Whew. Another month (and more) has passed and so much has changed since I last wrote! My partner and I moved into a one bedroom together, a dear friend visited from NC to help us unpack and move in, we watched the last Harry Potter movie together, and then went to Eastern Market, Target, and Safeway for more shopping and household errands. The next weekend I drove up to Albany and back to DC in 48 hours to bring back the rest of my partner's stuff. More unpacking, furniture assembly, then a major fundraising event for the board I'm on, then 5 days in NYC for a convention, and finally I made it to August and have spent some much-needed quiet weekends full of reading the paper and running errands.
As you can see, July was a whirlwind full of transition and settling into a new routine and way of life with my partner here. I had many people warn me that shifting from our 3 year long-distance relationship to living together would be difficult and that we'd fight a lot or find it hard to adjust, but it's actually felt very familiar and routine, as if we've been doing this for a long time. There haven't been too many compromises or drastic changes in lifestyle for either of us. I continue to have my DC life, one that revolves around work and organizing, and until very recently my partner has had her quiet life of the mind at home. I have been extremely grateful (and have sometime felt pretty guilty) that my partner has pretty much been my housewife for the last few weeks. We definitely would not be fully unpacked in a shiny, well-organized, clean new apartment without her work, not to mention that there's no way I could have managed showing and cleaning my old apartment while also moving into my new one. Her full-time internship schedule started this week, so we will have to redistribute our second shift labor to be more equitable now, but it's probably better for me to be a fully functional adult who helps keep the house clean. (dang though, husbands have such a sweet deal! who wouldn't want a wife? :P)
After three years of waiting, of seeing each other one weekend a month, of always having our next goodbye looming in the back of our minds, we are finally living in the same place. Being together is as wonderful and mundane as we imagined. At the same time, it's strange to now be living beyond what we've imagined. It's strange to just be content with what is, to not grasp at the future. At sangha on Saturday the teacher mentioned how sometimes during meditation her mind will cause drama just so there's something for her to do; a bone for her to gnaw on. I find myself wandering into the "what-ifs" and the clutching anxiety of fear even when things are calm, maybe because I can't let go of the perverse security of that old bone. I worry that I don't deserve this, that I might lose it all, that I'm not doing enough, etc, etc. Now that I have my comfortable, monogamous, suburban bourgeois life, am I not down enough? Have I isolated myself with my partner and lost my community organizing touch?
I have to admit that going to meetings after work is a lot less attractive now that I can spend them having dinner with my partner instead. I've also been realizing that although I am very grateful for the community that I've created here through lots of time, work, and effort that the spaces I've been pouring most of my time haven't created the genuine, lasting relationships I would like. I have a lot of colleagues. I know a lot of folks doing Asian American advocacy work. I can show up in many spaces and know one (or several) people there. I get invited to parties and picnics. In a city as transitory and alienating as DC, that means a lot. Yet my partner and I can still go to a picnic together and be mostly ignored by my colleagues, or she is left out of the conversation while the rest of us refer to politicians by their first name and bills by their numbers and talk about work drama and organizational grudges. In short: we act like DC tools.
Then we can go to a birthday party organized for a sangha member a few hours later, and be welcomed there like family. People are genuine. Strangers come up and smile and introduce themselves, and the first question out of their mouth isn't "what do you do?" We sing birthday songs and perform a community poem and dance and sing out loud to "Lean On Me". The people there want to have real conversations with me AND my partner as separate individuals. The entire vibe is different - more down-to-earth, grounded, refreshingly unselfconscious and real. And it struck me that I found the sangha last October, less than a year ago, and I have barely been once a month, and yet the sangha feels like more of a family to me then the Asian American organizing communities I've been working with for almost 3 years. Not to say that one is better than the other, or that I regret my decisions, or that my Asian American colleagues aren't really important to me. But I think I am realizing that if DC is going to be personal, political, and spiritual home, then I need to reorient. I want more spaces like the sangha birthday party: intergenerational, multiracial, mostly queer, and full of joy, gratitude, love, and dancing.
I believe you said to me at the harbor today with a mouth full of hush puppies, "Accept that we are tools. It's just a matter of degrees." Certainly the guilt we carry doesn't do much for the causes we believe in, as our guilt will not protect us, nor save us, nor ensure justice for others. But it does feel good to whine about it sometimes!
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's perhaps expected that we be afraid, especially when we have such precious blessings that seem like it would destroy us if they disappeared. And it's good to be aware of what might be missing, such as genuine connection and community. The trick is, I suppose, to keep living through the fear and not be guided by it, but guided by the things we know for sure, and be thankful that there are so many of those things.