So this is 33...
I turned 33 this month. When I turned 32 I did not know that I would lose both of my parents in less than a year. I hadnāt yet realized that I had Fibromyalgia or was actually autistic. To say a lot has happened is a drastic understatement. And that isnāt even bringing up the pandemic we have all been surviving.
This blog post is going to cover a lot of very personal updates. Dear reader ā I ask for an open mind. I ask for compassion and understanding that life has felt very hard for a very long time.
In August I got keys to a new apartment. A two-bedroom apartment that would have one room for me and one room for my kiddo. I made the decision to leave a 10-year relationship that had defined most of my adulthood.
I met Mike when I was 22 years old and had not yet even graduated college. He was impressed at the level to which I knew who I was and how much of my life I had figured out. Looking back, I had only just begun to understand myself at that time. I was always type-A personality, a stellar student who loved to overachieve. I had a life plan that had gone correctly up to that point: I had gone to college on a full ride scholarship, graduated on the Deanās list, and gotten a job with a promising career path in front of me. I knew that the ācorrectā next steps were to get married, buy a house, and start a family. Mike fit into that Happily Ever After so perfectly. We were so in love and wanted all the same things. He was older and already owned a house. He seemed so mature and responsible.
The truth is, we were both so very wrong. I was queer and polyamorous and had barely started to taste the surface of my sexual identity. He had untouched mental health issues and had yet to deal with the feelings from his last marriage, which had only ended a few months before we started dating. We learned a lot from each other right away and quickly clung to a codependent relationship in order to each feel complete.
We fought. A lot. But it felt just like the relationships we had as examples growing up, which made us think it was part of true love. It also felt safe. We could air out all our unhealthy habits on each other without fear of judgment because we were both so similar.
Shortly into us dating, Mike asked to be exclusive, and I cancelled two dates with women that were on my calendar, thinking that since I never went on a date with a woman I couldnāt possibly miss the experience. It was just another part of myself I could ignore. I had already experienced a lifetime of secretly shaming myself for having multiple crushes, so this couldnāt be that different. Plus, I didnāt think being polyam fit in with wanting to be a mom, and I knew I wanted to be a mom. This was something Mike and I always agreed on, wanting to be parents.
The desire to explore being with women only grew with time and when I came out at the age of 28 I quickly dove deep into the queer culture scene in Seattle. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. It wasnāt long before Mike and I had to start having conversations about the dynamics in our relationship. I was initially met with a lot of negative feelings that are common when monogamous couples first talk about opening up their marriage. I wanted to go to therapy, and Mike agreed that it was a good idea but always had a reason for why ānowā wasnāt the right time. For years.
Overtime, Mike reluctantly agreed that I could kiss women. And then overtime, it was okay that I date women. But with each compromise, my desire for additional companionship grew and his depression and anger got worse. We dealt with what we would pass off as typical growing pains in a newly poly relationship but were actually structural parts of our relationship breaking apart.
Then, his mom died. Then, my cat. And then we were in the beginning of a pandemic that would eat away at my being for many months. My identity was completely lost without conventions, friends, gaming, karaoke, and queer parties. We had to be fulltime parents, while working from home fulltime, while both dealing with severe depression. I experienced my first breakup with a woman. And then a second, which Mikeās continued dishonesty contributed to.
Honesty was always my biggest boundary. This ties into how polyam I am to my core. Polyamory requires a deep level of honesty, trust, and communication that I have always craved in my relationships, but I that Iāve never truly been able to find in monogamous relationships. I could forgive anything but lies. Yet here I was, trying to forgive him but constantly being heartbroken by more dishonesty.
Next, my mom got sick. And then she died and a part of me was broken forever. And then our house flooded, and we had to live in a hotel and everything was under a pressure cooker all the time. And our marriage continued to fall into the same patterns, and I stopped believing that the nuclear family was best for my son. And then my dad died, and I just stopped caring about being the perfect partner.
So, I moved out. And here I am, living more independently than I have in my entire existence. And it is so hard. But I am mostly happy and getting moreso every week. I get so much 1:1 time with my son, and there is very little yelling in my house. I am able to focus on being a mom half of the week and on myself (including much needed self-reflection and selfcare) the other half of the week. It feels right. It feels free.
I am learning a lot about who I really am without fear of disappointing others in my life. For much of my life, I lived in a way to make my parents proud. As much as I miss them every day, it is nice to be able to let go of those expectations that I had put on myself wanting to make them happy. And I donāt have to make my husband happy anymore.Ā I can focus on me and my son, and how to build a loving relationship the way that I want to. I can see my own identity clearer than ever before. And as I climb out of my cocoon and spread my rainbow wings, the horizon looks brighter than ever before.
