Nice house

This Christmas I got to see my brother in law's new place.  He and his wife have a huge house in the suburbs, in the sort of place where the idea of a pedestrian is laughable and the driveways are full of expensive, new vehicles.

I had no idea how to talk about the house.

I know I am supposed to say it is a nice house.

And it certainly is pretty, tidy, and well built.  No denying any of that!  But it makes me feel so odd to be in such an enormous place.  Six bathrooms.  So many ovens.  Two washer and dryer sets, only a dozen steps from one another.

My brain is saying that nobody needs all this stuff and all this space.  More than that, the money involved in making these ridiculous extras (the extra washer and dryer is the thing I can't get over) could have done so many more useful things for people with so much less money.

It isn't as though my brother and sister in law have done anything wrong - they earned their money, they bought a gigantic house that they are really excited about.  It is more that being in such a place really slams home to me just how warped the system is that people have so much, especially since they aren't even the super wealthy.  They don't have ten million dollars, much less 100 billion dollars.  Their wealth is nothing compared to some, and they are just existing in a system they did not create.

But it still leaves me at a loss.  To ignore it, to just pay bland compliments, feels like being complicit in the extreme disparity of wealth in the world.  On the other hand I can't see how I help anything by turning a house tour into a rant about wealth inequality either.

If I am honest, it is also just an artifact of how much money I have.  I know plenty of people who must feel the same way seeing my condo simply because I own it and they see no prospect of ever having that much wealth for themselves.  Any time you are out of your element in terms of social status and wealth it feels weird.

Am I just creating all this because I feel strange being around people who have so much more than me?  Maybe.  Hard to say. 

Small family Christmas

For many years now I have always done the big family Christmas thing.  Sometimes I was up north with my parents, sometimes I was in Toronto with Wendy's parents, but we invariably did the big thing.

Not this year.

We did a family celebration with Wendy's family on the 23rd, but for the 25th it will just be me, Pinkie Pie, and Wendy.  We are going to sit at home, play some Gloomhaven together, and make homemade pizza.

It is a watershed moment for my inlaws, I suspect, since they have always done family Christmas on the 25th with all the family that is available.  We just want to do something different, and honestly more our speed.  My little family has 3 introverts and we really enjoy just doing quiet things. 

Sometimes kids want all the things and all the fuss, but our small one (not so small, really, since she is now as tall as Wendy) likes minimal fuss.

We have our little tree with just a few presents under it.  It really feels like it matches us as a group, this year, because we are doing a little Christmas.

I am looking forward to a little Christmas a great deal.  :)

A good role model

I struggle sometimes with talking about polyamory and relationship anarchy when they happen to be combined with problems I have.  When you are part of a marginalized group there is tremendous pressure to present the best possible face to the world, to convince them that there is nothing wrong with you.  When a monogamous person says they are sad because of a breakup, for example, they have no worries at all that people will say "Well, this is what you get when you are monogamous.  Your own fault, really."  People in other relationship structures hear this kind of thing all the time, because people love to find excuses to punish those who do not conform.

The same sort of thing applies to all kinds of people, of course.  Disabled people, queer people, the list goes on.  The pressure to provide a 'perfect' front so as to avoid criticism is real.

I read a blog post today by a well known poly blogger talking about this subject as it relates to their struggles with anxiety.  I liked it because it felt like it mirrored my own experience with being told that I have to shut up because telling my truth in my own space was somehow dangerous to other people.  Really it is just dangerous to the current social order but quite frankly the current social order can use some shaking up so that is an upside to me, not a downside.

When I am pushed to shut up, to hide, to lie, to cover up, it makes me furious.  Director is willing to blend, to bend, to accommodate, but Passion lights up with incandescent rage at the idea.  When I am asked to stop talking to spare other people's feelings about my life Passion just wants to paint my words on the side of a skyscraper instead.  You don't like reading about my life?  Then don't.  You want me to shove myself into a corner so my life is more acceptable to you?  Get used to disappointment or leave, either way.

I am lucky though.  I have tons of privilege so people are mostly not willing to have that fight with me.  Also the people in my life are largely aware that trying to control me like that will lead to nothing good so they generally don't bother.

It is good to read about other people in the same situation.  It helps provide some extra certainty that I am doing the right thing, and some days I need that.

A sad song

I broke up with The Flautist recently.  I haven't been blogging much here in part because that has been occupying my mind a lot and I wasn't sure how to talk about it.  It is difficult and sad, but it was the right thing to do for me.  I have some guilt, for sure, about the hurt I am causing.  Despite that though, not doing so would just make a bigger mess for later, so I won't do that.

A challenge has been the way I think about breakups.  I often say that people don't change, and you shouldn't be in a relationship expecting them to.  Accept that how they are is how they will be.  That isn't exactly true, of course, as people do change.  But if they generally changed for the better, then old people would be paragons in relationships.  They would fulfill their partners and communicate flawlessly and make it all wonderful.  We all know that old people are bad at relationships the same way that young people are though, so clearly there isn't a big trend towards improvement.  While partners may change, they will as likely change in ways you don't like as ways you do.

This way of thinking creates its own problems.  I don't yell and scream and demand my partner do things differently.  I say what I want and how I feel, but it isn't a big mess.  That is usually appreciated, but it can fail to get my message across when I really don't like something.  I can't be in a relationship that requires me to have emotional explosions to communicate how I feel, but when many or even most people are used to communicating that way, my messages get lost.  If my partner is doing things that hurt me, I either decide I can deal with it, or I leave.  No explosions or ultimatums.  Not my style.

I am really not interested in assigning blame.  I find that many people love to hate their exes, and I don't hate any of mine.  My attitudes range from fondness (even love) to indifference, but no anger is to be found.  Surely there is fault in everyone, no one is without error, and trying to cast all the blame on one person (whether or not it is yourself, or the other person) is usually just a sign of insecurity, not reflective of fact.

I prefer to think of it like this:  It was good.  Until it wasn't.  And now that it isn't good any more, it is time to be away from it.  That doesn't mean the relationship can never be rekindled, but it does mean at a minimum that space apart is needed to approach a new beginning cleanly.

There is one particular song that speaks powerfully to me when I am feeling this way:

New normal

The first time a giant ball of steel swinging from a long chain came within 4 meters of my window I was somewhat perturbed.  It is kind of unnerving to watch a thing that is hanging loose and which would crush me flat if it hit me wander so close by.  Makes you wonder if the person driving the crane *really* knows what they are doing.  I mean, I assume they are competent.  But am I going to die ten seconds from now?

But that happened months and months ago.  Now the crane wanders right past my window all the time and I barely even register it.

Just like cars, really.  If you take a person who has no idea about cars and tell them they are going to zoom down a road at 100 kph in a metal box and other metal boxes going 100 kph the other way are going to pass within a meter of them they would think you are suicidal.  What if the person driving the other box twitches, just for a second?  Doesn't everybody die?  Can you really trust all the random buffoons in the human race not to kill you?

Mostly you can, it turns out.  Some of us die, but generally we barrel down our highways, zooming right past each other, and everything works.

We tend to get upset about things changing, but when we don't manage to push them back we rapidly come to accept the new normal, no matter how weird it would have seemed before, and just shrug and stop noticing.

I wonder what things I currently take for granted will suddenly strike me as bizarre when I finally stare at them really hard.  Sometimes I look at my phone and try to remember what it was like to not have one and I can barely do it.

Which is all to say that I continue to be surprised by humanity's flexibility.  We so often hate change, but then we quickly adapt and not only stop caring, but even stop noticing the stuff that is new.