Adapt or Die.

There is nowhere to hide. Therein lies the utter terror of partnership.  If you spend enough of your days with another, all the walls you put up, all the trappings of a person well-presented, fall away. You begin to see your partner as a reflection of yourself, and not in the sparkly, “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together” way. Not to say the sentiment isn’t beautiful (it is beautiful and it is true, we’re getting there..) – rather that this reflection has the potential to completely unravel you and eventually, your partnership, which was so perfect and so pure when you first set out, if you don’t own up to what you see in the mirror.

In this reflection, you aren’t always kind or fair or even remotely rational. All the ugly, broken bits of you come to the surface. You discover, to your horror, that you are utterly disfigured and terrifying, with cracked skin and dark shadows beneath your eyes. Shards from past lovers, splinters from childhood; traumatic detritus gathered and stowed away over time, the volume and complexity of which is so great you may as well be the possessor of Mary Poppins’s carpet bag. How can one person possibly hold this much? How can one person go about their days, seemingly unencumbered, and not realize they’re dragging this massive fucking tote bag behind them?

As you reveal more and more of yourself to your partner, you begin to rummage around in your bag for something new and (hopefully) exciting to present to your beloved. What you find as you reach into its depths isn’t always pretty and certainly isn’t always the gift you hoped to give. That’s the thing, we all want to be our best selves, its only that we continue to focus on those bright bits of us, disregarding that which is ugly, shaming ourselves for being anything other than the shining figure we so desire to be.  Denial, repression, displacement, reaction formation, regression, rationalization, sublimation take place. So too does the perpetuation of your own personal heartache.

Fuck “this is just the way I am.” I contradict myself immediately in that, yes, the essence of what makes you you will always be there in its brilliant complexity. I only mean to say that if there are parts of you that make you hurt, that make others hurt, you are not beholden to a self-perpetuating pattern of pain, blame, shame, what have you. If we’ve learned anything about the human race and our utterly astounding ability to adapt to diverse circumstance, it is that this key feature is not only necessary to survive, but also to thrive.

Here is where the beautiful part kicks in: you don’t have to go about your life like Mary Poppins. Or you can, if you want; “a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down,” after all. Truly, there is always going to be “stuff” to unpack. But, if you open your heart and commit to loving yourself unconditionally, you acknowledge that, indeed, these tarnished bits of you exist. Your reflection has the same benefit of being presented this truth. You bid yourself, and your mirror image, to be gentle, as you would with a small child who has just shattered your great grandmother’s china teapot. You remind yourself of the simple fact that what is tarnished can be polished to a fine gleam. You invite yourself to be patient as you rhythmically rub away the corrosion that has occurred over time and exposure to the elements. Meanwhile, your partner will have his or her own set of broken down hardware to tinker with. You have the opportunity to overhaul together.

Am I saying this is easy, fun, delightful? Fuck no. It’s dirty work and at times will feel like the biggest, most futile burden to shoulder. There will be moments when you feel absolutely insane, like you’re regressing beyond belief and your entire world is crashing down in waves that keep you under and tumble you in the surf. Commitment and perseverance, two tenets that have carried us from primate to human, will drive your personal evolution. Trust in yourself, ask your reflection to do the same. Forget, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Forgive my tendency towards idiomatic expression, but life is not black and white. Remember that you have the incredible privilege of being human with a cognitive and emotional capacity that is, even still, beyond understanding. Remember too that with this gift comes the onus that befalls all collective species on this earth: adapt or die.

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