{"id":62315,"date":"2012-11-10T14:30:47","date_gmt":"2012-11-10T19:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=62315"},"modified":"2012-11-09T13:29:28","modified_gmt":"2012-11-09T18:29:28","slug":"let-hope-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/let-hope-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Let Hope Die!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A good share of poly people say they knew they were poly because they never wanted to break up with anyone. I\u2019m still friends with almost all my exes, and I would climb right back in with most of them if it seemed like a smart and fun thing to do. I don\u2019t have so many great people in my life that I can afford to let any go — if I really like someone, I crave to know who they are, what they\u2019re up to, what\u2019s moving them nowadays. <\/p>\n

\"Poly
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But over the past year I\u2019ve had to begin pulling away from some relationships — some I didn\u2019t know if I wanted to be in in the first place, some I was in out of obligation and duty as well. As Samhain and the season for letting go comes around again, I realize what I\u2019m releasing isn\u2019t the relationship, which really didn\u2019t exist. It\u2019s the hope and dream of a relationship.<\/p>\n

There are people in my life about whom I berate myself for not reaching out, for not buying all the presents at the right times (I am terrible about presents, can\u2019t stand giving or receiving them, and the people who really know and love me know that and rarely get me things), for being distant. Then I realize with a shock that they haven\u2019t reached out to me, either. Why am I the one in the wrong, then? <\/p>\n

The form of some of these relationships I\u2019m letting go of hasn\u2019t changed. It still looks like we\u2019re doing and saying the same things. They may not know it\u2019s different. But I\u2019ve pulled out my energy, and pulled out my hope that the relationship could be anything real.<\/p>\n

For instance, more than 10 years ago, my father was diagnosed with cancer. We have always had a difficult relationship, though it wouldn\u2019t look that way to outsiders. During a phone call, I made the mistake of being honest — I said perhaps this would give him a chance to go back to being an artist in a way he had always denied himself since leaving school. He laughed disparagingly and said that was a stupid thing to say. (I had forgotten that real men aren\u2019t artists.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It was a strange time; I was living in South Florida at the time, feeling very isolated, and every night after getting off work around midnight, I would swim laps for an hour, back and forth, thinking and ‘writing’ in my head. Now I began crying as well, tears mixing with the pool water, stopping to honk into a towel. Long stretches of exercise, I had discovered once I hit my twenties, cause me to release all kinds of emotions and energy and creative thought, along with all the sweat and toxins. It works for me; I hope you can find something half as good for you. <\/p>\n

But why was I crying? It had been years since I had been able to care about this particular man, as harsh as that sounds, as much as I knew I would be judged for it. You must love your father, your parents<\/em>, the voices say; but the fact is many of us don\u2019t love people in our families; sometimes these people have killed any natural love, if any was there to start with. <\/p>\n

What I love is the idea I learned from being bi and having gay and lesbian friends: the chosen family. The world likes to say this can never be as strong as a blood connection, but when you see people caring for a chosen family member with AIDS, for instance, you know well that choice can be stronger than blood. Blood relationships, to me, are a tribal remnant. And what is marriage, so sanctified by most, but an ongoing choice to unite?<\/p>\n

Inside myself I argued that he had taken care of me as a child, paid my way; I told myself I owed him because he let me live. But I knew if they had had a choice, I would not have been born; they had been trapped by religion and culture into bringing me to life, and I had the bad luck of resembling him in so many ways, being just like someone he hated, and I\u2019d paid for it. I\u2019d even been willing to go along with him and hate myself, almost to the point of hating myself to death. <\/p>\n

That made us even, as far as payment went. As soon as I could, I got out and asked for nothing. I pulled myself loose, one spider thread at a time. A few times, I got sick, and they stepped in to help me, and their anger about this was clear. And I got loose again. I am enormously fortunate that they have arranged for their own care until the end of their lives, so I won\u2019t be called upon to make the horrible, self-denying decision so many in my generation are having to make. <\/p>\n

They say such sacrifice is ennobling. I say it\u2019s been the death of too many adult children. (My own child will never owe me care, never. Her existence is her own, and I freely protect her own growth and life that\u2019s been entrusted to me, briefly.)<\/p>\n

Today, we are polite and even kind; I want their grandchild to know them and have time with them, but I\u2019m careful even there to shape the experience, so she knows if she detects anything unkind we can talk and process it out at a level that works for her. And he has been cancer-free for years.<\/p>\n

But back there in the pool, I couldn\u2019t fathom my grief. It came to me in a sentence, as words do when I\u2019m swimming, running, doing yoga or dance exercises — he is willing to die without having said a kind word to you<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Some people think I\u2019m exaggerating about that; I\u2019m not. Not a single nice thing, no compliments, no congratulations. Sometimes I wondered if he had that deep Eastern European ancestral memory that tells you: praise attracts the evil eye. That can cause a reflexive denial of praise or appreciation. But no; it was because by his lights I\u2019ve done and been nothing worthy of a good word. <\/p>\n

So I let go of the hope of a relationship, and as letting go does, it freed energy. I found in the next few years I had incredible amounts of power to shape life in interesting directions and got very deep into my pagan practice, political activism, and working closer to ways I desired. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had to do this in a milder way in subsequent years, this process of letting hope die. This year, I\u2019ve had to detach from hope for a few friendships and for a closer relationship with my mother, who won\u2019t acknowledge that she\u2019s hurting people I care about. It feels like I\u2019m the one being mean and unreasonable, but I\u2019m used to being regarded as the bad guy, whether I am or not. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s giving up on the hope of some friendships that is more difficult — these arose out of choice, and I have no choice but to accept that just because I find someone entrancing and fun doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019ll feel the same way about me. It\u2019s even harder when you see via Facebook all the fun stuff they\u2019re doing with other people. I really believe I\u2019ve become, regarding friends, the way others are about lovers — if those others are 14-year-olds! Very pouty, indeed. <\/p>\n

It gets harder to make new friendships as we get older, precisely at the time our transforming selves need new people and new energy, just when we have so much more to share. But when I look at what I might have thought was a relationship and I see nothing but a dream, I have to let that die. No one sees the difference from outside, but I know it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n

The reality is — and risking being branded a solipsist, an experience that should not be unfamiliar to any of the Planet Waves regulars — these were all relationships with myself, and in transforming them I can find energy to shape them into good relationships with myself instead of swirling in a cycle of illusion. The real relationships, the ones in which there are active give-and-take, energy exchange, effort, love — these grow. As both poly and mono have said, relationships are like sharks — they move or they die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila A good share of poly people say they knew they were poly because they never wanted to break up with anyone. I\u2019m still friends with almost all my exes, and I would climb right back in with most of them if it seemed like a smart and fun thing to do. I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}