I am sitting in the Atlanta Airport on layover. We are returning from Memphis - our home. While I was raised, as was my daughter, in Central New York; Memphis is home - completely. Memphis is where we have grieved, recovered from and through grief, gained a real sense of who we are becoming, and the place where we were loved unconditionally by so many amazing humans. Whenever we travel home, it will be to Memphis.
One of the humans that loved me in Memphis was Charlie*. Charlie is a now 45 year old veteran of two military organizations. Charlie was deployed for a good portion of our relationship and we fought mightily through the rest. I could not, until this trip home, figure out why I couldn't cut Charlie loose. I have little issue ending relationships with intimate and sexual others. For me, relationships that are over should be over unless shared children are involved. I like closed doors to stay closed,
There were no closed doors with or around Charlie. Despite the usual grown folk relationship issues - cheating, lying, etc. I could not seem to close that door. If Charlie reached out, I responded. I made myself available. Charlie would reach out after a "break up/break/blocking", every couple to three weeks - with overtures of love and of trying harder. Once I let him back in, Charlie would go right ahead and perform exactly the same behavior that caused the last break up again ... every. single. time. It was a ridiculous, seemingly endless, cycle.
My responsiveness and availability to and for Charlie made me feel stupid, desperate, unworthy, unloveable, unpartnerable and all other black woman tropes you want to throw in there. I promised myself every single time he disappeared after trying not that hard for several days - a week - that I would NOT allow him to reconnect again. I promised myself I would not keep doing this and each time he disappeared I blocked him. There are so many ways a person who wants back in can get back in.
The move to Maine was good. It took Charlie a solid three weeks to realize I had left Tennessee. And yet, when he reached out, I answered. I stopped blocking him because that seemed like something I had control over. I stopped being disappointed. I stopped beating myself up over this.
We landed in Philadelphia for a layover on our way home - to Memphis - and, you guessed it, Charlie texted me at the exact moment I turned on my phone. I hadn't heard from him in a month. I had not told him I was coming. I had not posted that I was going to Memphis. I don't now how he does this. He suggested the universe wanted us to connect. He might be right.
We had dinner. He paid. He has never paid for anything in our relationship ever. He kissed my hand. He said he let me go to Maine without a goodbye because he didn't believe I would leave Memphis. He said he believed I would be back. He suggested we go down the city hall on Monday and get married. Charlie was serious.
We did not get married. As a matter of fact, Charlie disappeared a day and a half later only to turn up and suggest that it was some how my fault that he didn't communicate with me. That is not new. What is new is that I didn't care. I had not been sucked in. I had said goodbye. And, I now understood why I couldn't close that door. Charlie, like myself, is disrupted. Charlie is a genealogical isolate. Charlie's disruption manifests in his inability to hold this relationship, that he may very well want - with me or someone else - together. I couldn't close the door on someone who was so much like myself. I couldn't stand the idea of leaving Charlie alone.
Charlie was raised by his grandparents. His mother had some 12 kids (exact number unknown) and an addiction issue and all of the sadness and circumstance that comes with all of that. Charlie's was executed when Charlie was a child. Charlie has no clue how to be in a relationship with himself let alone with anyone else. Charlie has far exceeded any statistical expectations of black boys from the delta who are born of and into nothingness. Charlie is a success story in every possible way. Charlie just wants a good wife, a nice smart black girl, a family and a way out of the perpetuation of self that he is living. Charlie desperately wants to be connected. Charlie has no tools, frameworks, examples... ability to do that. I don't know that I do either.
As I have moved into and through genetic reunion, Charlie has articulated a sense of wanting to do a DNA test. A potential genetic brother of Charlie's appeared and disappeared. I asked Charlie if he had connected with this person and he said something like "he never text me back". The DNA test never happened either. In the two years that I knew him, Charlie has had two genetic siblings die. Charlie could not grieve them. Charlie didn't know them.
Charlie has horror stories of his genetic mother and the damage she plagued in her offspring's lives. Charlie speaks with deep love and fondness of his grandparents whom he called mother and father. Charlie has a cousin/brother who was raised in that household whom Charlie not only disdains but is trying not to become.
Charlie has more genetic relatives available to him than I have currently or may have ever. And, Charlie is more disrupted, genealogically disconnected and emotionally severed than anyone I have ever known. I love that hurt child without reservation. I do not need to be in relationship with him. I sure as hell do not need to be married to him.
Charlie is blocked and will remain that way. This is not because I am angry. I am not even a little bit upset. Charlie gave me the greatest of gifts - reflection. Charlie held up a mirror that I really needed to gaze into. I needed to see, to confront, to engage, to wrap myself around my own disruption ... dislocation ... isolation ... bastard-ness. This is what is driving who and how I enter relationship. This is probably happening with all relatioships. It is definitely happening with intimate and sexual others.
Broken-ness is familiar to me. Dislocated people feel like even ground to me. I am preying on others who are hurting ... forcing them into the labor of trying to complete me. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to attract and be in relationship with people who are healing. I want to be in intimate relationship with people who are aware of their broken-ness and working to be whole. I want my whole-ness to be in relationship with someone else's whole-ness.
I want to say thank you to Charlie. Maybe someday I will be able to do that. For now, I am going to carry this gift with me and maybe be a little bit better at seeing my contributions to toxic relationships and situations. Perhaps I can now deconstruct my own perpetuation of self and cycle.
I didn't get married in Memphis. I didn't and never will marry Charlie. Today, I am very okay with that.
More soon...
Baby Girl (maybe a slightly better version)
*Charlie is a fictitious name and the examples are based on but are not tied to the actual experiences of any one person as to not appropriate nor misrepresent anyone's lived experiences or sense of self.
