Leaving Space: Some Statistics on Entrances and Exits

Isla Magdalena, Pacific coast, December 2016

Destructive impulses include forcing things out of my life as well as forcing things in. I remember realizing, maybe a decade or so ago, just a couple years into living sober, that I was highly skilled at entrances and exits. I have the ability to get myself into anything and talk my way out. Cameo appearances are my stock in trade. So much of the narrative of my life is about transition, upheaval, getting into situations, getting out of them, committing too soon (or at least appearing to) and leaving too soon,

Tomorrow, I retrieve all of my worldly possessions (except for a couple hundred cactus plants) from the storage unit in Chandler. I'll bring everything here and begin yet again the process of wrangling all of it. I'm tempted to go through it all and pare down yet another level this time. By some standards, it is pretty pared down already.

Since moving to the floor of the desert in 2007, I've lived in 5 places. Once every two years. That's a fairly stable ratio for me, actually-- partly enabled by stretches of time with the poet and the ex. The poet brought me here so she could get her MFA. We lived a charming suburban life in an inexpensive rental house-- the landlord was an awful human being and the house had a roach problem which we paid to ameliorate-- and the neighbor had a constantly barking dog-- but the life had its stable charms for 3 years, until the poet and I fell apart. That was the beginning, really, of a lot of where I am now, in many ways of tracing it. More on that another time.

The background for this life of peregrination is much more stable: from 5 years old to 26 years old (after an agonizing 8 years of separation problems regarding the childhood home from age 18 to 26, during which time I left and returned 9 times), I called the same address my home base.

But anyway, right. New living place every two years on average since 2007. Since I graduated from my undergrad college in 1985, however, I have had 28 different addresses. 28 places in 32 years. From when I got sober in 2004 to now, 10 addresses. I think there have been some very transient, temporary addresses in this whole history as well. But the essential point remains-- for whatever reason, I end up moving almost every year.

From 1985 to now, also, I have gotten myself into 12 "committed," monogamous partnerships (this number is significantly lower than the number of partners, and reduced by two stretches of longer exclusive monogamy with two wives, from 1992 to 2001). I think the total amount of completely unpartnered time in the past 32 years has been about 3.5 years, not even continuously-- with the longest continuous stretch of singlehood being between the poet and the ex, at 16 months.

In that last long stretch, I sat still for a little while and excavated a lot of the old patterns, did an extensive sex and relationship inventory with a good AA sponsor, and began to uncover a lot of my rackets and trash beliefs that had been harming myself and others. My upper limit of continuous partnership is approximately 5 years, and in all three of those cases, the last stretch of time has been conflicted, complicated or disconnected. The number of monogamous agreements I have had since I was 16 is 16, the number of domestic partnerships is 6 and the number of partnerships that I entered into where I can say I was truly free of attachment to a previous partner is only about 3. The number of times I have begun a new "romantic" relationship while still in my soon-to-be-previous one is 6.

So this is a history of entrance and exit (and overlapping entrances and exits) and hardly and value placed on staying. I have tended also to be with women who choose not to do the work of staying. I have been broken up with 5 times, which puts me in the position of dumper more often than dumpee, merely as a reflection of my refusal to be accountable for my bullshit, most of the time. 5 times, I have ended a partnership relatively abruptly and not remained in any communication with my ex after the breakup. Sometimes, friendship and communication has been re-established, especially in sobriety. But, given the current ex's complete abandonment of all contact with me, it is important to recall that I have been guilty of the same abruptness and inhumane disappearance, and to try to understand what was motivating me at those times.

Another statistic: in a 30 year span of teaching work, from 1987 to now, I have taught at 9 institutions in 4 different states. Not awful, but still just a little more than 3 years at each job on average.

It looks, from here, that there is not going to be much let up on the work and living arrangement instability, as I go toward finishing graduate school in 2-3 years. Regarding relationships, however, I'm offline. Total system failure. Friendship, connection, supportive adventures without commitment, I am open to-- and yet I know that I tend to take even those lighter and more free situations and slather codependent commitment sauce on them. "This is too healthy, time to add a 300 pound weight of obligations I can only speak and cannot possibly show up for." So: it is time to leave space instead of abandoning space.