So busy being free
I've had Joni Mitchell's "Cactus Tree" in my head lately – as I putter around the house, managing my own little huddle of pets, teens, projects, and thoughts, I've been floating along to Joni's pristine oscillations, and when the lyrics settled in I felt a shivered rush. Something about this song hits:
There's a man who's been out sailing
In a decade full of dreams
And he takes her to a schooner
And he treats her like a queen
Bearing beads from California
With their amber stones and green
He has called her from the harbor
He has kissed her with his freedom
He has heard her off to starboard
In the breaking and the breathing of the water weeds
While she was busy being free
There's a man who's climbed a mountain
And he's calling out her name
And he hopes her heart can hear
Three thousand miles, he calls again
He can think her there beside him
He can miss her just the same
He has missed her in the forest
While he showed her all the flowers
And the branches sang the chorus
As he climbed the scaly towers of a forest tree
While she was somewhere being free
There's a man who's sent a letter
And he's waiting for reply
He has asked her of her travels
Since the day they said goodbye
He writes "Wish you were beside me
We can make it if we try"
He has seen her at the office
With her name on all his papers
Through the sharing of the profits
He will find it hard to shake her from his memory
And she's so busy being free
There's a lady in the city
And she thinks she loves them all
There's the one who's thinking of her
There's the one who sometimes calls
There's the one who writes her letters
With his facts and figures scrawl
She has brought them to her senses
They have laughed inside her laughter
Now she rallies her defenses
For she fears that one will ask her for eternity
And she's so busy being free
There's a man who sends her medals
He is bleeding from the war
There's a jouster and a jester
And a man who owns a store
There's a drummer and a dreamer
And you know there may be more
She will love them when she sees them
They will lose her if they follow
And she only means to please them
And her heart is full and hollow like a cactus tree
While she's so busy being free
Ooof.
Not to get all "main character" here, but if there's room in this world's jumble of archetypes and protagonists for me to point and say, "oh shit that's real, that hits home", I'm doing it now.
As a woman who has stubbornly made her own choices since leaving my first husband in my early twenties, I can reflect back on my winding and sometimes dramatic path and say that personal agency has been the throughline. My own sense of autonomy, and protecting that agency, has been critical to my personal sense of hope and joy.
And yes, I also know that "individual autonomy" is a core facet of neoliberal capitalism, but dear reader I will ask you to reframe those ideas within the context of a woman's life.
I shouldn't have to outline the entire history of feminism to make my point in this regard, suffice to say many might be surprised how completely stigmatizing it still is to be an "independent woman" in the 21st century. Yes there are plenty of laws and policies that make engaging with these bloated, rotten systems a little more accessible to women, but they are at constant risk of being clawed back, and many are being clawed back. Moving through these social paradigms as a solo woman who just loves feelin' free, I am very aware of the anomalous nature of my existence. In a system still deeply dominated by patriarchal structures, a free woman is someone to be suspicious of, someone too close to the edges of instability to be taken seriously. I'm supposed to be helpless and soft. I'm supposed to need. Who is taking care of her??
My upbringing in the Mormon church also fixed in my pysche a patriarchal conditioning that – even after twenty years of proving to myself, over and over, that I'm completely capable and worthy of joy as I am – still whispers in the darkest corners of my brain that I'm incomplete without a man; that I'm risking devastating insecurity by choosing independence; that missing out on long-term dependance on a man will ultimately be the one regret that negates all else.
And yet I can't tell you how downright glorious it feels to wake up every day in my own house, filled with people and critters who I get the privilege of guiding and supporting, all in a style of exploration and curiosity that we design together. A house customized according to aesthetics that both sooth and spark me, every element considered and chosen, extending my own sense of good. When I try to imagine a man exerting influence in my home, and when I've allowed it in the past, the result is a net loss for me. Not because the men were terrible by any means (one or two were dodged bullets, for sure), but because the past hundreds of years have asserted a sickness of masculine status in our culture, and no one seems to know how to shake it off. What my experience has taught me is that when a typical adult man is inserted into a femme-dominated household, his first instincts are to assert his dominion over it.
Romantic relationships with men tend to inevitably erode my sense of agency, sometimes through their influence, and sometimes through my own patriarchal conditioning. I shrink. It always happens. I sense their need to feel useful, to feel status within the household, and I cede territory to them. At first this works well, but I make the mistake of assuming they respect my influence and agency within my own household. This plus my apparent inability to clearly communicate boundaries, especially when the other party moves so effortlessly with his sense of casual entitlement to the world, results in my world slowly becoming more theirs than mine, the aesthetics of the home transformed to "masculine" greys and blacks, and I become miserable. (As an aside, why is the dominant male aesthetic so centred on minimalism and brutalism, both historically fascist movements? Gosh, lots to unpack there. Oh look! The only thing in that suitcase is a warped culture of masculinity driven by neofascist undertones that are actively becoming overtones! Huh!)
How do I explain to a potential partner how much harder it was for me to craft and build my steady little life, and how much is at stake when they enter the picture? Their fundamental inability to empathize with a lifetime of barriers customized for women (and every marginalization under the sun), by a system that really doesn't want anyone who isn't a white male to be "free" – it's really hard to establish this understanding when entering into a romantic relationship with a man.
And before you suggest it, yep I tried dating women. It wasn't for me, despite how often my teens remind me I could "just date women". And I'm not interested in polyamory, despite how many young white lefty men have eagerly proposed it, which is a whole other ball of thoughts. How easy polyamory must be for those who've been conditioned by modern romance to neither expect or request emotional commitment. Not that every poly person participates in that mode, but in my experience, many do. And to be fair, the rush of fawning attention and romantic validation is a potent drug, and to have that on steady supply with plenty of partners to pick up the emotional slack when things get crunchy, well... must be nice, but it's not for me.
My issue isn't a lack of interested men. I'm attractive, I'm bubbly and creative, and I have my shit together. Men are on my figurative and sometimes literal doorstep with a fair amount of regularity, and more than a few have professed with enthusiasm how well I "check all the boxes" (nothing kills my soul faster than that phrase. Like oh good, I'm a checklist to you. How lucky for me.) I've been love-bombed hard, more than once. I've been approached by married men, poly men, "allies"... every friendship I've formed with a man, or tried to form, has inevitably led to a Situation wherein my boundaries are crossed before I can identify what those boundaries even are. I can't make a goddamn move around a man without him ascertaining my fuckability, building a fantasy around me, or scheming how he might get at least one good lay from me.
Now edging closer to 50 with growing surety of who I am and what I want, the fucks I'm willing to give are rapidly shedding away leaving trails of middle-finger-shaped husks, and my autonomy is more valuable than ever. The stakes feel so much higher too, as the status quo crumbles leaving so many deskilled and dissociative men in its wake.
I do crave partnership, but it would have to be something that both respects my long-term autonomy and welcomes my divergencies. I'm so tired of shrinking for their comfort, and when I refuse to shrink, when I show up with my sparkles and invite them in, 999,999 times out of one million, their responses vary from a patronizing "that's my quirky girl!", to "good for you babe, what's for dinner?", to "you need therapy". I end up feeling infantilized, crazy, broken, wrong, stupid. Every time. Because for the most part they're simply unwilling or unable to engage in reflections about *gestures at everything* the way I need a partner to. The status quo has coddled men so thoroughly and for so long, and if it hasn't – if those men grew up with barriers and hardships – it's amazing that rather than empathizing with the Marginalized Others, they simply defer to indignant entitlement. And sure, fine, "not all men", but enough that it's a social epidemic, and it's goddamn exhausting to navigate.
So I'll continue busying myself with "being free", while the status quo that I've never trusted or depended on falls apart and the patriarchy fails us as a society, spectacularly and thoroughly, leaving modern masculinity lost and wandering in the fields. If we're lucky, that existential breaking might finally lead men to humility and empathy. And if we're really lucky, they may eventually even look to the Marginalized Others not as emasculating threats, but as teachers and leaders.
More on agency tho...
I recently came across this fascinating article in the Cornell Chronicle detailing how lab mice rehomed to fields showed reversed levels of anxiety:
The mice, which have only ever lived in a cage a little larger than a shoebox, rear up on their back legs, sniff the air, move into the grass and begin to bound over it, a new way of moving and a totally new experience for them. It’s one of many they’ll have as “rewilded” mice, and in a new study, Cornell researchers have found that the novel environment changes the mice’s behavior and reverses anxiety, even when anxieties are well established.
The result described is both profound yet glaringly obvious. And after reading it I've intentionally applied its learnings to my pet-tending methods. Specifically in the case of my dog, an Australian Shepherd – a breed personality defined almost exclusively by anxiety. I've engaged her in a sort of "agency" training, with the aim of reducing her overall anxiety, which up till now has manifested as frantic crying and yelping when any of us leave the house (separation anxiety), and sneakily nipping strangers on walks.
First, I have to be real with you: I'm not a dog person, insofar as I'm not a "leisure and recreation" person either. I'm good at sports but prefer casual teams, I think "hiking" as a hobby is tedious (something about it being the most popular hobby of the most banal personality types...), and basically any outdoor hobby requiring regular weekdays/nights and more than $100 worth of gear is more than I'm willing to participate in. So when I first adopted our dog as a seven-month-old pup, it was because I was on my way to living on a farm, and she was meant to be a "working dog". And that's what Aussies want to be! It's their whole deal! So for the time we lived on the farm, my little Aussie was living her best life. But once we were back in the city, none of us thrived. I was preoccupied navigating our overwhelmingly depressing return to Calgary, and our pup did her very best and was a very good girl, but her anxiety matched my own, and my anxiety was sky high. We had a fenced yard, but she didn't like being alone and never played or explored on her own. She'd do her business and then anxiously wait at the door to be let back inside.
Since moving to this quiet seaside town, where I work from home part-time and otherwise pursue various projects of my choosing on a single, cultivated acre, my anxiety has decreased drastically, but my pup's hasn't. Our property isn't fenced yet, enclosed off-leash parks are very rare, and for this East Coast plan to work, most of my time, for now, has to be focused on staying close to home, slowly renovating and setting up my side hustles. My anxious pup is such a good girl, and she really wants to be the goodest girl, but for the past six months her anxiety has been constant. Walks and outside time included a roaming leash, which we all hated because the thing got tangled in branches constantly. She was reactive outside and whiney inside.
But since reading that article about those emancipated lab mice, our routine has changed to include as much agency for our pup as possible. Now when we go outside we start with the roaming leash on (the front door is closest to the busy road), then when we get to the more enclosed areas of the yard away from the road, I remind her about all the treats in my pocket and take the leash off. We do boundary training and play "hide and seek", and she gets plenty of free time to sniff and explore the overgrown bushes near the back of the property. While she sniffs, I regularly call her back and reward her for listening. Then, when it's time to go inside, she patiently lets me put the leash back on (because she gets another treat when it clicks on), and once we're back inside, another treat.
Today during our morning round the neighbour near the rear of the property was out shovelling snow, and her retriever was out (off leash) with her. When the dog saw mine, it ran at the fence barking madly. The fence is wooden, older, and not designed to prevent anything from getting through. I'm actually sitting here at my keyboard trying to think of a single creature that wouldn't be able to cross that fence, and I can't think of any. A cow? Yes with enough will and determination, I think a cow could get through that fence. It's a boundary fence in theory only (honestly boundary fences are relatively rare on this island, which I find quite lovely).
Anyway, the two pups collided near the fence, on their side as my pup excitedly slipped through the generous 18 inches below the lower board. It wasn't a full blown scrap, just lots of posturing, anxious sniffs and growling. Thanks to my experience working with our sweet gigantic Akbash years ago (another farm pup who truly didn't thrive in the city, who we eventually had to re-home, oh I miss that boy), I've learned to approach such scenarios as calmly as possible. Usually the dogs just need to get their respective points across, in this case the point being: territory. Once the loudest part of the pup conversation had eased up, I called my girl back over to our side, and she came promptly! Treat! Good girl! The other pup still had lots to say about the whole territory thing, but my good girl was over it, and we carried on (the neighbour and I had a friendly exchange too).
Then we went back around to the bushes where I'd forgotten the poop bag, and the same neighbour's wiener dog was in their fenced dog run, and hoo boy that little dog had a LOT to say, I'm not sure what about, but I'm guessing it was something like "I fucking see you! I SEE YOU you better not come over here HEY. HEY. I'm talkin to you YOU CAME OVER HERE I'll kill you I'LL FUCKIN KILL YOU-". Anyway my pup tried to playfully engage at first, and then just kind of stood back and observed the furious little wiener as the neighbour's mom came out and apologized (while chasing the dog around the yard, which she and I laughed about). All told I was just so damn proud of my well-regulated little girl.
Another change I've made for her is setting up my writing desk in the living room, next to the bay window nook and right next to her bed. This plus the leash-off routine has transformed her whole personality. When we leave her behind to run errands and such, she doesn't cry anymore, she just goes and gets her bunny and self-soothes on her bed, where she naps or referees the cats (gently, they love each other) till we get back.
By spending that daily off-leash time with her outside, my good little girl gets to exercise agency, and there are just enough rules to help her understand when she's made good choices, which she loooves to do. Big wins all round.
And I've always prioritized ideas of agency as a parent, working to instil curiosity, accountability and consequences, honestly ever since my kids were toddlers. My parenting mode has never been about protecting them from the reality of the world, but rather equipping them for it. We took on difficult concepts together as they arose – this actually came up just the other night as my eldest and I rewatched Carl Sagan's Cosmos. We laughed about how the last time we watched it was after she had come home declaring Jesus was a big deal (grandparents...), so we spent the next two weeks watching the entire Cosmos series, while I strategically noted how cool and super fun and evidence-based science was. Mentions of Jesus dropped off quickly after that.
She's 18 now, and one of the best benefits of our new living situation is she gets an entire half of the house to herself. Our house has two suites side-by-side, my younger teen and I live on the "main" side, and she stays in the "other side". Even though I use that side for business, it feels like "hers", and she gets a safe off-ramp into adulthood. She works and pays rent, and I've told her she has all the time in the world to decide what's next, exploring possibilities with her as they surface. When I get too hyper-goofy or she gets annoyed at my constant coaching, she goes back to "her place" and we both get the space we need. It's pretty ideal.
And honestly our whole move from Alberta to the East Coast was about agency. After my market farming experience years ago – an experience that I chose despite a lot of people thinking I was crazy – after that, I had seen the other side, and returning to the city made me feel like a mouse trapped in a laboratory cage. I simply could not tolerate the feeling of not being in charge of my own path. Making the choice to pull stakes and move to the East Coast seemed crazy to a lot of people too, but here we are, and it's goddamn glorious. The only thing that could mess it all up is a relationship with a man (lol, sigh).
Workplace culture loves to ask "what's your why?" – my life is my "why". I choose what time I wake up in the morning, when I eat, who I interact with, and where I spend my energy. My life is my own, and having this level of agency is fucking incredible. Ten stars, highly recommend. Especially if you have anxiety.