ornoth

When we love someone, we hold their story within our hearts. When they pass, it’s incumbent upon us to bring that story forth and hold it shining like a gemstone for all to see.

Thus, I have to tell Grady’s story.

Two years after my first cat passed away, I was ready to add a new member to my household. In September of 2007 I went to the MSPCA’s Angell Memorial shelter and met a little gray cat. When I petted him, he had a very loud, easy purr, and I decided that he was the one.

The tag on his cage said his name was “Grady”, which is strange, because the previous owner had written “Grey” on the info sheet when she surrendered him. Of course, the tag also said he was “about 3 years old”, when the owner had said “one year”.

I’d thought I was getting an adult cat, but he really wasn’t much more than a kitten, and he had the energy and temperament to match. In the early years, he would often full-on attack me, drawing blood mostly with his teeth. When I got an animal behaviorist in, she tried to play with him until he was exhausted, but after 90 minutes of that without pause, she declared him “99th percentile”.

It got to the point where I was almost convinced that I would have to get rid of him, but we persevered, and I found that putting him in isolation when he misbehaved finally got the message through. He even figured out that if he really needed to play, he could come up to me, sit up on his haunches, and beg with his hands together. And if I wasn’t paying attention, he could tap my elbow with his paw first.

Play for him meant jumping for bouncing ping pong balls or leaping for potholders tossed like frisbees. He even played with little toy cars, rolling them around on the hardwood floor! But his favorite toys were the rubber wristbands that used to be popular; he’d run and chase them, then chew them up until they were destroyed. If you threw his stuffed toy pheasant, he’d run after it at full tilt, grab it with his forepaws, and do a complete somersault before administering a killing bite and bunny-hop kicks.

As he matured, he mellowed and came to trust me completely. Of course, whenever I came home, I could expect him to trot up and meet me at the door. He’d come snuggle any time I was on the couch, or nestle in the crook of my arm as I sat up in bed reading. If I was working at my desk, he’d come drape himself over my shoulder. We even got to the point where I could reliably hold him in my arms and rub his belly.

He was a good leaper, jumping across the kitchen from the island counter to the top of the fridge. He’d also jump several feet up and grab onto “his” particular part of the brick wall separating the kitchen and living room, or atop his scratching post. Every time I was on the toilet, we’d have to play grab-tag in the gap beneath the bathroom door. With people and loud noises, he was absolutely fearless… He had only one mortal fear: tinfoil!

Another daily ritual was feeding time. He was fed twice a day by an automatic feeder, and really knew how to tell time! Two hours before dinner, he’d start nosing around. With an hour to go, he would constantly prowl around. With 20 minutes left, he was downright agitated. And as feeding time neared, he’d pace around the feeder in high excitement, often biting it. I told him, “Don’t bite the device that feeds you!”, but that particular lesson didn’t seem to sink in very well. I think he knew exactly what it meant when I sang the “It’s almost time!” dinner song for him.

Speaking of music, Grady had both his own song, poem, and a special rhyming haiku. The song goes like this:

Grady, Grady, Grady cat:
Him not no average little ’fraidy-cat,
But him meows like a little lady cat…

His poem is:

My cat is full of grayness,
From his whiskers to his anus;
It seems to be quite painless.

And that rhyming haiku? Voilà:

My cat’s named Gradle;
He ate a raisin bagel:
It wasn’t fatal.

Perhaps his most unique trick was this: when he was watching you, if you held your hand out and rubbed your fingers together, his eyes would slowly close, as if from happiness. Very strange, but cute!

I’ve included a few good photos in this post, but I really suggest checking out all of Grady’s photos on Flickr. There are some real special pictures in that collection that capture his personality.

None of that, of course, says much about what he meant to me. Let’s just say he was a dear, dear friend, who made every day much better than it would have been without his warm presence.

So, what happened, and why is he gone?

On September 4th, we celebrated the seventh anniversary of his adoption with the traditional wet food treat. He was due for inoculations, so six days later I took him to the vet for his annual checkup. At that point, everything seemed fine, and continued that way for the following week.

The eighth day after his vaccination was Thursday the 18th, and he was his usual active self. The next day, he was lethargic and (for the only time in his life) ambivalent about food. I decided that I’d bring him to the vet if he didn’t improve overnight.

Since he didn’t improve, I brought him in to the vet first thing Saturday morning. He had quite a fever, so they kept him until 4pm, giving him IV fluid and antibiotics.

At the end of the day, he hadn’t improved, and since the vet was closing and wouldn’t be open on Sunday, they advised me to bring him to the animal hospital at Angell Memorial: the same shelter I’d adopted him from.

After an anxious cab ride, I brought him into Angell Saturday night. The doctor planned to run a bunch of tests and give him more fluid and antibiotics, which meant Grady would probably be in the hospital for a couple days.

Sunday his temperature had come down a little, but he wasn’t eating. All the tests they ran came back with only minor variations from normal. More tests needed to be done.

On Monday morning his temperature was back within the normal range. Monday afternoon I got a call from the doctor saying that he seemed normal and stable, but he still wouldn’t eat for them. Given that, she suggested I bring him home, in hopes that he’d be more comfortable and more liable to eat in a familiar environment. I just needed to wait a couple hours for them to get him ready to go, until 8:30pm.

At home, I cleaned out his food, water, and litter containers, in hopeful anticipation of his return. At 8pm, just as I was getting ready to leave, I received a telephone call from the woman who was getting him ready. “He’s in respiratory arrest. Do you want us to resuscitate him? We need an answer right now.”

What? But his fever had broken! The vet had pronounced him stable! Four days previously, he had been a lively and happy cat! And he was only eight years old! This wasn’t supposed to happen!

I was utterly staggered. Grady had spent three days in the hospital, but they had absolutely no idea what was wrong with him. The woman on the phone tried to be tactful while reminding me that even if they resuscitated him, it was likely to be only a temporary, short-term thing. Could I ask Grady to go through more trauma than he’d already endured? Was this his way of telling me that he’d had enough?

In the end, I took it as a sign that it was time for me to let him go. I told them not to resuscitate. They called back five minutes later to tell me that he was gone.

Grady—my lovely baby!—was gone!

I spent most of that night howling the horrible animal pain I felt. The comments I got from friends on Facebook were helpful, albeit to a limited extent. The next day, when I talked to the doctor, I agreed to spend the money to perform a necroscopy seeking answers about why he died.

Ultimately, the necroscopy was of no more use than any of the veterinarians who had treated him. Grady had a few minor health issues, but they found nothing life-threatening. Was his death due to a reaction to his vaccines? Was there anything the vets didn’t do (or anything they did) which contributed to his demise? There was simply no evidence to base an opinion on.

So now he’s gone, and we will never know why. It sucks mightily that we had such a short time together. I was so happy, and I really expected to have a lot more than just seven short years with him.

One of the most difficult emotions is my sense of responsibility for his unexpected and premature death. I mean, I used to look him in the eyes and tell him, “I *own* you…” And he trusted me so meekly when I brought him to the vet for his checkup. And yet, twelve days later he was dead, despite my feebly ineffective good intentions. And his well-being was 100 percent my responsibility. That guilt tears me up from the inside.

The condo, without him and all the cardboard boxes, the toys strewn all over, the food, water, and litterbox: it feels as if I’ve had a roommate move out. The place is silent and empty and lifeless. It might seem odd that living alone feels so radically different than living alone *with a cat*, but so it is. While my friends’ sympathy certainly helps, life just isn’t the same without my lovable little guy.

Seven weeks before Grady’s illness, I rode in my last Pan-Mass Challenge, and spent Sunday night after the ride at my hotel in Sandwich, on Cape Cod. Monday morning, my support person and I went and explored the Sandwich boardwalk, a quarter-mile foot bridge crossing a tidal marsh, connecting a parking lot to the town beach. After storm damage, it had been rebuilt in 1992 and again in 2013 with money raised by allowing people to purchase inscriptions in each wooden plank of the deck.

As we walked along, we read a sampling of planks. As I neared the beach end of the boardwalk, my eyes landed on one which simply read: ♥ U GRADY. Whatever the original intention had been, the plank reminded me of my little roommate, whom I hadn’t seen for four days. For all the feelings that reminder of him evoked, I stopped to snap a picture of it.

I didn’t know then that Grady had only a few weeks left to live.

That photo I impulsively took is now a very poignant memory and perhaps a fitting memorial in honor of my trusting and faithful little roommate, for whom I held so much affection, and who had brought so much warmth and joy into my life. Blessed be, my little one! I’m so, so sorry.

It wasn’t a New Years resolution, but when I came home from the IMS New Years meditation retreat, I launched a major social initiative, making an effort to reach out and establish meaningful connections with people and putting an end to a lengthy period of self-imposed isolation.

As you’d expect from an off-the chart Myers-Briggs ‘J’, I’ve quantified and tracked my progress, and the results so far are actually pretty surprising.

Over the month of January I counted 44 meaningful social interactions, which I have defined as face-to-face exchanges that are more substantial than just a quick greeting or business transaction. And I met 8 new people.

Despite being a shorter month, February was even more active. I tallied 58 social interactions and met 16 new people!

So overall, for the first two months of the year I had over a hundred interactions with sixty different people, two dozen of whom were people I hadn’t known before.

And the first half of March is booked pretty solidly, too.

How’s that for stepping out?

Of course, volume doesn’t necessarily correlate with quality or satisfaction, but I am pretty happy with the connections I’ve fostered so far. And it tells me that it’s not that difficult to overcome the inertia of rest, and that the effort one puts into it is rewarded more often than not.

So if you’re one of those folks I’ve interacted with in the past couple months—and especially if you’re a new friend, or an old one that I hadn’t spoken with in ages—thank you! I’m glad to have you as part of my life.

And if I haven’t spoken to you yet, please feel free to reach out. I’d love to hear from you.

Say you’re a happy little introvert, spending most of your time alone. Sometimes you might feel a little isolated and wonder whether the nice, safe life you’ve built is worth enduring the occasional bout of loneliness, or whether you should reach out and try to bring a loving relationship into your life.

Self-styled “normal” humans have probably accosted you with threatening phrases like “open up to love” as encouragement to change. But if it were that simple, no one would choose loneliness over love, would they? I’m here to tell you the truth.

When you leave the safety of your home, the first thing you find out is that—no matter how open you are to it—love is not guaranteed. Love is capricious, unpredictable, and unforeseeable. Whether you have success or not is largely out of your control. So at best, what all those well-intended friends are actually telling you is to open up to the mere *possibility* of love.

And because love is so rare and fickle, it’s pretty likely that you’ll waste your time and energy (and emotional vulnerability) and still come up empty-handed at the end of the day.

So realistically, what you’re actually being asked to open up to is the likelihood of rejection and heartbreak. And if you’re like most men, you’ll experience a whole lot of rejection and heartbreak before you ever find someone who will love you.

And trust me: experiencing a little loneliness once in a while is a walk in the park when compared to the pain of a broken heart.

So when your friends push you to “choose love”, remind them that it’s not a choice between loneliness and love, but between loneliness and the likelihood of repeated rejections and heartbreak, which are vastly more painful. Maybe then they’ll understand that avoiding romantic entanglements might seem like a sensible course of action to some of us.

And when they talk about dating being a growth experience, you should remind them that a growth is something painful that has to be surgically removed and excised before it kills you!

Wow… If you wanna get your LJ noticed, say something disparaging about love! I don’t think I’ve ever had that many responses to anything I’ve posted!

Two people agreed with my statement “Having loved once is once too many”. One person inquired what was up (in the form of a single questionmark). Four people felt the need to tell me that I was wrong, and one person posted a related quotation.

A couple general comments back…

First, it was an expression of emotion. Emotions aren’t right or wrong, nor do they reflect permanent truths. If I’d posted saying “I hate my mother!!!”, you’d probably take that as a temporary emotional outburst, rather than an expression of my deepest truth. No difference. It was one of those things that happens in the middle of the night. And honestly, Carlo’s song quote was absolutely spot-on: “What do I get to keep? A name, a face, a memory that burns in my sleep”. Specifically, at 2:13am last Tuesday.

Second, as one of those midnight moments of melancholy, it had its own poetry to it, at least in my head. It wanted to be said, shared. Part of my journaling is to record and share the depth of feeling I have, because I’m so horribly bad about revealing it in the moment. In the past I’ve written about my feelings about particular people, or about nature, or life in general; this was one attempt to capture a passing moment of melancholy. It’s no more fixed and permanent than anything else in this brief life.

I will say it surprised me how many people interpreted that statement as an integral part of my beliefs. It’s not; in fact, it’s pretty atypical. Maybe that’s why it needed to be expressed in that moment; I dunno. But it seems odd to me that people treated it as if I were making an assertion about Universal Truth, rather than just sharing another passing feeling, another moment of my all-too-humanity.

But that’s enough said. You don’t have to worry about me or my outlook on love. The ups and downs are part of the ride, and I was just sharing one particularly poignant moment. As they say, all such states arise and pass away, and wisdom is in recognizing that fact and maintaining one’s equanimity amidst the storm.

Having loved once
is once too many.

I recently read David Kundtz’s “Nothing’s Wrong: A Man’s Guide to Managing His Feelings”.

I guess the first thing to relate is why that book interested me. I grew up in a family where little to no emotion was visibly manifested. I was extremely introverted and intellectual. As an adolescent, I found myself becoming ever more angry, selfish, and hateful.

Then I started dating, which was an immensely transformative experience for me. I was confused by how impulsive my first girlfriend could be, and jealous of her stunningly carefree demeanor. I decided to try to incorporate this lesson into my life, thereby gaining a previously absent appreciation for beauty, nature, kindness, and humor.

Back then, I didn’t think the intellectual and the emotional halves of my personality could coexist, so I created separate, distinct identities for them. “David” was cold, calculating, and intellectual, while “Ornoth” was impulsive, open, and joyous. One or the other would be predominant for six months to a year, while the other popped up at odd moments, and then they’d reverse. In those days, someone close to me could see in my eyes when I switched gears. That took me through college and into marriage.

Despite all that, I guess the trend was for the cold intellectual to gradually reassert itself. My ex-wife’s parting shot to me was to give me a Mr. Spock tee shirt for my birthday, an unabashed reference to my lack of warmth toward her.

In the fifteen years since my divorce, I’ve changed more radically than I ever thought possible, but the basic disconnect with my emotions has persisted. I’ve worked hard to develop compassion and generosity, but no matter how hard I look, I can’t seem to detect what most women tell me is the essence of life: my emotions.

It’s undoubtedly a difficult thing for a woman to understand: that a man really doesn’t have the emotional range or insight into his emotions that is so basic to her. I can’t speak for any other men, but I don’t think I’m alone when I admit that I’ve spent much of my life honestly doubting whether I have any emotions at all, and whether I could ever detect any I had, however hard I try.

Thus, the book.

The first thing the book establishes is that men need a different vocabulary to talk about their emotions. Women’s emotions come from their hearts, but men feel things “in their gut”. By drawing attention to the body’s physical reactions, Kundtz actually echoed themes I’ve heard in my Buddhist studies, which emphasize the physical form and its state changes as the place to look for evidence of emotional activity.

The next logical step is, of course, for a man to become more aware of the changes in his body. That would seem like a potentially productive line of inquiry, although I found the way it was presented a bit unhelpful.

“The very first and vitally important thing you have to do in dealing with any feeling is really something that you must *not* do. Don’t bury it. Don’t run from it and don’t cover it over. Just stay in the moment and feel it. Just feel it. Don’t bury. Don’t run. Don’t cover. […] Got the idea? Just stay put; don’t run. Just feel.”

That kind of rhetoric does nothing to help those of us who have stopped, have looked, and found nothing. “Just take a few deep breaths and feel whatever you’re feeling” is not only an unhelpful tautology, but it’s also thoroughly frustrating for someone who has no idea how to “feel what they’re feeling”.

Kundtz talks about this ability to notice one’s feelings and says “Without this first step, all else is doomed”, but then turns around and says, “It might also be true that at any given moment you may not be feeling anything very strongly”. Well, duh. I can’t say I’ve “felt anything strongly” in years!

The underlying, common assumption is that men are all actively suppressing their feelings, because everyone has feelings, don’t they? As someone who is reasonably mature and has actively tried to sense my own feelings and come up empty, I find that a decidedly hurtful way to dismiss my difficulties. I may indeed have emotions, but don’t accuse me of being dysfunctional simply because my emotions are not as overt as a woman’s. Defining women as normal and men as inherently abnormal is both prejudicial and hurtful.

Beyond that, as Kundtz himself is quick to point out, “Nothing’s Wrong is based on the strong conviction that there is a direct and causal relationship between violent behavior in males and their repressed (buried) feelings.” If that were true, one might well expect me to be a mass murderer, given my longstanding and lack of emotion, which can supposedly only be explained by active repression. But it hasn’t happened yet, so far as I know.

Anyways, leaving that particular issue aside for the mo’, let’s turn back to Kundtz’s three-step program to male emotional fitness: notice the feeling, name the feeling, and express the feeling. Assuming I find some way to get past step one—the real problem—there’s still this final step of manifesting the emotion.

The next question is *how*. Okay, I’m feeling happy, and maybe I can even recognize that; now how do I make a conscious choice between the myriad ways of depicting that emotion in my actions? Should I skip and jump? Should I whistle a tune? Should I go buy a drink for a cutie at the pub? How do I choose? And don’t you *dare* tell me something useless like “whatever you feel like doing”, or I’ll rip your throat out. It’s not that easy.

When he starts to talk about expressing one’s feelings, Kundtz cites a 1998 Newsweek article that reads, “when people regularly talk or even write about things that are upsetting to them, their immune systems perk up and they require less medical care”. Kundtz interprets this as “The talking or writing is the third step. It externalizes the feeling.”

That’s actually extremely good news for me, because I do a *lot* of written self-expression, as the length of this entry attests. The very first thing I turned to when my wife left me was email. Ironically, even today my real-world friends criticize me because they see more of what’s inside me by reading my blog than by talking on the phone or hanging out with me. Another funny bit is that Kundtz not only mentions writing, but also specifically calls out cycling, poker games, exercise, and meditation as other avenues for self-expression, and those are all things I do quite a lot of.

Another interesting bit is how thoroughly Kundtz disses isolation. He opens one section with a quote from Men’s Health magazine which reads, “Lack of social connection is ’the largest unexplored issue in men’s health’”. He follows with, “If there is only one change that you make as a result of reading this book, please make it this one. *Please!* Determine somehow, some way, at some time to regularly get together with friends.” I found that kinda interesting, considering I’m really the epitome of the isolated bachelor, and have recently been pondering how to reach out and craft a few new meaningful friendships.

I don’t want to give you the impression that I disliked the book. It was reasonably interesting, and successful at raising all kinds of topics for reflection. I just wish there was a little more depth to his analysis of how to detect one’s own emotions. “Just feel what you feel” isn’t helpful at all, although I’ll start watching my physiological responses to see if they provide any clues.

One last bit, which is something of a tangent. In addition to the Mary McDowell quote I’ve posted about already, Kundtz also cites the following quotation: “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that’s my religion.”

I think that’s about the most eloquent statement of the Buddhist law of karma that I’ve ever heard. Satisfaction comes from taking moral actions, and immoral actions produce dissatisfaction. And I’m blown away that the speaker added “And that’s my religion” as a postscript. Can you guess who the quote was attributed to? I’ll give you a hint: he has a wretched hairdo and spends most of his time on $5 bills.

Imagine what might happen if we had a president today of a comparable ethical standard.

4:52am.

It's like having just come from an incredible movie that touched you to the heart, over and over.

And no one else has ever seen it.

No one else has ever even heard of it.

And they'll never get the chance to see it.

You'll never be able to share it with anyone.

"Made mindless" and the Southern Cross.

Berg and the Nakeds.

From Ka-Ve to my wedding to the Paint Lady.

Car magazines and reading primers

Frankenstein and Philadelphia Freedom.

Corrugated fun.

Dodgeball and Seally Pond.

The Saco River and the quarry.

Garnet and Garnett.

Watching the most important person in my life dying in an ICU.

The Bentmen and Concussion Ensemble.

From group love in a Jersey suburb to a different kind of group love in a cottage on a Scottish loch.

Free Enterprise.

Disco duck and "sprots".

Frodo Lives! at the McClurg Court Theater.

Sink the buses and save the nukes.

He's an eviscerator.

Sweet, Abba, and Devo piped thru a jury-rigged speaker system.

Mosquito Mountain and the Devil's Triangle.

Miles and miles of roads and trails that no one else has ever seen.

The Klong Yaw.

Hundred thousand dollar tax bills, and one-cent bank statements.

The Great Lie, and Then Again, Maybe I Won't.

Blond. Egad.

The turn toward Race Point, and resting at the beach afterward.

The campanile of the New Old South Church.

Astoria, and the RR.

Nights at Bill's or the Pluff.

The Toxicmobile. The Glick. The Starship. The Devinci and the Plastic Bullet.

Quack and meow. I'm flabbergasted. Ay-ant! Juggo naiyo.

Fletcher Pratt. "Eh? Did you say munny?" Yes, shut up, Hal.

Playing ball against the wall of the DMV for years at a time.

Compersion, and the ten thousand and one unspoken crushes.

Suits, casual, and back to suits. Purple rugs everywhere. I think the Morale Committee should have considered that.

Pemaquid, Camden, Battie. My tree in Old Town.

The ComDisk, MJJWSMBB, and HSnet.

Mazar Balinu, Carmarade, and DAL-SYS.

Kenny Kinnikinnick, inventor of Gnip Gnop.

Silent summer drives back from girlfriends' homes.

And the Southern Cross.

This is what it's like to grow old.

I've lived my life thinking: while I'm young, I'll live it up. That way I'll have a huge collection of wonderful memories to relive when I get old, and can't do all those fun things anymore.

I guess I'm over the crest of that proverbial hill, because when I look back, I'm filled with hundreds upon hundreds of memories of my life.

I see now why old people feel isolated. It's not because they're alone; it's because they've lived an amazing, deeply touching novel that no one else will ever read.

So many people and places and events have touched my life, but no person will ever share the things I remember, the things that even today bring up deep feelings that toss me around like a toy boat toy boat toy boat.

If you've been part of my life, I owe you something I can never repay. You've honored me greatly, and no matter how small a part you played or how distant the events in question, rest assured that you have touched me, and I remember.

Though no one else can or will, I shall remember, until the end of my days. Namaste, my friend.

Think about how many times I have fallen.
Spirits are using me, larger voices callin'.
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.

I found the following clipping very interesting. It’s similar to how I envision my old age: a time to reminisce about the life I’ve led.

A life of solitude does not have to be a life of loneliness
By Donald M. Murray, Boston Globe Correspondent | January 18, 2005

When I was 40 I was warned about the loneliness of old age, but now that I am twice 40 I find I enjoy the community of the self.

I have been surprised and grateful for the support Minnie Mae and I have been given by family, friends, and neighbors, even some whose names I do not know.

The importance of the support from the community has been so dramatic that I have overlooked the importance of the increased time I spend alone, since Minnie Mae unfortunately needs the care of an assisted living community.

Of course I miss her. In the 53 years we have been together our lives have grown as one. Each morning when I wake, I still expect to find her at my side, but the loneliness that I had feared has become a blessing, not a curse.

I enjoy the trivial freedoms of living alone. I can get up early or late, nuke and eat a one-course meal of peas, only peas; turn the volume on the hi-fi up and the TV off; sit at my computer at 3 a.m. if I can't sleep; keep a refrigerator without eggs or milk.

True solitude, however, takes me far deeper into the self than the freedom of the trivial. I realize I was bred for aloneness. Some of my ancestors, I am sure, spent their days alone, in a small rowboat fishing out of sight of Scotland.

Others spent weeks, perhaps months, hunting alone in the great forests of Scotland before the English slaughtered the trees so they could provide fuel for the early factories of the Industrial Age.

I feel those great-great-great grandfathers and beyond in my genes, and alone I can travel back to live with the ancestors who programmed me for solitude.

I was blessed with a sickly childhood and that wonderful condition called convalescence, and spent weeks in bed reading, daydreaming, and being introduced to classical music on the radio by Walter Damrosch.

I like waking in an empty house, walking from room to room, listening to the silence, different in each room. Shadows share my rooms, and they become friends, and we laugh at how they scared me at bedtime when I was young. The painter's light at the edges of the day changes each room from hour to hour.

It takes an hour of sitting alone to empty my brain of yesterday and tomorrow. Then it fills. I am the boy who explored the Ashuelot River by himself; the soldier who was sent, alone, to find the British Army so we would not attack each other; the newspaper reporter who felt comfortable on the sidelines, taking account of life.

Alone, pleasing no one but myself, I keep exploring my many lives, what was, what is, what might have been.

I no longer travel to the Norwegian Coast but I am a tourist in my past, surprised at those who worry about an old man's lonely life.

In contrast to the wonderful joy of compersion, being polyamorous isn't always fatness and light. Let me tell you now about one of the biggest frustrations of my life. It's not really about poly per se, but more a criticism of modern western society in general, which has been underscored by my being poly.

Looking back at the times when I've been most happy with my social life, the big thing that strikes me is that in every instance, a group of friends had become close enough to overcome their fears and allow us to freely express our affection for one another. Sometimes that was expressed verbally, and sometimes it took the form of physical touch: hugs, backrubs, holding hands, or more. Those have been very special, magical times for me, when I've been able to establish an intimate connection with people by telling or showing them that they are important or attractive to me, and receiving the same kind of reinforcement back.

But when I looked back over the duration of my life, those times have been brief and rare treasures. When I thought about it, I realized how very strongly and thoroughly our modern society discourages the expression of affection. We're taught from a very early age that our love must be limited to only a few prescribed channels, and we have to control others' affections if we hope to remain in their hearts. We have to jealously guard our lovers, prohibiting them from getting close to anyone else, for fear of being suddenly excluded. We also have to beware anyone who offers us affection, because it usually comes with unwanted expectations and ulterior motives. In short, in America, fear trumps love every time.

As a polyamorist, I find this situation incredibly frustrating. Every day, I meet so many wonderful, beautiful people whom I'd love to learn more about, get close to, and offer my genuine affection for, but I can't touch them or even speak to them of my attraction, for it would violate society's idea of decorum. There is an adorable and talented woman in one of my classes, whom I'm attracted to and would love to get to know; but if I so much as told her that I felt that way, it would certainly make her uncomfortable about me: fear. I am friends with a former co-worker who is both beautiful, intelligent, and insightful, and whom I admire and am attracted to; yet she once confided in me that she had totally lost her respect for another co-worker whose only fault was that he appeared to like her: fear. Another friend and I have verbally expressed our affection for one another; yet she is married, and her husband controls her ability to express any affection at all through his adolescent jealousy: fear. Another former co-worker is wonderful to be with and very attractive; yet if I told her simply that, our age difference would freak her out: fear.

How have we come to this point, where I cannot express my affection for someone, because it would cause them to fear me, or the people who also love them to fear me? We have become a society where our fear tells us that all affection must be suppressed, denied, and discouraged if it doesn't conform to a very limited list of specific authorized forms.

We live a society where all of us are lonely and virtually starved of friendship and affection. We have all made ourselves isolated and untouchable, and we refuse to allow ourselves to partake in the bounteous feast that lies right before our eyes. If we were to give up our stupid, juvenile fears, this world could be so much better. To me, as a polyamorist who is free from society's bondage to these ridiculous fear-borne restrictions on expressing affection, this seems to be the biggest tragedy of our lives. It surely isn't the way an intelligent humanity were meant to live.

I say I'm free of these fears myself, but it's only partly true. As you can see, I am still afraid of running the risk of rejection and telling those people I love or desire how I feel about them. I do believe that I am more willing to acknowledge my affections than most people, and I take pride in being much further down the road of allowing others full freedom to express their love, wherever it is directed.

I can only hope that over time I can grow more confident in my own ability to boldly approach someone and tell them forthrightly that they impress me, that I care about them, or that I am attracted to them, despite the fact that our society of fear would have me deny it. I can't change our whole world, but hopefully I can change my own world, and make it a place where affection doesn't inspire fear, but is openly accepted, celebrated, and allowed to thrive.

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