Partner

When I talk about Patrick or introduce him to new friends, I call him my partner.

I love everything about the term. Weightier than "boyfriend", it connotes a subtle seriousness that implies dependability and security. There is intimacy in "partner" for me, a powerful recognition of the investment to each other we've committed to. A partner has to know your weak spots so they can support you. They genuinely care about your insecurities because they'll be the ones to tell you where you're strong. A partner pushes you, challenges you, comes up with wild schemes with you, and gets you out of the most impossible scrapes.

Long before we were partners, we took ourselves out to fancy restaurants and hidden bars, ran weekly Costco runs and grocery shopping trips. We backpacked in the desert and and stargazed among the redwoods. We'd study together until dawn and take long drives at midnight to nowhere, sharing secrets and worries and shaky dreams (I was going to move to Sri Lanka to work with elephants, he wanted to switch up and study computer science). We'd do movie nights on his bedroom floor, emergency room visits, and secret handshakes. And then, in a teary-eyed phone conversation a year and a half ago - he in California, I on a hotel room floor in Denver - we finally blurted out what had been a reality for months and months; "You're my partner in crime....I love you". And it stuck. Partners.

I also feel privileged to be able to choose to use "partner". "Boyfriend" or "girlfriend" can be riddled with stigma or judgement for many same-sex couples and so "partner" is a safe, vague alternative. As a straight woman, no one questions my sexual orientation or morality if I say "boyfriend". However, my lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender friends can't always say the same thing and that's a reality I'm very aware of. And so, I like being able to challenge a system of defined gender roles and social norms by using "partner" to describe my heterosexual relationship. I feel using "partner" allows me to challenge the stereotypes and easy assumptions that ascribe narratives to individuals without allowing them the space to define themselves.

As queer writer Lindsay King-Miller wrote: "If your relationship doesn't depend on a fundamental disparity between the roles of "male spouse" and "female spouse", but on the two (or more) of you approaching each other as individuals and equals, I think you should have access to terminology that reflects that equality. As same-sex couples continue to love, commit, and build families and lives together, regardless of gender, we create space for straight people to do the same....When I hear someone I don't know refer to their 'partner', I no longer assume that means they're a same-sex couple. I don't assume it means they're unmarried. I don't assume anything except that they are sharing their lives and creating relationship models that work for them."

I love it. I love knowing Patrick is my partner through thick and thin, that I can lean on him and we'll be an anchor for each other. I also love the conversations about equality, gendered norms and societal labels that tend to arise whenever I use the term. Partnering in partners.

Validation

When people speak of love languages - gifts, physical touch, kind words, time, service - my mind goes to the word "peace". I've discovered how truly precious this rare quietness is, how hard it can be to cultivate, nurture, and maintain it.

The tours office is a whirlwind. I'm interviewing nearly 80 students this week, scheduling my current staff for numerous special events that are wearing all of us thin, I made a simple mistake that now has over 600 visitors coming for tours next Monday alone, and tour guides keep showing up late to their shifts. I'm one part disciplinary officer, mother, special events coordinator, HR manager, supervisor and one part very, very human. It's a hard balance. Yes, rewarding and exciting, but also draining and I have moments where I don't want to see another human being for hours. I just want to curl up in a hug and a blanket, get a kiss on the forehead, and be told I'm doing a good job. I crave peace. Silence to just think and pause. Peace. It's sacred. 

Be realistic, Demand the impossible.

The past ten months have been a confirmation in determination in strength. I moved back to San Diego in January completely unemployed and signed a lease on an apartment in a beautiful neighborhood in blind faith that "something would happen". It was the riskiest financial decision I've ever taken. 

I submitted almost a hundred job apps, interviewed like mad and bounced between four completely different jobs in eight months. I ended up moving again, lost a car, bought a car, went camping once or twice, and somehow the fridge stayed stocked, bills were paid, and friendships remained intact. It was a rollercoaster and an exercise in trusting my gut, unabashedly pursuing simple goals, and leaning on amazing friends. 

It's been ten months and I've gone from being unemployed to a temp employee to a director of 100 staff members. I am so, so lucky. So lucky to have the opportunities I've had. That the right doors opened at exactly the right moment. That my friends and partner put up with my crazy schedules and dogged stubbornness. That I have a support system that allows me to bounce around without cracking. That the sun continues to rise each and every morning. 

"Be realistic, demand the impossible." It works, guys. 

Smells of Fall

The kitchen is quiet in the morning. Soft, warm morning sunshine joins me at the table as I blink sleep away. My man leans over my shoulder with a steaming ceramic bowl. He layered my oatmeal with cinnamon and honey, knowing that, even bleary-eyed and not awake, I have a sweet tooth.

Mondays feel heavy. They come regularly and uncalled for, barging into a perfectly happy weekend like that one cousin who always feels unattended to. Screaming and dancing for attention. Mondays always seem like a whirlwind; full of meetings and phone calls, new projects and urgent problems born over the weekend that all those bright, cheerful morning people love to bring to your attention before you've gotten halfway through that emergency latte.

This job is demanding and exhilarating. I constantly have to make decisions, speak in front of audiences, and manage my 100-person staff. It's big and exciting, difficult and challenging. I love it. But I wake up slow.

He knows this. And stirs a pot of warm cider on the stove for our commute to work. He adds honey and spices to it, filling the little kitchen with cozy smells of Fall.

This Monday feels heavy, but it tastes like love. 

Fierce

Fierce: displaying a heartfelt, powerful and sometimes aggressive intensity. Living on the road months at a time teaches me that life is short. Live fiercely, love fiercely. Do things that scare and grow you.

Graduating

Desert

I need the desert.
Right now. I need to be out in the dry, dusty, barren desert with the heavy silence and brilliant stars. I need the rocks. The cacti. The texture. The silence. The rugged silence. I need to stare at the vast emptiness and let my mind whirl. Life is too busy, too complicated, too demanding, too exhausting. I feel like the desert is an escape from realities and responsibilities. A magical moment to pause time. A place where I can think and be and revel in my utter confusion while the distant world of obligations and phone-calls spins chaotically on. Without me.

Graduation looms a mere three months away and I feel as though my world, security, and sanity is crumbling before me. I have no idea what I'll be doing in three months. I have no idea how I'll pay loans off when volunteering seems to be the only prospect before me. I have no idea how to make dreams happen. I've pursued something I've loved for so long, and now that I'm on the brink of it, I'm balking. I'm terrified. Excited and anxious and scared and restless and frustrated and bewildered and tired.

What do I want? I WANT to grab my camera and notebook and listen to the stories of women around the world. I WANT to sit in the dirt with these women and give their voices a platform. I WANT to show the commonality of women and mothers around the world; their struggles, their pain, their joys. I want to gauge my ears, get tattoos, get sunburned and sit under patched roofs and learn from people I've only read about. I don't want to read one more theoretical model or social critique. I'm so burned out from academia. I want humanity, I crave connection, I need reality and honesty and humility and simplicity. I'm starved for real people in real places with lived experiences and their own personal narratives. I'm so exhausted by chronic abstraction; the sitting behind desks in quiet rooms in filthy rich La Jolla TALKING about poverty and aid and women's rights and empowerment and how white people have fucked it up. I need to do something with my hands. Let me help deliver a baby. Let me dig a well. Let me scrub the floors of some orphanage. Let me plant crops. Let me DO something tangible.

I need to walk and walk and walk and walk. In silence. In hot, sweaty, unbearable silence. I need to trudge, and think, and be. I want to stretch my arms across the mountain ranges and breathe in the vastness of the stars. I want to revel in my humanity and my identity and my own uncomfortable skin.

In three months, something will happen. But right now,
I need the desert.
Right now.