by tashmcgill | Aug 10, 2015 | Friendship, Love & Marriage
I have something to tell you but first I must give you two definitions. Be patient with me, but come along with me to this place.
Love is problematic to define these days. A single word has been stretched through the ages to encompass many things that are not love. We have come to know love as a feeling, as many feelings. Feelings of acceptance, belonging, desire, companionship, friendship, trust, fulfilment, lust. Many of these feelings are about the Self, the Ego. In it’s most basic human habit, pursuit of love is an egocentric, the language of love is a lazy lens through which we seek meaning. We hope to satisfy our inner turmoil through external means. As if love applied externally, from outside of us, will heal our wounds and complete our emptiness.
Here is what I believe about Truth. Truth is a way of being and seeing in the world. Truth is not seeing things as they are, the definition of black or white, good or bad Truth and therefore freedom to live truly is not found in determining what is right or wrong. Which is why Truth leads to Truest Love, the kind of love that sees the possibility of hope and redemption in all things alongside the darkness. Truth lives in a world that is both good and bad, redeemable and hopeless.
Truth is bigger than us. Sometimes we forget Love can be too but we tend to reduce it to feelings; a transaction record of good and bad feelings that we keep within us. We try to make Love fit the emptiness we feel inside when perhaps we could fill that space with truthful things instead.
I am angry with you, I am happy about this. I feel conflicted in this belief. I am not sure about this situation. I am confused. I am undecided. I have decided and you will not like my decision.
This basic kind of love almost always involves a transaction with another person or people. “I felt loved because of what you said or did. Because of how you touched me or laughed at me, I felt secure, weak, sad, rejected, loved, desired.” Truth brings us back to self and the universe. Who am I? Who are you?
Truth looks inwardly to express something external into the world. Love searches in the world for something that will answer the internal. If you pursue Truth, you will always have a gift to offer the smallest or largest gathering of humans, because you can live outside of your own need.
So to the crux of it: I wrote here that I was giving something up – trying to determine the What-Is, What-Isn’t and What-If.
I have not given up on Love, but I have given Love up. I have given up Love for Truth. Not to give up on Love itself, but to give up the chasing of it. I am willing to embrace a life that does not rise or fall or find it’s definition in the way I am loved or find love in relationships with people. I am learning that accepting myself wholly is a most worthy endeavour, despite what feels uncomfortable and risky. Where I fear loss, I remind myself that being fully alive in this wondrous body and mind is a glorious pursuit. I am not bitter, I am not defeated nor deflated, I am not fatally pessimistic. I see a different type of future, where I, loving Truth most of all, might find more truthful love in any variety of expressions.
Truth is already waiting for me, within my grasp and with a sustaining, life-giving, soul-filling pulse. If I do not choose Truth, I might accidentally let go of it to chase Love and for what? Truest love settles within me and longs to be sought out, if I would just embrace Truth as a way of living and let her be revealed. She who is I.
Strong, idealistic, creative, sarcastic, witty, playful, sexual and sensual, a dreamer and doer, demanding and deeply emotional: this is just the surface of truth in my life. Lonely, brave, terrified and sometimes irrational, I am always well-intentioned and I try to demonstrate Love in my actions even when my words are firm and furious. I am passion in flesh and blood, letting nothing from my grasp without a fight if I desire it. And I desire many things. I desire. I am desire.
Yes, I have chosen Truth over Love and it has done nothing for my loneliness. But living in Truth is also accepting no external force can calm the inner turmoil. Not even your idea of God can resolve that which is unresolved within you if you cannot accept Truthfulness as a way of living. To choose Truth is no miracle cure for loneliness. Truth is key to embracing your loneliness.
Love promises the Ego there is comfort, security and belonging in being known.
Let me be explicitly clear: the more time you spend chasing this kind of love, the hungrier you’ll be. No one will ever love you hard enough, deep enough, true, rich, kind or fast enough. It will never be enough.
Truth tells you there will always be loneliness within your life, that grows and shrinks accordingly to your chasing of Love.
Truth will help you accept rejection and love deeply in the midst of your own sorrow, celebrating in times of sadness and of joy because Truth is always bigger than us and invites us into a bigger way of living.
Truth has always been the gift I have to offer, so I could not be more at home with myself than to give all else up to embrace it fully, and therefore myself.
Do you struggle to forgive simply through loving someone enough? Love is not the path to forgiveness. Truth is the path to forgiveness because the transaction is not based on putting things to rights but rather telling the truth of what is and what might be; side by side.
Do you struggle to show people your true self for fear of rejection or losing relationships? You require Truth to become fully yourself. Choosing not to live out of complete truth for fear of losing relationship, status or influence is a Catch-22 that quickly traps you into people-pleasing. It’s as if you begin to reject your true self so others won’t.
Do you wrestle with loneliness? Truth will set you free to embrace and understand your loneliness, to live with it rather than against it.
Yes, I have chosen Truth over Love and it has done nothing for my loneliness. But living in Truth is also accepting no external force can calm the inner turmoil. Not even your idea of God can resolve that which is unresolved within you if you cannot accept Truthfulness as a way of living.
So I have given Love up for Truth in order to tell you the truth. To tell myself the truth. To live truthfully in the world. Maybe I will also encounter Love along the way, but I will most certainly live in Truest Love.
by tashmcgill | Aug 7, 2015 | Friendship, Relationships
Men and women need each other, and they need to be friends. However, rarely do people write about what happens to precious, life-giving male-female friendships when friends find lovers that are not each other.
I’m lucky to have a lot of married/engaged/commited men in my life. I enjoy their friendship and mostly I love their women too. Sometimes, my dear male friends have become so because I loved their wives first anyway. I’ve successfully negotiated relationship mergers before.. guy friends who have married and their wives have become as close as the husband ever was.
But it’s tiresome, heartwrenching work because there are moments you have to sacrifice the role your boy bestie played, sometimes for years.
A woman like me, needs men in her life. Companions and champions. Buddies and trusted advisors. I need them because I have a wealth of women in my life but if I don’t continue to have positive, thriving relationships with great men – I might risk believing the press that no man you’re not sleeping with is worth your time.
Truthfully, I think these relationship transitions are more important than we realise. The fabric of social groups and communities is woven with the complexities of many different types of interactions between men and women. So while I am writing about my male friends, this is true for many of us regardless of gender.
Sometimes, a rare thing happens and you end up adoring the woman that makes your friend so happy, even more than you loved your friend to begin with. Those relationships are amazing and I’m lucky to have a few of them. Sometimes, the one you thought was never good enough turns out to be worse and you have to bite your tongue from saying all sorts of things. Sometimes you don’t have to say anything because you’re so relieved your friend is no longer suffering. That’s happened a couple of times.
Sometimes, you end up seeing your friends through their weddings, marriages, children and then through their divorces. That’s happened a few times too.
In any of those circumstances, there is a season where your friend is lost to you, replaced by a creature called ‘Stranger That Knows Your Deep Secrets’. Your secrets, once shared in trust between the two of you are now the shared property of your friend and their lover. You have to re-introduce yourself and hope they are equally as trustworthy. You have to hope that they choose to love you, as you choose to love them.
You hope happiness lasts for them, forever. You hope not to lose them forever.
Mostly, the change is within you. You learn to say goodbye differently and hello less often. You grow accustomed to a changed priority, a new role, a different place. ‘Stranger That Knows Your Deep Secrets’ is no longer as available, for good reason. They too, are undergoing personal adjustment. Avoid bitterness.
You have lost your friend for a season, maybe forever. You cannot retrieve him from the place he has arrived at; that’s not your right. You now have only the choice of waiting, hoping and nurturing some expression of a relationship that somehow bridges the stranger he has become and the memory of who he was. In it you become a stranger too; a stranger to his partner, a stranger to the friendship that you had that now merges to be something different.
More often than not, you are no longer on the inside of their life, even though once you shared dreams and thoughts. Indeed, crisis and tears and whispered words float past their ears, the smiling partner who knows enough of your face to warrant knowing a measure of your heart. You will whisper, ‘I miss you’ and it will go unheard in the depths where you needed to be heard.
You will pick yourself up. Your friend may one day return but you are less likely to have the same sense of comraderie you did before. You can’t be forced into loving companionship with his wife, and you can’t force yourself upon them, they are two, they are strong.. and they wholeheartedly go about their existence. This is the way the world should be.
You won’t talk too loudly about it, because boys and girls struggle so much to be friends anyway. You won’t be too demanding. There is no sensitive way to say I love you, but I do not know your wife enough to love her yet. There is a sadness admist your joy in your friend’s delight.
See, in the corner of your heart, you always fear that you had your friend by default .. that he has only room for his mother, sisters, wife and daughters in the woman-shaped spaces in his life. You wonder how you got there to begin with, and you know you’ll never be the same.
His empty space is shaped like a brother, within your heart.
by tashmcgill | Jul 15, 2015 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas
From the archive: A few years I lost a lot of weight and noticed some interesting changes in the way people responded to me. Here’s a snippet of what I reflected on back then.
I don’t make any secret of the fact that I’m as single as a single person comes – never been on a date, never held hands, never been kissed. I do consider myself to be in possession of a fairly healthy sexuality. I’ve certainly met my fair share of men who, in possession of depth, character and a sense of humour have won my affection. In other words – I’ve never been not open to the idea. In fact – if there is one thing in this world that I know how to do.. it’s crush. I’mreally good at seeing the beauty, goodness and wonder in the people around me.
Still – something in the wind has changed.
The only thing that’s changed is my physical appearance. And I’m not offended by it. It’s the most honest thing to acknowledge. Sometimes love and romance needs a trigger; sex certainly does.
Whatever the threshold of commonly accepted desirability/eligibility is – I think I’ve passed it. For the first time in my adult life, people are taking an interest in my love life. They’re suggesting people to connect with. It’s intensely strange to experience something that feels so adolescent at this stage of my life. Some in jest, some in resolute seriousness, have begun to talk about my relationship status, potential mates. From the most unusual places, comes commentary, speculation and suggestion.
The only thing that’s changed is my physical appearance. And I’m not offended by it. It’s the most honest thing to acknowledge. No more of that, true love loves regardless stuff. Sometimes love and romance needs a trigger, and sex definitely does. Chemistry might still exist but it has a hard time getting out there when you’re carrying extra kilos than you should. There’s no issue in that for me. I’m so different now to how I was and so much the same. I’m no more or less sexually aware or available than I ever was… but others’ awareness of me has changed.
In fact, it’s almost a rewarding gratification. It’s a relief to be noticed at last. It’s a relief to have my sexuality, my gender recognised and attributed to my attractiveness. It’s confirming and affirming my identity and participation within the species. I am no more woman than ever I was, but oh, you should hear me roar now.
What I wonder is – to what extent does physicality impact our overall perception of sexuality/eligibility and attraction? I’m not really that different in mind or heart than I was 10 months ago, but still I think a friend said it best, when he said “You’ll be married any minute now – just look at you!” I’m thinking it impacts us quite a lot. In fact, more so the group and community dynamic than the individual. After all, in years past – the art of matchmaking has always had a place in community ritual. So, community affirmation of sexuality and gender identity is important.
So, is there a threshold at which we subconsciously categorize people and attribute a certain level of asexuality to their persona? A point at which we stop considering the attributes of sexuality in the consideration of a whole person?
From Another Side
I’ve always felt guilty of failure, as if there was a part of my understanding of human nature that was simply underdeveloped, unqualified due to my inexperience. I’ve had to consciously shirk off feelings of “less-than” and the looks that suggested a sub-text I’d only understand once I’d had a relationship of my own.
I can agree that there are many nuances of human behaviour that I have not experienced for myself. Still, my observation skills seem to increase exponentially as the years tick by. Last night around drinks, there was a refreshing and unheard of perspective shared for the first time ever. With it, a bit of a bubble broke and I felt somehow released.
“Still,” he said (being the recipient of a recently shattered heart), “you’ve got to be thankful that you don’t have any of that baggage of poor relationships to carry into the future. Everything’s a fresh clean slate.”
Yes – there is something delightful about that. Whatever tragedies I have suffered on my own or lived vicariously through my friends … I have no significant love wounds. All unnecessary and unfounded conjecture on love may abound – but I can believe the best of love between a man and a woman. I can believe in soulmates, in connection as deep of the deepest oceans. I can believe in patience and appreciating someone for who they are, not how they make me feel. I can love freely out of knowing myself. I can believe the best of love and how it is.
Now, the world says I am qualified for love; acceptably attractive. The community expects it of me. Isn’t that strange?
This was written more than five years ago. I’m slightly heavier now than I was writing this, but just as single. A few stolen kisses and plenty of confirmation of my robust, vital sexuality. Still unscarred from love and yet, not without wounds. My community has changed expectation too. Now, those who speak say it’s my intelligence and independence. Others nod sympathetically, I just nod. I am more myself now than I was then but I have always been me.
by tashmcgill | Jul 14, 2015 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas
I did not earn these tiger stripes of mine. I am not one of the women who can claim bravery, sharing images of stretchmarks on Instagram. The hashtag is #loveyourlines. Search it and you will read some words that reveal how women really feel about beauty and its social constructs.
“Maybe we’ve been looking at it wrong. Maybe we’re not damaged, maybe these are the brands of our accomplishments.”
“I have struggled with my stretchmarks for years, but today I want to accept them. I’m not perfect, but I’m worthy of love and loving myself.”
“They’re like flames and like the Phoenix, I will rise above them.”
We talk as if the body fights against itself. As if we have fought, battled and finally lost perfection as the prize. Then we call that battle birth and say it must be worth it. Our sacrifice is worth it because of what we made.
If a woman must say she is beautiful because she made another human, because her scars are the product of love, because she sacrificed flawlessness to make another perfect little body to one day be wrecked by scars of love’ – then she does not say ‘Because.’
She is saying ‘despite’.
Qualifying For Beauty.
We are looking for one more way to qualify for beauty and find our meaning. It’s not that our meaning is solely found in our beauty but physical beauty and the popular feminine are entwined without distinction. So our language becomes muddled and unclear. We mistake our words in trying to accept ourselves fully. We are saying self-acceptance and love lies beyond overcoming the obstacle of our physical imperfections, we talk ourselves into self-acceptance by worthy cause and thus; forget – our bodies alone are not our beauty. In fact, our bodies are not our beauty, just a vessel of it. A machine.
If I didn’t know that our bodies are not our beauty, it would be easier to believe. Instead I know our bodies are vessels for beauty not beauty itself. Carriers of beauty and at times beautiful, our bodies are machines designed to slowly burn up as we decay physically, mentally towards death. We ought to use them up, wrinkled and worn down. We ought to wring every ounce of beauty from within these bodies.
Isn’t it strange that our bodies might be loved and yet our True Selves remain untouched, but when we are truly loved and seen, our bodies can be also loved?
Maybe I could stand it if the tiger stripes of birth were my story too. Little silver marks that fall delicately around my curves. Like lace over my hips and gathered like fingerprints under my belly button. Velvety to the touch, in the right light they shimmer, like a roadmap of where to touch me. In truth, the map says – here’s where I stretched. Here’s what’s left behind of the sad and heavy days, here’s what you didn’t know at 17. Here’s what you lost at 28 and found at 30 years of age. Here is my pale Scottish skin over strong thighs and proud breasts. Here is an extraordinary, sensitive machine that carries my self, my soul, my sense.
My marks are not qualified.
They are not beautiful because they came from something worthy.
Nor beautiful because they proved my womb is warm and useful.
They did not mark me as one who is connected by flesh and blood.
They are not battle scars.
They are not the remnants of some hard-fought struggle.
I am of sound mind enough to reason, these marks cannot make me beautiful – though you might tell me that, if I had given birth.
Truthfully, I have nothing worthy to attribute my marks to. Like many women who cover their first stretchmarks with the stretchmarks of childbearing, I grew too fast and shrunk too quickly, my skin could not keep up. Time has passed and those lines are faded. I do not qualify my imperfections to be considered beautiful. My body was made to be used up and I am doing a good job of that, perfecting it’s strength and ability for balance, grace and clumsiness.
In the same way, I am not beautiful because of my age or the lines on my face. I cannot be considered beautiful because I have lived so long, making this body last until my life is etched in leathered valleys.
Isn’t it strange that our bodies might be loved and yet our True Selves remain untouched, but when we are truly loved and seen, our bodies can be also loved?
My beauty is within. Seek it out.
by tashmcgill | Jul 11, 2015 | Culture & Ideas, Love & Marriage
I think I’m just about done writing and thinking about this marriage business. There’s maybe two more posts in me for the next little while and then I’ll be putting it aside. My friend Bethany pointed out that it’s been something I’ve talked and thought a lot about over the last couple of years. It was like a warning bell. Until recent years, I haven’t really talked about being single and I certainly don’t want to get stuck with only one topic of conversation.
Tomorrow, my best friend from high school is getting married, again. While I’ve been to a lot of second weddings, this is the first one I’ve been to where I’ve been to both events, let alone had the same job at each. Years ago, she asked me to write and read a poem for her wedding as I stood beside her in a burgundy bridesmaid dress. This week, I’ll read lyrics to a song they love and I have no idea how it’s going to turn out, but I’m hopeful. As she said, “We’re professionals, so there’s no rehearsal.” So true, my friend, so true.
Her first wedding is best left in the past, it’s become a poignant and intimate thing that is best shared between two friends who have loved each other for a long time. Together, we can laugh, groan and cry about it. Her second wedding will feel more true, more authentic at least. Less triviality.
The first time around, mutual friends and acquaintances fluttered around with reassuring and unfounded promises, the way they tend to do with bridesmaids.
“You’ll be next!”
“Can’t wait for your wedding, it’ll be such a party!”
Even the band (of friends) joked they would have to stay together long enough to play my wedding dance. They’ve long since broken up. There is no boyfriend. Nor a girlfriend, which I’m asked surprisingly a lot. I don’t have an ex-husband to roast. There are a handful of awkward first-date stories that I use to entertain people. Tomorrow’s questions will not be as fun.
In the last year, my two sisters have become engaged and one is married, the other soon to be. My best friend from high school is about to marry again, as are some of my other recently divorced friends. Whether it’s the first time round, or second I feel joy for them. It’s the circumstance however, that’s pushed me to examine the deep, dark things of my life. To look at what is, embrace it and move into a different way of living with the ‘What-If’.
Sometimes life is like going to the dentist. You think you’re fine, until he prods that molar with the sharp pointy thing. Next thing you know, you’re paying for a cavity you didn’t realise you had.
I’m selfish and afraid. I’m afraid of disappointing people, afraid of facing the same old questions and the same old reassurances, when what I want to say is ‘No, stop. Just let it be what it is.’ I’m also learning to let go of my ego, that wants to asks things like, why them and why not me. Dark, dangerous, stupid questions. I’m not afraid that I’ll be single forever and I certainly don’t care about not spending a fortune on a one-day party. I’m afraid that I won’t be ok, if I’m alone. I’m afraid I’ll be too okay and that every day I move forward with my life into a complete, fulfilling, do-all-the-things world, I get further and further from the possibility of meeting someone to share that world with me.
I’ve lived half of my life with the expectation I’d meet someone and we’d re-design the rest of it together. A halfway co-design of the future was the plan I had. That’s not what it is right now, so I’m having to design the second half myself. More on that later.
What-Is, What-Isn’t and What-If.
I’m trying to give something up here, trying to grasp on to something new, this next phase re-design of my life. I’m trying to talk myself into a new way of thinking, which is largely about moving into a new phase of life. I’ll tell you about it once I have the words, but I’m currently in transition.
We all know people who get stuck in What-Isn’t. That singular focus and deep misery that comes from not seeing the wood for the trees. Longing for something they don’t have. Not just single people, but people unhappy in their jobs, their work, their health, their relationships. People who wish for change but do nothing about it, people who live stuck in What-Isn’t.
I think you can get stuck in the What-If too. Afraid to move in any direction in case the magic you were looking for comes along. What if they really change this time? What if my soulmate lives here instead of there; I’ll just stay put. What if I won’t be ok?
I’m trying to give up the What-Isn’t and the What-If. They are addictive, slimy little emotional ego drugs. To be fair, for a girl who lives by the motto ‘do all the things’, it’s not What-Isn’t that trips me up. I’ve never been one to wallow in what I don’t have – but even the twinge of “why her, why not me?” has shaken me enough to re-think my thinking. Just a glimmer of What-Isn’t thinking is too dangerous to give a foothold, like getting high one time and liking it just a little too much.
Earlier this year I nearly overdosed on What-If thinking. It is a slippery slide of self-doubt.
Being Present.
When people write and talk about being Present, this is what we mean. Cling to What-Is and live deeply out of that. Don’t dwell or give too much time to the What-Isn’t and What-if, lest you get stuck. Of course, the healthier you are the less dangerous the What-Isn’t and What-If thinking is. Sometimes life is like going to the dentist. You think you’re fine, until he prods that molar with the sharp pointy thing. Next thing you know, you’re paying for a cavity you didn’t realise you had.
