#10 | indispensability
A couple months ago, my now-ex and I bought a book together called Hijab Butch Blues, a memoir by a lesbian Muslim writer that also reinterprets parts of the Quran through a queer and feminist lens. She took it on a trip to California and devoured it, texting me passages of it that resonated with her - in particular, the parts about being fearful to come out to friends and family who will never understand, and how it feels like betrayal. but she also sent a passage about emotional repression and the difficulties of trusting others. When she broke up with me, I took my turn to read it, hoping that it would offer insight into her frame of thinking. There were a few takeaways that I've been simmering on.
- Queer indispensability
by definition: "This way in which queer people tend to make themselves indispensable in their relationships and friendships. They're so afraid of being left that they make themselves unleavable."
As an example, the author ruminates on how they "glorify self sufficiency, have a hard time asking people for help . . . [they] minimize [their] own needs so [they] can spend all my time and energy taking care of others, so they love [them], so they won't leave [them]."
I would say this is a pattern of behavior that both she and I exhibited. This is the kind of friend I have always been - offering everything at any moment so people will love me and affirm our bond. When we were just friends, we were that type of indispensable to each other, providing emotional comfort and confiding in each other about funny and interesting things. As we started dating, this is the also kind of partner we always were to each other; she showed me around new york, found fun things for us to do, planned things. I cooked all kinds of comforting meals, brought us to new and fun restaurants. But as an act of love, I also opened myself up emotionally, made myself incredibly known, to make myself easier to love, to set the tone. we had different ways of practicing indispensability, but we were both this way. and yes, it was out of sincere love, but it was also motivated by an intense need for closeness. However, I think we also both held things in when the other person was in need. When she started to struggle, I found myself holding in feelings when I usually never do, because she didn't have space for them. And she of course always held things in.
And on the other hand, when one needs to be supported, as all people do, there's a reflex. When you need to ask for help, will it be there? Does it put your indispensability at risk? The writer describes this fear of asking for help as "fear of people leaving, that prevents me from asking things of people in turn. That makes me recoil when others try to be there for me, even when I don't ask." They write that understanding this concept made them cry, "for decades of friendship where people were closer to me than I was to them, for this person I've become [...] who wants intimacy and interdependence [...] who is too scared to risk anything and everything, for fear of being left."
I'm familiar with that reflex. as I've completely collapsed over the past couple weeks, I've heavily leaned on my friends and family to process and be sane. I spent hours and hours on the phone. I cried so many times in front of various people. Each time I said, sorry. I'm sorry for putting all of this on you, for asking this of you. Partially as a courtesy, in case they didn't want to hear all of it, but also genuinely because I felt bad. But they never said it was a problem, and I have to trust that they will if it becomes one, or that they'll just be slow to respond sometimes. And if they don't bring that up, then, well, that's not on me. I feel that where my ex (hate saying that) and I differ is that I have been able to completely collapse and be held before, and I know it's the only way I can possibly be. I cannot hold myself in, because in doing so I deprive myself of love in times when I need it most. There I was, waiting for her to collapse, because I thought it was inevitable - everyone must at some point. But she pushed me away and refused.
That's what hurts the most, too. That I made myself completely indispensable and vulnerable and she still told me it wasn't enough.
- Unfairly testing others
The author then writes about the tale of Yusuf/Joseph. Yusuf suffered mental and physical trauma from his brothers as a child, and as an adult encounters them once more. He tricks them as a 'test,' and they fail, i.e. they take the wrong conclusion from the trick. The writer says she initially hated Yusuf because he was being unfair. "They don't even know that they're being tested. It's an unfair test, one they're destined to fail."
They write about an instance of unfairly testing their partner, when they sought advice but she was sleepy, so she says to talk again in the morning. The next morning, she doesn't bring it up first, and the author reads that lack of asking as a failure of the test, instead of them needing to just ask again. It's so difficult for them to be vulnerable, so if they try and don't immediately get what they need, their thoughts begin to spiral: "You shouldn't have asked [...] you don't need her, you know how to take care of yourself."
When things escalated with my ex's family, there were times when I was told that I failed. Once or twice in times of stress, she told me when I wasn't doing enough, and I apologized and corrected myself. But she also told me when we broke up that there were times I didn't take quick enough action, I didn't say the right thing, I wasn't present enough, I didn't have the right tone. But looking back, those were times when I didn't know what was expected of me.
I knew her well; I knew how difficult it was for her to ask for help. So I delivered when I was asked, and then some. But everything moved so fast - I felt retroactively tested in ways that I couldn't have anticipated. Of course, during the most difficult period of her life, I was bound to fail sometimes, because these things are so horrible that we can't prevent pain entirely. but I know I didn't fail enough to be declared unreliable and pushed away. I loved her sincerely and completely.
I told her I thought the issue was not that we were fundamentally not compatible, but that we just needed to open ourselves up and communicate more. But maybe this came off the wrong way, or she was unable to understand at this time. She insisted it was my lack of patience and generosity in her greatest time of need.
The author is aware of these behaviors in themself. They write, "I know that my mind is jumping to conclusions that don't necessarily follow from the evidence, that I'm actually gathering proof for conclusions I've already drawn. I know that this is self-protection, that I'm leaving before I'm left. And I know this is unfair to the people who love me and even to myself, but I just can't seem to stop [...] I'm too afraid of taking without giving, which would mean that I'm no longer indispensable to people, that they're indispensable to me. And if I'm not offering or providing anything, people would start to notice that they don't need me. But I need people to need me so they won't leave."
Returning to the story of Yusuf, they write that their friend told them they needed to be kinder to his story. "This love everyone has for Yusuf is real. It's time for him to let himself feel loved, not for [his role], but for being Yusuf, their brother, their son, their trusted friend." And they think about all they do have in their live to be grateful for, all their friends' and partner's care. And they realize, "...if all around me is the evidence of what happens without my asking, doesn't that mean that there's possibility for more? A more trusting love where I could let myself ask for things, let myself be vulnerable and imperfect and even dispensable? A more magnanimous, forgiving kind of love where sometimes people give me what I ask for and sometimes they don't and it's okay? Where it's okay to be disappointed and it's okay to be disappointing--where we can love each other and ourselves regardless?"
I know she read this chapter, and I know it resonated with her. I looked back through our texts and it was one of the passages she sent me. She knows. To her, am I an exception to this? Have I truly fucked up, or does she know about all of this, and she needs time and space to put it in practice? Of course one can't just read a book and internalize it, of course this takes therapy and understanding. I ache thinking that she might realize this but it will still be too late for us. I thought, and still think, that I was that person, that generous, patient, and forgiving person.
A poem - Weighing the Dog by Billy Collins
It is awkward for me and bewildering for him
as I hold him in my arms in the small bathroom,
balancing our weight on the shaky blue scale,
but this is the way to weigh a dog and easier
than training him to sit obediently on one spot
with his tongue out, waiting for a cookie.
With pencil and paper I subtract my weight
from our total to find out the remainder that is his,
and I start to wonder if there is an analogy here.
It could not have to do with my leaving you
though I never figured out what you amounted to
until I subtracted myself from our combination.
You held me in your arms more than I held you
through all those awkward and bewildering months
and now we are both lost in strange and distant neighborhoods.