Boys, Girls, Bodies

Coming of age in relationship

We are all struggling with our own maturity. None of us can claim the job is finished to satisfaction. But we feel for each other, and that feeling softens and opens us, providing more room for us to grow.

—Norman Fischer, Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up

As I write my way through 46 years of comings and goings, timelines blur, become tangled, unruly even. I remember big lessons and small moments in sharp detail. Meanwhile, the who and what came when keeps jumping out of order. Sequencing is elusive and circles back again.

Still, amidst my wanderings, there were sedentary stretches around schooling. There were times of running away and times of learning to stay. And, in grad school, in my early twenties, there was Matt.

Matt’s house sat across the ally from the tiny basement studio I rented in Glover Park. One day, as I was headed back from my daily run, he was sitting on his stoop. He stopped me to ask, “Is it your ankle or your hip?”

I wasn’t injured, but that was before finding yoga and having any awareness whatsoever of how my body moved in space. Running, walking, or standing, I was all over the place. Not injured, just awkward.

But, it was an entry. And just like that, Matt picked me up.

He was nine years older, which seemed wonderfully adult to my 22-year-old self. He was also way out of my league so far as general hotness.

I was thrilled but fully expected him to lose interest fast. To see that I wasn’t cool or even normal and studied all the time and had a running addiction and an eating disorder and only ate Lucky Charms and a very specific brand of frozen veggie burgers at every meal.

I consciously decided this run in with Matt was what it was with no expectations. My mantra: “It was an honour just being nominated.”

Even one date was a win and more than I’d have hoped for. We went on that date. And another. And somehow, before long, I’d moved into his house and fallen in love.

I should back up a minute — timelines being at least somewhat useful. Shortly before this, I had come out as queer and bisexual. I’d known I was attracted to women long before — since tween years, really, and definitely in college and grad school.

Months prior to meeting Matt, I’d started acting on it — attending a bisexual retreat and a regular group and making out with women on the dance floor of a local gay club. That sort of thing.

Soon after meeting Matt, I dropped this news, declaring myself a “bisexual virgin.” I’m not sure which part of that designation was farthest from my small town origins but, at 22, it was finally my unapologetic truth.

The “virgin” part, however, needs an asterisk.

Specifically, I had not had sexual intercourse, despite desperate, ultimately failed attempts with a sweet, summertime boyfriend named Christopher who came after Jeff number 2. Jeff, you’ll recall, was okay with oral but not vaginal penetration before marriage because, Jesus.

Depending on your leanings when it comes to such things, this rap sheet perhaps renders my “virginity” at the time null and void.

Christopher, by the way, had no such rules and was the kindest, sweetest, most caring boy. He strummed me songs on his acoustic guitar and sketched my portrait and we took care of adults and kids at a residential camp for people with disabilities.

It was a beautiful summer, coming somewhere during undergrad. We lived in cabins and I learned how to feed and bathe and change people and insert a catheter. I learned how to connect with those who didn’t exist in the same mental realm or speak the same language.

I also tried really hard to be in love again. This time, with the nice guy. This time, with someone who adored me.

Oh, yeah…and I wanted to have sex already so I could stop worrying about being a virgin for all eternity. But alas, we quite literally could not get it in there. I was too tight and closed off and truthfully, did not feel the right things to make it work.

I was still hooked on trauma and drama. I wanted to love Christopher but somehow couldn’t in the necessary way. He was too sweet. He couldn’t offer the requisite crazy with a side of cruelty my then self required. So I broke things off and possibly broke his tender heart.

I am still sorry and yet, it offered him a way out. A way to escape my crazy and cruel and find his person.

Anyway, that attempt behind me and newly out as bi, I still considered myself a virgin and was especially eager to rectify the situation. Apparently, I was also naïve beyond belief, assuming that telling an older guy I was a “twenty-something bisexual virgin” would for sure be a turn off and potentially a deal breaker.

Seriously. For a grad student on a free ride, my ignorance in certain domains was medium funny.

But Matt graciously provided a crash course in sex…amongst other things. The sex, to my relief, came easily. That part, at least, wasn’t broken. Other things, I’d soon discover, still were.

In the months before meeting Matt, immersed in studies at Georgetown and claiming new aspects of self, I had finally turned a corner with body image and eating disorders.

I had started to get a sense of: What if this is just my size? I think I can be comfortable here. What a relief to let the obsession go.

At the start of dating Matt, my wanting to seem normal reinforced this. Feeling and seeing ribs poking out from my sides, I told myself: Get it together. No one finds an anorexic exercise addict who obsesses over every calorie sexy.

Then, sitting on Matt’s porch one evening very early in our courtship and before actually moving in with him or even really knowing one another, I mentioned that if I gained a little weight I’d be okay with that.

This was a pivotal moment. More hinged on it — and Matt’s response — than either of us imagined. An offhand remark. A simple conversation sitting on a porch on a hot afternoon nursing bottles of dark beer while people watching.

But Matt’s response changed the course of things. At the very juncture when I was taking tentative steps towards a new, healing path, Matt’s response said: Danger! Go back!

It set in motion decades more of eating disorders and body dysmorphia. Specifically, he declared, “If you gained more than five pounds, I’d break up with you.”

Now, to be clear, at the time I weighed 90 pounds — a weight I’ve hovered around since. A weight I still hover around, in my mid-forties.

A weight that I decided, in that moment, was already teetering on too much. On being out of control. On being undesirable and unsafe. So I stayed there. I am still there. And I still have an eating disorder and body dysmorphia, however deftly organized.

At the time, I got upset and cried and felt ashamed and crazy. Matt confirmed my craziness, saying he was kidding. What’s the big deal. Get over it. Have a sense of humour.

Maybe he was kidding. I do not know. I do know this wasn’t the only thing.

While dating and after we’d settled into boyfriend and girlfriend and living together life, he’d urge me to go on longer and longer runs along the C&O Canal even when I was exhausted and felt I could go no further.

Spooning after sex, he’d place one hand on my belly and say that “based on my genetics,” he was pretty sure I’d grow potbellied and lose my abs.

I did not. To this day, they and my belly remain pretty much the same. Addiction to perfectionism combined with an eating disorder is a powerful thing, fucker. All the more so in an Aries with indomitable will.

To seal the deal, Matt constantly — from the first date on — offered running commentary about other women. Mostly picking out the hot ones. Mostly saying how beautiful, sexy, attractive, etc., they were. Sometimes pointing to the ones who’d “really let themselves go.”

Trying to be cool, I’d join in. Telling him which ones I found beautiful, sexy, attractive. I tried objectifying men too, but that and especially any flirtation made Matt go ballistic.

He’d also break up with me from time to time. Full of tears, I’d relocate to the basement, taking up residence there but “not allowed” to bring other dates home. Being granted occasional access to sleep upstairs with him on nights when he decided he wanted sex, even though we were broken up.

Then, eventually, he’d decide to take me back again without any discussion and as though nothing had changed. And, really, it hadn’t.

There was also the thing where I kept telling him I loved him and he kept telling me: “I want to love you but just don’t yet.”

Now, before you blame Matt, I feel pulled to argue his defense. First, he remains one of the most straightforward, honest people I’ve ever known. I appreciated not having to guess what he was thinking and whether he was lying. However painful, I knew where I stood.

Second, I’m guessing Matt suffered from great pain and eating disorders and body dysmorphia himself. His body was the stuff of Greek gods, but he likely didn’t see it that way.

Like me, he was addicted to daily runs and had weird things around food. At least once or twice, he spoke of being made to eat only lettuce and run, run, run, sweat, sweat, sweat to make weight for high school wrestling.

He’d also, before me, been devastated by a woman he loved deeply. A woman he returned home to find fucking another man in his bed. For him, this was one of those moments. A moment after which nothing was ever the same.

As honest as Matt was, he was also closed off. He had decided, way before meeting me, that he needed strong walls. Walls protecting against the outside and being hurt and betrayed. Walls against feeling fully on the inside, or feeling too much.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that such speculation is exactly that. Stories and projections my own heart breathed into being.

Regardless of whether my story of Matt is real or imagined, he was in his thirties then and may be totally different now. I know I am. So, so different.

I also know I’m able to articulate things now — to myself and aloud — that I was completely, utterly incapable of back then. What’s more, my entire experience of self and others has undergone radical transformation.

Just to say, I don’t blame Matt. I don’t even presume to know him. Then or now. Except I do know he is human. And we’ve all hurt others and broken hearts and set harmful things in motion.

I’m still haunted by my own places of cruelty. My own places of saying words that changed the course of things.

In elementary school, for instance, I had a backyard party for neighbourhood kids. In a game of duck-duck-goose, all of us sitting in a circle, I made a comment that I somehow thought was funny. I’m not even sure where it came from or what it was in response to, but it was along the lines of: “At least I’m not fat!”

Even then, before being conscious of exactly what was wrong in that, I knew. I scanned the circle shamefully to see whether anyone present was fat, out of fear I’d said something hurtful.

I noticed Kendra, a younger girl from down the block. She was leaning over her soft belly, trying to conceal it under her chest as she sat cross-legged on the earth. She hadn’t earned “fat kid” status yet but was notably bigger than the rest of us, with our impossibly skinny limbs.

I tried to cover my slip and make it okay, declaring loudly: “What? It’s not like anyone here is fat!”

But it was too late — I likely caused a wound and left a lifelong scar. One line said without thought or consciousness likely changed the course of Kendra’s trajectory.

That was 30-some years ago, and I’m still sorry.

So, again, I don’t blame Matt. He was part of my story. He was part of what my soul needed, doling out the poison and the medicine in one dose.

He led my soul exactly where it needed to go, to learn the lessons it is here to learn. To work out what it needed to work out. This “working out” will continue until I pass on from this human form. A form that, for all of us, holds painful hurts and beautiful fragility.

What’s more, there was much sweetness during our time together. For one, I finally had lots of sex! With someone who was crazy hot! I also saw I could be in relationship with a person and even play house with them, despite my weirdness.

I loved Matt so fully for a while. And even when love leads to devastating heartbreak, I’ve come to believe it’s worth it. The intensity and aliveness are wildly perfect, even when the love story crashes and burns.

There was everyday sweetness too. For better or worse, Matt taught me to drink coffee — which I’d avoided until then — and to take it dark and black. He also taught me to like dark beer — the darker the better. And to rock climb and play Van Morrison and Big Head Todd on repeat.

We ate fantastic PB&J sandwiches for dinner and thick, syrupy pancakes on Sunday mornings. We played countless games of Scrabble, and he taught me to always squeeze toothpaste from the bottom of the tube (something I’ve resisted on principle since).

He taught me to play grownup in our own fashion, which differed dramatically from my parents’ versions. And he taught me how to be in relationship, at least in certain ways.

One time his deceased German shepherd Cerberus visited me in a dream — not in a particularly friendly way, but rather, to protect Matt. One time I found a note he’d written and secreted away without my seeing. It said, “I love you Dana Leigh.”

The loss of that missed love — or at least outward expression of it — was crushing.

Eventually, after a handful of breakups and heartbreaks, he also taught me not to settle anymore.

He taught me that I wanted more. That going round and round the same story loop without evolution or change or even communication around anything beneath the surface was not enough. That compartmentalizing my intellectual side to grad school and only talking about sports and bodies and women and sex at home was not doing it for me.

I wanted stimulation and inspiration and connection and conversation in a million other ways Matt rejected. At the very least, I wanted someone who told me they loved me instead of, “Sorry but I just don’t yet.”

So, ultimately, I choose to break our trauma bond. I chose to leave. After many times of Matt breaking up with me, the final time I was the one.

We did stay in touch and did sleep together another time after that. The occasion culminated in big drama and years of hate…before later settling into a fond if remote friendship.

I’ll leave that for another day, but just know part of me will always love Matt. No longer romantically, but full of tenderness for his messy wholeness. In the end, this is how we are, as humans.

It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and we’re all in it together, still trying to grow up.

If you liked this article and want to read more such articles without restrictions, please consider becoming a Medium member by using my referral link below. I get a portion from your $5 monthly fee at no extra cost to you, and it will go a long way in supporting me as a writer.

Alternatively, have a listen to my free audio readings here. Heart-sourced thank you’s either way!