I have become THAT ONE

So I sit here at Ghostlight Coffee, feeling a little guilty and conflicted. This is a different space and coffee shop than I usually stop into after my CrossFit morning. Smiling, I can hear my husband’s teasing toned voice, “Well, that’s a short putt.” Our vernacular for “it doesn’t take much for us to feel guilty and conflicted.” Which is true. The reason here? My traditionally favorite coffee shop stopped purchasing unsweetened almond milk for its espresso drinks. When I set aside time to breathe more deeply into my writer-self, I like to treat her to a latte, without sugar, which my body no longer needs or welcomes. So I came to Ghostlight to see if they had unsweetened almond milk. And they do. So I sit here…smiling into my writer self.

And listening to a voice inside: Really? I’ve become that one?

I traditionally hear that one with this guilty-sense about advocating or sticking to a personal choice over some collective one around me. I’ve become the ‘vegetarian-vegan-whomever-different’ who refuses the nourishment provided by a community, a collective, a whole. I’ve become the one who is difficult to invite to parties because she can’t or won’t eat what the host/ess is providing.

My husband’s Swedish-Norwegian sensibilities float up to the surface here, going a little bonkers inside me. I hold his energies, in other words, even though I have my own fear and inability to say what I really want. Encountering a vegan, or a Harley-Davidson motorcycle crowd, or someone who states a preference over a communal norm—he rolls his eyes and sighs, which I experience as him projecting his irritation onto those who clearly can and do advocate for what they need or want. This is not something that comes easily to him--knowing what he wants, saying what he needs. He has a tremendous amount of energy about those who eat differently than he does, or than a community provides. This used to be directed at me until I would cave and join him. I now have a strong-fitness-health community around me, supporting me. Makes the difference for me, to stay with what I want and need re: food. Anymore, when I encounter this tension or intersection of difference someplace, I tend to simply go quiet and remove myself from direct communication.

And now his beloved wife has become that one! He is faced with a conflict between his irritation and deep desire to be seen as a supportive husband. This means sometimes he now holds it in (though I can usually feel it rising anyway). Sometimes he does not, cannot, withhold his irritation and judgment of the one who is choosing differently from the norm, from what is immediately available in the community.

To be fair, both he and I struggle to discern, let alone name, what we need, individually, from one another, from others beyond our immediate family home of him, me, Nala (our dog).  Long family histories intertwine here, of course. His Minnesota-nice family that regularly avoids moving into any waters deeper than cultural-child-centered polite society. My long-churched, neglecting-our-feelings family intent upon serving the other to avoid any possibility of accused selfishness within. To name a need therefore pushes both Brian and me, each of us, for different reasons, into a vulnerable position of (perceivedly) being ‘needy’ or worse, ‘rejected,’ not having that need met by our partner.  We play this dynamic out hundreds of times each month, or week, perhaps. We excel at getting our needs met by those a little further afield than our home. Church, work, duty for him. Circle, spiritual companioning, creativity for me.

One of the great things today, however, is that both he and I are more intentional and practiced at loving the other right where s/he is. Each of us is genuinely trying to honor the other, in his/her experience just as it is, in his/her gifts, just as they emerge and become manifest. I think each of us is also trying to learn how to be more honest with our inner-self and the other about what we do need or desire. Come vulnerability. Come ‘rejection.’ Or not...

Because it’s not actually rejection on any grand scale. Each of us has demonstrated our capacity to stay-with the other, across anger, felt-betrayal, difference… We are not rejecting the other, but simply learning to stand more often in our own skin, Center, to trust the relationship between us to hold whatever it will, whatever it needs to, for both of us to become more than we are today.

And for me, in this new stream of bodysoul flow that is my life, that one has a new seedling-meaning that makes me smile. I am now that one who will act for what her body needs. I am that one who actually knows better what her body needs to be fit, healthy, whole. I am that one who is willing to endure greater social discomfort in order to choose what is healthy for me.

Clearly, I’m not yet the one who speaks gently and clearly to her traditional coffee shop about what that change has meant in concrete, practical terms. I’d rather write a blog-post to come to words about a desire, a wish, apparently.

I wish Wholly Grounds would return to the unsweetened almond milk they used to have on hand. The team of owners—Amy, Ti-Ti, Tony, and a fourth fellow whose name I do not know yet—is a beautiful collaboration that touches something inside me. Two African-American women, alongside an Irish older white man, alongside a fourth white man with workman style dress and quiet voice. Yet I cannot seem to lean into clear communication with them about this unconscious/unaware change in their supplies on hand. Does it matter, really? Does it need all these words? I wonder…

This is a nice space to write too.  Perhaps I should purchase the enamel mug they have on hand here: I need to overthink about it first…