The first tenderness, an introduction
…in autumn you realize: the greatest bravery is in being translucent like glass
All that fragility, lightness, signs of others' imprudent fingers,
The greatest generosity – is to gift inner warmth amassed,
True maturity – is in being able to trust, remember, be afraid;
It is customary in our lands to come back in autumn,
The time of absence has passed.
Ksenia Zheludova [1]
Eight years ago, my life changed dramatically.
In the space of a month, I filed for a divorce, returned to my mom's home, and changed job. The first change hurt, the second one burned with shame, while the third one became an epic challenge: in my little cosy swamp, a rowing contest began.
I got lucky. I joined an editorial team that was going to create a start-up project for women on a major internet news portal in Belarus, TUT.BY, winning my place over a crazy number of other applicants. In the next two and a half years, I worked like Carrie Bradshaw: writing bold news stories about relationships. Those narratives, full of irony, banter, and reassurance, implied that I knew everything about men. When I met my future husband, I realized after a while that I knew nothing about them. My swagger was meaningless.
And it was precisely because when we broach the subject of real, living people, there is no absolute and constant knowledge, and every year spent side by side changes one's worldview. What seemed normal before, ceases to be so, and what was once perceived as a wonder, becomes humdrum. Conclusions and lessons of the past stop being treasured like a museum masterpiece, artifacts from your personal hall of military glory. Where once they served and protected you from harm, now they prevent you from moving forward.
Three years after my divorce (to the day actually) I got re-married. Some more time passed and my husband and I bought a house with a wonderful garden, and we moved from Minsk to the suburbs to listen to apples fall and grass grow.
We became parents.
I continued to write about love and relationships, but more and more often I felt like I was losing the thread of my topic, like sand slipping through my fingers, like it was asking me to leave it in peace. I came to the conclusion that I no longer want to write about love. Other worries seemed more significant, more poignant, and demanded more attention and strength. What is love for… what could I say? “If something changes, I'll let you know”.
I was tired of worrying about love. Tired of scrutinizing relationships, as if they were mistakes on a dictation assignment (do you pair words “family” and “home” with “want” or “have to”?), tired of thinking in perspectives (“Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?”),[2] tired of asking questions, the answers to which are unclear for me, but which I know already I'm still not going to like.
I realized that the only person who would never abandon me and whom I'd never have to dance around for – is me, myself, and I. I have no need to doubt my own desires, nor to prove to myself the truth about my own pain: for me, everything is exactly the way I feel it.
I can trust myself.
I can count on myself.
Nobody will ever love us the way we want – they will love us whatever way they can. Our dependence on other people and their changing moods doesn't make us happy – it makes us convenient. We are so used to adapting and acting as a buffer, to controlling our inner resentment and turning our anger into a silence that it inevitably leads to an explosion. The moment it all goes to hell is only a matter of time.
It is completely exhausting to think for others, feel for them, and predict their reactions. It is also quite useless: to live the life of others instead of doing something beautiful of your own.
It is boring and bleak to live in a world where your cheerfulness depends on how well you adjust to someone else's view of you. It is all right to end relationships and quit jobs that do not bring you value anymore or jobs that you cannot devote yourself to anymore either. It's not because it will be more exciting or interesting with other people or at another place, it's simply because here, at this particular place, it definitely won't be exciting or interesting anymore.
It is normal to be quite overwhelmed by the question (often put to celebrities) “What's your highest and most significant achievement in life so far?”. It's normal to look beyond the voice asking and quiz in return what right they have to ask; moreover, what have they done with their lives so far.
In the world where I celebrate myself, I no longer wait for someone to come and take care of me, I create my own joy. I take myself by the hand and lead myself to where I can feel the things I long for – the trustworthiness of “my people”, the taste of hot shish-kebab, or a sense of light-headedness after a fresh haircut.
In the world where I celebrate myself, I tell myself: I will get to this later, this will be done a couple of months from now, and this one I will never do, because for some things never is the best time possible.
