major malfunction

The quote from Full Metal Jacket came to me this morning as I was putting away my (clean) dishes (thank you, Homejoy, for your Facebook coupon!): What is my major malfunction? Why have I gone so far off the reservation with this dating situation? What is my primary malfunction? Primary...

That’s when the trap door opened, I fell through my crazy, into the heart of truth. And I began to cry. From realization and long delayed-grief.

Some of you may know by now that my mother suffered from manic depression as I was growing up—still does, but went on medication about 8 years ago, around the time I got sober, in fact. She told me a few years back that she was terrified of loving me fully because she was scared of the depths of her feelings, that they would overwhelm her. She told me that when I was growing up, she would spend 30 minutes locked in her bathroom crying every morning before emerging into the day. This, I remember. Staring at the closed bathroom door every morning, listening to her cry, and having no idea why, if she would stop, if she would come out, what I could do. She said that she just thought this was normal—this was her normal at least, and it was the only way of being she knew.

The way this manifested in our relationship was that I never knew when she would turn. When she would be the mom who was there for me, and when she would click into mania and be unreachable in her heights, or click into depression and be unreachable in her depths.

This, was not a recipe for trust.

My father, as we all know, was a volatile man, doing nothing to help the bonds of trust and love cement into something benevolent, supportive, and foundational.

What I saw this morning is that the ambiguity of dating targets right into that major malfunction with laser precision.

I don’t blame her, and have long since forgiven her. But apparently, I still haven’t really healed what it meant to attempt to establish bonds of love on a fault line. Not knowing what your feelings are about me… I get as crazy as you’ve seen me this week. Perspective, reality, confidence, hobbies, work, all get ousted as I try to figure out what it means, because if I can figure out if the fault line is about to crack, then I can get out of dodge. I can shut down, run away, shove you away.

That was my previous M.O. for sure. I will shove you away before you get close, before I have to “figure out” if you’re trustworthy. It was not worth the pain of waiting to see if I could. Better to bomb the whole base, just in case there was a sniper in there aimed at me.

So, shove you away. That meant any number of things, including not dating, only have casual relationships, going after taken men.

My other way of being was to fall quickly into a relationship, which is how my two long-term (read: 6 months) relationships began. Express interest, have sex nearly immediately, you’re now in a relationship.

There wasn’t ambiguity in that.

I didn’t have to figure out (then) if you liked me, if you were gonna hurt me—we were “boyfriend/girlfriend,” and had great sex. It only came later (read: by month 4, and certainly by 6) that I had to question something different: if I liked you.

So, it is believable, understandable, and more than a little compassionable that an ambiguous dating situation would set off an atom bomb in my head. Though, ultimately, it’s stemming from my heart, but more ultimately, it’s stemming from my head, and the recreation of an old story and an old way of coping with the uncertainty of human relationships.

I have very little dating experience past the first date. It has always either gone: “Ciao, buddy, thanks for the latte,” or “Which side of the bed is yours?”

People I know talk ALL THE TIME about “living the in the grey,” “not figuring things out,” “relaxing into the experience,” and I want to spit a poisoned dart into their over-eager eye. Fuck you people. The grey was a place, growing up, that was riddled with landmines and Blitzkreigs. The grey place was one where you never knew if you would be okay, ever.

And now, of course, how fitting, I’m being asked to once again live in the grey—or at least get a rental application—but to live there differently. To live there, visit there, try it out there in the grey, because that’s where most of life is lived, and I want to live in life. To be in the grey differently, means to call upon my own foundations of trust that I have established with myself and with the people I have chosen to love as friends in my life—Not all of these friendships went the distance, but they were worth pursuing. And didn’t cause any agida. So, it’s a deeper love and a deeper trust we’re working on.

And it’s probably not even with a person, unless that person is me. It’s probably about developing, deepening, cementing trust with a benevolence. And from the foundation of that relationship, will I be able to withstand whatever the Richter scale throws at me. Especially if it's reading 0, and telling me it's safe to stay put.