It Was Never Mine
On why "what's meant for you won't miss" isn't always an empty platitude...
Hello, Dames Nationals,
Last weekend, I had an experience that was both soul nourishing and heartbreaking: I led a “pilgrimage” dedicated to the albums folklore and evermore by Taylor Swift (soul nourishing) while knowing it was the last such trip I would lead for the foreseeable future (heartbreaking). For four days, I got to go on beautiful walks, eat delicious meals, and— best of all— enjoy hours of profound conversation about art that really matters to me with a group of heartfelt nerds (complimentary) who also cherish it. This combination of deep analysis, personal reflection, and shared vulnerability lights me up like a Christmas tree.
Over the last three years, I’ve been lucky enough to lead four other trips like this one and I left burdened by the knowledge that being lead faculty on these five trips is the most completely satisfying work I’ve ever been paid to undertake. I also left knowing, albeit with somewhat less certainty, that withdrawing from further work with the company who organizes these trips was the next right choice for me. Over the past year, I realized that I put too much of myself into this work to feel safe undertaking it as a contractor. Both legally and emotionally, I needed more ownership than that relationship allowed. So, I have to step away from the best work I’ve ever done because the terms on which it’s available to me are not ones I could accept.
Predictably, it’s a Taylor Swift lyric that captured what I felt— “August slipped away into a moment in time, ‘cause it was never mine.” This line comes from “august”, a song written from the perspective of a woman sleeping with a man who’s in love with someone else, but its potent combination of yearning and acceptance suited this situation, too.
Just like the narrator of the song in her stolen moments, when I was in the midst of the work, it totally engrossed me— it felt like mine. Between trips, however, the tenuous nature of my connection to the work would loom so much larger. Part of me wanted to do what the narrator does for much of “august”— accept as much connection as I could have on the terms available to me, store it up, cherish it. But you cannot hold on to something that was never yours to begin with— you just end up losing more of yourself as it slips away.
Which brings me to the aphorism “what’s meant for you won’t miss.” I don’t believe, as Kacey Musgraves sings, that a train that’s meant for me won’t leave the station— I’ve seen Sliding Doors too many times to take the sentiment that far. What I do believe, however, is that you make the connections you’re meant to have, and you keep the ones you can maintain while staying whole. To demonstrate why I believe that, I want to tell you about two previous Novembers: November, 2019 and November, 2022.
On Veteran’s Day Weekend, 2019, I took a trip to Maine with a group of dear friends and my then-boyfriend. We’d been together two years, I thought we would be together indefinitely, and I truly believed that would make me happy. We shared the twin-sized top of a bunk bed and I vividly remember thinking that it was the most comfortable I’d ever felt being that close to someone. The first night we were home from that trip, he finally confessed to me that the relationship I’d thought was ethically non-monogamous was, in fact, unethically non-monogamous. For the majority of our relationship, he’d been sleeping with other women and lying to me about it, despite the fact that he could have slept with them and respected our relationship by simply telling me it was happening.
But, whether he could have articulated this at the time or not, whether he realizes this today or not, what he wanted was not merely a relationship that still allowed him freedom to pursue multiple connections at once. What he wanted was the freedom to pursue multiple connections at once and the devoted, generous, open affection he could extract from me by concealing those other connections. Believing myself to be in love with him, believing this was the most happiness I could find with a partner, I told him I was willing to try to make things work, but only if it were just us. No more non-monogamy. And he said he couldn’t do that. In that moment, I felt— as I have said on a podcast I recorded about this relationship— like a vampire being exploded into ash by Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s stake.
I had given so much of myself to this relationship, I had worked so hard to make him feel safe being himself within it, and, in the end, I succeeded: he was finally his full and honest self with me. The problem was that the person he revealed himself to be was one to whom I would not willingly give a Tic-Tac, much less two years of my life. And while it’s true that before that moment, I could not see the real terms on which I gave him those years, I could always see how much of myself I was giving away to keep him. And the experience taught me that anything that asks me to give away that much of myself is nothing I am supposed to keep.
Which brings me to my second November story: on November 18th, 2022, I went on my first date with my current boyfriend. He makes every bed we sleep in feel like a twin-size top bunk because that’s how close he always wants to hold me— this is both a literal truth and a perfect metaphor. When I walked away from that terrible boyfriend five years ago, I was not holding out for the happiness I have now, because this happiness is truly deeper than anything I had the ability to imagine. But I knew what I told my pilgrims this weekend: to the people we’re meant to keep, we are not a burden to carry—we are a joy to hold.
I cannot imagine work I will love more than the work I did this weekend, at least not yet. But I know I need to leave space to find that work and I will not get that from remaining in a dynamic that I’ve realized cannot hold me with joy. It was never mine— but something else will be and I hope, when I find it, I’ll be able to share it with you.
Love,
Dame Margaret
Keeping It Classy-fied!
Books on GIF is a FREE newsletter that uses GIFs to review books. A “brilliant high-low fusion of an old art form and modern storytelling device,” says Esquire. Bestsellers! Hidden gems! Classics! Try our review of ‘Middlemarch,’ a masterpiece packed with hard truths and hot gossip.
Thank you to our advertisers!
You help keep us going and we appreciate it so very much! Do you sell items or provide services that readers of this newsletter might like to buy?
You can reserve your spot for future issues right now! An ad for a single issue is $25, or you can buy a month’s worth of ads (in 4 consecutive newsletter issues) for just $50.
(Ad maximum is 300 characters, including emojis. All ads are text-only and subject to TBD approval. Limit four total ads per issue. Full details in our handy fact sheet!)
That was beautiful, dearest.
I can’t wait to see what you do next, Margaret 🌻❤️