Sans Fig Leaf
w
"Taking the plunge"
19 October, 2006
When Michael and I first started dating, my friends and family had varied reactions, mainly because it was only a few months after Ray had died.
Understandably, some of my friends and loved ones thought it was too soon for me to be seeing someone. Which isn't to say that they were clinging to some sort of Victorian idea about how many months one is required to mourn the death of a spouse. It was genuine concern that I was not entirely myself; a worry that being in an emotionally impaired condition, I would make foolish choices.
Others were very happy for us. As one of them put it, "He lights up when you come into the room." I'm not sure I had noticed that particular phenomenon, mainly because I was too busy "lighting up" myself whenever I saw him.
After we had been dating for some time, we talked about living together. We came up with some very logical reasons that we should wait a bit longer before we took that step. We were in agreement on the reasons we should. We were in agreement on how long we should wait before we talked about it again.
That wasn't an entirely easy decision to make, because at the time we were living in different towns. When traffic was good, we were only about forty minutes apart, but that was complicated by the fact that Michael didn't own a car. For him to visit me, either I had to pick him up and take him back, or he had to take a long bus ride. We also worked different schedules. I had a typical Monday-Friday office job. He was a bartender working evenings, and his days off were in the middle of my work week.
Still, we were determined to stick to our plan. And it might have even worked.
Except one time while he was visiting me on his day off, one of his roommates decided to change rooms with him. This decision was made without consulting Michael. He simply came back to find most (but conveniently not all) of his things moved to another room, and the psycho roommate sleeping in his room.
There had been a few milder instances with that particular roommate, but nothing that quite rose to such a disturbling level of violation of boundaries. Michael had had a deadbolt lock on his room, but that hadn't stopped them. And, as I said, they hadn't moved all of his possession. They had "accidently" kept a few things. There was also quite clear evidence in the jumble of his things that the psycho roommate opened containers and boxes of his stuff to go through. Apparently looking for more things that could "accidently" get left in their space.
All of the reasons and logic about why we should wait before moving in together flew right out of my head. I just blurted out, "We have to get you out of there!"
So we did.
More than eight years later I still think it was the right thing to do. Not that there was anything wrong with our original plan. Circumstances changed, so our plan had to change.
Just as there had been nothing wrong with the plan that we chose to abandon, there was nothing wrong with the concerns that some of my friends raised earlier about our decision to start dating. I had been through a terrible experience. I wasn't always thinking clearly during those months after Ray's death. I did make some decisions that I later regretted. It just happens that dating Michael wasn't one of those regrets.
As to thinking clearly, everyone has moments when they aren't at their intellectual best. It doesn't require a recent trauma to cause that. We can be distracted by quite inconsequential things. By the same token, just because we've had something horrible happen recently, that doesn't necessarily make us utterly incapable of making good decisions.
Anything really worth doing--whether it's a relationship, a job, a painting, a story, or just a little home project--includes the possibility of failure. We seldom have an accurate understanding of how big the risk of failure is when we start. So we can't predict with certainty which plans will succeed.
This uncertainty paralyzes some people. Too cautious, they never risk anything. They stand ever on the brink, and never take the leap. At the other extreme are those who just ignore all possibility of failure and leap blindly. The tiniest problems catch them unprepared and leave them devasted. Neither type ever really accomplishes anything.
Good decision-makers accept that uncertainty. They do more than accept it, they embrace it, recognizing that the best plans are those that adapt to changing situations.
--Ray Bradbury
.