I write vignettes: tiny little glimpses into my world, in which everything resolves neatly in the end. Which makes my life seem put together, wrapped up, tidy. But, really, there is a lot of mess before the lesson is learned, before the big picture becomes clear.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the mess. And how often I live in the mess, muddling through, wondering how long I’ll have to slog along before I can see my way into the clear again.
Mess gets a bad rap, though. When I give my 4 year old a piece of watermelon, she can consume the whole thing almost mess-free, managing each drip as it occurs, bending over a plate to avoid getting errant pink juice on her clothes. But, on my stellar mommy days, I just take the kid outside and let her go after that watermelon like it’s her job. I’ve had to hose her off after an encounter with a watermelon, but damn if she didn’t love every moment, every bite.
Mess isn’t inherently bad, it seems. In fact, when I try to tidy up my mind too quickly, I miss the joy that can ultimately be derived from the mess. I get so busy trying to make everything neat again, to get my feelings tucked into nice little boxes, that I miss being able to take inventory of everything that’s there, choosing what to keep and what to discard. I don’t get to find my own resolution if I avoid the mess entirely.
Simon’s transition is messy for me. It brings BIG feelings to the forefront. Often the feelings seem to conflict—and contradiction makes me crazy. But I’ve discovered that I can feel multiple things at once. That doesn’t make them less true.
Here’s a quick (and, I’m sure, incomplete) list of what I feel at this given moment:
1) I am proud of him.
2) I struggle mightily against loss of my lesbian identity.
3) I admire his strength.
4) I am angry that I didn’t get to choose this.
5) I am happy; Simon and I laugh a lot.
6) I feel entitled to ask for something big—a psychic balancing of the ledgers.
7) I regret all the time that he wasn’t who he really wanted to be.
8) I am excited to see who he’ll become.
9) I love him with a vibrant, expanding love that sometimes feels like it might crack my heart.
10) I resent that more people don’t ask me how I am.
11) I am grateful that I finally understand his need to transition.
12) I am amused; after all, I live with someone who acts like a teenaged boy.
13) I feel lucky that I was chosen for this journey—that Simon invited me to accompany him.
14) I feel fiercely protective of him, of our family.
15) I feel completely normal.
I find this mess strewn all over the interior of my psyche. It bleeds into my spiritual life, impacts the way I interact with the world around me. Truly, it screws with me sometimes. My instinct is to corner the mess, box it up and shove it under a bed somewhere. That’s how I used to clean my room when I was a kid. My mom kept insisting that shoving things into a box/drawer/under the bed wasn’t cleaning. And eventually, I’d have to drag that same damn mess out again to sort it, to purge it, and/or keep it. Eventually I’d have to deal with it. Something tells me that psychic mess is no different.
So, I am letting the mess just be. I am observing it without getting attached to it. I feel how I feel. There’s no need to get all judgey or label-y. I know the mess will eventually begin to sort itself in an organic way. Some feelings will fade, some will morph into others, and some will have to be dealt with.
But right now, I am just going to let the mess be. I am going to pour myself another cup of coffee and appreciate this wildly chaotic psychic moment.
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