Jack tells me that whenever I’ve gone on a trip without him, I come back just a little different. More confident, more relaxed, somehow stronger. Whenever he says this I change the subject, not because it’s not a compliment, but because I’m afraid of what that means for the rest of my life. If I come back independent, confident, and strong to the point that my husband is startled, it must mean I’m less these things in my daily life. I’ve written on this blog before about my insecurities about being a wife, my fears that maybe I only married because I thought I needed a man, and that I’ll never be truly brave and strong.
A couple weeks ago I stayed home, and Jack went on a trip, which I don’t recall happening in our marriage before. As I dropped him off at the airport a 5am, I wondered if he would come home to a more independent and confident wife.
The first day, I reveled in my aloneness for a good 10 hours, then I got bored and lonely. So I invited a friend over for dinner.
Wait, what?
Spending time with people is usually a much more complicated process for me. I’m never sure if I’m lonely or just exhausted. I don’t know whether I want to see people or just see them on facebook while a movie runs in the background. I hem and haw and fret and just don’t know what I want. And eventually I decide to see people, or not see people, but I don’t feel at ease. I spend the evening thinking that maybe I would have preferred the opposite.
But for some reason, on the day Jack flew to Boston I knew that what I was feeling was loneliness, and what I wanted was company. To know what I wanted was, I’m sorry to say, the strangest feeling.
The whole week without Jack was marked by me knowing myself… as if my desires had cleared their dusty throats and started singing with shocking clarity. And I was like, wait, who are you guys and what is that beautiful song?
I made french toast for dinner three nights in a row. I left dishes in the sink overnight, not worrying about whether I’d regret it in the morning because I knew I wouldn’t. I had 10 people over for a study group and loved every minute.
It was such a delight-filled week, but I was also scared. Jack would return, and I didn’t want to have to say, “the week you were gone was one of the best of my life.” I brought my ambivalence in to my counselor, asking her why just the presence of Jack (who is a very kind man) muddles my own thoughts and desires. And we talked and came to some realizations, and I cried, and I left with more wonder and joy and sadness than I had come with. PEOPLE, THIS IS WHY I’LL BE IN THERAPY TWICE A WEEK FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. That’s $12,000 a year, if you’re curious. But it’s worth it. It really is. Go to therapy.
The day before Jack came home, I read a chapter from a book called She Who Is, by feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson. The chapter was on conversion. Johnson writes about how religious conversion is often talked about in terms of “disowning oneself,” but this language is only really useful to those in power.
She writes:
If pride be the primary block on the path to God, then indeed decentering the rapacious self is the work of grace. But the situation is quite different when this language is applied to persons already relegated to the margins of significance and excluded from the exercise of self-definition. For such persons, language of conversion as loss of self… functions in an ideological way to rob them of power, maintaining them in a subordinate position to the benefit of those who rule.
Okay, there’s more, but take a deep breath. If you’re anything like me, your stomach is churning and your heart is saying “more!” and “stop!” simultaneously.
Johnson continues:
Analysis of women’s experience is replete with the realization that within patriarchal systems women’s primordial temptation is not to pride and self-assertion but rather to the lack of it, to diffuseness of personal center, overdependence on others for self-identity, drifting, and fear of recognizing one’s own competence.
(Johnson, She Who Is, 64)
And my first thought after reading this was, NO FUCKING WONDER humility never worked for me. I remembered myself at 20, a new convert, presenting myself and my new faith to roommates, family, and friends. I tried to appear joyful (because that’s the image I was supposed to project), but was dying of fear inside. A few people, mostly men, men who were probably used to power and privilege, scoffed or laughed or bragged about themselves in response to me. It was painful and infuriating. But I thought they would come around if I was more humble, if I listened to them and laughed at their jokes and was nice and gentle.
When really, I probably should have thrown some tables around.
Diffuseness of personal center. Overdependence on others for self identity. Fear of one’s own competence.
It’s heartbreaking to admit that all these phrases describe me in relationship, even in my marriage to a truly humble man—the kind of man who, when I told him that I was more free and alive in his absence, responded, “let’s keep working on a way to let you be free and alive when I’m around, too.”
I do have parts of myself that are capable of harming others for my own benefit. But most of my sin comes out of the belief that my identity is tied up in how others think of me, that my opinion of myself is secondary, and that I should check with someone else before doing, thinking, or even feeling anything.
Before reading this Johnson excerpt, I kind of worried that I was going about personal healing all wrong. That all this therapy was “secular,” and God was impatiently tapping his foot waiting for me to get back to humbling myself and diffusing my personal center (God-construct, anyone?). But Johnson gives me hope.
There’s theology and then there’s theology. Some theology is like, “Oh, so that’s what perichoresis means. Interesting,” and some theology makes you go, “Holy fuck, maybe God is good to me.”
