It Took Getting to This Place in My Growth to Realize

My partner-- or my ex, we’ve been discussing how to reconcile the depth of our care for each other with our complete inability to communicate for a while now-- and I are working side by side, occasionally chuckling about Bernie memes. We’re quiet again, working. As I start to tell my partner “It took getting to this place in my growth to realize” she picks up her phone and starts unlocking the screen. I stop talking.

She says my name. And then again, the way my mom might have said it. Stern, demanding. As if I’m not obeying. As if I need to obey or I’m causing trouble.

I tell her it’s fine. I’m not upset. I’m just not going to talk if I’m not being listened to. I tell her that she can choose to pick up her phone whenever she feels like it. And in the same way, I can choose to use my voice in the conditions that work for me.

I’m remembering the time my young niece told her, the way little kids verbally witness the truth: Your face looks like you hate listening when other Auntie Nik talks.

Naturally, in the space that follows, both of our silences are heavy and our keystrokes loud, or at least more noticeable than before. The air between us sighs in place of breath. The cat gets up from her nap there to leave the room. And I reflect on what I’d started to say, about this place in my growth. And while what I was about to say was about social change and understanding, that realization is connected to this one. Tangled, they got me here.

In the past, I would have asked her to put her phone down. Because I’ve learned to ask for what I need. (You know, instead of just expecting people to read my mind and then being devastated when they can’t).

And she hasn’t yet learned that multitasking isn’t sexy anymore. That presence is in. Or something I love about her, she doesn’t give a fuck what's "in".

As someone who understands deeply the pain presence can cause when you’re not practiced in it, how difficult it is to sit still when you’re so focused on out-running what’s inside of you, I don’t push her. Instead, I try to focus on me. I ask for what I need.

That doesn’t work either. “It’s hard for me to feel heard when you’re on your phone” leaves my most vulnerable places and moves through my trust that she cares deeply for me and lands in her ears as “I’m in control of you, put your phone down.”

And since she’s told me enough times to be embarrassed to share, that if she’s asked for something, she has to do the opposite, that’s just the way it is, it’s non-negotiable, the way her brain is wired, take it or leave it-- it usually plays out one of three ways: 1. I keep talking, fighting back tears, while she stays on her phone, until I lose track of where I was trying to take us. 2. She slams down her phone and stares past me, not on her phone and doing everything she can to not let my words enter her ears while she barely pretends to listen. 3. With her yelling and me sobbing.

I’m remembering how many times, in a former relationship, when I was much younger and my trauma was my How-To-Guide for living, how often I would say to my lover “I forgot to listen to you” as if making the truth sound like an adorable accident somehow lessened my responsibility for my actions or reduced the harm I was causing. What she was choosing to say to me was a gift and it should have been treated like it.

And what I had to say was a precious piece of myself and I don’t need to offer it where it will be treated as anything less. And it’s ok if that just means it stays rattling around inside of me for a while.

It took getting to this place in my growth to realize,

it took getting to this place in my growth to realize,

that I don’t have to offer my voice when it doesn’t feel good,

I don’t have to speak when my gut says not to,

and I don’t have to obey when my name is called.

The room has lost its hyper-focused volume and returned to its steady rhythm of breath and peace and the cat is back, curled up and sleeping on my legs now.