A: Tell us about the new guy!
B: Oh, of course! Well, we met last year and I think I mentioned him to you guys already...anyway. We decided to take things really slowly since we both anticipated that life would get in the way. But from the start he seemed more invested in this relationship than I was; he's very spastic--a self-descriptor-- and while I present as extroverted, you know I'm a closeted introvert at heart. So, even though he makes me happy and treats me well and everything--for example, I could be telling him something really important about my day, or something that to me is just really significant, and he'll interject and start talking about something he finds similar in his own life, without letting me finish. Of course, I don't think he's at all bad-intentioned. It's just difficult at times.
A: Oh...
C: I really get that, just from personal experience I identify.
B: Well, I really wish you two could've met him. He's in for a few days and I think you'd have more perspective if you kind of saw our interactions and things. Plus, I really want to ask you two for some advice...because I just don't know how to handle everything right now. Like I said, he'll be here a few days, so I'm a little reluctant to bring it up now, but I don't think this is a phone conversation at all.
C: Do you want to go first?
A: What you have to understand is this: your feelings are valid. Your experiences, worries and thoughts, preoccupations, all of it is valid and true. Relationships
are in a sense about compromise, but not so much so that you lose yourself, or your ideals or your goals.
B: Yeah, I don't want it to seem like I'm asking him to change. His spontaneity and "spunkiness" are part of his charm and are part of what made me attracted to him in the first place.
C: Right, but you're not asking him to change, I don't think. You're only asking him to recognize your story as valuable. Even in my own relationship, I find that I am at times trying to pull my guy down from flitting around up in the clouds. It's hard sometimes, but also it helps to balance out my dry, at-times-boring personality. But even more, I find myself acting like your guy sometimes. I mean, I say things and don't think first, or perhaps I say them don't even realize they are offensive or hurtful until it's too late. Then whoever is on the other side of my interaction gets hurt and, more often than not, doesn't say anything until they explode. It's like, "I would've appreciated an early notice," you know.
A: Wait, I have an Emerson for this! "Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. "
C: And that should've come second to my Frank: "In bed at night, as I ponder my many sins and exaggerated shortcomings, I get so confused at the sheer amount of things I have to consider that I either laugh or cry, depending on my mood. Then I fall asleep with the strange feeling of wanting to be different than I am, or being different than I want to be, or perhaps of behaving differently than I am or want to be."
The dinner ends and we each go our separate ways. Me, I go home, naively planning on having my own worth validated by the recognition of an Other. It wasn't. Instead, an Other's was being validated by precisely 5971 Others. So I sleep.
My eyes open at 4am, to the usual missed calls and messages--sent two hours later and not in direct response to mine. I find myself revisiting Emerson's "Self-Reliance" and pondering the suggestion of its juxtaposition with the Anne Frank quote. It just seems right.
At 5:53am, after a hot shower of equal parts city water and wasted tears, I'm out the door to get the first ticket at Bodo's. On my way, I run into Donnie and Jack, two homeless men whom I often see on the streets, but usually attempt to avoid.
Donnie introduces himself to me. He says I've probably heard about him since people around here talk a lot of shit. I told him I hadn't. Jack followed suit, but he asked for a cup of coffee. I told him I would meet them at Bodo's at 7, when it opened, we could have breakfast together.
I stand outside in the dead cold and darkness, still reflecting on Emerson and Frank, but also Whitman and Dickinson. The mellifluous second concerto of Rachmaninoff eases the bitter cold through my B&O headphones.
Still no one in line after 38 minutes. Rach 3 begins to play, with Argerich at the keyboard and Maestro Chailly wielding the baton. At 6:53, I hadn't seen a single Other, so I check the hours. 8 o'clock. I could only laugh at myself for having fallen victim to my own lack of planning. I decide to take the long way home, hoping to run into Donnie and Jack, so I could get them a coffee at a convenience store and chat, but they weren't there. No one was there on my way home.
My thoughts shifted from those great artists to myself. I think. I am. I don't need parse it in Latin in order for it to be true. I realized that I had myself said what I had needed to hear last night. I had thought it all along, but actually articulating it made me realize the hypocrisy of it all. What kind of person am I to dole out advice on command, but never, even under the direst circumstances, take it? I realized that I didn't need to be confronted with an Other. I needed to confront myself in my totality of broken emotions and withered hopes. I cannot continue to be afraid of myself. I cannot keep shortchanging myself because I only recognize Others' feelings as valid. I must cultivate my own Self-Reliance.
