Letting Swift River Go
I always thought if I met the right person, everything would fall into place. I know, I know. Totally stupid. Ridiculous. Crazy, right? But I did. I thought it would feel like a fairy tale. I thought I would never really have to deal with my shit or face my relationship demons, because why would I? He would appear in my life someday and just sort of make everything okay.
Well then I got older, and I saw all the images on billboards plastered all around me. I nearly killed myself trying to look like those girls. I thought, if I couldn’t be pretty, at least I could be thin. But then somewhere I discovered some bit of self-esteem, and I realized I didn’t want to be thin more than I wanted to be alive. So I decided to love the body I was born to, the body I had nearly destroyed. The body some combination of my childhood trauma and my own eating disorders had made fatter than I was naturally born to be. I chose myself. But I chose myself pretty sure that meant no man would ever really love me.
I was okay with that. Was.
I know it’s stupid. I know you’re not supposed to meet someone and totally change your sense of self in like four days. I know it’s stupid and ridiculous and childish and fairy-tale and stupid romantic comedy and everything, but it happened to me. I never thought I really wanted to get married or have kids. I never wanted to be tied down that way. Until I met him.
But it wasn’t a fairy tale. I wasn’t magically capable of emotional intimacy. He wasn’t magically capable of leaving behind everything patriarchy had taught him a man is supposed to be. We weren’t even speaking the same language, half the time. I was pretending to be who I thought he wanted me to be. I was pretending to be the kind of woman I thought any man would want any woman to be. Meaning, a stupider, cuter, bubblier, laid-back-er version of myself. Someone less ambitious, less shrewd, less intense. Someone more likely to watch Game of Thrones for the dragons than the politics.
Although the dragons were pretty cool too.
Meeting him did not magically make me into the kind of partner I want to be. And for that matter, meeting me did not magically transform him either, though I’m unconvinced he sees himself as in need of transformation. I walked away feeling kinda crazy and more than kinda manipulated. Months later, and I do mean months, I realized I had forgotten one very important thing. In this life, everything has a cost. Says Anne Bishop, and I tend to believe her. Even if her book titles are kinda stupid.
Everything has a cost. Everything takes work. Everything.
So I am trying to work towards being the kind of partner I really want to be. Even if that takes a lifetime, which it really might. Since I have spent this lifetime working to be a whole lot of other things. Things I thought I had some chance of success in becoming. Since I thought being that guy’s partner was off the table, no matter how good I got at pretending.
It’s hard to let Swift River go. Just ask Jane Yolen. I’m borrowing her book title.
It’s hard to let go of the idea that it’s possible to return to the world as it was before. That the solution is to break the wheel, to defeat civilization, to return to an anarcho-ecological-wonderland where human beings were few and our civilizations were rooted in leave no trace ideology. Or that a human being can return to who I was meant to be. “Meant to be.” Such an appealing concept. As though it’s possible to strip off all the trauma and all my bad choices to get to the ‘real’ me underneath.
We are cyborgs, says Donna Haraway. I’m inclined to believe her.
We are what our pain has made of us. What our pasts have made of us. What our abusive tendencies and toxic coping mechanisms and humiliations and defeats and self-hate and misery has shaped us into. And our joys too.
I don’t think that has to be a barrier to loving somebody. He taught me that. Because I have all the excuses in the book to call him ‘bad’ or ‘toxic’ or ‘cancelled’ and walk away. But —
I guess I just don’t think love ought to work that way. Predicated on somebody being not broken. Because we’re all broken.
Scandal says either no one is worth saving, or everyone is. Scandal says every one of us is too fucked up to love. But we are human, and so we love. So we have to find ways to love people anyway. Even broken as they are. Even when they make terrible or painful or really despicable mistakes.
I guess that’s what I believe. If my idea of what love is has a mission statement. That sounds about right to me.
So — I guess we choose. We let Swift River go. We choose to accept the person we have become. We choose to accept that everyone around us has flaws and broken parts and ways they will never be whole. We choose to view the world through a disability justice lens. We stop laughing at men for being ‘incapable’ of identifying and expressing how they feel. We stop pitying women for struggling to assert ourselves professionally, and often never ending friendships or rejecting any opportunity for fear of hurting someone’s feelings. We recognize our own and others’ incompetencies. And then, we deal. Together. Like family. Or Pack, which is my preferred terminology.
I have this tattoo on my leg. It’s sort of appropriative. Sort of not. There’s a story. Anyway, my tattoo says Ohana. Because I really believe that we find our family along the way. That we choose our Pack members, or our Pack chooses us. And “family means no one gets left behind. “ Says Lilo and Stitch. Cute and pat and silly, okay. But still. Words to live by.
So I am trying to learn new things, this year. Things like health. Physical health. Like if I’m sick for three months, I am allowed to cut out activities and start figuring out what’s really important to me. And things like assertiveness. And things like what happens when I or someone else just don’t get it right. Like how we deal. Like what reparative process really works, and what reparative processes are stupid and useless. Like punishing people, for instance.
I am dedicating a year to learning how to be happy. To actually letting myself be happy. We’ll see how that goes. Results forthcoming.
I am trying to learn new things. Like how to let Swift River go.
The hard part is always, I want to love the people I love better than I know I will ever personally be able to do. But the hardest part is knowing I still have to let them choose. That I have to let them choose me, if they want to. Even knowing I’m going to hurt them, probably over and over again, in a thousand little ways. A thousand small paper cuts. And some bigger ones too.
I can’t save the people I love from pain, or death. Of course I want to. But there is not one person alive in this world who is a resident of Swift River. Swift River is dead and gone. Everyone hurts everyone.
Whether we hurt the people we love or not is never going to be up for question. What matters is what happens after. Is how we apologize, to each other and to ourselves. How we take accountability, and not through self-flagellation but by treating the vulnerable parts of ourselves better so we can treat the vulnerable parts of other people better.
I just want to be myself, warts and all. For a year. And see how that feels. To tell myself I deserve to be happy. Even if Swift River is dead.