Trying and failing
It is a challenge to write this entry, but when I started working on my autoethnography, I realised that I had to, and also wanted to, capture everything, both successes and failures. It was not enough for me to write about living an extremely minimalist lifestyle, avoiding plastic and visiting local food markets and swap shops. It was so important to capture imperfection of my practice. This practice concerns deeply interrelated material, philosophical, spiritual, emotional, aesthetic, financial and other aspects. Because genuine sustainability is about all of them. In fact, I believe that genuine sustainability is first and foremost about gentleness towards being in general (the self, human and non-human others, nature, the cosmos), that then manifests in practice.
I feel like I am failing to live sustainably in many ways. My personal practice of sustainability is imperfect. This whole autoethnography is dedicated to imperfection and nuance. While I practise minimalism, do not fly, buy local whenever possible, do not own a car, do not eat meat and so on (here is my list of practices), I still shop in a supermarket. I live in an expensive rented apartment, thus contributing to someone's profit. Recently I bought a Lego set for my stepchild. Lego is an institution here in Denmark and beyond. I had Lego sets when I was a child. I was growing up in the 90s. Their products are durable and perhaps facilitate creativity in some ways, but they are made from plastics. Here is a link to the types of plastic the company uses. I bought that set because this is something the child's father wanted to buy for her. The child has other Lego sets too. Though I told myself that this is not for me, and I should not feel bad about buying a plastic toy, at the same time I felt bad about it. It did not fit my normal consumption pattern and went against my own principles of relating with the world. It led me to think about being in the life of a child that I cannot in any way control and that I can influence only minimally. I am not her parent. She has two parents who have made and are making decisions about her life and consumption pattern. I feel that this is not my place to say anything, and this is what my partner and I agreed on. There are some aspects of consumption that we can decide on together, such as bedding and clothing that the child has at our place, but this hardly changes her overall pattern of consumption. In fact, these are just additional objects that she has because she stays at our place at times.
I know that I would choose a different pattern of consumption for my own child if I had one. I would do my best to bring together my and their consumption. I would study zero-waste and minimalist parenting sources. I would spend time exploring nature with them as much as possible, because this is something that was a big part of my own childhood. I believe that growing up with nature led me to develop a worldview to which oneness and gentleness are central. Above I mentioned having Lego sets when I was a child. I barely spent any time with human-made toys because they were so much less interesting, exciting and inspiring than nature. I would involve the child in everyday activities in a playful way to explore the joy and beauty of simple, everyday life.
I am failing in my role of a stepmother. I love my stepchild, just like any other fellow human. It's easy to love fellow humans, and this is something that I feel good about. I feel the need to care and protect her, to make sure that she is comfortable and safe, that her needs are met. But she is not my child, and there are no chemical and biological mechanisms to support me on this journey. Those fellow humans who are parents, say to me that love towards their children is something so strong and indescribable, something they have never felt before. I can understand it, feel happy for them, but this is not something I experience myself towards a child who is not mine. As a critical realist, I believe there are multiple mechanisms and forces that make this special kind of love manifest. I do not experience it towards my stepchild. My love is of a completely different kind. I find it challenging to explain this to my partner who is her father. I struggle to find the right words, to express myself in a way that does not hurt his feelings. Recently his mother asked me what I thought about this child. Me not loving her grandchild is one of her biggest concerns. Naturally I said that I loved her. But it is a completely different kind of love.
I associate this child's presence in my life with many things that are going wrong in my relationship. She is not to blame for anything, of course. It is not her fault that her parents went their separate paths in life. But the 50/50 childcare schedule has been incredibly difficult for me. When my partner and I moved in together, we didn't have any sufficiently long period of time to bond and establish our life together. Our togetherness has been discontinuous. I do not feel that my emotional needs have been satisfied.
I disagree with those fellow humans who say that knowing about my partner having a child was enough to decide if I wanted to be in that relationship or not. Knowing is not the same as actually being in a situation, experiencing it, having feelings and emotions about it. As a social scientist, I recognise this issue so well. My experience has been that of sorrow, sadness, discontinuity, loneliness. That sadness is directed partly at myself and my own inability to embrace this situation, to feel what I want to be feeling, what I expected I would be feeling. But also more generally, sadness is directed at the universe, since the timing when the unfolding of reality brought my partner and I together is not at all ideal. Growth through acceptance of this situation takes an enormous amount of my energy that I could be spending elsewhere, such as serving nature and focusing even more on my research. Dwelling in an emotionally unhealthy space is not serving anyone. I contemplate being of deep transformations (the main theme of this autoethnography) in relation to my situation. And I do not know what is the right path, whether it exists. What is the right way to heal, whether stepping out or staying is the best option. I contemplate all the opportunities that I am foregoing because of the situation where I am not even happy.
I feel that the gap between where I want to be, both emotionally and geographically, and where I am, is currently too large. I want to feel safe and authentic. I want to feel that I have enough mental capacity for self-care and care about humanity and nature. I want to be closer to nature. But currently all the energy that is not invested in my research and my book is directed at trying to be there for a child whom I love only generally, to accept the situation that I dislike, to accept living far from nature because my partner and I have to live close to where the child mainly lives. I am afraid of finding myself in a situation, many years down the line, where I will be looking back at my life and regretting taking this path.
I am struggling with labelling my emotions correctly and understanding their causes. I am trying to understand why I feel like I need to pretend to be perfect and loving in the child's company, why I cannot be my imperfect and introverted self. This is not authentic. My partner is introverted too, but when he is around his child, the love he experiences towards her seems to sustain a high level of energy, while the only thing I want to do after some hours in the child's company is withdraw and rest. And withdrawing after some hours is perhaps not the path towards bonding with this little human being. I am trying to understand why I feel no positive emotions when I see my partner and his child together. I feel excluded and the need to be with myself and non-human others.
There are many projects that my partner and I wanted to do together. Both of us work in the same field in academia, and we are affiliated with the same university. We have been working on some ideas, including self transformations for degrowth. But I am not sure how long I can continue on the current path, and whether I can find ways to accept this situation or I can't. Writing about self transformations feels incredibly difficult as I feel that I have reached some limits to my love and acceptance. I do not know if I can find a second wind.