You remember, last post, how I said “I don’t like waiting in the void”? That was, um, an understatement. I really just don’t cope with it. If I can’t see some glimmer of a hint that what I’m waiting for is coming, I can’t believe that it ever will. I usually exercise my over-capable imagination to invent hints that it’s coming. If I can’t do that, I decide to stop wanting it altogether. If I can’t do that, I pretty much spaz out and act, think, and talk like a thirteen-year-old (specifically, like the thirteen-year-old that I was, a number of years ago. She was not a particularly graceful, centered, life-accepting person. Few thirteen-year-olds are.)

So this is something I need to work on. One thing I’ve learned in the last four months is that inevitably, in even the closest relationships, there will be times when you need to wait on the other person’s process. When they need to retreat into their own private space, and just work on stuff — think, grow, accept, learn, whatever. You can’t always be a part of that. Sometimes it’s because you’re involved in whatever they need to work on, sometimes just because it’s something they need to do alone. Loving them, in those times, means waiting… without necessarily knowing what’s going to show up when they finally emerge.

Can we guess how well I deal/have dealt/will likely deal with that kind of situation? Not flippin’ well, is the answer. It’s one of the hardest things I can imagine doing. I am depressingly likely to use every available hint to figure out what’s going on in their head (typical response 1), detach from the relationship (typical response 2), or start acting like a thirteen-year-old (typical response 3… and thirteen-year-old me is not the kind of person somebody else wants to deal with while processing whatever they’re processing.)

There are lots of other good reasons to improve my waiting-in-the-void skills, but that’s the one that’s been on my mind of late. So. What do I do?

No, really, I’m asking.

I don’t think it’s realistic to ask myself to overcome this weakness… certainly not in the short term. With these big, endemic problems, telling yourself you’re going to eliminate them entirely is a recipe for failure and guilt. Even if you’re able to conquer them for a while, they’re usually the first things to come back in times of extreme stress, and then you have the despair of feeling like you’ve lost all the progress you made.

No, what I need are strategies. Concrete, graspable strategies for when I feel that panic coming on and find myself slipping into typical responses 1, 2, or 3. I need a variety of them, because different things work at different times — sometimes you need something active, extraverted, or productive, sometimes passive, private, or self-indulgent.

I don’t know that I’m really asking for suggestions here — though if you have any, bring ‘em on! But I don’t expect that what works for you will necessarily work for me, and there’s also a lot of value in having strategies I’ve worked out for myself. Mostly I’m putting this here as an expression of intent: I will look for strategies, both by thinking through possibilities and by being alert to inspirations.

I mentioned in the last post that I have one already. And I’m going to tell you about it, even though I’m a little afraid it will make some people think I’m crazy. This is specifically for when I get into that “I will never find a partner” panic (one I’m particularly prone to.) It is this: I’m knitting my wedding veil.

I’m a little shy to admit this here. Planning for a wedding when there’s no actual partner in sight… there are a lot of girls who do that, and I’m not entirely comfortable being lumped with some of them. I’m fairly disgusted by the whole wedding industry, and by the state of legal marriage in this country. But I do think a committed, lifelong partnership is a powerful, beautiful, and life-giving thing when it works, and I very much hope to create one. And I think a community celebration and affirmation of that partnership is important and exciting and inspiring, especially when the details of the celebration accord with the partners’ values. All of which is to say that whether or not I decide to get legally married, and at whatever point in the relationship I decide to do this, I do hope to have some kind of wedding ceremony. And I think I can promise that it will be a little weird and awesome. And I am knitting a veil to wear for it. (If you think that a knitted wedding veil sounds ugly, you haven’t seen knitted lace.)

I decided to do this sometime over the summer, and I decided I wanted to start it while I was single. I found the right yarn over Christmas vacation and I started knitting it on New Year’s Day. I’m using the process as an affirmation: I do believe that I will find a partner, and I’m working on something concrete in expectation of it. I am not allowed to attach to the idea of any particular person while I’m working on it (a big part of the reason I wanted to start it while single)… it’s a focusing tool, to keep my eyes on the larger dream. It’s using the time of waiting, of hoping, of not-knowing, to create something beautiful. If the wedding thing never happens, I will still have something beautiful, and I will find some use for it that is special and full-of-meaning and will probably make me cry.

So that’s one strategy, for one specific waited-for object. I’ll let you know as I find more.