I've been unusually introspective lately. I blame a conversation I had a couple weeks ago with OOTC. We were having dinner (yes, sometimes we just spend time together like that) and he said, "When you mention The Farmer, you go all soft. You get a far away look in your eye and you seem to recall things fondly." I pondered that for a little. Then he asked me a stranger question. "If you could have chosen...would you have had a child with The Farmer rather than with anyone else?" That was tougher...I had never intended to have children, never planned, never tried. It just....happened. Like rain, like snow, like the wind. The gods chose their time and a seed was quickened. Some never came to fruition, one did. Would I change that, would I want to further impose my will on the order of this part of my life? That's one I still can't answer. Or maybe it's that the answer changes with the day, the hour, the rain, the wind...
Since then, I have been doing more thinking. It's like his words pushed me a little farther into myself, at the right time. Work and life are busy, yes, always so. But not so all-consuming as at other times, leaving some space for introspection.
I do go all soft-filter when something causes me to bring up The Farmer. What is it about that relationship? I told OOTC - admitted, it seemed - that it wasn't all perfect. That it was an incredibly dysfunctional relationship, that I did things out of love that came to be expected, demanded. That when the long-term relationship took a left turn towards true commitment, I was forced to re-evaluate. Could I bring children into such an emotionally distant, dysfunctional family? Because regardless of my satisfaction with being childless, children would be expect, nay - required of me. At the same time, I felt like I was blossoming into my true calling of a career all while The Farmer seemed to try to push me back into the space he was comfortable with me occupying: a job, and helping him with his when I wasn't doing mine. It came to a head when he told me I "wasn't getting my work done" (work for him, my job was taking too much of my time and energy) and I retorted, without thought for how it would hurt, that no one was helping me earn my annual income the way I was helping him. It was all downhill from there.
Was it good? Is it worthy of the soft eyes and soft words when the memories resurface? Or am I, a decade plus past it all, finally at that point in the grief where I can acknowledge the bad and still bask in the good? Is the whole thing more poignant because we do not have a relationship of any kind? I feel that his awkwardness in my presence at his father's wake was telling...but I don't know what it's telling me.
More questions, not as many answers. Sometimes that's what introspection brings, I guess.
