New Story (6/16)

Three things have come together in my mind today: in short, they are Butoh, my romantic attachment styles (and perhaps those of others, we shall see), and the chapter in Brian Latour’s book Pandora’s Hope called “Circulating Reference;” but the connections won’t make much sense unless I describe them further. I will start by describing what is closest to me and most emotional, because it might cut through to you.

I have to come to see a pattern in my emotional life: I will start by describing some instances in which it occurs. One such instance occurred 7 years ago, today; I remember because it relates to the event of my sweetheart’s birthday, and today is again her birthday (happy birthday, Madeline!), 7 years later. Today is Saturday, so the day in question, as it was 7 years ago exactly, must have been a Saturday as well. 

Madeline and I had been dating for a little over a year; we lived together in the same room of a punk house on the eastside of Olympia. We both worked as caregivers for adults with developmental disabilities, and I was in school, though school had probably just let out for the summer.

Let’s backtrack a bit, to a few days earlier in the week: I can see us now, walking to the Mobil on Boulevard to get coffee with large dashes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cappuccino, conversing with this caffeine and sugar boost on our way back. We often talked, on these walks home, about our relationship, in an attempt to understand what we were building together: we were (and are) both very invested in having a shared field of reference, and at the same time coming to a common understanding of our relationship was (and is perhaps less so now) incredibly difficult. One major lesson I learned from her at this time, during these conversations, is that comparisons between how I treat her and how I expect her to treat me can be useful, and are necessary. At the time I had been on a track of avoiding one-to-one comparisons between myself and other people in an attempt to “stay on my plate”—admittedly a silly tool to use universally, which I may have overused in an attempt to stray from my ways of disordered eating and the chaos it invoked in my life. This comparison practice was an especially important one for Madeline to impart to me because it aimed to correct behavior that had harmed her in her childhood. 

Our relationship is, among other things, polyamorous. It was at the time too, on paper, though neither of us were dating other people. 

Madeline doesn’t like her birthday, so she said she didn’t mind that I had planned a trip to go to visit a family friend with my sister in Bend, Oregon for the weekend. I was nervous to leave, and felt bad that I wasn’t able to be there with her, even though she didn’t seem to care.