Fight and Trust

Trust. Dedication. These are things that I thought that I understood over the years, and of course I understood bits and pieces, but now... Wowsa! Now I feel like I have the whole thing.

Nikola and I have been on a Friends binge. We are in season 3, where Ross and Rachel break up--- things get tough in their relationship and Rachel says that they need a break. Ross immediately goes out and sleeps with another girl, thinking that their relationship was over. Rachel finds out and while they are trying to figure out if they can make things work Ross points out how quickly Rachel gave up their relationship, the way that she didn't fight for it. (I wont go into how Ross failed to fight for the relationship either.) He needed to know that she was going to fight to be with him, and in the end she decided that, no, she wouldn't. Him sleeping with another girl had destroyed her understanding of him, because before she felt completely safe with him and thought of him as a man who would never, ever hurt her. After such a painful experience she could no longer view him the same and so the love had changed. Now, here I am suspending the fact that this is just a television show, and the fact that I am not really certain of the monogamy rules as the end-all of relationships to say: "I finally get it!" 

There have been times in the past that I was accused of not fighting for a relationship. Sometimes that accusation has been true. Sometimes it was, in my heart's view, unwarranted. However, whether I was fighting or not (I realize now), the fight was always on my shoulders. It was, ultimately, a question of my investment and how much I was willing to give up to be with someone. Was I willing to give up my location, my job, my school, my values? How much room was I willing to give? How much of them was I willing to take? This is not to say that there has been no give from my previous partners. The people that I have loved in the past have given quite a bit of love to me, and accepted many aspects of me. Some have been very supportive of this wandering game that I play and my thirst to find myself. Some have put up with large amounts of insanity. Some have not. Some left at the first sign of trouble, and some have stuck it out far enough to scar ourselves into a permanent remembrance. But it has never, never been the way that it has been with my husband.

 "How much are you willing to fight for us?"

With Nikola, for the first time, I feel like the question is not shooting directly towards me and only me. It is a valid question. But for the first time I feel that he trusts me enough to never ask, and I feel like I will never reach the end of his fight either. He knows that I want our life together, and I cannot question his commitment either. I have never really thought about it before, but I think about it often with him: I have a man that will never hurt me. Now, that is not to say that I will not suffer in our relationship, and that I will not experience hurt. But, that pain will never, ever be inflicted intentionally by him. I know that for sure. I know that he will support me in any way that he can and that he will always, always fight for our relationship. I can trust that. I never knew I NEEDED to trust that, but I do, and I can and it is wonderful.

I am the happiest woman in the world in this marriage.

Subtle Gear Shift

When the cub came back from Bulgaria he brought a delightful array of presents for me: a family ring to solidify our fake marriage, coffee mugs from his parent's trip to moscow, and a bicycle to take me here and there and, on a good day, back again to him. The bike is something that makes me squee inside. A friend once defended his reasoning for getting his daughter a bicycle as it being a rite of passage and an experience in responsibility and freedom. In the gridlock of Istanbul that freedom is a breath of fresh air. There is nothing quite like being able to control my pace and speed and get to where I want to be, hills and effort be damned. But the bike has one thing strange for me: the gear shift. I am used to indexed gear shifters. You know, the type that click thoughtlessly into place with the flick of a finger. This shifter requires a little more thought and finesse. Effort, time, whatever you will. It isn't that I can't handle it, but I definitely have been spoiled by magic for my entire life.

Riding home the other day I realized how much my relationship outlook is like a gearshift. I have always been the type of person that locks immediately into place in a relationship. For me there is no "dating - for - fun," phase. There is love, or not-love and there is no reason to dabble in a relationship if the connection is not there, just for amusement or companionship. At the same time there is no reason to pretend that the connection isn't there when it is. I have never been the type to play hard to get. People think that this is an unhealthy way to live- that it betrays some personal attachment issue deep within me. Maybe this is true, and maybe not. All I know is that it has been the only thing that makes sense to me. If you feel love, then say it. If it is important to you then care for it. It seems quite simple to me, not some twisted form of desperation. However, finally, this bike has helped me to understand the other perspective. There is no commitment in the shift. You can get halfway towards the next gear and decide that you were wrong and back down without consequence. There is no stopping, no turning, no jolt in the indecision. At the same time, sliding up to the next level is an awkward experience with a bit of friction until you are settled, sometimes not worth the intention that it requires. I get why people find it so difficult to find a relationship and settle into it; why they date so many people that it will obviously (even to them) never work out with. Well, call me easy and automatic, but I will stick to my indexed life. 

Traveling with the Internets

Last week I was reading the book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, and it awakened in me a healthy wanderlust. That may sound strange because I haven't been home ever in my life and so I should not even be able to want to travel. It should be like breath for me... but sometimes I go to yoga and I realize that every second of every day we are missing out on much of the potential that our breathing holds. Travel is like that. You can do it, as a natural process that keeps you alive, or you can imerse yourself in it and feel the complete power of the movement within and around you. I have fallen into habit and so it was refreshing to be brushed awake by Calvino's prose.

After getting over the initial shock of his style (always different, even from his own) I began to enjoy Marco Polo's queer experience of foreign lands. Then, of course, I wanted to experience foreign lands of my own. I went out (I had to anyways, as there were visas to be applied for and Turkish food to be eaten),  walked around Plovdiv and I felt lighter and more aware than I had in months. I appreciated the garden and the streets in a more thorough way, as if seeing it for the first time even as I had to say goodbye. I wondered how Marco Polo would have felt in Plovdiv. What craziness would he have imagined there, and given to it as its permanent popularity? I daydreamed about what it would be like to go somewhere and not research it before hand. I realized that I now look up places to go, things to see, and line up a place to stay before going anywhere. My need to feel safe and secure has gotten so bad that I was not comfortable exploring the mineral baths only 45 minutes from my home until I felt that I understood them first. I even book my train travel online. Everything is planned through the computer, which holds the cumulative experience of every traveller before me and in the end, when the moment of truth comes, I have little more to do than lazily slide through the experience. I wonder what it would be like to go someplace new, without knowing anything about it. To show up and potentially miss the biggest, most important sites and to be guided by instinct to my personal wonders. Perhaps instead of seeing the blue mosque and the cisterns in Istanbul I would have forever imagined it as a city filled with tiny fish and spice markets and an ancient wall that lovingly wraps around it, going on and on to eternity. It becomes quite a different city.

As enticing as the imagination can be, I don't think I am brave enough to let go of the external storage that guides me. I like to be safe. I like to know where I will lay my head at night. I think most of the world agrees with me. More and more people are traveling these days. These are people who would not have traveled 20 years ago, back when things were a left just a little more to chance. They would have stayed safe in their own countries. Instead they hop on the internet and get the closest experience to home that they can, in 10 different countries. And being in the hostel gives me very little hope. I see a room of 30 people, every one of them on a smart phone or laptop. They are researcing their next destination or blogging about their last one. I wonder what hostel lobbies used to be like, with one computer and no wifi. People sat around and gave each other tips about where they had been, writing it down in notebooks.They talked. They processed their experience and all they had was each other. Stories waited in film canisters to be told at home. I imagine a greater camaraderie among travelers, borne out of necessity, and I am thirsty for that experiece. Of course, my laptop and smartphone are here... I am part of the problem. I need to put them away and rediscover what an intimate conversation is. Luckily I have time, and I have a great place to start learning how to be lost and clueless. 

Slow like honey

People say that love is slow. It takes time to build trust and respect between two people. When I was young I believed them. I consented that my full, pulsing heart was nothing more than lust and hormones. I didn't really know my lovers. How could you possibly know someone in a month, or a year? People spend lifetimes not even knowing themselves. So I let the elders tell me that I was young and foolish, and that I didn't know what love was. I second-guessed all of my emotions and my values. They came too easily.

Now, I call bullshit. Love does not, by definition, come in slowly. Sure, it can be slow and quiet. It can be a whisper so softly that you risk missing it altogether. But it can also be quite sudden. It can roar like a lion, the saliva from its jaw smattering your squinched-up face. It can rain down like acidic stars falling from the night sky, piercing your shell of false beliefs.

When I was young I learned what I could from my elders. I learned about moderation, balance and reason. I learned how to keep my heart in check. Now that I am sliding up the scales I am seeing how much I need to relearn from those that are younger than me. Love is, above all, simple. Quick or slow, easy or difficult, it is at least simple.