Let's Talk About All Fours.

The book, not the position. We'll get to that topic another time.

I never highlight novels. Or underline passages. I do it all the time in nonfiction books, but with fiction? Never. The first time I did it was when I read Liars by Sarah Manguso last fall. The second time was Friday night, when I began the book All Fours by Miranda July. I only read the first two chapters, but I reached for my highlighter on the second page and marked no fewer than five passages in a mere 18 pages.

“I stood holding the note with that funny little abandoned feeling one gets a million times a day in a domestic setting.”—Miranda July, All Fours

Yes. The funny little abandoned feeling. The out of body sensation that whispers, “I feel so lonely and disappointed right now, but I’m not sure why.” That voice is the first cousin of the one that whispers, “Is this all there is?”

I was sick last week, and I felt sorry for myself. But I also felt something different creep in— a relief that there was no other adult human in this home to be “inconvenienced” by my illness. No hypothetical former partner whose resentment and dismay couldn’t help but seep through his pores when I was injured or sick or otherwise “out of commission,” despite the plausible deniability of not having actually uttered a snarky remark aloud. Please. As if I wasn’t born to read the room.

I was once again in touch with that gorgeous freedom that occasionally hits you in the chest and knocks the wind out of you. There is nobody here to comment on the high-waisted underwear that is conventionally quite unsexy but I think is both comfortable and flattering, and also kind of hot in a retro way.

There is nobody to open the garage door at the end of the work day, setting off a Pavlovian panic/guilt response causing me to hop up and “act busy” in the kitchen, tapping on the Roomba with my foot for good measure. There is nobody to remark on how many hours I spent working on my laptop in bed or how late I slept on a Sunday morning while they waited for waffles and breakfast sausage.

There are no raised eyebrows at the volume of my voice.
Or my profanity.
Or raucous laughter.
Or bold wardrobe choice.
Or new tattoo.
Or career move.
Or unnecessary purchase.
Or inappropriate joke.

There is nobody to raise their eyebrows at me, at all. No freezing out. No quiet judgement.

I tell people that the best thing about being divorced is the freedom from pretending you aren’t constantly disappointed. Disappointed by things like July’s character mentions, the daily micro-abandonments of domestic life.

On being myself, all the time.

“And for the rest of my life, I’ll tell people about this cross-country drive I did when I was forty-five. That’s when I finally learned to just be myself. Of course I was always myself with Jordi; she knew I meant be myself at home. All the time.”
—Miranda July, All Fours.

Maybe even better than the absence of pretending not to be disappointed is, as July writes, the freedom to be myself all the time. Even (especially!) in my own home.

I am always me now. Every minute of the day.

As I walked and talked with a dear, wise friend over the weekend, overlapping patterns in our history wove their way into our conversation despite different circumstances, and I realized a fundamental truth:

So many women unconsciously attempt to make themselves easy so that they might be loveable.

You’re thinking hard about this right now, aren’t you? And as I noted the inevitability of this phenomenon and the universality of the treacherous path out of it, I pondered aloud whether there might be six steps to this commonly traversed trail:

1. Be “easy” in order to be loved.

2. Recognize that you are being easy in order to be loved.

3. Realize that it’s kind of fucked up to make oneself easy in order to be loved.

4. Stop doing that shit, and feel wildly uncomfortable about it.

5. Notice when you relapse into doing it again.

6. Stop doing that shit, and feel great about it.

Girl dinner: served all day, every day

Another close friend of mine commented that, without minimizing the struggle of single motherhood and how difficult my life was at times, she felt an occasional pang of envy at our super-close “girls club.” I had just hung up with my oldest daughter after making a plan to go out to dinner just us two, and I told my friend that I understood what she meant and that I wasn’t offended, that I didn’t think she was making light of the hardship of parenting alone. Because I sometimes feel a flash of something disguised as smugness around this very thing, but at its core, this sensation is actually relief and gratitude. I love raising my daughters, particularly in the way I have chosen to raise them, which may not be the manner in which most people parent their children.

We are close. We are honest. We have loads of inside jokes and say highly inappropriate things and use bad words and laugh loudly and talk “too much” and share things other people would label TMI or “bad boundaries.” We talk about sex and relationships and gender and politics and body image and friendship and anxiety and the patriarchy. We eat Girl Dinner and operate on our own natural rhythms and are true to ourselves without worrying that we are too much for anyone. We are always ourselves, together.

Dancing in the rain with Papa, our biggest fan, years ago.

I have divorced friends who say they never want to get remarried because they don’t ever want to live with a man again. I’ve always shrugged that off, fully believing and intending that I will marry or at least partner again. But I understand the need to fully belong to yourself, to not modulate the tone of your voice or rethink your outfit or ask for permission or wake up / fall asleep / eat / cook / shop / work / rest / fuck at a certain time of day, “pitch a request to your partner…” or bend yourself into all manner of convenient, compliant shapes.

I simply am allergic to that practice and don’t think I could return to it if I tried. But. If I had a partner who reveled in my weirdness, championed my ideas, respected my orbits, and introduced me to people with pride and a touch of awe, well. . . that’s a whole nother ball game.

I have no idea what’s going to happen after page 18 of All Fours. I have no idea what’s going to happen in my next chapter, either. I have a feeling, though, that both will involve quite the ride.

XO,
Steph

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