The Landing
Oct 06, 2026There comes a point when you stop trying to make someone else see the landscape—and finally give yourself permission to land.
The Quiet Done
There comes a point when enough is enough.
And I used to think I knew what that moment would feel like.
I thought done would be loud.
Angry.
Explosive.
Maybe there would be some final conversation where I finally found exactly the right combination of words. The words that would make everything click. The words that would somehow make another human being see what I had been desperately trying to show them for years.
Maybe I would scream.
Maybe I would cry.
Maybe I would finally say every fucking thing I had swallowed, softened, reframed, forgiven, understood, rationalized, explained away, or tried to communicate more gently because perhaps this time it would land differently.
But apparently there is another kind of done.
And it is fucking quiet.
There is no panic.
No urgency.
No desperate need to explain myself one more time.
No overwhelming desire to make another person understand why I hurt, what happened, what I needed, what I had been waiting for, or why the same goddamn conversation we have already had a hundred different ways somehow matters this time.
There is just...
silence.
And strangely, peace.
Not numbness.
That's important.
I've known numbness.
I've known dissociation. I've known what it feels like to become so overwhelmed that something inside of me turns down the volume because feeling everything would simply be too fucking much.
This isn't that.
This feels completely different.
When I teach psychic mediumship, or when I work from a transpersonal perspective with ego-strengthening and the many wise aspects of ourselves that can be encountered within our inner world, there is something I tell people over and over:
Experiment with it. Experience it. Learn the difference for yourself.
Because there are times when something inside of us becomes incredibly quiet.
There is no frantic voice trying to convince us.
No emotional argument.
No pleading.
No but what if?
The body settles.
The muscles soften.
And there is simply a sense of knowing.
For me, it feels like standing at the top of a mountain after the climb and taking in everything below me.
Or sitting somewhere overlooking the ocean as the sun rises, coffee in hand, while the rest of the fucking world hasn't quite awakened yet.
Nothing needs to happen.
Nothing needs to be solved.
For one moment, I am simply there.
Flowing while knowing.
Maybe that's the best way I can describe what I feel now.
Like a river.
If a river could feel, I imagine this is what it would feel like.
It doesn't have to hate the rock for being in its way.
It doesn't have to convince the rock to move.
It doesn't need to stand there screaming:
Do you understand what you're doing to my fucking flow?
It doesn't need the rock to apologize.
It doesn't need the rock to finally understand rivers.
The river simply moves.
Around it.
Over it.
Beside it.
Sometimes slowly.
Sometimes violently.
Sometimes changing the fucking landscape as it goes.
But it moves.
And I think somewhere along the way I forgot that I am allowed to move.
I can love someone and still move.
I can believe with everything inside of me that someone matters profoundly to my life and still move.
I can believe someone is connected to my heart in ways I don't completely understand and still move.
I can hold every spiritual, transpersonal, emotional, psychological and deeply human meaning I have made from a relationship without requiring that relationship to remain exactly as it is.
Because love does not require me to become a dam inside my own fucking river.
Maybe that's what done means for me now.
Not:
I don't love you anymore.
Not:
You never mattered.
Not:
Everything was a lie.
Not even:
I know what happens next.
I don't.
I have no fucking clue what happens next.
And strangely, there is something both terrifying and exciting about finally admitting that.
For more than two years, I have felt like I have been circling the same landscape in a helicopter.
Looking down and seeing the whole fucking thing.
The roads.
The dead ends.
The beautiful places.
The damaged places.
The places where something could be built.
The places where something keeps burning down.
The weeds.
The wreckage.
The possibilities.
And I have spent an extraordinary amount of energy trying to communicate what I can see from up here to someone standing on the ground.
Look.
Look at the whole thing.
Not this argument.
Not this sentence.
Not what happened Tuesday at 7:42 p.m.
Not whether this one particular tree is technically healthy.
Look at the fucking landscape.
And then we talk for an hour.
And another hour.
And another.
I explain.
He explains.
I clarify.
He clarifies.
I zoom out.
The conversation zooms back in.
I point toward the forest.
We debate the tree.
And eventually I get back into the helicopter and circle the same fucking landscape again.
Except now something is different.
The helicopter is running out of gas.
And suddenly the question isn't:
How do I finally get someone on the ground to see what I can see from the air?
The question is:
How long am I willing to keep circling before I fucking crash?
Because I have choices.
I can keep flying over the same destination.
Keep pointing.
Keep explaining.
Keep hoping.
Keep believing that one more pass over the landscape will somehow reveal something that the previous hundred didn't.
I can burn through every last drop of fuel trying to make someone see.
And eventually crash into the very landscape I have been trying so desperately to fix.
Or—
I can land the fucking helicopter.
I can get myself somewhere safe.
I can refuel.
I can rest.
I can decide that the next time I fly, I may head toward an entirely different destination.
Maybe I come back someday.
Maybe I don't.
Maybe the landscape changes.
Maybe it doesn't.
Maybe someone finally starts pulling their own weeds.
Maybe they decide they like the weeds.
That isn't mine to decide.
And I think that's the difference this time.
I don't need another hour-long conversation.
I don't need another explanation.
I don't need to win the argument.
I don't even need someone else to agree with what I see.
Because somewhere underneath all the noise that has existed for years, something inside of me has finally become very fucking quiet.
And it isn't saying:
Fight harder.
It isn't saying:
Explain it better.
It isn't saying:
Maybe this time.
It isn't even saying:
Leave.
It is simply saying:
Move.
And for the first time in a very long time...
I think I'm going to listen.
The Empty Chair
And once I stopped circling, something else became painfully fucking obvious.
I had been talking to an empty chair.
Not literally, of course.
There was a person there.
There were conversations.
There were beautiful moments.
There were plans and promises and affection and laughter and sex and tears and fights and apologies and dinners and ordinary nights on the couch. There were moments that made me believe there was something worth continuing to build.
That's what makes this kind of realization so fucking complicated.
It would almost be easier if there had been nothing.
Nothing to love.
Nothing to remember.
Nothing that felt meaningful.
Nothing that made me think, Yes. This. This is why I've stayed.
But that's not how human relationships usually work.
Sometimes there is enough there to make you believe in what could be there.
And sometimes we confuse those two things.
I did.
I fucking did.
I believed the promises.
I believed that eventually all of this waiting was going to pay off.
After this hurdle.
After this treatment.
After this legal issue.
After this recovery.
After this financial problem.
After this physical injury.
After this transition.
After this crisis.
After this fucking thing and then the next fucking thing and then whatever fucking thing came after that.
Eventually.
Eventually we would get there.
Eventually the circumstances would settle enough that the relationship could finally become what we kept talking about it becoming.
Eventually the promises would become behavior.
Eventually the plans would become a life.
Eventually I would stop waiting.
And I think that's what makes looking at the empty chair now hurt so fucking much.
Because I wasn't only sitting across from the person who was there.
I was sitting across from the future I believed was coming.
I had put partnership in that chair.
I had put shared responsibility there.
I had put trips and vacations and Sunday mornings and financial stability and healing and growth and accountability and laughter and sex and companionship and someone finally having my fucking back there.
I had put all the things we talked about building there.
And every time reality didn't quite match what was sitting in that chair, hope helped me fill in the difference.
Just a little longer.
Just get through this.
Just wait until this changes.
Just give him time.
Just understand what he's been through.
Just remember how hard this has been.
Just remember his wounds.
Just remember your own.
Just remember that change takes time.
Just remember that relationships are hard.
Just remember that healing isn't linear.
Just remember.
Just remember.
Just fucking remember.
And somewhere in all that remembering, I kept forgetting to ask one incredibly important question:
What is actually here?
Not what has been promised.
Not what is possible.
Not what another human being might become.
Not what I can understand about why they aren't there yet.
Not what I can see underneath their behavior.
Not what my professional training allows me to conceptualize.
Not what my heart hopes for.
What is actually fucking here?
Because hope is a fascinating thing.
I teach about hope.
I believe in hope.
I've watched hope keep human beings alive through circumstances that would bring other people to their knees.
Hope matters.
But there is something else I know about hope.
Hope is not fact.
And maybe one of the hardest things I have ever had to admit to myself is this:
I fucking knew.
There.
That's the part I don't particularly enjoy saying out loud.
Because it's much easier to tell a story in which I simply didn't know.
I was blindsided.
I was fooled.
I believed someone.
I couldn't possibly have seen it coming.
And there were absolutely things I didn't know.
There were things I couldn't have predicted.
There were promises I had reasons to believe.
There were moments that genuinely gave me hope.
But there were also moments when something inside of me knew.
And I negotiated with her.
I explained things to her.
I gave her additional information.
I asked her to consider context.
I reminded her that people are complicated.
I told her healing takes time.
I told her love requires patience.
I told her there were circumstances.
I told her there was trauma.
I told her there was addiction.
I told her there were wounds.
I told her there was potential.
I told her there was hope.
And she kept sitting there quietly saying:
I know.
That's the fucked-up thing about knowing.
Hope had arguments. Knowing had silence.
Hope could write a dissertation.
Hope could build a case.
Hope could create another timeline.
Hope could find one more explanation for why what wasn't happening yet might still happen eventually.
Hope could take one beautiful moment and hold it up against ten painful ones and whisper:
See? It's still in there.
Knowing didn't do any of that.
Knowing just fucking knew.
And I think I spent years treating what could be as evidence of what was.
Maybe that's what the empty chair actually represents.
Not that nobody was ever sitting there.
Not that nothing between us existed.
Not that every moment was false.
But that I kept reserving part of that chair for someone who had not yet arrived.
A future version.
A healed version.
A more accountable version.
A more consistent version.
A version who would eventually do the things that had been promised.
A version who would finally pick up his side of what we were supposedly building together.
And I loved so deeply that sometimes I allowed the possibility of who someone could become to occupy the space where I needed to evaluate who they were choosing to be right now.
That's mine.
That part belongs to me.
Not his behavior.
Not his choices.
Not his promises.
Not what he did or didn't do.
My participation.
I don't have to take responsibility for somebody else's yard in order to take responsibility for the fact that I kept walking into it with a fucking rake.
And that distinction matters to me.
Because accountability is not self-punishment.
It isn't:
You stupid fucking woman. You should have known better.
God knows I've heard enough versions of that.
And I don't need to do it to myself.
It's:
You knew some things before you were ready to accept what knowing them might require you to do.
That's different.
And painfully human.
Sometimes we don't resist the truth because we're stupid.
Sometimes we resist it because accepting it means grieving something we aren't ready to bury.
A person.
A dream.
A family.
A future.
A version of ourselves.
Years of investment.
The belief that all this fucking waiting was eventually going to mean something.
Because I did invest.
Time.
Money.
Energy.
Patience.
My home.
My body.
My knowledge.
My forgiveness.
My emotional labor.
My resources.
My hope.
My fucking heart.
And there comes a point with any investment when you have to stop asking how much you've already put into it and start asking whether continuing to invest makes sense based on what exists now.
That's a brutal fucking calculation when the investment is a human relationship.
Because this isn't money.
This is love.
And part of me wants to say:
I made the wrong investment and lost it all.
But even as I write that, I know it isn't true.
I may have lost the future I thought I was investing in.
I may be grieving the return I believed all this waiting, loving, forgiving, understanding and growing would eventually produce.
But I did not lose everything I became while I was here.
Because while I was waiting—
I was changing.
I was building.
I was confronting my own patterns.
I was meeting my shadows.
I was learning what unconditional love actually means and, perhaps more importantly, what it does not require me to tolerate.
I was learning to stop shrinking.
I was learning to speak.
I was learning that being kind does not require being compliant.
I was learning that another person's disappointment does not automatically mean I have done something wrong.
I was learning that boundaries without consequences are often just requests.
I was learning that I can be internally activated as fuck—every shadow part of me either ready for battle or waving the white flag—and still refuse to hand any of them the keys to the vehicle.
I was learning my worth.
My values.
My body.
My voice.
My fucking self.
And maybe that's one of the strange, brutal gifts of retrospect.
Sometimes we don't understand why something is falling apart while we're standing inside the rubble.
Sometimes we don't know what the loss made room for until much later, when we're standing somewhere we couldn't have imagined before and finally able to look backward.
I'm not there yet.
I won't pretend I am.
I'm still standing close enough to this one to smell the fucking smoke.
There is grief here.
There is anger.
There is resentment.
There are moments of hate.
Toward him.
Toward myself.
Toward the world.
And then there is that quiet knowing underneath all of it.
The part that doesn't need me to know what gets built next.
It only needs me to stop pretending the chair is occupied by something that hasn't actually arrived.
Because perhaps the question was never whether I loved what I believed we could become.
I did.
The question is whether I am willing to continue organizing my present around a future that exists primarily in hope.
And for the first time, I think I know my answer.
Hope is beautiful.
But hope is not fucking evidence.
The Duplex
And maybe this is where the empty chair becomes something even harder for me to look at.
Because I wasn't just waiting.
I was compensating.
There is a difference.
Waiting sounds passive.
What I was doing was anything fucking but.
I was working.
Planning.
Remembering.
Anticipating.
Teaching.
Explaining.
Paying.
Cleaning.
Organizing.
Forgiving.
Initiating.
Repairing.
Adjusting.
Understanding.
Making decisions.
Making excuses.
Making things work.
And perhaps that is one of the reasons it took me so long to fully see what was happening.
Things kept working because I kept fucking working.
There is a particular danger in being someone who can walk into dysfunction and make it functional.
I know how to do that.
I've been doing it my entire life.
Give me chaos and I'll organize it.
Give me a crisis and I'll figure out what needs to happen next.
Give me ten things that need done and not enough people willing to do them and apparently some part of me will say:
Fine. Move. I'll fucking do it.
For years, people have called versions of this strength.
Capable.
Independent.
Driven.
Hardworking.
Resourceful.
But I don't know that I ever experienced my capability as some extraordinary fucking strength.
My capability came from survival.
I became capable because things needed done.
Because somebody had to do them.
And apparently, over and over throughout my life, that somebody became me.
I can see it far outside romantic relationships.
Years ago, I worked at a hospital where another therapist and I were responsible for running intensive mental-health programming.
There was work that belonged to me.
And there was work that belonged to her.
Except somehow, because I was capable of doing more, I started doing more.
And more.
And more.
She seemed perfectly content with that arrangement.
Why wouldn't she be?
The work was getting done.
The program continued.
Patients were being attended to.
From the outside, the system functioned.
Meanwhile, I was carrying responsibilities that weren't fucking mine.
Eventually I complained.
And then I did something far more effective.
I stopped doing her part.
And wouldn't you fucking know it?
She did it.
Then I eventually quit.
And suddenly the workload I had been quietly absorbing became visible.
For a while, she had to carry the work without me there carrying the excess.
Eventually, she quit too.
I think about that now because the lesson wasn't that I was better than her.
It wasn't that she was incapable.
It was much simpler.
As long as I kept compensating, the system could conceal how dependent it had become on my over-functioning.
How many times have I done that?
How many systems have I helped appear healthier than they actually were simply because I was willing to work hard enough to keep them functioning?
Family.
Work.
Friendships.
Relationships.
How many times have I confused my ability to keep something functioning with evidence that the thing itself was functional?
That's a difficult question for someone like me.
Because over-functioning works.
At least for a while.
That's why we fucking do it.
The bills get paid.
The appointment gets scheduled.
The house gets cleaned.
The vacation gets planned.
The dinner reservation gets made.
The conversation gets initiated.
The conflict gets revisited.
The apology eventually happens.
The next step gets identified.
The crisis gets managed.
The relationship survives another day.
See? It worked.
Except sometimes what worked wasn't the relationship.
I did.
I keep imagining a duplex.
Two people live beside each other.
We each have our own side of the property, but what happens on one side inevitably affects the other.
I maintain my yard.
I pull my weeds.
I clean up my shit.
I notice when something is starting to become overgrown.
I try to take care of problems before they become disasters.
Maybe I plant something.
Maybe I make the place beautiful.
Maybe I work way too fucking hard making it beautiful.
And beside me is another yard.
At first, I tell myself:
That's not mine.
And that's true.
But then the weeds grow.
They reach the property line.
Then they cross it.
Animals wander through.
They leave shit everywhere.
The roots travel underneath the fence.
Whatever is happening over there starts affecting my ability to peacefully inhabit what I'm trying to maintain over here.
Now I have a choice.
I can leave it alone because it isn't mine and watch the consequences continue spilling into my life.
Or—
because I know how to fix things,
because I know how to work,
because disorder makes me uncomfortable,
because I want peace,
because I care about the person living beside me,
because I can see exactly what needs to be done—
I can walk across the fucking property line and start cleaning.
So I do.
I pull some weeds.
Pick up some shit.
Maybe I show them how to do it.
Maybe I explain why letting the weeds grow this high creates bigger problems.
Maybe I make a list.
Maybe I offer tools.
Maybe I remind them.
Maybe I say:
Hey, if we just stay on top of this, it won't get this bad again.
And eventually the yard looks better.
The immediate problem disappears.
I can breathe again.
So I go back to mine.
Until it happens again.
And again.
And again.
And somewhere along the way, something that began as me helping quietly becomes me maintaining.
That's where things get dangerous.
Because when one person chronically compensates for another person's unfinished responsibilities, eventually nobody can tell what the system actually looks like without the compensation.
Including the person doing the fucking compensating.
Until she stops.
And suddenly—
everything looks worse.
The weeds are everywhere.
The shit piles up.
Things aren't getting done.
Problems aren't being solved.
Nobody is reminding anybody.
Nobody is smoothing anything over.
Nobody is rushing in to restore peace.
And then comes one of the strangest fucking reversals:
The person who stopped cleaning gets blamed for the mess.
As though the weeds appeared because she stopped pulling them.
As though the shit exists because she stopped picking it up.
As though the system became dysfunctional because she finally refused to continue making it look functional.
No.
I didn't create the mess by putting down the rake.
I stopped concealing how much of the mess I had been cleaning up all along.
And when I look at my relationship through that lens, I see things differently.
If I didn't pick somewhere to eat, how often did we go somewhere thoughtfully planned?
If I didn't decide what we were going to do, how often did something happen?
If I didn't suggest the weekend away, who planned it?
If something hurt me and I tried to talk about it only to be met with defensiveness, anger, blame, or being told I was too sensitive, how many times did I eventually decide that keeping the peace was easier than continuing to tell the truth?
How many times did I teach what I understood about relationships?
About interdependence?
About addiction?
About the Victim Trap?
About trauma?
About communication?
About regulation?
About accountability?
How many fucking times did I explain concepts that understanding intellectually was never going to replace actually practicing?
How many times did I accept an apology because it was the closest thing available to repair?
How many times did I hear:
I know.
without seeing the knowing become behavior?
I waited.
For legal matters to resolve.
For treatment to end.
For recovery to deepen.
For probation to end.
For injuries to heal.
For work to resume.
For financial promises to become contributions.
For help around the house that had been promised.
For trips.
For vacations.
For plans.
For skills that had supposedly been learned to finally become skills that were actually used.
And while I waited, life still had to fucking happen.
So I kept doing what I know how to do.
I carried.
That doesn't mean the other person never did anything.
It doesn't mean there were no contributions, no meaningful moments, no gestures, no attempts.
Human relationships are rarely that fucking simple.
But when I zoom out—when I get back into that helicopter and look at the entire property instead of debating the condition of one tree—I have to ask myself:
Who was responsible for keeping the relationship itself moving forward?
And I don't like my answer.
Because somewhere along the way, I became the relationship's project manager.
And teacher.
And planner.
And emotional first responder.
And groundskeeper.
And fucking historian.
I remembered what happened.
I remembered what we'd discussed.
I remembered what had been promised.
I remembered what we were supposedly working toward.
And then I tried to keep all of it moving.
No wonder I'm exhausted.
But here's where I have to be careful.
Because I don't want my healing to become another rigid rule where everyone must maintain exactly fifty percent of the yard every fucking day.
That's not partnership either.
Life doesn't work that way.
People get sick.
Bodies fail.
People lose jobs.
Parents die.
Depression happens.
Trauma gets activated.
Businesses struggle.
Someone has surgery.
Someone falls apart.
There will absolutely be seasons when one person carries more.
I know how to carry.
Carrying isn't what I resent.
What I resent is carrying becoming my permanent fucking position.
There is a difference between:
I can't carry this right now. Can you help me?
and
You carry this because eventually we both learned that you will.
There is a difference between temporarily helping someone maintain their yard and quietly becoming the unpaid groundskeeper of another adult's life.
And reciprocity doesn't mean keeping score.
It means that when I am the one lying flat on my fucking back someday, I don't have to wonder whether anybody notices there is still a rake leaning against the fence.
It means sometimes I pull your weeds.
Sometimes you pull mine.
Sometimes we stand in the middle of the whole fucking yard together and say:
Jesus Christ. How did we let it get this bad?
And then we both start working.
That's what I've wanted.
Not perfection.
Not rescue.
Not a man who takes over my responsibilities.
Not somebody to save me from being a capable woman.
I don't need saving from capability.
I need to stop being punished with more responsibility simply because I am capable of carrying it.
Because of course I can fucking do it.
I've proven that.
Again.
And again.
And again.
My entire life is evidence that I can do hard things.
But I'm beginning to understand something the little girl inside of me may have known before the adult woman was willing to hear it:
Just because I can do it doesn't mean it should be mine to do.
Who the Fuck Holds the One Who Holds Everybody?
For more than twenty years, I have sat with human beings in some of the darkest moments of their lives.
I have sat with trauma.
Addiction.
Grief.
Shame.
Abuse.
Mental illness.
Suicidality.
Families falling apart.
Relationships ending.
People trying desperately to understand how the fuck their lives became what they became.
And my job has never been to hand them my answer.
It is to sit in the chair.
To listen.
To pay attention.
To notice.
To sometimes challenge.
To sometimes teach.
To sometimes say the thing nobody else is willing to say.
And sometimes to shut the fuck up and let another human being fall apart without trying to rush them into becoming okay again.
Because there are moments when people don't need another solution.
They need a witness.
Someone willing to stay in the fucking chair.
Maybe that's why the empty chair hurts as much as it does.
Because I know exactly how to sit in it for everyone else.
And lately I've found myself wondering:
Who the fuck sits in it for me?
There comes a point when you've been struggling with the same relationship, the same cycle, the same heartbreak for so long that you don't even want to tell anybody anymore.
You know they've heard it.
You know they've watched you leave.
Go back.
Hope.
Get hurt.
Try again.
Explain why you're trying again.
Get hurt again.
Eventually you start imagining what they're thinking before they ever say it.
Here we fucking go again.
Maybe they're exhausted.
Maybe you're embarrassed.
Maybe both are true.
So you stop reaching out.
You stop talking about it.
You stop calling.
You stop trying to explain the newest version of something that even you recognize sounds painfully similar to the last version.
And then you're left with yourself.
Your thoughts.
Your feelings.
Your anger.
Your grief.
Your professional knowledge.
Your fucking insight.
And sometimes insight is the last goddamn thing you need.
Because I don't need somebody to tell me what attachment is.
I don't need another lecture about trauma.
I don't need somebody to explain boundaries to me.
I don't need someone to tell me that people show us who they are.
I don't need another:
You chose this.
You should have known better.
Why did you stay?
I told you this would happen.
Maybe I fucking knew too.
Remember?
That's part of the problem.
Sometimes I just need one human being who can look at me while I am completely falling apart and resist the urge to turn my pain into a fucking lesson.
Someone with an open heart.
No judgment.
No urgency.
No need to tell me what I should or shouldn't do.
Maybe a hug.
A kind smile.
A stupid fucking joke at exactly the right moment.
Someone who can let me cry without becoming uncomfortable with my tears.
Someone who doesn't need me to become the therapist because my feelings became too complicated for them to sit beside.
Someone who can simply say:
I know. Come here.
That's it.
I don't need someone to save me.
I don't need someone to figure my life out.
I don't need somebody to tell me what decision to make.
I need reciprocity.
For once.
A couple of weeks ago I went to a self-care appointment.
The woman working with me told me to sit back, relax and let my worries disappear for the next few hours.
We started talking.
She had met the man I was with about a year earlier, so eventually she asked how the relationship was going.
I gave her the condensed version.
As condensed as a story like this can fucking be.
And she said something incredibly ordinary.
She told me I deserved to be treated better.
That I deserved someone who sometimes paid the bills.
Someone who planned something beautiful.
Someone who told me to get dressed up and took me somewhere that made me feel sexy.
Someone who allowed me to have moments where I didn't have to think about every fucking thing.
She wasn't describing a billionaire.
She wasn't describing some fantasy man on a horse.
She wasn't describing dependency.
She was describing being cared for.
And I felt the tears immediately.
I tried to hold them back.
And I told her:
“I honestly don't even know what that fucking feels like anymore. And I'm starting to think I never will.”
That's what broke something open.
Not because I need a man to pay my bills.
I can pay my fucking bills.
Not because I can't plan a date.
Jesus Christ, I can plan anything.
Not because I need somebody to create a life for me.
Look at the fucking life I've created.
It hurt because someone casually described reciprocity as though it were a perfectly normal thing a woman might expect.
And my body responded as though she had described some exotic country I had only ever seen in photographs.
Maybe that's another cost of being chronically capable.
People see what you can do and assume you don't need anyone to do anything for you.
She'll figure it out.
She always does.
She can handle it.
She always has.
And they're right.
I can.
But capability and desire are not the same thing.
Just because I can carry the groceries, pay the bills, build the business, plan the trip, make the decision, manage the crisis, clean the house, regulate myself, advocate for my health, soothe my own wounds, take myself to dinner and put myself back together after somebody breaks my fucking heart does not mean I want a relationship where I am expected to do all of those things alone.
There is a strange cruelty in admiring someone's strength while continuously giving her reasons she has to use it.
I don't need another person to admire how strong I am while handing me something else to carry.
I want someone who occasionally notices what I'm already carrying and says:
Give me that.
Not because I am incapable.
Because we're together.
And maybe that's what I've been trying to explain all along when I talk about wanting a partner.
I don't want a parent.
I don't want a rescuer.
I don't want someone to take over my life.
And I sure as fuck don't want to become somebody else's mother.
Adults need nurturing.
Of course we do.
I want to lay my head in someone's lap sometimes too.
I want my back rubbed.
I want someone to make me coffee.
I want to be held when everything hurts.
I want someone to tell me it's okay to stop working for a fucking minute.
I want to be sick and not immediately have to calculate how I am still going to manage everything.
I want someone to plan the dinner.
Choose the restaurant.
Book the trip.
Handle the thing.
And I want to do those things for him too.
That's the part people sometimes misunderstand about women like me.
I don't want to stop giving.
Giving is part of who I am.
I love deeply.
I nurture.
I teach.
I cook.
I plan.
I create.
I support.
I notice.
I fucking love taking care of the people I love.
I just don't want love to require me to disappear inside the giving.
There is a difference between nurturing someone and being assigned responsibility for their adulthood.
There is a difference between:
Baby me.
and
Let me hold you tonight. Tomorrow, when you need me, I'll hold you too.
There is a difference between being needed and being consumed.
And there is a difference between someone enjoying everything you provide and someone participating in creating the life from which both of you benefit.
Maybe that's why I have become so fucking tired.
Not because I have been doing too much.
Although, Jesus Christ, I have.
I'm tired because so much of what I've been doing has felt unreciprocated.
And there is something particularly lonely about giving another human being the very thing you are quietly starving to receive yourself.
Attention.
Care.
Understanding.
Patience.
Grace.
Touch.
Presence.
Accountability.
Effort.
A place to fall apart.
A chair.
And perhaps that's why the simplest question in the world has become one of the hardest for me:
Who holds the woman who holds everybody else?
For a long time, my answer has been:
I do.
And there is something beautiful about that.
I have learned how to stay with myself.
I have learned how to protect myself.
I have learned how to hear the younger parts of me.
I have learned how to regulate myself when my entire internal posse wants to either start a fucking war or surrender just to make the discomfort stop.
I have learned how to become my own safe adult.
That matters.
But self-regulation was never supposed to become a substitute for relationship.
Self-love was never supposed to mean never needing another human being.
And healing was never supposed to turn me into someone so self-sufficient that nobody ever has to show up for me.
I don't want that version of healing.
I want interdependence.
I want to know that I can stand on my own two feet and sometimes lean into someone without discovering there is nothing fucking there.
I want to be able to sit in my own chair without also being responsible for occupying everybody else's.
And maybe that's the part I'm finally ready to stop apologizing for.
I want someone to fucking show up for me.
Not because I can't survive without it.
I already know I can.
I've survived almost everything without it.
That's precisely the fucking point.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life proving that I can.
I Know I Can Fucking Do It. That's Not the Point.
There is something almost insulting about being told how strong you are when strength was never something you volunteered for.
You're so strong.
You're so independent.
I don't know how you do it.
You always figure it out.
Yeah.
Because what the fuck was the alternative?
I don't know that I ever experienced being capable as a strength.
My capability came from survival.
It came from being a little girl in a house where things needed to be done and the people responsible for doing them weren't always doing them.
It came from learning how to watch.
Anticipate.
Adjust.
Take care of people.
Keep things moving.
Make something out of whatever the fuck was available.
There wasn't always enough.
I made it enough.
And apparently, if you practice that long enough, you get really fucking good at it.
You become the person people trust in a crisis.
The person who knows what to do.
The person who can carry more.
The person who will figure it out.
The person who steps in when somebody else steps out.
And there's a reward for that, especially when you're young.
People praise you.
They depend on you.
You become useful.
Needed.
Reliable.
Maybe even exceptional.
Except nobody tells you what happens when being needed becomes tangled up with feeling valuable.
Nobody tells you that one day you might find yourself surrounded by adults who genuinely believe you can handle everything—
because you fucking taught them that you would.
That one hurts.
I have witnessed people throughout my life allow me to take on responsibilities that belonged to them with what sometimes appeared to be very little concern about what carrying those responsibilities was costing me.
And I participated in that.
That's important.
Because I don't want to write another story where everybody else is the asshole and I'm simply the woman unfortunate enough to encounter them.
I stepped in.
I picked it up.
I fixed it.
I said yes when I wanted to say no.
I did things because it seemed easier than waiting for someone else to do them.
I anticipated needs before anyone had to experience the discomfort of having them unmet.
I prevented consequences.
I restored order.
I kept shit moving.
Sometimes I probably didn't even give another person enough time to discover whether they would step up before I was already halfway across the yard with the fucking rake.
That's mine too.
Because over-functioning isn't only something other people do to us.
Sometimes it's something we do because uncertainty is harder to tolerate than exhaustion.
Sometimes doing it ourselves feels safer than finding out whether someone else will.
Sometimes capability becomes control dressed up as helpfulness.
Sometimes we're afraid that if we don't hold everything together, we'll finally discover what happens when we don't.
And sometimes—
we already know.
But accountability has to work in both directions.
Recognizing my over-functioning doesn't suddenly make somebody else's under-functioning my fault.
I can acknowledge:
I shouldn't have picked that up.
while also acknowledging:
You should have been carrying it.
Both can be true.
I can own that I crossed the property line without pretending the weeds weren't there.
I can recognize that I taught people I would tolerate certain things without deciding that somehow made those things acceptable.
And I can stop participating in the pattern without requiring everyone who benefited from it to agree with me.
That's probably one of the biggest changes in me.
The nice girl doesn't have to be fucking nice anymore.
She doesn't have to scream either.
She doesn't have to convince.
She doesn't have to punish.
She doesn't need everybody to understand her boundary.
She needs to set it.
And then she needs to stop taking it back.
I'm learning this in my body now.
There are still moments when every fucking shadow part of me shows up at once.
The people pleaser.
The fawner.
The rescuer.
The caretaker.
The hopeful one.
The chaser.
The runner.
The one ready to surrender just to make the conflict stop.
The one ready to burn the whole fucking thing to the ground.
The wise one.
The scared little girl.
The woman who has had enough.
They're all still here.
Healing didn't evict them.
I don't think it was supposed to.
What has changed is that they don't automatically get to drive anymore.
They can scream from the back seat.
They can tell me what they're afraid of.
They can tell me what they want.
They can tell me why this moment reminds them of something that happened twenty or thirty or forty years ago.
I can listen.
I can attend to them.
I can love the fucking shit out of them.
And still say:
I've got the keys.
That is different.
And maybe that is why something else has become so obvious lately.
When I am alone, I know what I want to do.
I fucking do it.
I write.
I work on my blogs.
I build my website.
I create.
I think.
I work on The Soma Alchemy Institute.
I imagine what could come next.
I attend to my body.
I listen to myself.
I move.
There is an entire fucking life trying to come through me.
And when a relationship requires so much maintenance that my creative energy repeatedly has to be redirected toward managing the relationship itself, something in me starts dying.
Not dramatically.
Incrementally.
Instead of creating, I'm processing another conflict.
Instead of building, I'm explaining.
Instead of writing, I'm recovering.
Instead of listening to what I need, I'm attending to what somebody else needs.
Instead of moving toward the life calling me forward, I'm standing in the same fucking yard explaining for the hundredth time why the weeds need pulled.
And that may be one of the hardest things for me to acknowledge:
I feel freer when I am no longer responsible for managing another adult.
Not because I don't love deeply.
Not because intimacy interferes with ambition.
Not because relationships are supposed to be effortless.
And certainly not because I want a life in which nobody ever needs anything from me.
I want to be needed sometimes.
I want someone to need my arms.
My comfort.
My wisdom.
My laughter.
My body.
My help.
My love.
I just don't want someone's need for me to require the abandonment of me.
There have been moments when I have wondered whether someone could sense this about me too.
That if I ever stopped circling—
if I ever stopped waiting—
if I ever stopped managing—
if I ever truly understood that I didn't have to stay tethered to someone else's unfinished work—
I might fucking fly.
I don't know what another person consciously or unconsciously fears.
That belongs to them, and I won't pretend to know.
But I know what I have felt.
Held back.
Delayed.
Distracted.
Pulled repeatedly away from my own becoming to manage somebody else's.
And now that the helicopter has landed, I'm noticing how much fucking fuel I have been spending flying in circles.
Imagine what I could do with that fuel if I actually went somewhere.
That thought doesn't make me afraid.
It makes me feel free.
And then, in the middle of all this, I asked the little girl inside of me what she thought.
I expected something profound.
Tender.
Maybe she'd tell me she was proud of me.
Maybe she'd finally look at this beautiful yard I've worked so fucking hard to create and say:
Look at what we did.
Instead, her response was basically:
Why do you work so fucking hard?
Well.
Fuck.
She had a point.
Life isn't a contest.
Nobody is standing at the end of it handing out awards for:
BEST FUCKING YARD.
And even if they were—
would it have been worth it?
All the exhaustion?
All the time?
All the hypervigilance?
All the fixing?
All the years spent making sure everything was okay?
All the moments I could have been living while I was busy maintaining?
Because maybe I've misunderstood my own yard too.
Maybe healing doesn't mean keeping my side immaculate.
Maybe that's just another fucking job I've assigned myself.
Maybe sometimes there are weeds.
Maybe the grass gets too long.
Maybe the dishes stay in the sink.
Maybe I don't answer the email.
Maybe I don't finish the blog.
Maybe I don't build anything that day.
Maybe I sleep in.
Maybe I sit outside.
Maybe I travel somewhere I've never been.
Maybe I spend an entire Sunday in comfortable clothes doing absolutely nothing impressive.
Maybe nobody needs me.
Maybe nobody praises me.
Maybe nobody looks at my life and says:
I don't know how you do it.
Maybe I don't fucking do it.
And maybe I'm still okay.
That's a strange possibility for someone whose identity has been forged through doing.
What if my life doesn't have to be evidence of how much I can carry?
What if the point isn't to prove that I can survive anything?
What if the little girl doesn't need adult me to build the most beautiful yard she's ever seen?
What if she just wants somewhere safe enough that she can finally put the rake down and fucking play?
I think about that now.
Because I have spent so much of my life proving that I can.
I can survive scarcity.
I can survive trauma.
I can survive heartbreak.
I can survive financial uncertainty.
I can survive illness.
I can survive other people's choices.
I can survive being alone.
I can survive losing things I thought I couldn't live without.
Okay.
I fucking get it.
I can survive.
Maybe the next part of my life isn't supposed to be another demonstration.
Maybe it's supposed to be lived.
And if somebody wants access to that life—
to my home,
my body,
my heart,
my energy,
my time,
my fucking yard—
then I don't need them to match my productivity.
I don't need them to become me.
I don't need another person working themselves into the ground beside me so we can call mutual exhaustion compatibility.
But I do need them to participate.
To respect what I've built.
To take responsibility for what belongs to them.
To understand that stepping into my life does not mean handing me theirs to manage.
And to know that if they walk into my yard and throw their shit everywhere, I am no longer going to quietly clean it up so they don't have to experience the consequences of what they brought with them.
Because I'm finally understanding something that should have been obvious a long fucking time ago:
I know I can do it.
That was never the question.
The question is why the fuck I should have to.
What I Actually Want
So if I am going to stop spending my life proving what I can survive, I probably need to answer a different question.
Not:
What am I willing to tolerate?
Not:
How much can I carry?
Not:
How long can I wait?
Not even:
How much do I love someone?
But—
What the fuck do I actually want?
And maybe that should be an easy question.
It isn't.
Because when you've spent enough of your life responding to what needs to happen next, desire can become secondary to responsibility.
You become incredibly good at identifying the emergency.
The problem.
The person who needs help.
The bill that needs paid.
The mess that needs cleaned.
The relationship that needs repaired.
The thing that needs fucking handled.
You learn to ask:
What needs to be done?
long before you ask:
What would feel good to me?
So what do I want?
I want something remarkably fucking ordinary.
I want a Sunday morning.
That's it.
I want to sleep in.
I want coffee in bed.
Maybe breakfast.
Maybe I make it this week.
Maybe he does next week.
Maybe neither one of us feels like cooking and we order something and eat it in bed while looking like absolute shit.
I want to go to the gym together sometimes.
Meal prep.
Take a walk.
Go somewhere in nature.
Sit outside.
Wear comfortable clothes.
Laugh.
Be ridiculous.
Watch something stupid.
Play a game.
Have sex.
Take a nap.
Do absolutely fucking nothing.
And enjoy being beside each other while doing it.
I don't need every moment to be profound.
I don't need every weekend to be some spiritual awakening.
I don't need luxury vacations every month.
I don't need someone performing romance like he's auditioning for a fucking movie.
I want a life.
A shared one.
Where neither person disappears inside the other.
Where there is a we without either person losing the me.
Where we have things we love doing together and things that belong entirely to ourselves.
Friends.
Interests.
Work.
Dreams.
Space.
And then we come back together because we actually fucking like each other.
Not because one person is chasing and the other is withdrawing.
Not because somebody has to manage the temperature of the relationship.
Not because we're afraid of what happens if we stop moving.
Just because—
There you are.
There I am.
What should we do today?
I want communication that doesn't require a fucking courtroom.
I want to be able to say:
That hurt me.
without the entire conversation immediately becoming a trial over whether I was allowed to be hurt.
I want someone who can say:
I don't agree with everything you're saying, but I want to understand why it landed that way.
And I want to be able to do the same.
Because I'm not always right.
I know that may come as a devastating fucking shock.
I can misinterpret.
I can become activated.
I can react from old wounds.
I can get defensive.
I can become sharp.
I can assume.
I can see something through the lens of everything that came before it.
I am a human being.
So is whoever stands beside me.
I don't want a relationship where nobody ever fucks up.
I want one where fucking up doesn't automatically require somebody else to become the villain.
This action belongs to you.
This reaction belongs to me.
This wound belongs to you.
This wound belongs to me.
This choice was yours.
This choice was mine.
And sometimes all of those things will collide in the same fucking room.
Fine.
Then we sit in the room.
Maybe we need an hour.
Maybe we need a night.
Maybe somebody needs space to regulate before we say something cruel simply because we're activated.
Healthy repair doesn't mean every disagreement has to be resolved before anyone goes to bed.
But it does mean we come back.
We don't leave the relationship emotionally bleeding on the floor and pretend nothing happened because enough time passed.
We return.
We talk.
We own.
We repair what is ours.
Together.
I want fairness around money.
Around the house.
Around planning.
Around responsibility.
Not rigid equality.
Fairness.
Those are not always the same thing.
I don't believe healthy partnership is 50/50 every fucking Tuesday.
Sometimes I'm going to have twenty percent.
Sometimes he is.
Sometimes I might have five.
Sometimes life is going to beat the absolute shit out of one of us and the other person will need to carry almost everything for a while.
That's love too.
If my partner is sick, injured, grieving, overwhelmed, or barely able to keep his head above water, I want to be able to say:
I've got us.
And mean it.
But I also want to know that if I am the one who goes down—
he's got us too.
That's reciprocity.
Not keeping a ledger.
Not:
I washed three dishes and you only washed two.
Not weaponizing who paid for dinner.
Not demanding identical effort regardless of capacity.
It's knowing there are two people responsible for the life being created.
Two adults.
Two imperfect nervous systems.
Two histories.
Two sets of wounds.
Two bank accounts or maybe one shared one or whatever arrangement actually works.
Two bodies that will sometimes fail.
Two people who will occasionally need more than they can give.
Two sets of hands.
That's what I want.
I want someone who participates in his own becoming.
Not someone who has finished becoming.
That person doesn't fucking exist.
I don't need enlightenment.
I don't need perfection.
I don't need somebody who has read every psychology book, listened to every podcast, attended every retreat, meditated on a mountain, healed every childhood wound and can recite his attachment style while fucking sage burns in the background.
Knowing the language isn't the work.
Information is not integration.
You can know why you do something and still keep doing it.
You can understand your trauma and still hurt people.
You can name your attachment pattern and still refuse repair.
You can learn regulation skills and never fucking use them.
You can understand exactly why you reach for something that numbs you and still keep reaching for it.
Self-awareness matters.
But eventually awareness has to enter behavior.
Otherwise it can become one more sophisticated way to explain why nothing changes.
I want someone willing to look at himself.
Not because I make him.
Not because I'm standing over him with another fucking worksheet.
Not because he's afraid I'll leave.
Because his life belongs to him.
His mind.
His body.
His wounds.
His choices.
His relationships.
His finances.
His habits.
His promises.
His becoming.
And mine belong to me.
I will absolutely stand beside someone doing that work.
I will encourage him.
I will love him.
I will celebrate him.
I will sit beside him when the work gets ugly.
I will remind him who he is when he temporarily forgets.
I will pull some weeds when he's too fucking exhausted to do it himself.
But I will not become his work.
And I will not do his work for him.
I want somebody who notices his weeds.
And if he doesn't notice them?
Fine.
I have fucking eyes.
I can say:
Hey, there's something growing over there.
But then I want him to look.
Maybe he disagrees.
Maybe he says:
That's not a weed. I planted that.
Great.
Then we fucking talk about it.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe it's his yard and I don't get to decide what belongs there.
That's part of this too.
My standards for my life don't automatically become laws governing somebody else's.
But if his weeds start crossing the property line and choking everything growing on my side?
Now we have a shared problem.
And I want someone who understands the difference.
Likewise, when my weeds start growing wild, I want someone who loves me enough to say:
Catherine, look at your fucking yard.
Not cruelly.
Not triumphantly.
Not because mine gives him an excuse to ignore his.
Not:
Well, you have weeds too, so mine don't matter.
Of course I fucking have weeds.
I'm human.
Tell me.
Show me.
Stand beside me while I look at something I might not want to see.
But don't use my imperfection as permission to avoid responsibility for yours.
Two people can have weeds at the same fucking time.
Imagine that.
And maybe that's the relationship I've been trying to describe for years.
Not a perfect one.
A participatory one.
A relationship where both people actually show up for work.
Where love isn't measured only by what someone feels.
It is visible in how they participate.
Where promises aren't treated like completed tasks.
Where intention matters, but behavior matters too.
Where circumstances can change a plan without erasing responsibility.
Where if you can't do what you said you would do, you communicate.
You don't leave the other person standing there indefinitely, slowly discovering through waiting that the plan has apparently changed.
Integrity isn't always doing exactly what you promised.
Life happens.
Integrity is participating in what happens next.
And I want fucking joy.
I almost forgot that one.
Not healing.
Not processing.
Not another lesson.
Not another relationship conversation.
Not another opportunity for personal growth disguised as emotional devastation.
Joy.
I want to laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
I want music playing while dinner burns.
I want spontaneous drives.
I want water.
Trees.
Sunshine.
Travel.
Sex.
Food.
Adventure.
Quiet.
I want inside jokes that make absolutely no sense to anybody else.
I want to look across a room and know exactly what somebody is thinking.
I want to get dressed up sometimes and feel fucking beautiful.
And I want sweatpants and messy hair and a face that hasn't seen makeup all weekend.
I want passion.
And peace.
I want depth.
And stupidity.
I want spirituality.
And jokes that are completely inappropriate.
I want conversations about consciousness and the soul and what the fuck we're doing on this planet.
And then I want to argue over what we're watching because one of us picked the last three fucking shows.
I want to live.
Not constantly analyze whether the relationship is surviving.
And maybe the most important thing I want is this:
I want to be with someone who does not require me to become smaller so the relationship can remain intact.
I don't want to silence myself.
Slow my becoming.
Abandon my dreams.
Reduce my standards.
Ignore what I see.
Or keep circling the same landscape because somebody else isn't ready to move.
And I don't want that for him either.
I don't want somebody shrinking himself to stay with me.
I don't want obedience.
I don't want control.
I don't want somebody terrified that becoming fully himself might make me leave.
If becoming who we genuinely are makes us incompatible, then that truth deserves to be known.
Because love cannot require two people to remain unfinished enough to continue fitting together.
So maybe what I want isn't extraordinary at all.
Maybe it's painfully fucking simple.
Two people.
Two whole, imperfect human beings.
Two lives.
Two histories.
Two yards.
Two chairs.
Two sets of hands.
Sometimes carrying ourselves.
Sometimes carrying each other.
Sometimes sitting beside the absolute fucking disaster we've created together and laughing because neither one of us has any clue what to do next.
But both still there.
Both looking.
Both willing.
Both participating.
I don't need someone to build my life for me.
I've already proven I can build.
I don't need someone to carry me through life.
I've already proven I can walk.
And I don't need another person to save me.
I need someone willing to stand beside me and pick up the other fucking hammer.
Because there can be two imperfect builders.
There can be crooked walls.
There can be mistakes.
There can be seasons when one person can barely lift a fucking nail.
There can be renovations.
There can be demolition.
There can be weeds.
There can be dishes in the sink and bills on the counter and hard conversations waiting until tomorrow.
None of that scares me.
But if we are going to call it our life—
if we are going to call it partnership—
if we are going to keep saying that we are building something together—
then there is one thing I am no longer willing to negotiate:
Both builders have to actually show up for work.
The Landing 🌿
So where the fuck does that leave me?
I don't know.
And maybe that's the most truthful answer I have written in this entire thing.
I don't fucking know.
I don't know what happens to this relationship.
I don't know what happens to him.
I don't know what happens to me.
I don't know whether two people who have loved each other can become two people capable of building together.
I don't know whether someday I will look back and realize this was the moment everything finally changed.
Or the moment I finally stopped waiting for it to.
I don't know whether I will ever fly back over that landscape.
Maybe I will.
Maybe I won't.
Maybe someday I look down and see something different.
Maybe the weeds have been pulled.
Maybe the debris has been cleared.
Maybe someone has finally stopped standing in the middle of his own yard explaining why the mess is there and has started deciding what the fuck he wants to do about it.
Maybe there is evidence of work I didn't organize.
Growth I didn't manage.
Changes I didn't request, remind, teach, monitor, or reward.
Maybe.
And maybe by then I don't want to land there anymore.
That is possible too.
Because his becoming belongs to him.
And mine belongs to me.
For once, I don't have to predict how the story ends in order to know what I need to do next.
I think that's what has changed.
I spent so much time believing that if I could understand enough, anticipate enough, communicate clearly enough, love deeply enough, wait patiently enough, teach effectively enough, forgive generously enough, and hold enough hope—
I could somehow secure the ending.
Maybe that's part of what all the over-functioning was trying to accomplish.
Not just keeping things running.
Trying to make uncertainty less fucking uncertain.
If I planned the date, there would be a date.
If I made the reservation, we'd go somewhere.
If I initiated the conversation, maybe we'd repair.
If I explained the pattern, maybe it would change.
If I picked up what was dropped, nothing would fall apart.
If I maintained both sides of the duplex, maybe I wouldn't have to find out what happened when I stopped.
There was safety in doing.
Exhausting, miserable fucking safety.
Because doing gave me the illusion that I could control what happened next.
And now I am standing somewhere I have spent most of my life trying desperately not to stand:
I don't know what happens next.
And I am okay.
Not perfectly.
Not every fucking minute.
There are still tears.
Sometimes simply fucking tears.
Waves of sadness.
Deep grief that rises seemingly out of nowhere.
Anger.
Resentment.
Moments when I hate what happened.
Moments when I'm angry with him.
Moments when I'm angry with myself.
Moments when I'm angry at the fucking world.
Moments when I want answers.
Moments when I miss what was good.
Moments when I grieve what never got the chance to become real.
Moments when some part of me still wants to get back into that helicopter and make one more pass.
Maybe if I explain it this way.
No.
I know where that flight goes.
I've flown it.
A hundred fucking times.
And this is where I keep coming back to the little girl.
The one I thought I was healing all these years by creating a beautiful life for her.
A safe home.
Stability.
A voice.
Choices.
Everything she didn't have enough of.
I wanted her to look around and know:
I fucking got you.
You're safe now.
I'm the adult.
You don't have to run the house anymore.
And I still mean that.
Maybe more than ever.
But I finally understand what she was trying to tell me when she asked why I work so fucking hard.
She doesn't need a better groundskeeper.
She needs me to put down the fucking rake.
So maybe I let the yard have some weeds.
Maybe I let the dishes sit.
Maybe I sleep late.
Maybe I travel.
Maybe I grieve.
Maybe I play.
Maybe I stop turning every goddamn experience into another opportunity to become better.
Maybe sometimes I just live it.
Because what if healing was never supposed to create a woman who needs absolutely no one?
What if that's just survival wearing prettier fucking clothes?
What if becoming capable of doing everything alone was never the finish line?
I don't want to become so healed that I no longer need another human being.
I want to become healthy enough that needing another human being no longer requires abandoning myself to keep them.
There is a difference.
A huge fucking difference.
I can love someone and still let the river move.
I can believe in someone's potential without organizing my life around whether they ever choose to embody it.
I can understand someone's wounds without volunteering to be wounded by them.
I can have compassion for why something is difficult without making myself responsible for making it easier.
I can miss someone and not chase them.
I can want something and still acknowledge that wanting it does not make it available.
I can hope.
God, I can fucking hope.
But hope does not get to impersonate evidence anymore.
And love does not require me to build a dam inside myself so somebody else doesn't have to move.
The river doesn't hate the rock.
It doesn't need to punish it.
It doesn't need to convince it that rivers are important.
It doesn't stand there demanding:
Move so I can become who I'm supposed to become.
The river moves because moving is what the river does.
Maybe that's where I am.
Moving.
Not away from someone as punishment.
Not toward somebody else.
Not even toward some perfectly mapped-out future.
Just no longer willing to remain dammed.
And if someday I find myself standing beside another human being again—whether that is someone I already know or someone whose face I cannot yet imagine—I don't need him to arrive with a perfect yard.
I don't have one either.
There will be weeds.
There will be shit.
There will be days when one of us is exhausted and the other one has to pick up the rake.
There will be times when I am triggered.
Times when he is.
Times when we misunderstand each other.
Times when old wounds enter new rooms.
Times when somebody says the wrong fucking thing.
There will be illness.
Stress.
Money problems.
Family problems.
Bodies that change.
Plans that fail.
Loss.
Grief.
Human fucking life.
I don't need perfection.
I need participation.
If your weeds are growing, know they are yours.
If mine are growing, tell me.
Lovingly.
And don't point at mine because you're trying to avoid looking at yours.
If I am sick, help me with my yard.
If you are sick, I'll help you with yours.
If neither one of us has the energy, maybe we let the fucking grass grow for a while.
And when we're ready—
we walk outside together.
That's it.
Maybe that's what partnership has always meant to me.
Not someone rescuing me.
Not someone completing me.
Not someone becoming responsible for my happiness.
Not two perfectly healed people who never activate each other's wounds.
Two imperfect human beings.
Two sets of hands.
Two people responsible for their own becoming.
And when life gets hard, neither one quietly resigning from the fucking job while continuing to occupy the chair.
I think that's why the empty chair matters so much now.
Because I don't want to fill it anymore.
I don't want to sit across from possibility and pretend it is participation.
I don't want to place promises in the chair.
Potential in the chair.
Future plans in the chair.
My professional understanding of why someone struggles in the chair.
My ability to see someone's wounded little boy in the chair.
My compassion in the chair.
My hope in the fucking chair.
If someone wants that seat beside me—
they have to sit in it.
Not perfectly.
Not constantly.
Not without ever needing to stand up, walk away, regulate, stumble, fuck up, or ask for help.
But actually fucking participate.
And if the chair remains empty?
Then it remains empty.
I am no longer going to exhaust myself pretending to be two people so I don't have to feel the loneliness of being one.
Because there is something far lonelier than sitting alone.
It is sitting beside someone and still having to occupy both chairs.
I don't know whether there will eventually be one chair or two.
I don't know where the river goes from here.
I don't know what the landscape looks like a year from now.
I don't know whether someone I love will choose to become an active participant in his own life.
I don't know whether another person will someday walk into mine.
I don't know what happens next.
And for perhaps the first time in my life—
I don't need to fucking know.
My job is not to predict the destination.
My job is to stop circling until I crash.
Land.
Refuel.
Listen.
Move when it is time to move.
Let my yard have some fucking weeds.
Let the little girl play.
Let myself be a human being instead of a human emergency-management system.
And allow other adults the dignity—and the consequences—of being responsible for their own lives.
Because I can carry a lot.
I know that.
I can survive scarcity.
I know that too.
I can make something out of almost nothing.
Hell—
I can make a fucking feast out of breadcrumbs.
But I don't want to spend the rest of my life proving it.
I don't want to survive love anymore.
I want to live inside it.
And if there is going to be another person living there with me, I don't need him to build the whole fucking house.
But I will not build both sides anymore and call what I created togetherness.
I will not occupy every empty chair.
I will not maintain every yard.
I will not keep a helicopter in the air until it crashes simply because I am capable of flying it.
And I will not confuse my ability to keep something alive with evidence that it is healthy.
I am done doing the work of two people and calling the result partnership.
Of course I can fucking do it.
I've been doing it my entire life.
That's not the point anymore.
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