Though I did experience a sense of “missing something,” I also took pride in this lack of worry about losing. I chalked it up to a sense of healthy detachment. This detachment, to some degree, came naturally, but it was also something cultivated over time. I’d recognized over the years, the constant grappling and the deep traps people, including myself, would fall into because of an unhealthy relationship to which they were deeply attached. I’d seen the stressful and guilty compromise that came from an attachment to a job or social position a person was desperate to keep. I’d read the work of many a Christian mystic and Buddhist philosopher and thought, “Aha, I must have successfully achieved detachment!” Contentedly single, I confidently gave advice to friends struggling with a partnership or the lack thereof. I counseled with people in transition struggling with what they were leaving behind; the home, the work, the relationships.
Since I’ve lived here, I’ve noticed something strange growing inside me. The joy of spending each day on this land is accompanied by a growing anxiety. What if we’re not allowed to stay? This is property owned by the archdiocese. What if they tell us they tell us they don’t want us here anymore? This anxiety does not come from any legitimate concern. The Church in Baltimore has had an mutually amicable agreement with Jonah House for twenty years and when it was revealed new young people were coming in there was only enthusiasm – so why the anxiety? I have a sense of a future here, ideas of projects that will fill years to come. This is someplace I want to live, I love it and I’m worried about losing it.
As I consider this sensation of worry accompanying love, I recognize that it is not something new that has developed but something dormant that has resurfaced. When I was a child, I had nightmares almost every night. Though the content varied, more often than not the terror centered around something happening to one of my siblings – usually kidnappings, sometimes murder and diseases were a few of the ways that I lost those who were most beloved to me. I remember, before my sister Grace was even born and long before I had any consciousness of debates about abortion I had a dream that my parents had decided not to go through with her birth. This dream struck me with such sadness that it weighed on me after I awoke and for days to come.
In marriage, the tool of detachment, as I had utilized it before, no longer brought the sense of healthy boundaries it had but acted instead as an infringement on the intimacy and trust that are so key to the unique bond Ted and I had intentionally chosen. Likewise, to always have the attitude, “I can leave at any time,” while trying to form a new community, inhibits me from being a truly engaged participant both in challenges and in celebrations.