The Way It Is

I first met MacTroll in 1992 at Yearbook camp. We were in Iowa City. We were from two different towns in Illinois that were (if I drove the farm roads at 100 mph) 2 hours apart. We figured we didn't stand a chance, and we weren't looking for one another. But we really fell hard. And that deep felt understanding and similar big picture ideals has gotten us through a lot. It's certainly gotten us through nearly 20 years of togetherness, even though, for all intensive purposes our relationship has been based on "separateness."

That is, my significant other and I have spent significantly more nights under separate roofs than under the same roof in our two decades.

It's the same, just different.

I know couples that can't exist day-to-day without being around each other. I know a couple who, when a wife tried to take a weekend with a friend, locked himself out of the house, lost a video on the drive to the Blockbuster, and set a kitchen fire. She said she'd never go anywhere again.

I know women who make plans with me only to change them at the drop of a hat for their boyfriends or significant others. Before X-man this made me outraged. Now, I realize he's the man I drop things for...It's the same, just different.

And maybe it would be frustrating to MacTroll to see that I drop things for our kid, but I don't drop them for him, unless he's gone for work. And then it's different. I'm not canceling engagements to snuggle with a man I see only one-third of the time. I'm dropping them to be the primary caretaker of our child.

But in the end, I have a hard time understanding adults who are unable to function apart. Or who plainly just don't want to. I have a hard time conceptualizing what the big deal is, even though I know quite well to try and respect differences among families. But something about it just cheeses me off, and I wish it didn't.

Do I wish MacTroll was around more -- yes and no.

But I'm not going to go insane thinking about what isn't. I'm going to live my life, and be happy that I have him in it -- now matter how small that amount of time may be.

Date Night

Last night my father stayed home with X-man while MacTroll and I went to see Julia and Julie, directed by Nora Ephron. I had been reading reviews and a few of them had noted that not only is it a fun story for foodies (anyone who likes butter, in this case...) but it's a fun movie for married people. I had never read those words in a movie review before. 

Usually "chick flicks" are about finding a "prince" or a "hero" (hello, Pretty Woman), or they often portray marriage in a  horrible "Disney" light OR they show how marriage is a gigantic downer and always falls apart, so why bother? 

Instead, this film showed a range of marriage issues, but for the vast part, in particular, Julia and Paul were very inspiring. And they were so freaking nice to each other -- even when they weren't. Mostly they appeared to find great humor in one another. I wonder if this is because they found each other later in life? But they weren't bogged down in the day to day, even when the day to day found her husband being questioned by the Feds thousands of miles away from her...

It was a highly entertaining film. Joel and I laughed through most of it and held hands during the most endearing as well as the sadder moments. It's one I'll be purchasing and putting on my DVD shelf for the days when I don't feel so fabulous about coupledom. It reveals the big picture of married life, which so many people don't get to see because they haven't been together long enough to appreciate it. 

In other movie news, Roger Rogers and I are finally going to go see The Ugly Truth. We had plans to go see it two weeks ago, but X-man broke is leg so I had to cancel. Two movies in two days? What is this world coming to? 

Relationships

When I was between 12 and 15, I experienced a steep learning curve on the realities of relationships with humans. My first boyfriend, as sweet as he was when he was quoting me lines from John Cusack movies, dumped me six months down the line for another woman. I was never quite sure why. All I knew was that I went away to California for spring break and came back to find that my poetry writing boyfriend was suddenly with some other girl and had morphed into one of my high school, hippie, wanna-be-Jim-Morrison, theatre friends. It sucked. It hurt. I was annoyed because up until that point I still had the Disney Princess Goggles. You know the goggles... the happily ever after goggles? The one where as soon as you find true love you'll never question your life again Disney goggles.  This was my first lesson in love going wrong.

But I wasn't a complete sucker. That whole believe in your heart, and you'll be okay thing can only go so far. Mostly the day that I found out that one of the friends I had spent a lot of time with in middle school, had come to high school only to denounce my relationship with my first boyfriend to her entire girls' swim team. I'm not sure what she found so offensive about the relationship. Was it that he was bi-racial? Was it that he wasn't in our "gifted" education program? Whatever it was, she decided to tell the swim team that I was letting James pull my tampons out of me with his teeth. First lesson in friends going EVIL -- and even more embarrassing about what 14 year olds will believe.

Between 12 and 14, I had watched my parents end their 20-year marriage. And what I couldn't quite get my brain wrapped around at 12, I understand more at 32, but it still sucked. The eve of starting seventh grade was when my Dad announced he was moving out. That night we all, strangely, went to my seventh grade orientation, where I told my best friend Laura about my newly broken home. I was hoping for some kind of condolences or at least an invitation for some free nights away from the mental anguish my mother was clearly going through as she cried herself to sleep, ate nothing and hurled every demeaning word she could find at herself. Instead, Laura's face turned cold.  "You're making this up," she said. "You just want attention."

It was a double slap. 1) Because a person I considered a part of my core support group had just called me a liar, and 2) because she somehow thought that me seeking attention was kind of a norm for me. I was shocked. So on top of the anger at my parents, I suddenly got to add one of my best friends to the pile.

The let down of people I considered close to me just kind of kept happening. Each time there was a lot of heartbreak and confusion. I kept trying to figure out what I had done to make them so angry to say or do things that were so offensive to me. But in my early teen years, I hadn't quite worked up the balls to walk up and ask people what the hell was going on. That would have to wait until much, much later... after I knew myself a bit better, after I ran out of patience with what I consider other people's crazy.

I choose to look at these long-ago episodes as lessons in human frailty in myself and in others. At the time, I thought each loved one was just another example of how I was unlovable -- or more exactly unworthy of love of any kind. I decided that there was something just plain wrong with me. And it also taught me not to have a lot of faith or demands on the people I cherished.

I want to say that at some point I learned differently, but I never have. I keep most people, even MacTroll, at an arm's distance. I don't expect people to be around forever. I don't expect them to have the same interest in a relationship with me as I have with them. It's easier that way when people move away and you learn that your relationship was really one of proximity rather than of the soul. It's easier when you have a major life event, like a baby, and people stop calling or don't even make arrangements to meet your child until he can walk and talk and feed himself. It's just easier to cope with disappointments when you're not holding "high" expectations of them, and I put "high" in quotes because a lot of times, my expectations seem like the bare minimum to me, but my bare minimum is apparently a pretty tall order for most.

I guess what I'm learning now though. Is that by being the person that's "easy" and "low maintenance" it gives an aura that I don't care if people are cruel or flaky or inconsiderate. And what being "easy" does do is make it easier for people to step on you, ignore you and just assume because you're standing you weren't at all tarnished by the harm that was inflicted on you. But you keep standing because if you show that you care, you'll let them know you were really never very "easy" to begin with. 

Maybe then they'll know that they never really knew you at all. 

The worst part of this being, of course, that if they were too selfish not to notice -- they really didn't give a rat's ass about really knowing you in the first place. 

And trust me, when I've got my shit together, I'm so worth knowing. :-P  

"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." — Carrie Fisher