Author: Libby

My And

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So, I’ve been thinking about writing this for a month and actually writing it for close to two weeks and when you consider the fact that most things I write, I conceptualize and get down on “paper” within a few hours, that’s saying a lot. In college, I’d start essays an hour before they were due and get A’s. If I decided I was really going to sit down and apply myself–give myself a week or two to devote to this work, I generally got a C+. So, sorry if this is C+ work but I’m not exactly shooting for a grade, today.

It’s not hard for me to talk about this with you. You know I love to lay it all out there on the line. Honesty begets honesty begets honesty and I’m here for it. I’m here to do that work. But sometimes your story intersects with someone else’s story. Or a few someone elses. I strive to be mindful of what is or isn’t my story to tell. I’ll tell you my part of the story.

My bisexuality was revealed to me this summer in a way that only the most pretentious metaphors can describe. For the longest time, I could only explain it like this:

It’s like my whole body and soul is this house. So, I’ve been living in this house for 33 years. And all of a sudden I’m walking down a hallway and I see this open door to a room I’ve never seen before. As soon as I walked inside, it looked like the rest of me but somehow more me? Somehow me but with the vibrancy turned up 80 percent. And suddenly the structure of my house made so much more sense. Like, you always knew there had to be something else but you weren’t sure what it was or how to get to it.
But more than that, it felt the way it does when it’s been a long, stuffy winter and you’re able to open the windows for the first time on a spring day. And there’s lilacs outside. Just all freedom and weightlessness and breezy joy.
But then it’s also like when you are finally starting to get the hang of a Rubik’s cube and it all starts to click into place and you can see it happening and you can’t believe this is all true and it was possible and it was right inside of you living here all this time. But you’re not holding the Rubik’s cube–the whole world is the Rubik’s cube. And it’s shifting and clicking into place and it explodes into brightness and color and light. But it’s also, like, an ordinary day. On your normal couch. Eating normal spaghetti and watching Master Chef like you always do. But with this quiet acknowledgement that this huge thing is all going on around you and inside of you and no one can see it but you. At least this is how it felt for a few weeks this summer, for me.

I know I’m making it all sound so magical and glorious but it wasn’t always. It was scary. It was confusing. It’s still a little confusing. Some of it hurt. Some of it hurt a lot. Some of it didn’t. Some of it… very opposite of hurt. Some of it felt like a huge gamble with an unknown pay off. Sometimes it didn’t feel worth it.
But it was.
At least right now it all feels worth it.

Another day I’ll tell you about how I came to this.
I can tell you that it was a mixture of boldness and vulnerability and beautiful, sticky, inescapable grace and terrifying honesty and communication and understanding and trust and tequila. Just like, well, most anything worth having in this life.
This story will fall together overtime. I promise. As it all becomes admissible.

So then if there’s so much I’m not ready to say, why do I want to tell you about this? Because it came somewhat out of the blue for me and it was scary and immediately it felt like I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. I shouldn’t talk about this. My instinct was to shove this down and keep it quiet. And I think we all know that in the quiet, in the dark is where pain grows. I knew that if I was experiencing something like this–something that felt like I was supposed to keep quiet about, then there were other people out there who have had this happen to them, too. You’re in your mid-30’s. You’re pretty settled. You might even be, like me, in an unbelievably happy marriage. Maybe there’s a couple kids in the mix? And a door accidentally unlocked in your house and creaked open and you didn’t know what to do about it. And here you are, with a quiet secret that maybe your friends only know about because you had that 4th sangria that one time and then you woke up with a shame hangover for revealing too much. For having mostly questions but no real answers.

No shame hangovers for us.

In the aftermath of this revelation, I remembered a lot about myself. Like, the way that I’ve never been terribly boy crazy. I’ve always known that about myself. When I was younger, it always bugged me. Girls would be like, “Who do you have a crush on??” And I’d be like, “Um… sorry I can’t bond with you on this.” There were a few boys that I’ve had crushes on but in my whole life I can count them all on one hand. I was always way more obsessed with the girls in my life but I thought that was just because I was super passionate about female friendships. Haha!
And, I mean, that’s true. That is true. But… I mean… I need more hands to count the girls I’ve swooned over. And there are other things, too. Other things that suddenly make so much more sense but I’m not here to get too wrapped up in specifics. I’m just saying, I thought that was all a part of being straight. You know? I just had never ever questioned my sexuality because  I adopted a label without ever considering it. Which is, to be fair, what I’ve done with most labels in my life. Haphazardly applied without even thinking about it. Don’t even notice it till it starts to itch. I started to itch.

And, look, I’m married. To a man. To whom I am very, enthusiastically attracted and with whom I am head over complete heels in love. I’m not saying that I’m not attracted to men. I am! That’s what part of being Bi is. It’s just that there’s always been an extreme vetting process for men when it comes to crossing these here borders. That’s all I’m saying. Does this realization affect our marriage? Of course it does and I feel grateful every single day for a partner who is open and trusting and generous and full of grace. He raises the bar for life-partners everywhere. He would also prefer it if I let you know that there are certain areas where he lowers it, too. He is, after all, a human person.

This week is Bi-Visibility week and that’s why I decided to tell you about this part of me, today. Because it’s been strange to know something about myself that other people can’t just inherently know on their own. It’s been strange to pass as one thing when I know I’m not that. I was sitting in church a few weeks ago with my husband and feeling so… dishonest. It wasn’t intentional but I kind of hated the way that when you look at me and my husband sitting in a pew, it’s so easy to make several assumptions about me that aren’t true at all. “There’s a cute straight, Christian couple.” But neither of those descriptors are mine. They’d be honest assumptions–I wouldn’t fault anyone for thinking certain things based on what I’m presenting. But I still didn’t like the grimy feeling that I had sitting on that hard bench in the back of the church. I’m working on figuring out what to do about it but in the mean time, I’m just going to tell you this one thing. Like all the other things I’ve told you.

I have much privilege to be able to tell you this without fear of backlash. I don’t worry about losing my job. I don’t worry for my safety. I can’t imagine that I’m going to lose friends over this–at least not for this part of who I am. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m married to a man and my sexual identity is easily ignorable for anyone who isn’t me or my partner.  And since I do have this privilege, I think it would be a misuse of it to not speak out and let you know that you’re not alone if you’ve felt this, too.

That’s why I’m here. I’m living visibly so that maybe you can, too, if you want to. While this doesn’t change anything about our relationship, you and me, reader–you know me better, now. You know more about me and that’s what I wanted. That was my goal when I started this post.

Here’s me. I’m handing you one of my Ands. The extra, not-so-obvious parts of me. I’m handing you my And, and you’re free to do whatever you want with it. Because once you’re holding my And, it becomes a part of yours.

I’m open to all honest, loving questions and comments. You can leave them in the comments section of this post, on Facebook, email me: libby (at) xoxolib.com, or just talk to me when we’re out in the world. I would love to hear your story even if it’s nothing like mine.

Thank you for hearing me, today.

I appreciate you.
XOXO, Lib

What Does She Owe You?

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Earlier this week I took Fiona to the dog park. We love to go out there. She likes to run. I like to sit in the sun all by myself and unplug from the internet for a while. Sometimes, I bring a book but I almost never read it because my mind really just loves to wander. We’re usually alone.

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This time, though, a gentleman was there with his three dogs. This man did not share my joy in solitude and quietness out there. He was so enthusiastic and trying so hard to engage me in conversation despite my use of the polite nod, headphones, and actively walking away from him. Finally after his fourth failed attempt at getting a conversation going he said to me, in the exact same tone of voice that he used when speaking to his tiny dogs, “well you’re just not very friendly are you?” Like, he could have easily finished that up with, “Who’s not a friendly girl? You aren’t! No you’re not!”

Frankly, I was just grateful that he was rounding the corner towards giving up so I just said, “not really,” put my earbuds back in and texted my friends about this guy. Look, could I have made an effort? Yeah. Of course. Am I required to? I am certainly not. And why not? Because I’m tired. We’re tired. And also because I’m just a person doing her damn best at being alive some days.

Last year, immediately following the funeral of a friend, I was filling my car up with gas and the man across the terminal said to me, “Come on, baby, smile. Things can’t be that bad.”

A dear friend was walking out to her car in a grocery store parking lot in the middle of the day as a man approached and asked her to him show her tits.

Last winter, a stranger approached me as I was closing up the bookstore and asked me to drive him out to his home in the middle of the country well after dark. And when I very extra politely declined, he said, “well I hope someone helps you out when you need help one day.”

Someone I know was once physically assaulted at work by a man who was upset that her nail polish was chipped. He claimed that she didn’t show him respect by making the effort to appear presentable.

For some people, it can be easy to “see both sides”. It’s easy–really easy to make us look like the bitch because we each said “no” to these men who wanted a piece of us.
That guy was just being friendly or he needed help or he obviously has issues. And because of these special circumstances, we’re expected to make a sacrifice of ourselves to be as polite as possible to these men who are so entitled to us. Entitled to our friendliness. To our bodies, our time, our resources, our devotion.

Sometimes we’re polite because our comfort comes secondary to those around us. It’s part of being a woman. We give and give and give. That’s the way we’re raised and that’s what men were raised to expect from us.
Other times, we’re polite as a means of survival. Because we don’t know how they’ll react to a rejection, we have to butter it up in the most sticky, sweet, gratitude. So flattered that they’ve chosen us to talk to on this lucky, special day.

It’s exhausting.

So when you come to me at the dog park and want to become best friends immediately without taking a minute to read the room, when you need a favor from a stranger, or you want some girl to take her top off or change her nail color to make you feel good I beg you. I BEG YOU to take a second and repeat after me:

This person owes me nothing.

 

 

Only When I’m Telling the Truth

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One of the most natural and acceptable getting-to-know-you questions for college students is, “what’s your major?”
“English,” I’d say.
Then they’d ask a question that was all at once boring and also deeply triggering if you, like me, didn’t have a real answer. “Oh, so what are you going to do with that?”
“I’m not sure,” is what I said for years. Then in my senior year I decided that I should start putting out there into the universe what I actually wanted. “I want to write for a living.” Pipe dreams. Everyone knew it.

Last night I sent some pieces of writing to a friend of mine. Something that I wrote without any audience in mind so I was able to be more free than usual. I was writing just to get this experience down on paper. Just because it was begging to be written.
This morning she texted me, “seriously, your writing is beautiful.”

I’m going to sound so arrogant right now but this is a compliment that I’m used to. It’s easy for me to not hear it and just say, “thanks” because I’m embarrassed by flattery. But I knew that she meant it. I knew that she was saying that something I said landed with her. My routine, robotic, “thanks” would have disregarded her. So instead of responding right away, I decided to hop in the shower and think about what that means. Because I don’t always write beautifully. I don’t always write in a way that connects with people. As I’m doing it I can tell, “this isn’t going to work. No one is going to hear this.” And I’m usually right. I don’t know how I know, I just know when it’s right and when it’s not.

What I wrote last night was vulnerable and even a little scary. It was all truth.

Right after graduation, I did get a writing job. My first grown up job. In Brookings, South Dakota at SDSU. This was great because I got to stay in a comfortable university setting but I’d get to be one of the grown ups! A department hired me to assemble their course catalogue and put it online. The writing part? Oh, I’d get to write the course descriptions. Yeah… that’s utilizing my talents! I’d spent the last four years writing whatever people asked me to write, I could do it and get paid for it for sure. Then, when the catalogue was up and running they asked me to write pamphlets for different courses and tracks and stuff like that.

It was the worst. I was terrible at it. In addition to not understanding the basic structure of how a public university operates (I went to a private school), feeling like a complete outsider, living so far away from the people that I loved (though my best friend did live with me at the time and that was an actual life-saver at times), writing because your life depends on it is horrible. I got the worst writer’s block. And not only that but this was stuff that I just didn’t care about. Which made it infinitely harder to dredge up any damns for the task at hand. I don’t care about the classes you have to take to keep your teacher’s certification. Some people do, I do not. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t force it.

When I was fired after six months, I was relieved more than anything. I vowed to never have my life depend on my creativity. It took me years to get my magic back. But my magic is back, don’t you think? I’ll be cocky, it’s fine. My magic came back this summer.

I do write for a living, now. But “for a living” means something totally different. More like: to stay alive.

After my shower, I picked up my phone and responded to my friend’s text:
“Seriously, your writing is so beautiful.”
“Only when I’m telling the truth.”

That’s the one. That’s how I know whether or not you’re going to hear what I’m saying. When I’m just filling space. When I’m hitting an arbitrarily self-imposed deadline, you don’t care. You don’t! You just don’t and that’s fine. In fact that’s good. That keeps me here in this honest space where I want to live forever.

Thank you for keeping me here.

XOXO, Lib

[Feature photo by Jessica Dixon on Unsplash]

Giving and Taking

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So, I’m reading this book right now. It’s called A Little Life [affiliate] by Hanya Yanagihara. Ever since I saw it for the first time at the book store I felt drawn to it. I don’t know why. It’s really, really long. And as I’ve mentioned in the past, I am a very slow reader. So I try not to get drawn to books that are 720 pages. But here we are. One day I just couldn’t take it anymore and I drove to the store just to buy this book to read while I was at the laundromat. I’ve been reading it for hours at a time since Friday and I’m almost 1/4 of the way through.

So I’m going to write to you about how I’m feeling about this book knowing full well that my thoughts and feelings about certain characters absolutely will change as time goes on.

There’s this one character named Jude. And I hate that I relate to him more than anyone else. Or maybe everyone relates to him the most? I kind of doubt it but there’s a lot of him that echoes so much about how I feel a lot of the time. I really don’t like it, either, because Jude’s character is kind of the foil of his roommate, Willem. Willem is tall and blonde and beautiful and open and kind and generous. Jude is… a physical wreck. He’s an emotional brick wall. He’s filled with secrets and silence and nevertheless everyone loves him so much.

The thing about Jude is that he has a secret. I don’t know what it is yet. There have been allusions to what it might be but nevertheless, one of Jude’s most defining characteristics–at least at this point, is that he never divulges any personal information about himself. He doesn’t want anyone–not even his deepest most loving friends, to know what happened to him when he was a kid. He’s very aware of how much he takes from other people and is forever keeping track of what he owes to them. And he is forever in awe of the way that other people will hand over so much information about themselves so freely to one another.

Now, on the surface, there’s not a lot that Jude and I have in common. But the chapters that focus on him, for some reason, feel like they’re about me. I don’t know why I hold tightly to him except that we have similar defense mechanisms. Jude and I–we want to know our people intimately. We’re afraid to speak up. We’re afraid to ask about things we don’t know about. We both work so hard to appear to be fine that we miss out on true, full experiences.

There’s this one habit that I have–something leftover from childhood that still creeps up. No, it doesn’t creep up. It lives at the front of my mind and I have to actively battle it. Every day, when I remember to. It’s this part of me that is so afraid of getting things wrong or being seen as someone who doesn’t understand something. I’ve been doing this since I was a 5th grader in math class when my exasperated tutor would show me flash cards and I would roll my eyes and pretend like this particular math problem was too easy to even consider answering. I have never passed a math class on my own merit–even after I was in college and was trying my absolute best. I skated by on the kindness of befuddled teachers who couldn’t bear the thought of keeping me from graduation on account of the fact that I couldn’t grasp Algebra 1.

This hits me in relationships, too. I feel like there have been times where I’m just easing by on limited amount of information–forgetting how much people love to be asked about themselves. I do this thing where I assume that someone is going to give me as much information as they’re comfortable with and asking follow up questions is prying, nosy and insensitive. But that’s just not how it always goes. I feel like I’m too old to be learning basic aspects of friendship but here we are. I’m grateful to be learning them at some point.

Some of my closest friends are here because we’ve lived so much life together. But my newer friends, ones I’ve known for a year or two, it only hit me recently how little I know about them. I know how they see things politically. I know how they parent. I know that they are generous with their love and time. I know that we’re similar enough to get along and take care of one another and maybe I just figure that these friendships will live themselves into intimate knowledge of one another. And they will–of course they will. But the way I guard myself and expect others to want to do the same isn’t going to foster any sort of intimacy. I don’t want to be like Jude. I want to know and be known. I can’t wait to get back home and read more–I hope he gets to know this part of life.

So, I’m working hard at not letting fear get in the way of letting me life a full, intimate life. I’m divulging more information than I’m wont to do even though I feel so self conscious and self-absorbed when I feel like I’m talking too much. I’m asking people more about themselves. I am reminding myself that people want to know me as much as I want to know them. Digging deeper is okay–it’s important. It’s not an imposition–and if it is, my friend will tell me. Because friends.

This feels like basic stuff. Kind of embarrassing to even put out there. But these are the lessons I’m learning lately and if I’m living open and honest so that you can, too. It’s part of it.

What are you learning, lately?

XOXO, Lib

 

August Things

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So… this summer, huh?? I can’t pretend I’m not relieved to see this season end in a few ways. I’ll be unpacking this summer for years and I’m here and I’m happy to be doing that work. But for now, I’m grateful for cold mornings and sleeping with the windows open.
Here’s some things that August brought to us:

Things are moving forward with &/Both Magazine and I’m more psyched every day.

This is the vending machine we all needed right when we needed it.

My beautiful friend Kellory drew up this gorgeous printable for us to create an action plan for self-care. Get into it! And check out the rest of her beautiful website for ways to take care of yourself right now.

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Ryan had a birthday. We invited all of our friends to Noffy’s to drink until we saw double (or maybe that was just me). I love celebrating Ryan’s birthday.

Other things I love celebrating: our date-i-versary. August 25, 2011: when Ryan and I started dating. I personally think it’s more important than our wedding anniversary and I personally like that we celebrate it privately and not many people know about it.

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So,  a huge group of churches got together to write up and ask other churches to sign their name to/ donate money to support the Nashville Statement (to which I will not be linking because I will not support it). I was looking for the right words to express how I’m feeling but I found someone else who said it best: A Christian Response to The Nashville Statement.

I’ve been trying to channel 1970’s vibes all summer. It hasn’t really happened but a few times I did sweat it out on a porch swing with a glass of wine, toddlers running around in the adjacent yard, and cigarette smoke wafting over from the neighbor’s house. That certainly felt pretty 70’s to me.

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I found this beautifully written article about a woman’s experience living in a way that seems so foreign and scary to many of us. “Intimacy and love aren’t finite resources.”

Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and the way that everyone is pitching in–at a time when we are so divided, I feel so grateful and in love with the way that love really does win in time.
Donate your time, money, and resources. I like to give my money to Together Rising but you should help however you can. Leave links to your favorite helpers in the comments or on Facebook. 

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I’ve been writing some of my favorite stuff this summer. I’ve also been painting my favorite stuff this summer. This summer has been fertile for my creative process. Make sure you’re following along on my Instagram  stories so you can see my #artbeforebreakfast process where I paint first thing in the morning (because it’s the only time we have any sunlight in the house).