The Limbo of Our Lives
During the sometimes awkward "getting to know you" phase, my new therapist asked: Can you tell me about a time when you felt most like yourself?
I reinterpreted it to a time when I felt most free and immediately pictured myself in Seattle in 2019. I had traveled there for work, and all my coworkers had returned home. I came and went as I pleased, working here and there at cute cafes and going on sightseeing adventures on a whim.
If you asked me what that time was like, I would tell you, like I told friends and family then, that I felt like a "free elf."
But if you asked me on a deeper level—cue the TikTok background music—I'd tell you that gaining the privilege of flexibility had made me come alive. At this point, I had lived alone for six years, but something about exercising my freedom in another city awakened me to the type of life I wanted for myself. I could be myself, by myself, when and how I wanted.
I hadn't realized yet that the type of life we want can—and often will—change. It can get snatched away by circumstance. The road to it can be paved with new passions and unexpected hurdles.
And the life I wanted could be (and would be) incredibly different from what others wanted for me.
My therapist responded, "What I'm hearing is...it sounds like autonomy is really important to you."
Beginnings
This inherent need for autonomy is likely why marriage wasn't on my radar.
Societal and religious conditioning is likely why I still assumed it would happen eventually. It was and wasn't in my plans.
By the time I married at age 31 (I "joked" that I still felt too young for such a thing), my husband and I had fully developed frontal lobes and a healthy respect for each other's individuality.
Well-meaning people gave what we recognized as disturbing pre-marital advice: We always had to agree. We always had to go with what the other person—especially the all-powerful husband—wanted. Who we are is who we should always be. Our days spent with our friends and having interests outside of our relationship—especially for me, the soon-to-be downtrodden wife—were over.
Our working, mature brains (thank God!) knew that change was part of the deal. We retained our rights to change our minds, believing that freedom of thought doesn't go out the window when commitment comes into the picture. We were us, but he was still him, and I was still me.
He has watched me start a research project to win a debate against a friend, only to end up on the other side (not his).
He has listened to me make a million "if only" statements. If only I had changed my mind before now, what might have been? (He says there's not a single "what if" that matters to him.)
We'd always be us, even if unexpected shifts introduced waves into our calm sea. We said we'd always be for each other no matter how it turned out, and we still are—the one up that didn't go down.
But we made a lot of assumptions. We assumed we would go along with every status quo marriage rule that was presented to us. We assumed we would fight our first year. We assumed we'd have children. They told us we would. They told us we should.
Endings
For better and worse, I've learned much about love and relationships just from looking around.
And when I look around, I see people changing. I see people changing their minds about everything from personal sexual ethics to whether to keep dating apps installed, from having children to staying with someone they used to love.
No one got married with plans to divorce (most people don't), but I've seen more love story endings in the last couple of years than I can count on one hand, all because something or someone changed.
That's life and love, as I've witnessed it. We try, and sometimes we stop trying. We do until we don't. We keep trying for the right reasons and some of the wrong ones. We stop trying for many of the same complicated reasons. Life is a lottery, and love is a gamble. It costs you your heart—and sometimes your pride—to play.
They made assumptions; we all did. We assumed they'd make it. We assumed the friend groups would stick together. We assumed they'd have children.
A painfully high number of us have watched friends get married and joined in on their jokes about what their future children would be like, only to find that bringing those children into their lives proved complicated years later.
We all hoped life (and fertility) would be simple. We expected to want something and then have it. The children we believed our friends would have were as good as done in our minds. In faith, we believe they still are.
These are lives in limbo, as all our lives are, weathering the ups and downs and weighing decisions. To choose a beginning or decide on an end?
I've been there. So many times, I have grieved an ending that I asked for.
I remember being on the other end of a phone line where a man I used to love mumbled something, implying that the lifespan of our relationship was entirely up to me. Before I hung up, I ended the life of a relationship that still had love running through its veins.
I was better for it, but it wasn't what I had planned. It was my choice in the end, but it wasn't what I wanted to happen. He told me the end wasn't what he had planned, either. I realized that he had no plans at all.
I realized that I had moved forward after all of my worst days. I had even moved states. I realized that it had been four years since the event I thought would end me. I could survive this ending, too.
Life is a lottery, and love is a gamble. It costs you your heart—and sometimes your pride—to play.
In Between Times
I'm starting to think that life is a series of assumptions we make and break.
I've assumed so much about others. I've assumed so many things about myself and how my life would unfold.
A few months ago, a friend found grainy photos of us at one of those contemporary Christian music concerts put on by a type of megachurch we wouldn't step foot into now. I wish I could insert the sound of how we laughed. How little we recognized ourselves.
We ask so many more questions now. We have deeper lives and thoughts now. But there was a time when we barely scratched the surface. There were years when we didn't ask about anything—we just assumed.
The way people assume that what they want out of life must be what I want, too.
A few people have been vulnerable and honest enough to admit to me that they would be unbelievably bored without children, that they have no idea where in this world they would find fulfillment if they didn't bring children into it.
This is the type of insight I've been searching for in the many, many books about parenthood I've read this year, and still, I've learned nothing—except that I am absolutely not bored.
They don’t believe me when I say I’m not bored or unfulfilled and don't ever have to be. ...not unless you take all of the art off of every wall, block every person I’d ever meet, burn every book, close access to every creative pursuit, and take every plane out of the sky.
I'm glad they know what they want. I sincerely hope they get it and all the resources they need to thrive as a parent. As for me, I’ve never been this ambivalent about anything in my entire life.
I've tried earnestly to imagine this dull life that horrified them so, and I can't see it for myself. There are so many corners to turn around in this life; all I can see is all of them.
On a recent episode of the Saved By the City podcast titled, "Should I Become a Mom?" the host, Katelyn Beaty, questioned whether she should pursue motherhood as a single Christian woman who would be turning forty soon.
Her podcast guest, Elizabeth Oldfield, said this about life and decisions in general: "Everything most meaningful in life is risky. The most soul-defining things in life are also the riskiest, and there are no guarantees. That's the reality that we live with."
I hate that she's right.
The therapist who uncovered that having autonomy makes me feel most like myself also helped me realize that I make fervent attempts to manipulate life and control narratives. Sometimes, my mastermind plan comes together. But more often than not, some surprise adds a twist to my plotline.
I've even added a few twists to other people's plotlines. I have a few more that I'm writing into the story right now.
I can only hope they'll learn to give me and others the space and grace to change our minds, reintroduce ourselves, and choose our own endings. This is what I'm trying to give myself.
I haven't entirely relinquished control, but I might as well. After all, change is a promise. What can we do but accept the malleable nature of humans? What good is it to wish that love wasn't so delicate? What is there to do but embrace life for the mystery it is?
