Mirrors

Whatever it is we seek in other people, we will never find it.

It’s one of the things I wish someone had told me when I was younger, although I probably wouldn’t have listened, much less understood.  It’s one of those lessons only experience can teach us and even then we may not be receptive. So I’m telling you now—whoever you are, whatever you are, however old you are: Whatever you’re looking for in another person, you will never find it.

I know it sounds cynical, maybe even a bit misanthropic. But bear with me as I bare a few things.

Let me tell you about the three major romantic relationships in my life. I’ll tell you what attracted me to those partners and then tell you how I ultimately failed them. I will try to do so without invoking shame in myself or anyone else. But you know how that can sometimes go.

My first partner and I had contact for the first time in a chat room, on gay.com back in its early days, if you can believe it. This was back before users could even set up profiles, much less have pictures in them, and if you did want to exchange photos with someone, you had to fall back on email. (Heck, now that I think of it, some guys didn’t even have scanners, let alone digital cameras, so if you wanted a photo, they had to mail it to you.) I had no picture in my head of what Michael looked like; I loved the alchemy of his wit and words. Back then, people used mostly complete sentences, even in digital settings; but most men opened and expected you to open with a single line: Your stats. These were and probably still are a string of numbers and words (or, later, abbreviations) indicating your measurements, age, race, whether your picnic area has a canopy, whether you bunk on bottom, top or both, and a whole slew of other things that, I must confess, I have never neither really gotten nor gotten the hang of. Michael, however, usually began with some enthusiastic, normal greeting like, “How goes it?” And, from there, he would proceed to weave Elton John and TS Eliot, pop culture and high literature, humor and insight into dialogue so infectiously delightful that even the gloryhole queens would come up off their padded knees to join the banter.

It took months for me to muster the nerve to say hello to him. I didn’t know what someone like him—with all of his intelligence and charm—could see in someone like me. And I worried that if I ever engaged him, I would be too stupid and slow to keep up. By the time I finally did muster the nerve to say anything, there was an issue with keeping up—but the problem didn’t rest with either me or him. I don’t know if it was the limited connection speeds of modems back in those days or if we were simply too fast for the chat software to process, but it felt like we were casting sparks underwater. I had to deliberately slow down so that the software or whatever could keep pace. I didn’t want to run the risk of a misunderstanding blooming like refrigerator mold and putting him off. I learned a lot about him, although I tried to tell him as little as possible about me (a holdover from my childhood, where if I revealed too much about myself, a visit with the guidance counselor or social worker was in order). Michael asked if I was single, and I remember getting goosebumps. In my excitement, I almost forgot to respond that yes indeed I was. And then I asked him about his relationship status, and he responded that he was involved with someone.

“Well, damn,” I said to the computer.

It stared at me, blankly. Computers weren’t trying to be up in your business the way Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Googlecia—or whatever the hell her name is—are these days. (To their credit, however, they are a lot better than that fucking paperclip Microsoft allowed to hijack Windows years ago.)

But the conversation went on, and I still enjoyed talking to him.

Michael and I talked off and on a handful of times for the next year or so. And then one day, when he seemed to be feeling down, he shared the truth about the relationship he was in, how his boyfriend and the people around him used and mistreated him. Being a hero with dubious powers, I rushed in to rescue him. And it felt good. But it set an unhealthy tone in our relationship.

When Michael and I were not in crisis, I was bored and restless. We were in our element when it was us against the world. Crisis came at regular intervals, but I lacked the insight to see how we manufactured those situations. Our ideas about who we were also became super-enmeshed, almost as though we were a single organism. I always saw great things in Michael and thought if I could just fend off the distractions, it would free him up to shine. But I couldn’t conquer the online thing. I learned that Michael seemed so alive online, because he spent a significant amount of time and energy there. Any moments he could spare were often at the computer, playing a game and chatting and listening to music or politics—all at the same time. While he immersed himself in virtual worlds, things in the material world slipped. I picked up the slack. Over time, it began to feel as though I was simply the caretaker for his needs in the real world, while the best parts of him—his imagination, intelligence, wit, and creativity—were tied up in this virtual realm.

When I ventured out there with him to try to coax that part of him out into the material world, I could never reach him. Over time, I got tired of reaching. And of rescuing us from clockwork crises. We tried couples’ counseling for a bit, but we seemed incapable of full disclosure to each other, much less to a stranger. After nine years, things hit rock bottom when I found myself clinically depressed. After a few sessions of counseling, I reached the conclusion that this relationship as going to kill one of us—Michael or me—if one of us didn’t do something. But I couldn’t just walk away. For one thing, the idea of being alone scared me shitless. But I also felt obligated to cauterize the wounds I was causing—to do something to make Michael so angry he would be grateful we were separating. Heck, maybe his anger would even spark his creativity to propel him to the heights I always so saw for him. I had uncovered the vitality of my own creativity then and felt I needed someone who could complement that part of me, too. So… I took my dysfunctional codependent ass online. And I did what dysfunctional codependent people do: I started looking for someone new.

Robert came along. And he seemed perfect for me in every way. Michael found out, as I wanted him to, but it sparked only despair, even when I tried to provoke him. At the end of the day, the simple fact was that I needed to decide. I thought the choice was between Michael and Robert. And because I felt more alive when I was with Robert, I chose him.

For a while, things were good with Robert. Too good. That lasted only a few years, and it fell apart rather suddenly. I see now the yellow light all along the road, but at the time, I convinced myself I was just seeing stars. He abruptly came home from a business trip where he didn’t speak to me for an entire week and said he couldn’t be in a relationship anymore. No explanation. And I never really asked for one, truth be told, because I thought I deserved none. I never felt like I deserved him. I always felt like a temporary fixture for him, something he needed to keep up an appearance or a placeholder for someone or something else. He never understood me or even seemed curious. And my curiosity and insight in him seemed to disturb him. It was as though he didn’t want to be seen. So it often felt like he wasn’t really there.

For me, the most significant part of that relationship wasn’t in its doing but in its undoing.

Its end sparked two things. The first and most significant is that the prisons I had built to hide away my creative parts flat-out broke. I had interfered with my creativity to try to meet Robert where he was and to try to help him love himself the way I did. In the relationship, I willed myself to not create. So when that relationship broke, my will broke. Alex took a backseat. And for the first time since childhood, my Aspects—Raven and Phoenix—took over to create things. I could do things to slow the takeover, but I couldn’t stop them. I would go through the motions of working and feeding and tending this body; and then when I would go home to my little studio apartment on the Plaza, my body was theirs to command. And, honestly, I welcomed the respite. I was alone in this strange city trying to maintain, and they freed me from that daily. And although I understood they were parts of me, I never felt alone. They also distracted me from the second thing the end of my relationship with Robert brought about—a quest.

The lack of explanation from Robert about why he all of a sudden “couldn’t be in a relationship” naturally led me to seek answers. Art and writing became tools, lent to me to explore thoughts and feelings in that quest. My creativity, a dash of therapy, and the many things I learned by osmosis at the community mental health center where I work finally led me to recognize that maybe Michael and Robert were only part of the issues that led to the failures of those relationships. I was also an accomplice. I also noticed myself repeating patterns of behaviors and thought I had picked up from my family—such as not breaking off one relationship before starting another and thinking that a man was right for me simply because he didn’t beat my ass on the daily. So, I put away my dance card for a while, declared a moratorium on attachments. And I didn’t just stop dating. I gave up the bangers and mash.

This bitch went celibate.

The first things I found myself led to do were repairs. Michael and I patched things up and now share one of those odd but familiar friendships you often see on sitcoms and in movies between ex-spouses in their thirties, forties and fifties. Stan and Dorothy in the Golden Girls, the titular character and Ira in Cybill, or Erica and whoever the hell her first husband was in Something’s Gotta Give. Except maybe less dubious. Although we still trip over embers of hurt over what happened between us, those are just part of our story. And they are parts we can talk about and process. I am grateful for our friendship. For the most part, our exchanges are online, as they were in the beginning.

With Robert, well… It is a hard thing for someone to accept being seen and accepted for who they are when they do not afford themselves the same courtesy. It felt as though the more I reached for him, the further away he got. So I learned another hard lesson there—letting go. My heart is open, in case there is anything I can ever do to help him. Life flows in circles, though. And the ends of all things are evident in the beginnings: He seemed to come out of the blue, out of nothing. So maybe that’s just where he was destined to return… I will admit, even now, I miss him at times. And then I remind myself I never really knew who he was—he never allowed me to know that—so I can’t miss him, not really. All I can miss is the way I felt or thought about him. And, sometimes, how I felt or thought about myself when I was with him. So when I do catch myself feeling that way these days, I examine my situation and what it is about him or how I was with him that could apply to some unease I have with this current situation. Some people are meant to be with us only for a season, but everyone is with us for a reason. I am grateful for the pain he caused. It helped to forge me into what I am.

I met my third partner, Allen, a little over five years ago. And when people ask what attracted me to him or if it was love at first sight, I typically make up some wisecrack. The truth is I don’t know what attracted me to him—there was no single thing. And falling in love with him didn’t strike like lightning the way it did with Michael and Robert. For one thing, I was under the impression that I had blown those fuses already, and I was in no hurry to replace them. The fundamental conflict with Robert and Michael was one of vision. I saw them one way; they saw themselves in other ways. We struggled because each of us was trying to protect his vision of his identity. It stirred up our shame, so we fell back on instinct. We hid. I wanted to see Allen for who he was, rather than who I thought or wanted him to be, so I paced myself, tried to get to know him and to progress methodically. “Affection in moderation,” became my motto.

“We’re getting to know each other, that’s all,” I would tell myself.

The place from which I was coming with Allen was also different: I wasn’t looking for something in him. I wasn’t looking for anything at all, in fact. I was quite fine with being on my own, answering no questions, making apologies to no one. I simply was. And that’s how I grew to love him. I simply am. And he believes and accepts me. I do the same for him. I don’t have to be his sword, his crutch, his shield, or his wings. But I can choose to be, if I wish. And he can do the same. We look for nothing in each other, ask for little more than that. We freely share our abundance.

You see, whatever it is we seek in other people, we won’t find it. Even when we think we have. This is because what we love, what we want, what we need, what we hate—any emotional connection we have with someone else first begins with the emotional connections we have with ourselves. In Michael, I saw vast talent, gifts and potential. I wanted those things to be and to be seen in me. In Robert, I saw strength, lovability, passion, ambition, virility, and focus. I wanted those things in me. These stemmed from feeling that I was invisible, weak, unlovable, aloof, undriven, unattractive, unfocused… But the truth of the matter was that I simply saw myself in those ways. I blinded myself to my own talents, gifts, potential, strength, love, and so forth.

I didn’t need to find these things in others. I needed to find them in myself.

It all feels rather Diva Plavalaguna from The Fifth Element, doesn’t it? Or Nina at the end of Black Swan. But as creatives, it is what we are called to do: Give the performance of a lifetime and at the end of it, body blown open and bleeding on the floor, realize, “It was perfect,” or, “The stones…are in me.”

And they are in your too.

What we see and feel and think of others—these are just mirrors of ourselves. We will find what we seek when we identify what lights and shadows the other person reflects. The beacon that shines the light or the mountain that casts the shadow lives within us, calling us to manifest or challenge it.

So, no, whatever it is we seek in other people, we will never find it. In them. But we will always find it where it really counts and is truly ours—within us.