Glennon Doyle - Untamed

For a long while, that was how I felt about everyone who was not me and Abby. I’d look at folks walking down the street and think: They don’t even know. We are special, and they are so… normal. The only normal person I could even speak to during those early days was my sister. She talked to me back then exactly like she’d talked to me when I was a drunk. She’d cock her head to the side and say things like “Be careful, Sissy. You don’t really know what you’re doing right now.”

I’d think: Oh my gosh. She thinks this is a phase. She doesn’t understand that I have found love and so now I am different and special forever. This is what I’ve been missing. This is why life has been hard for me: because I didn’t have this one thing. Now I am better. This is who I am now. I am meandAbby.

One night, Abby and I were sitting on the couch, wrapped around each other, kissing and talking about eloping.

Abby said, “We gotta be smart. Our brains are lit up like Christmas trees right now.”

I pulled back from her. I felt confused, like one of my shrooming friends had turned to me in the middle of a trip and asked if I would help her with her taxes. I felt lonely, like Abby had abandoned me and become normal without me. I felt annoyed, like she was suggesting that our love was not personal but chemical. Like it was not magic, just science. I was under the impression that our love was the opposite of the drugs that we had used to light up our brains and escape our lives for decades. I was under the impression that we were healing each other, not drugging each other. I was under the impression that we were Juliet and Juliet, not Syd and Nancy.

Abby said, “I’m afraid for when this beginning part ends for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve never fallen in love, so you’ve never been in this part before. I have. It changes. I want the change. I want the next part. I’ve never had that before. This first part isn’t the realest part. The next part, when we stop falling together and land side by side, that’s the real part. It’s coming. I want it, but I’m afraid that when it comes, when we land, you’ll be disappointed and you’ll panic.”

“I feel like you’re saying that we’re under some kind of spell and soon it will wear off and we will love each other less than this.”

“What I’m saying is that soon the spell will wear off and we’re going to need to love each other more than this.”

After a few months, I started noticing that our love shrooms started wearing off. I started to see Abby as separate from me, and I started to feel myself becoming normal again. That was a tragedy for me, because I thought that she was the thing that had finally saved me from having to be myself. I thought I could just be us forever now. She was right. I did panic. One night I wrote her this poem:

colors

Two years ago

You were pearl white

I was midnight blue.

We became sky blue.

Pearl gone, midnight gone

All sky blue.

But now, sometimes, you go.

To a meeting, to a friend, an opinion, a show.

When you go, I’m left with me again.

You take your pearl. I feel my midnight again.

This is right, I know.

Midnight is how I make things.

I just thought, for a minute, that I was gone.

I miss being gone.

The end of the Beginning is existing again.

We will be beautiful and strong side by side.

But between you and me (between pearl and midnight)

I liked sky blue better.

I look at that poem now, and I think: Glennon, you are always so desperate to find yourself and ready to abandon yourself. You so badly want to be seen and to disappear. You have forever been desperate to yell “HERE I AM” and to fade away at the very same time.

Abby and I have been normal people for a couple of years now. We are in the next part now. The initial buzz has worn off, but sometimes we’re sky blue again. It’s not a permanent state anymore; it comes in fleeting moments. It happens when we make love, steal a kiss in the kitchen, catch each other’s eyes when the kids do something amazing. Mostly, though, we’re separate colors. This is a beautiful thing, because we can really see each other. I have decided that I want to be in love with a person, not a feeling. I want to be found in love, not lost in it. I’d rather exist than disappear. I’m going to be midnight forever. That’s perfect.

Ask a woman who she is, and she’ll tell you who she loves, who she serves, and what she does. I am a mother, a wife, a sister, a friend, a career woman. The fact that we define ourselves by our roles is what keeps the world spinning. It’s also what makes us untethered and afraid. If a woman defines herself as a wife, what happens if her partner leaves? If a woman defines herself as a mother, what happens when the kids leave for college? If a woman defines herself as a career woman, what happens when the company folds? Who we are is perpetually being taken from us, so we live in fear instead of peace. We cling too tightly, close our eyes to what we need to look at hard, avoid questions that need to be asked, and in a million ways insist to our friends, partners, and children that the purpose of their existence is to define us. We build sandcastles and then try to live inside them, fearing the inevitable tide.

Answering the question Who do I love? is not enough. We must live lives of our own. To live a life of her own, each woman must also answer: What do I love? What makes me come alive? What is beauty to me, and when do I take the time to fill up with it? Who is the soul beneath all of these roles? Each woman must answer these questions now, before the tide comes. Sandcastles are beautiful, but we cannot live inside them. Because the tide rises. That’s what the tide does. We must remember: I am the builder, not the castle. I am separate and whole, over here, eyes on the horizon, sun on my shoulders, welcoming the tide. Building, rebuilding. Playfully. Lightly. Never changing. Always changing.

It’s late afternoon, and I’m winding down from a nine-hour workday. Abby pops her head into my office and says, “Babe! Guess what? I’m going to start playing ice hockey! I found a league that plays Monday nights. I’m looking at gear now. I’m so psyched.”

ME: Wait. What? You play ice hockey ?

ABBY: No, but I used to play when I was little. My brothers would put me in goal, and I’d just stand there and let the pucks bounce off of me. So fun.

Fun.

I am confused about “fun.” Abby is always asking me “What do you do for fun?” I find the question aggressive. What is fun? I don’t do fun. I am a grown-up. I do family, work, and trash TV. Repeat forever.

But we are newlyweds, so I am still sweet. I say, “That’s great, honey!”

Abby smiles, comes over to kiss me on the cheek, then walks out the front door. I stare at my computer. I have so many questions.

Why does she get to have fun? Who has the time and money for fun ? I’ll tell you who: everyone in this family but me. Craig has soccer and Chase has photography and the girls have…everything. Everyone has a thing but me. Must be nice to have time for a thing.

This “must be nice” thought stops me. It always does.

Hmm. Maybe it is nice. Maybe that’s why they all want a thing.

Maybe I want a thing.

I sit and think about the one thing I’ve always wanted to be: a rock star. I am so jealous of rock stars. If I could have one talent I do not have, it would be singing. When I was little, I used to stand in front of the mirror with a hairbrush and transform into Madonna in an arena. Now it’s P!nk. In my car, alone. I am P!nk. I am the P!nkest. I am P!nker than P!nk. I am Deep Magenta.