. Then another round. What happens at the end of that? How can I look forward and determine if waiting a year-and-a-half for a man I’ve known just seven weeks will be worthwhile?

The question, “What do you want?” has been volleyed. What I want is to settle down. I want to be done with school, in a career, married, and starting a family five years from now. I’m done with the restless period of my life, and I’m anxious to create something stable and satisfying. It’s a twisted game of Russian Roulette where no one wants to say, “If we get through the 18-month obstacle course, I think you’d be worth marrying.” That’s an insane thing to say to someone you’ve known for so short a time, and easy to misconstrue as an attempt to corner and capture them like big game. So in our delicate treatment of the subject, for fear of scaring the other person off with an extreme level of intensity, we’re circumventing the very discussion that needs to happen. Neither one of us would be involved in a long distance relationship if it weren’t for this perfect storm. I don’t know if it can wait to be discussed until he comes to visit in March, or if the revolver will go off before then.

Due to the nature of the relationship being a variable, any attempt to plan for two years from now is futile. All I can do is see him in March, again in six months, and then in a year to determine what will happen. The huge swaths of time between visits allow him ample time to decide it’s not worth the investment, or meet someone else, or simply tire of me. I’m deeply worried, feeling extremely vulnerable, and almost anticipating ultimate rejection. An equal low to match the high I’ve been feeling since I last saw him.

This is where Buddha comes in. There’s nothing to cling to yet. It hasn’t had a chance to solidify. I need to relax my grip and allow events to unfold as they may.

Or perhaps I just need a strong drink.

I started 2009 confused and rough. The year chewed me up and spat out a softer, more sentimental Ash than I can recall myself as ever having been. I consider the first 25 years of my life to be a false start. My life, as I want it to be, began this past year.

Volunteering at the state mental hospital in the Peer Support program forces me to repeatedly rehash my family history. Given the Jerry-Springer-ness of it, one would think that this would be traumatic. But much like repeating the same word over and over again, it begins to lose meaning and becomes abstract, an academic curiosity, distant to me as the Iran-Contra Affair, defanged. For this and countless other reasons, my experience at the hospital has been invaluable.

For a long time, I skirted the subject of my family. At first, I’d refuse to respond to inquiries — angry, lonely, and still stinging sharply from the first eighteen years of my life. Then I minimized. Sometimes I’d lie and say that my biological mother was dead. I’d shrug my shoulders at my father’s death and mutter, “Don’t worry about it; you didn’t kill him” to those who instinctively apologized for my loss. I didn’t want to deal with the stigma of a broken family. I didn’t want to be perceived as damaged goods. Then rage and self defense. I hated my biological mother so intensely — the pain of rejection and abandonment melted and left a hard pit of independence. I felt as though I were without family, alone.

I moved back to the Northeast, in part, to be closer to my aunt and uncle. My aunt had been in poor health and had had a close brush with death that was not communicated to me at the time because I was too far away (in Austin) to do much besides worry. Faced with the prospect of her dying and being unable to see her before that happened prompted my return.

I visited them frequently over the next year and a half while living in Massachusetts. I loved everything about it. I loved the drive down (two hours from Boston, breaking 100 mph multiples times in my new, light, beautiful car). I loved her exuberance when meeting me at the door. My uncle’s good-natured stoicism. Helping in the kitchen. Knocking back beer and playing cards with my uncle until after midnight (he’s still my favorite drinking buddy). Picking marigold seeds completely sloshed on glühwein. Badmitton for hours on Heineken. (Detecting a pattern here…) They are relaxed, content, joyous people who love, accept, and support me as I am and as I wish to be. Each visit felt like a celebration. I slowly realized that I was not without a family. I had a perfect, chosen family.

In addition to my aunt and uncle, I also had Dr. McAwesome at home. He is, to this day, the person to whom I am closest. He receives the uncensored, unembellished truth, processes it rationally  and returns in the same fashion. He shares my hobbies, my curiosity, my desire to spend quiet hours indoors, and my domestic patterns. He is brilliant, affectionate, accepting. He is irreplaceable and I will love him forever no matter what the form of our relationship.

When I moved back to Austin, I moved in with a close friend, and quickly made other supportive, mature, and fascinating friends that I admire and love sharing optimistic thoughts and time with. Musicians, artists, nerds. Passionate, intelligent people. People I want in my life forever. That will come to my wedding, that I will call at Christmas, that I will weep for when they die someday.

In short, I am surrounded by awesome human beings. Even Dr. McAwesome’s mother, who wrote me the sweetest, most earnest thank you email for a scarf I sent her for Christmas. My new family is an oddly shaped tree worth embracing, and I heartily thank my biological mother for leaving the month of my 18th birthday. My life will be rich and filled with love.

Happy New Decade, y’all!