by Sheila Heti
Maybe motherhood means honoring one’s mother. Many people do that by becoming mothers. They do it by having children. They do it by imitating what their mother has done. By imitating and honoring what their mother has done, this makes them a mother.
I also am imitating what my mother has done. I am also honoring my mother, no less than the person whose mother feels honored by an infant grandchild. I am honoring my mother no less. I do as my mother did, and for the same reasons; we work to give our mother’s life meaning.
What’s the difference between being a good mother and being a good daughter? Practically a lot, but symbolically nothing at all.
*
On the other hand, wouldn’t my grandmother want us to be happy? Say, after our work was done? My mother retired this summer, after working nonstop and so hard all the way through school, from grade one until she retired in her late sixties. She achieved what she set out to do—the exact plan her mother put in place for her life. She should be at peace, happy—but she’s not. Even though she did it—she fulfilled her destiny, and is now in its aftermath. She should be in heaven, free—if heaven is a place where your destiny is complete, and you are free of any destiny. There cannot be happiness when you are fulfilling a destiny. Happiness is the opposite. Happiness will have to wait.
BLEEDING
Today all I want to do is sob and leave everything. It’s two days before my period, and I woke up in a fury, then Miles and I argued. I have a heart full of sadness and wishes. Everything feels like tears. He makes me feel like tears. But without a stress on the mind, there is no mind. Is what I am feeling the hormonal sadness?
yes
If only there was some good in it. Is there?
yes
Is the benefit that one stays away from other people?
yes
And one is also more sensitive. Both of these things are good for writing. I write more before my period than at any other time. I want to kill that ice cream truck with its odd, sad song! With its terrible, Portuguese song of tragedy. Will my sadness be gone by tomorrow night?
yes
It should have been gone already! It should have been gone yesterday, in fact. The fight with Miles prolonged it. Why do couples have so many problems with each other? Has anyone ever adequately answered this question?
yes
Was it a woman who did?
yes
Did a man give a good answer, too?
yes
Was the man’s answer basically about blaming the woman?
yes
And did the woman’s answer blame the man?
no
She blamed herself?
yes
Did the man blame the woman for her frailties?
yes
And did the woman just guiltily condemn herself?
yes
Would things work out better for men and women if women didn’t just guiltily condemn themselves?
yes
I’m sorry. Are my frailties to blame?
yes.
*
I have been in a nervous panic all afternoon, not having heard from Miles. There is a trembling inside me, a feeling he will completely reject me, or that I don’t know what’s going on, or that he’s mad. But why should his anger bother me, if I have done nothing wrong? Still, there is a deep panic inside.
There’s a huge part of me that wants to please him, that feels I cannot, then gets angry when he doesn’t show me what I feel is love. I wonder if it will get better, or if it can’t be solved, and that as much as we care about each other, we won’t be able to make it work. I feel sorry for all the men who came before him, whose feelings I didn’t consider. I have a way of reducing the humanity of every man I’m with to a manageable size, and it’s something I mustn’t do.
I just feel so tired, so worn out from all our fighting. I think we might separate soon, and he’ll go off without me. I just want to break it off because I can’t stand the idea that this will happen out of my control. Yet I want him here at home to love me—not to be away! I want another man who will love me more. No, I only want him.
But what to do about this tremulous feeling inside?
*
I asked myself before falling asleep what I should do about my life, and when I woke in the middle of the night, this phrase accompanied me from my dream: You need to control yourself if you are to have more meaning in your life.
Easier said than done. He woke me up this morning by asking me what I wanted from St. Lawrence Market. I said a can of tomatoes. Then he got upset because he said he had made me tomato sauce a week ago and I had let it go to waste. After he left, I cried.
*
When Miles came in through the front door with groceries from the market, I saw that what was between us was real, and not a construction of my mind. I told him that things would be better from now on, but he didn’t believe me. Also I know it’s not true—I am powerless before my emotions. And I often want to retaliate against him for causing me so much pain.
There is no coming to consciousness without pain.
The pain that opens the door.
*
The simplest thing to do with pain is to deceive yourself into thinking it offers you an opportunity: by making it into a game, it becomes something less by which you suffer. By playing with it, you can turn it into the category of things you pick up, and can therefore put down. Thinking about your pain puts it in the category of the imaginary. But pain is not imaginary. It is wrong to think that the thoughtful escape it, or the very tricky, or the very wise. Those who skip town do not escape it, and those who skip between lovers do not. Drinking is no escape; gratitude lists are not. When you stop making a project of trying to escape your pain, it will still be there, but also a realization: that the pain is only as much as you can handle—like a glass of water filled to the brim, the water hovering at the meniscus, not running over.
*
Last night, I dreamed about three men—one representing Miles, one representing an ex-boyfriend, and one representing a man in New York. I saw my ex-boyfriend—and it felt simple between us, and there were no vetoes there. The New York one—I was told by an angel that this man was fine, but the angel had seen him cheating on girlfriends before, so he was dismissed. The angel said he had done his best in putting together Miles for me. I said there was friction, and he agreed: Wasn’t the friction good? The friction was a good part of the recipe. I felt an intelligence up close to me, saying: I have made this person for you. Why are you rejecting him?
The question you must always ask is, Is what I am suffering characteristic? For there are pains that are characteristic, and pains that are uncharacteristic—characteristic suffering and uncharacteristic suffering, characteristic loneliness and uncharacteristic loneliness. Some suffering feels characteristic, it’s deep and familiar in your bones. Other suffering feels alien, like it should not be happening to you.
What would be more characteristic for me: the suffering of being with Miles, or the suffering of being without Miles; the suffering of having children, or the suffering of being without? When I ask myself this question, the answer is clear: the suffering of being with Miles; the suffering of being without kids. We all know which suffering is meant to be ours. In every life, there is a quality of suffering. I have never before in any of my relationships felt such characteristic suffering as I do with Miles. With Miles, the suffering feels meaningful—like something of significance could be born.
It is true that he has cleared away so much somehow, and that I am down to the bare bones, the very roots of my existence, living so close to all the things that are most real and mine. I don’t think it’s anything he is consciously doing, or something I could point to. Maybe it’s just finding something so endless.
*
I always believed there were several possible lives I could be living, and they were arranged in my head like dolls on a mantelpiece. Daily I would take them down, one by one, dust them off
, and examine their contours and compare. The life I was living felt no different from one of my doll-on-the-shelf lives, no different in plausibility or detail. I felt I could as easily be living one of those other lives as much as the life that was mine—and that if I was to make the decision to lead one of those lives, it would be as simple as swapping dolls.
How had I confused my life with a doll? It would have taken great force of reason—which I did not have—to convince me that even if I was to run away, it would be the exact same life—a continuation of this present one, and my same self in it. Those lives I pulled down from the shelf of my mind never contained the ashes of this present life, or the sorrow or consequences of deserting this one for that one, or any uncertainty about my new choice. But I did not think too deeply about any of this—it was just my obsession. I dusted and turned those other lives around, as if to give them up would be to give up my only security in the world, leaving me alone in the dark with nothing.
Happily we run away from even the brightest and best things in our lives, because we are curious about what else is out there. And what else is out there? Just more of the same, whichever way you look. Whichever way you turn, it’s the same life you’re facing. It’s the same life that’s facing you.
Miles never fantasizes about other lives, and he can’t understand this part of me. What a waste of time, he once said. If you’re not actually going to do anything about it …
But in some ways life is easier for him. It will always be easier for a man to know what he wants, and live his life accordingly. It is unfair of him to compare himself to me. Whenever I try to explain myself, he always says, What’s holding you back? I cannot point to anything. What holds me back is my actual freedom—my reluctance before the void. Reluctant to make my own meanings, in case I make them up badly, afraid of being laughed at, a fool, apart. No one wants to be shunned. There is only one place to live, a great thinker once said, and that is in civilization.
Outside of civilization is where you get eaten by bears.
Always, having accepted that I want everything to change, I suddenly realise I do not. I want the dream of leaving, not leaving itself. The dream of other lives, not any other life. The trick is not to trick myself with too much dreaming, but to let my dreaming to take me to the uttermost edges of desire and longing, without actually advancing too far—for my fantasies to only stretch so far, before snapping me back into my life.
*
I know Miles hates me right now. I could feel it in the air when I walked out the door, and I can feel it in the air, as I walk down the street. I want to resolve things and go home. But I don’t think he’s at home missing me. I think he’s at home hating me. He says I don’t care about him, which is wrong! He looks for evidence that I don’t care, or regards my moods as proof that I don’t. He regards my carelessness—which applies even to my own life—as proof that I don’t value him, when I’m as careless with myself and my own property! I don’t have a systematic way of doing things. I’m not thinking about the implications of everything, all of the time!
It’s possible there is only one way out—through the exit. But I don’t want to take this route. What if I look back and realise that I was wrong; that Miles was not my tormentor, but my saviour? Perhaps I have to accept the great crashing of one planet into another, which is us, and the possibility that we will destroy each other. Or perhaps I have to change my approach—practice acceptance, quiet desperation, find joy in the situation and remain. The oracle said follow truth. But I can’t speak the truth to him about anything! I grow moody instead, which he hates. The only way to leave would be with a steely heart—which is to say, without hope. But I love him, and am bonded to him—bound to him in so many ways, and I love to hold him—whatever parts of him come near, whenever they do, in their sweetness.
I have a hard time seeing both the good and the bad at once. Maybe that is the way forward: in every moment to see the good and the bad, rather than flipping back and forth. Sometimes I feel so cold, other times I feel so loving and warm. It’s a new year, and I want to do things differently this year: to resolve my ambivalence, or at least be able to live with it; to be an upstanding person he can trust; and be someone who takes joy in things—though it may be too late to change. Obviously I am middle-aged. Middle-aged! I am just waiting out my days until my childbearing years have passed, and I can make good decisions again. Or perhaps make good decisions for the first time in my life.
Until then, there is nothing to do but get back into bed with him, where I know my body will hold his with gratitude. Could it really be that simple—just get out of my head and into my body? Get up close to his? I don’t have faith in anything anymore. How am I ever going to get it? What two opposing things have to be brought together, in order to finally trust myself again?
*
When I got into bed, I cried in Miles’s arms, then we slept. Sometimes I cry such hot tears just to feel how much I love him, and how tenderly I feel towards him, and how deeply I want him to be mine, and how awful it would be if he wasn’t. If he left me, I would be heartbroken—it guts me to even think of it. But why should I think it? The way I have been acting, I feel possessed. It’s really not me, but the worst, most insecure parts of me. I have to respond from the other parts. He said, I will do anything to save this relationship except walk on eggshells around you—but walking on eggshells is what I have been doing around him! He insists we only fight like this before my period, but I cannot be sure—I’m afraid to trust his interpretation of things. Even if it’s true, I don’t want to believe it. I don’t know what to do if the problems aren’t with him, but with me.
*
Waking this morning, I realized the extent to which I had been relying on Miles to make me happy. How great and huge my expectations for his behaviour have been. And how little responsibility I was taking for my own happiness. I see now how your life can only be what your insides are. Your life sits in your lap. I saw my life literally sitting there.
Teresa said that many of the relationships that are most solid and long-lasting are tumultuous at the start. I know that even with all our pain, I never want to be away from him for very long. I must love him, then. I must love what is. Love really does grow. A man becomes your family, and just as your family was chosen for you, so it seems as if the man who sticks around was birthed into your life from the very matter of the universe, no different from a howling baby. At least, that’s the way it was for me the first time I saw Miles—like the universe stretched the way it does when a new life comes into being and is born.
On a certain level, you can never explain love. You never can know why. At a certain point, you have to accept the strangeness of love—the outsiderness of it compared to everything you have experienced before.
*
Now it seems you are at the point where being with Miles can’t be debated. You have actually been in that place all along. Now that you have your mate in life, just move forward in your work and be glad for his existence. Don’t expect Miles to fill in the hours for you, but be grateful that the hours are available for you to fill in as you like. He provides a constant stimulation for your desire, so you are not led into lostness, looking for other men. Our aloneness is so full, I never feel the need to have anyone else to fill up the empty spaces, for there are no empty spaces. And I so much love to be in his arms.
Sometimes we have so much anger towards each other. But we should be grateful to each other, for having helped each other—with however much pain—come to this new place, whatever this new place is. Instead, we hate each other. It’s impossible to feel grateful.
Yet the man who doesn’t leave, even when things are difficult—this reassures you. What is constancy? What is duration? My father’s mother once told me with pride, I kept my marriage. When I asked her what the secret to a lasting marriage was, she said, You eat crow.
*
When Miles arrived home, after me yelling at him on the phone to come home, it wa
s three in the morning and we hadn’t spoken all day. All day it had just been awful, and the night before was awful too, and we just folded ourselves into each other’s arms. I don’t know if I slept or he slept or neither of us slept, but at a certain point he pulled up my nightie and began sucking my tits, then he went down on me, then he fucked me from behind, then he wanted to put his cock into my ass, but I didn’t really want him to, yet I let him, but it felt bad, like I was shitting. I felt nervous and I told him this. Relax, sweetie, he said. I wondered why he wanted to go in my ass when he hadn’t done it in so long. As soon as he got deep enough, I realized I didn’t want to go any further or for him to come in my ass—I didn’t want to give him that much right then—so I pulled away. He said, I’m about to burst, and he jerked himself off while I lay there and pulled up my nightie and fondled my tits. His eyes were closed as first, but when he opened them and saw what I was doing, he gave a great groan and closed his eyes and came.
Later, when I went to wash myself off, I found a bit of red blood on the tissue, like a teardrop.
Mairon once said, You can handle discomfort in your friendships; why can’t you handle them in your romantic relationships? She was pointing out that I wanted zero discomfort. She said, You have to increase your tolerance for discomfort. You should be more courageous. What are you going to find if you run away? If you stay, maybe you’ll see how strong you are—how much you can take, how it’s okay to be hurt.
Why do I listen to her? Because she’s my friend? Yet all the women I know say similar things. And I say the same things back. We encourage the craziest behavior in each other. She said, I think our marriage is harder for me than it is for him.
Like soldiers nudging each other into battle, we nudge each other into relationships. Stay there, we say. Don’t run from the front lines. That’s what we are trying to convince each other of—that these are the front lines of life. If you run from the front lines, what good is your life? We encourage each other, Go on—let yourself be maimed, annihilated, destroyed.