you run into your ex-husband at the grocery store as he shops for Thanksgiving, as you shop for Thanksgiving, and it hits you, the full emotional wall that this is the first ‘post-divorce’ family holiday, his cart full of what he will cook in your absence, your cart full of what you will cook in his. it is not that you miss him, rather the void of the collective unit, knowing you will spend it without your youngest children, that this fracture will be felt to the marrow of your bones. you check out in separate aisles, ignoring that you ever loved each other, and as you walk to the car with your ten year old son, you briefly feel water attempt to collect in your eyes, but you refuse to cry in front of him and have him bear that burden, so you blink the back the woe. you arrive home, put away the groceries, feed the kids, change into exercise gear, pop in headphones, and lay out a mat. your body begins to warm as you move, as you roll every joint, head to toe, preparing for the workout ahead. then the real challenge begins, and you are deadlifting steel, lunge, squat, press, plank, scissors…repeat. repeat. repeat. until sweat rolls over inch of your body, collecting in dips and valleys, your cheeks flush and rosy. you feel your muscles pull and shove, stretched and taut, squeezing out all the sorrow, liquefying your grief, leaking it out of every pore so you can wipe it away. you begin to feel lighter, stronger, powerful. your mind collects a list of all the things you are grateful for in this moment: losing fifty pounds of gathered gloom that you used as physical protection from the emotionally stifling marriage of the past ten years, the muscle you have built in its disappearance, how beautiful you feel in your own skin for the first time in...? the workout is over, and you are breathing deeply, inhaling rapidly, feeling your lungs expand, the pang of your well worked tissue emanating in waves, the reward for your endurance, the payoff for moving forward. you take a bandana and swipe at your forehead, swabbing the watery heartache that you have expelled, proud he no longer induces your tears, instead becoming the origin of your sweat, the source of the grit you never knew you had until he was gone. It sets off alarms
gives off a chemical trail from my groin I get waved aside, and she clinically explains how she will violate my comfort for the safety of all those around me She puts her hand in my waistband, rolling past my belly button then sweeps in lines across the private triangle, down the inner thigh, back up, first the front, turn around then rear, repeat As the backs of her knuckles rake across my jeans I think of all the fingers that have swiped my cunt in a similar fashion without permission I channel all the women who have felt the same, whose bodies recoil because touch has often come without consent They test my hands she tests her hands still it registers as unknown danger She takes me to a table, asks me if I prefer a private screening for when she explores me again I shake my head ‘no’ Do it in public, in the light of day, where everyone is forced to watch your hands sliding across the hills of my breast, the slope of my groin the curve of my legs I want nothing of my discomfort to go unseen Finally, my pussy is cleared as a ‘danger’ Perhaps it was my body’s lunar bloodshed, a powerful reminder of all the babies I will never touch, or the scent of the first time someone inserted themselves into my body and heart, or the times when men carelessly scratched at my interior or forced their way into my most sacred space to desecrate it from the inside out Perchance it’s just the weeping of my vagina for all the times men sought oppress its nature, a force beyond their grasp, a magic they cannot harness It will never belong to them, its untamable energy refusing, no matter how much they will it, to sit in the corner and just, “be quiet” Don’t they know by now it’s where we stash our power where our supremacy sits in wait how it galvanizes us the goddesses we are This organ refuses silence it screams: I am not here to fulfill your needs, desires, pleasure, and fantasies You cannot own what you do not understand You cannot take what isn’t yours You cannot take what isn’t yours You will not take what isn’t yours But possibly, my snatch secretly plots while I sleep building bombs out of its juices, static electricity and sheer nerve because it’s smart, this pussy it knows exactly how ready we are for this world fashioned by men, sculpted from female flesh and our anguish, how ready we are to have it blown into extinction Fog fascinates me. Thick, rolling, my overactive imagination conjuring witches and werewolves running through its white tapestry. I love its descent, how it magically climbs from forest and sky, and just lays itself upon the landscape like a lover, comfortable touching every curve and opening. Something about its supernatural quality speaks to my heart about trust, and longing, and understanding that the world can’t always be our interpretation of what we want it to be. There is something to be said about trusting in mystery, and having faith when you can’t see around every corner. I once heard a shaman speak about what it felt like for him to awaken from the ‘dark night of the soul’, and he described it as running through a field with his eyes closed, arms splayed to his side, trusting that the way before him was open. I both love and fear walking in the fog, particularly at night, hearing noises echo and bounce, their origin hidden from my view. The allure to wander into its ivory cloak is powerful. It makes my pulse quicken, my senses become heightened, and I feel this otherworldly connection to a part of me that often lies in shelter, because as a survivor of childhood sexual trauma, the notion of unpredictably is so hard to swallow. As I reflect on my journey as a woman, I realize that (and if you know me well, you hear this frequently) ambiguity is something that I have come to despise. In a world where culture still leans to whisper in our ears subservient, conflicting messages of how we should be, look, act, fuck, and live, I feel that it becomes of even greater importance that I understand decisiveness, can look it in the eye, and choose with dignity and ferocity. It has taken me 41 years to arrive in a space where I can feel, with a whole heart, that I am who I am, and if you don’t like my look, what I represent, how I live, or who I love, you can pretty much fuck off and go your own way, and we will both likely be happier for it. Imagine that constant conflict, wanting to know and feel the stability of having a path that lies clear before me, and feeling the yearning of wanting to be enveloped in the unknown. It is so hard for my heart to let secrecy be a part of my life’s magic, because I was taught that secrets are for holding onto to moments that thrashed and scarred me from the inside out. It is so excruciating to trust in things that are obscure, when it such things that have damaged your soul the most. You’re left feeling like the internal compass of your instinct is forever broken, and that you are incapable of reading people for who they are: can you really sense good? Can you see the bad coming, when it was so obvious yet allusive before? Can you read another soul and see them for who they are, and trust your gut without constantly questioning that voice along the way? It hits my relationships the hardest, both platonic and romantic. I don’t do well with friends who are fair weather, because I am staunchly loyal and lucid. And I struggle with indecisive lovers, because I am perspicuous, and the notion of balancing more than one person in an amorous association is out of the question for me. I don’t compartmentalize and parcel my emotions, spreading myself across multiple hearts. If I offer myself to you, it is everything I have to proffer, and I will share it without hesitation. I give my all, body and soul, and just don’t know how to offer less. I don’t know how to be when things are equivocal, and the road ahead is covered in a thick, white gauze. I am captivated by its mystique, and terrified by what could happen along the way. Sometimes I question why I feel such devotion: what wouldn’t I give to descend into the fog, allowing my twisted intuition to guide me, allowing my heart to blindly lead the way? What wouldn’t I surrender to be a woman whose soul could be that free, who could afford the luxury of ambivalence? Yet, I recognize that my capacity for feeling is directly proportionate to what I devote. The more that I relinquish of myself to one person, the deeper I dive into the catacombs of my own passion. There is no superficiality. Each joy arrives wrapped in bliss, each ache is a knife that brings its own remembrance. I do not stretch myself in bit and pieces, parceled out slowly and carefully depending on the recipient. I could not bear to tear my soul apart to spare my heart. Anything except the totality of all I am feels counterfeit. The fog is merely water disguised as mist, and how it smolders in the light of my sun. Part One:
I hear my daughter before I see her, can hear the breathlessness before she appears, the attempts to take huge gulps of air that will not move into her body. I hear her sister ask if she’s okay, and I rush around the corner, meeting her as she stumbles the last step, her body begging for oxygen. It is the sound of someone trying to breath underwater, when the lungs cannot be filled but the body still wants more. It is as deafening as a scream and as quiet as a whisper. ******* I remember Sacajawea, the weight of her tiny body in my hand, how she folded up like she was back in the womb. Her fur was velvet, the hair tickling my palm as I carried her. She was grey and ivory, with light colored eyes that shone with curiosity and joy. She was beautiful, kind, and loving. She would leap up behind you and curl her torso around your neck, her paws digging gently into the shoulders, giving a light massage as she purred. She would settle in this way, like a muffler, warming the spirit, spreading love. ******* I slap her back, turning her head to the floor, folding her body in half, trying desperately to dislodge whatever it is that has cut off her air supply. The gurgling continues, and I can feel her energy without having to look at her, knowing that there is only so long that the brain can sustain without oxygen, only so many seconds that it can sit in depravity before its cells begin apoptosis, bursting and dying from their own longing. ******* I remember the rasp that emanated from the kitten’s throat, like someone grating basalt on steel, her breath sucking in and out in gasps, hearing the air whistle, her neck dangling where once it sat strong, tiny patches of blood seeping from undetectable wounds. How we pulled her from underneath the rocking chair, the one she always wanted to lie beneath, this time acting like an inefficient guillotine to her vertebrae, merely fracturing but not severing. ******* Her lips start turning blue, there are strings of saliva beginning to drip from her pouty lips as her small chest heaves and fights for what it needs to survive. I wrap my arms around her waist, placing my fists below her rib cage, pulling in with as much force as I think she can take without breaking her. I yell to call 911. Over and over I force my palms into her diaphragm, and every time I am unsuccessful, I get a moment of dread where I smell death, and I beg and plead in my mind, “Please don’t take her like this, not in my arms.” ******* We take Sacajawea to the bathroom, her blood leaving tiny circles on the wood stained floor, gently setting her body on the counter top. Everyone is high, and no one knows what to do. It’s a Sunday, midnight, in a tiny New Hampshire town, and the nearest animal hospital is about an hour away. The kitten’s breath takes on a new heaviness, and tiny, red bubbles froth from one of her wounds. Her neck is broken, she is beyond repair. ******* I continue to pump into her body with my fists, and with every thrust, I am forcing every ounce of love and memory into her belly. A collage of memories float through my mind in succession, unstoppable: her birth, the feeling of her tiny, infant body as it warmed my chest, the heat of her body when she crawls into bed with me still, seeking comfort and heat, wrapping her lanky arms around my back, hugging me close. I begin to calculate the time: how long until 911 can respond? How long until she might lose consciousness? How long until… ******* The kitten is going to die. It is inevitable. Her breath tells us this in shallow gasps, but she seems determined to fight until she can draw no more. Watching her is excruciating. A decision is made that her suffering needs to end. Her owner collapses on the floor in grief and tears. Her sister, the one who was sitting in the rocker, eyes her from the doorway, water collecting in splashes on her shirt. That leaves me, and my friend Adrian. He volunteers to take the kitten to the river. I offer to go along for support. ******* Again, over and over, my palms plunge into her midsection. Over and over, I am met with silence when I want to hear the sharp intake of air. She is drooling more, strands falling to meet the floor, encapsulating soft, pink candy specks that stain the tile in darkness. I look to my left and see my older son, standing helpless, not knowing what to do or how to be. I move my head forward and my older daughter and younger son have both called 911 and are speaking to dispatch. I hear bits and pieces float by my ears, “my sister…choking…she’s 6…come…” ******* We crawl down the slope to the river bank, Sacajawea wrapped in a plaid scarf, slipping over the rocks. The air around us hangs in a humid shroud, and we can hear crickets as we slowly place our steps. Softly murmuring, the Contoocook River flows at a clip, meandering and pausing upon the shore. We reach the water’s edge, and the kitten is still managing to breath, still wanting to live. Adrian unwraps her from the scarf and holds her body above the water, preparing to plunge her underneath. His eyes fill with tears, and he blubbers like a baby. He repeats, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” The kitten, sensing his hesitation, begins to gurgle, the suck of the air more and more labored, and attempts to issue a horrendous, sharp meow. She is suffering. ******* My arms are feeling tired and ineffective, and I worry I might break her ribs. I muster another heave, and this time, I am rewarded with the sound I am longing for: sputtering. I hear her breath move into her throat in a hoarse whoosh. I am still not convinced she is breathing, so I pump again with my fists, and she coughs, spit falling from her mouth onto the floor, air permeating the lungs. I ask her, “Can you breathe?” and she nods ‘yes’. I tell the older kids that she’s okay, and to call off the emergency dispatch. I envelope my daughter in my arms and she bursts into tears, big droplets pouring down her cheeks, allowing the fear of death’s specter to weep from her body. My muscles begin to shake as I hold her, the adrenaline racing through my veins, sweeping every inch of my body. I lift her and take her into the kitchen, inspecting where fists pounded into her flesh, taking a paper towel from the counter to dry her face and the spittle from the corners of her mouth. Her eyes look straight into mine, and I see how intertwined my own mortality is with her being. I feel the invisible strings between my heart and hers, the ones, that if severed, would leave me as fatally wounded; the ones, that if snapped, would bust me, too. ******* Adrian sits on the rocks with the kitten in his lap, his face buried in his thick hands. I gently lift her body, so fragile and light, because I cannot bear the wailing another moment. I walk carefully and steadily to the water, bringing the kitten close to the river’s surface, reflecting the dark night and an opal sheen from the moon. I hear her inhale one more time, then I sink her body, breaking the skin of the water, her body thrashing out of instinct, but barely moving. I feel tiny jerks, bubbles rising to the surface where her mouth sits below, the twitches lessening and slowing, until her body issues silence, and the water’s surface is again smooth and untouched. In that moment, I feel her energy rise, like a jolt that makes my hairs stand on end, and then it’s gone. She’s gone. I wonder what Sacajawea sees in her last moments. My face? Her mother’s? The moon? Hot tears crease my cheeks as my hands sit submerged in the icy water. I hate that she died cold. I carefully float her to the surface, wrapping her soaked body in the scarf, as if it matters now. I hold her tiny body, hugging it next to mine. Then I place her back in the river, letting go, watching her become one with the current, watching the river continue to move despite death at its doorstep. ******* Part Two: I contemplate dimensions, slits in the fabric of time and space, all the tiny choices we make every second of every day that draw us closer together or further apart. In my dreams, I see Sacajawea’s eyes turn to stone, the luster dulling as her spirit exited her form. I wonder if there is another outcome in the universe, or several, all running alongside each other like television channels playing different programs at the same time. In this one, she is dead. In another, does she pass from old age, a grown cat, in the arms of her owner? In yet another, has she never left her mother, curled up next to her abdomen? Perhaps she herself is a mother, has a litter of kittens, and she is introduced to the same pain I taste in watching my children grow. I see the eyes of my daughter, panicked and frantic, desperate to breathe. I think of the same parallel moments, that maybe in another path she has exited the world, and I am left to hold her still body in my arms, watching my heart shatter into slivers so tiny it will never be repaired. I feel my heart clench around itself, creating a barrier from the thoughts that persist as I toss and turn, because to face them feels like a burden I can’t bear to hold. Why do we love anyone with depth if the pain of loss can reach into so deeply that we feel scooped out from the inside, as if we are empty? How is it our hearts can bear to reach out and intertwine with others, if the potential cost of watching them leave in a thousand different scenarios, is our own wholeness? Are our elastic hearts capable of stretching enough to hold and carry pain to the point they explode? How do you keep your heart at arm’s length, distancing joy and love, and still feel human? How do you forsake love, continuing to move through the world, without choking on your own loneliness? How do you say no to love and manage to breathe? I can’t bear the thought of losing her, and I can’t stand the notion of not loving her. If I tasted her mortality, I might shatter into microscopic shards, never fully picking up all the pieces to have a full heart. But if I guard myself from emotion and love, I turn to impassive, cold stone, and my heart suffocates a tiny bit each second. Here is what I know: I would rather be broken. My heart yearns to breathe. His finger, long and sculpted, curved down her pubic bone, inching closer to the apex of her sex. It finally landed with a flutter, gradually sliding over and around its button, aided by the slippery moisture seeping from her body. His other hand continued to circle her nipples, the friction hardening their flesh as he moved back and forth to stimulate them. Quiet, panting moans seeped from her throat, the volume and intensity slowly increasing as his fingers deftly moved across chest and between her legs.
She leaned back slightly, opening the space between her thighs, taking her right hand into her panties to find his, moving his fingers further down to the wet slit of her vulva, tiptoeing them inside the hot ocean raging inside. She gasped as his fingers filled her, sliding along her inner walls, his flesh sparking waves of pleasure that rippled up through her legs, settling in her abdomen. As his fingers gained speed, her body whipped into a frenzy, a hurricane slowly increasing in power and force. Her left hand nestled itself into his hair, slowly winding his tresses around her fingers, as her other hand removed itself from between her thighs and reached out to take his chin in her palm, stroking his cheek with tender motions, drawing his face close, finding his lips with her own. He breathed her in, and could taste each her emotions: longing, lust, affection and vulnerability. Her lips quivered slightly, her mouth opening and closing with a rhythm syncopated to his hand, tongues caressing as his fingers pressed forward and back. She removed her hand from his hair, sliding along his chest, grazing his shirt, resting her fingertips on his tiny nipple bud, massaging, then running them down his belly, feeling slight soft, flesh at the line of his belt. Her lips disentangled from his for a moment, her mouth leaning to his ear, her warm breath falling upon his neck like quiet snow. “Can I stroke you?” she asked breathlessly, and he moved his hand from her nipple to her shoulder, half embracing to bring her close, whispering, “Please.” Her mouth sought his out again, wanting to inhale every inch of him in every rise and fall of her chest. Her hand began to fumble with his belt buckle, freeing it from its lock, the straps falling open. She carefully took his button between her fingers and released it, continuing downward to his zipper, its teeth making a quiet grating sound as it unfolded. She walked her fingers into the newly unfastened space, feeling his flesh rise and harden beneath her fingertips, her nails skimming across the fabric housing his member, gradually upping the pressure as his body responded. For a moment, as the fervor of his hand inside her burst into a short dash, she paused, her hand trembling. In response, she gripped him gently, finally sliding his shorts down to extricate him, feeling his muscle reach upward under her tender touch. She wrapped her fingers around him, fondling his flesh with delicate joy. She loved the weight of him in her hand, how her fingers molded around his shape, as if he melted into the crevices of her palm. It felt so natural to touch him, like his skin always belonged inside her own, as if the heat rising from the back and forth of her hand was like the sun creeping across the landscape, igniting it with golden fire. As his hand moved inside her, her hand caressed him, developing a syncopated rhythm. Her body weeped onto his fingers, and she felt him become rigid beneath her touch, but with fleshy give, as if she were carving him from soapstone with her hand. His belly lit on fire from her contact, feeling erratic notes escape his throat and mouth as he gasped with pleasure. He sought her eyes with his own, and she returned the glance, almost trance-like, swept away by the pleasure rippling through her body. He thought he could melt into her eyes in that moment, disappearing entirely into mist, every inch of his body fusing into her own, wanting nothing more than to feel every wave of what she was experiencing, every pulse of pleasure radiating from his hand. He settled for drawing her close, foreheads touching, their breath mingling between them in hot, invisible clouds, finally drawing his eyes closed as his lips pressed her own, feeling his own existence fall away as she returned the advance, feeling his body dissolve into her mouth cell by cell by cell. i.
you believe in invisibility, moving in circles, landing gently and with delicacy, barely a whisper of notice, leaving no trace of your existence i believe in transparency, emotions gaping, like a stain glass window warmed by a mid-July sun, i project kaleidoscopes upon blank surfaces in magenta, turquoise, and emerald ii. your butter soft hands are everything, tenderness enveloping my fingers, encircling my soul you are the shelter from storms that rage beneath my skin, leaving silent scars and blemishes where no one else can dare witness, the safe haven for my overworked heart to breathe, inhaling deep, exhaling slow iii. somewhere between where you pull back and i push forward, we meet dead center of two divergent forces, maybe for you too much maybe for me not enough but its all about the leap, landing on the bridge between intact iv. in the gloaming, when a hush falls the earth and invisible creatures stir, my heart whispers how it feels your own: like a Glasswing butterfly perched in your hand, flapping its wings against the silk of your furrowed skin, tenderness spreading across gossamer and tendril, entrenching itself in your heart line rooting, not because you enclosed it with a velvet fist, its pinions beating against your digits, its lust for living slowly sapped by the capture of insecurity rather, your satin palm splays in graceful humility, risking any love by giving it room for exit In the wake of the explosion of #MeToo, I find myself more and more reflective and aware of not just my experiences of assault and harassment, but how more conscious of it I am becoming when it is presented in my life. For instance, this past weekend, I was asked by a friend to come with her, and her group of companions, to a nightclub to dance. I reluctantly said yes. It’s a place where I’ve never really felt comfortable, which I have found rare in my small city. But I allowed myself to be cajoled, and off we went to Skylight, where drinks are poured into plastic cups and music was pumping into the street.
From the second we entered, I knew I wasn’t going to stay long. I had been to a performance by John Waters earlier in the evening, and was sporting fishnets, a fitting skirt, and a tank top with the words “Nerdy, Dirty, Inked, and Curvy” down the front. I don’t really give a shit what people think about how I dress, because I will wear what makes me feel comfortable and happy until the day I die. But I don’t like when people (i.e. men) use it to objectify and assume. I had a bunch of eyes on me from the moment we entered. Aside from the main dance floor where men formed a ring around those moving in the middle, a balcony runs along its edges, with more men gawking from above, because evidently that circle of eager men surrounding the dance floor was just not enough testosterone. I hit the dance floor with the group, but didn’t feel at home, and felt myself holding back in my movements, like hearing a small whisper in ear that says, “don’t be too sexy, you know what will come of it.” My friend and I made some offhanded jokes about how ‘rapey’ it felt, but it wasn’t funny that places can have that sensibility. I felt like a fish in barrel encircled by guns. As I was dancing, one guy approached me with exaggerated swagger and asked me if what was on my shirt was what I was looking for in man. I turned to him coldly and replied, “Not really, because I’m not looking at all,” before dancing myself away to another section. A couple of other men shimmied in my direction, and I intentionally glided over toward my friend to avoid having to say ‘no’ over and over. Clearly this was not the type of place where I could just be myself and cut loose. It began to feel overwhelming, the glances and intensity, and my anxiety kept climbing, so I hugged my friend and told her I was leaving. I grabbed my coat and was out the door in a flash. The level of discomfort was palpable in every cell, and it took me walking around a bit in the cool night air to feel my flight or fight hormones begin to subside. It is a strange world to live in where something as pleasurable as dancing can feel like a situation of life or death, because our bodies sometimes know what we do not: that even people who are ‘decent’ on the daily, when infused with alcohol and lust, become other creatures all together. I can’t acknowledge this fully without coming to terms with the fact that I, myself, have been that aggressive person under the influence. It’s the hardest part for me reflecting on #MeToo, knowing how much I have endured in the realm of assault and harassment, yet having full awareness that I once hurt someone in a similar way that I still regret enormously. When I was in college 20 years ago, I think I was a junior, in the heyday of my party years, I was cast in a scene with another theater major, “John”, whom I didn’t know very well, for a student directing class. We were a small department, which I loved, because some of class sizes topped out at four people. But it also meant all hands-on deck for projects and productions. Outside of academics, I had a very small, core group of friends from different majors, but I also spent time with a very diverse group socially: I wrote for the hockey team, I was part of several organizations on campus, I was in a coed, academic fraternity and went to Greek parties, etc. The theater department was more insular, and most of the theater majors hung out together very frequently. I was, as I have been most of my life, an anomaly, because I’ve never had the desire to be pigeonholed and fit into a nice, round hole. Because I didn’t solely hang out with my fellow thespians, some people were always on the periphery, such as John. The scene we were cast in was romantic, and we were to kiss in it. As soon as I read it, I felt enormous anxiety about the performance, and it began to dominate my thoughts. I had never done such a scene before, and I didn’t know how to process it. I was just beginning to unravel the sexual abuse from my childhood, and was drinking a lot in the process to not drown in that sorrow. The idea of publicly being intimate with someone I didn’t know, nor was attracted to physically, began to weigh on me heavily, and still being a young adult in college learning how to navigate on my own, I didn’t really know where to go with my discomfort. One night shortly thereafter, in our local Chinese restaurant watering hole, I ran into John and two other theater friends who I was better acquainted with, and sat with them. I had been drinking steadily, and was feeling quite tipsy. Eventually the discussion veered around to our scene, and we began discussing the kiss. I asked John if he was nervous, and then I began, out of my anxious thoughts and feelings, to pressure him to kiss me on the spot, ‘to get it over with’. He politely shied away. My own perturbation grew and grew with his backing from me. I continued to push, and then, out of my own discomfort, leaned in and kissed him without consent, because my uneasiness was too much for me to bear, my clouded mind not considering his comfort or feeling. Shortly after, he left, and the incident was a hazy memory come the next morning. The following Monday, I was asked to talk to two of my professors, who gently sat me down and told me that John had come to them because he felt violated, as he should have. I gave my account, which mirrored his, and openly admitted to what I had done. I never intended harm, but I realized in that moment how quickly our own desires can replace the consideration of, and for, others. Our scene was axed as a project for the student director, the consequences of my actions rippling further, and I felt horrible. I consider myself very fortunate that graver repercussions were not handed out. I still feel incredible shame and guilt about the fact that I made another human being feel physically uncomfortable, as I did in that club, especially since it is something I have grappled with internally for most of my own life as a victim at various points. But despite intention, I did what I did, and I own it, because it has served as a catalyst for my own growth and reflection, and it is one of the main reasons consent has become an essential part of my interaction with others. Despite apologizing (and John-I am still deeply sorry for any hurt), I can’t erase the past, nor the pain I created, but I will always hope for forgiveness. Maybe it will come one day, maybe not. The discomfort forever serves a moral compass. But I also can’t wave the banner of #MeToo without stating that I have, in my life, been such an aggressor. I carry the promise that in the aftermath of #MeToo’s tsunami, that men can not only look inward, reflect, and recognize the moments where they have contributed to devaluing women, but publicly come clean about the moments when they have faltered, without defensiveness or resistance. It is not enough for so many women to merely say we have endured these collective experiences. We need your atonement, and we need to know how you plan to change for the better in concrete action steps. Maybe you will be forgiven, maybe you will not. But we’re all savvy enough to know that’s not the point. By saying things out loud or publicly, we evoke accountability. For myself, it has meant some hard soul searching about the person I wanted to become, and evolving into someone who is sensitive and conscious to the physical and emotional needs of others. It also means raising my children to understand that actions have definitive consequences, and that respect for self only starts when you respect others with the utmost regard for their comfort and safety. It’s not just about the big issues such as rape and abuse, but about the small moments we let slide that give permissiveness to those larger moments, and learning to tackle them one resistance at a time. It’s about learning to say ‘no’ to friends and family who use other men to give themselves permission to exploit women, or to validate their own exertion of power. It’s about the jokes, the comments, and being willing to change the objectification of women by realizing that they are not yours for the taking. Perhaps, if we can initiate this honest conversation not only within and amongst ourselves as a society, but particularly among men themselves, we can start to retool what masculinity means, and recognize its capacity for abuse and hurt. Maybe feminism will seem less like an oppressive word, but more like an aspiration. Then, maybe instead of #MeToo, we can begin to collectively move forward and finally demand, altogether, #NotOneMore. Made a comment. Or two. Maybe three. Was it four? I lost count.
Called me sweetie, darling, dear, a hot piece of ass, a bitch, a cunt. Defended your friend, you know, the ‘good’ guy? Yeah, he raped me. He also raped my friend. And two other women. Rubbed my neck, stroked my arm, touched my leg, smacked my ass. Tried to grind with me. Licked my back when dancing. Made me squeeze past you because you didn’t want to move knowing I would have to rub my body on your own. Said a joke. But it wasn’t funny. Watched porn. Paid for sex. Read those magazines, you know, the ones with the good ‘stories’. Approached me when I didn’t ask you to. I ignored you. You kept talking. You still wouldn’t leave. So I had to leave. Let your eyes slip below my chin during conversation, over and over and over and over and over and over. Called to me when I passed you on the street. Followed me while I was walking. Followed me home. Forced your way in. Forced your way inside me. Left me to pick up the pieces. I love to walk home alone late at night if I’ve been out dancing, or socializing. I enjoy the silence, and time to reflect. I think about my writing, my life, my goals, what I want and how to get there. I tune into nature: crickets, cicadas, birds. I count stars, identify constellations, and like the solitary feeling of being independent. My home is only about a twenty minute walk from our downtown area, so it’s more than manageable, especially when trying to catch an Uber or Lyft seems near impossible. When the moon is full, I enjoy bathing in her rays and catching glimpses of the shadows she casts from the trees and homes I pass on my journey.
I went out dancing the other night, and found myself walking home late as usual. After a bit, I could hear footsteps behind me, on the opposite side of the street, but really thought nothing of it. Sometimes, other people feel the same urge as me to travel on foot. As I continued, the steps became louder, and echoed a faster rhythm. When I was almost at the intersection of a larger road and less than five minutes from home, I heard those footsteps begin to clap closer, crossing the street between us, and I looked back to see a man who began to yell to capture my attention, “Hey, hey!” In general, I am not frightened by much. I grew up in a city where I learned to be street smart, and frankly, was blessed by some unseen force looking over me at times that delivered me from precarious situations that could have ended badly. But something in this guy’s tone just hit me in my gut, and I felt myself get instantly defensive. I started walking faster, and his steps increased as well. He began a light jog, and I could not outpace him, finally coming to the road where I had to rely on a street sign to cross. He sidled up near me and said, “Hey, can I walk with you?” in a very slurred, alcohol induced pattern. I turned to him, square in the eye, and forcefully said, “NO.” He backed away slowly, a little stunned, it seemed, by the force of my words, then finally crossed back to his side of the road. He and I walked in a parallel direction for the next few moments in silence, my hands shaking slightly in my jacket. I felt relieved that it only took one word to move him along, but I hated that I had to deal with it in the first place. Reflecting on this the next day, I realized that I felt a depth of sadness at the fact that I have been conditioned to fear men so quickly and easily. That seeing a man on the street at night, when I am alone and vulnerable, issues a deep-seated alarm that I shouldn’t trust him, instantly. I thought about all the times I have spoken to my older daughter about ways to avoid placing herself in uncertain situations, and counted how many of them involved how to keep men at a distance. Pretty much all of them. And then I felt a huge wave of anger that I even feel this in the first place, that our culture allows for women to be accountable for the actions of others at every turn. If things had ended differently, had some form of assault been attempted, how many would have whispered, “Well, you know, she was walking home ALONE, and it was very late,” or “She should have known better and waited for an Uber.” NO. I should be allowed to walk wherever the fuck I want to and not have to feel that my body and spirit could come under attack from someone who feels the need to exert their own power by denigrating others. By men who feel that the only way to get what they think they need is to take it from others at a weaker moment. I don’t want to live in a world where I feel it’s necessary to teach my daughters that men can’t be trusted. I know so many wonderful men who defy that stereotype, and who understand how to treat women with respect and admiration. I have a son who respects women immensely, and I hate the fact that there are girls, such as my own, being taught to fear him. But for each of those, there is a ratio of more men who just don’t seem to fucking get it. Men, you have to help us out. Talk to other men. Have some conversations. Explain why certain behavior toward women isn’t acceptable. Explain why women deserve better, and how they better themselves by respecting us. For all I know, that guy that approached me was genuinely concerned that I was walking alone, and just wanted to help. But until we live in a culture where men hold women in the esteem they deserve, I’ll just have to continue to assume the worst, and teach my daughters the same. And that’s not okay. For the fists that ravaged your bones
splintering your reflection from the inside out, leaving your spirit torn into jagged rags of grief For the watercolor, stormy inkstains that followed the beatings, the pinching, the moments when you dared say something wrong, out of tone, indifferent For the moments when you said no but he forced himself next to you, on top of you, inside you, under your flawless, glowing skin where no amount of cleansing can ever restore the shininess of what he stole, leaving you ragged and dull For the times you let men touch you because you were lonely, alone, or just felt so loathsome that any burst of connection was welcome in your sorrow For the babies who wanted to flourish but could not find a way to attach to the rigidity that crept its way into your body and metastasized, leaving your womb an empty coffin of your worst imaginings For all the suffering and sorrow for every harsh, piercing word that settled in your chest, fanning out to your lungs organs, tissue and blood, reaching deep into your marrow to whisper that you would never be good enough to feel robust again The memories leaching into every pore, even the ones you can’t recall but that the body recollects Those ones where there will never be a pill to purge its remembrances inspired by Claudia Love Mair i can feel my heart gaping wide, stretching in every horizon, pulled thin by its capacity to want to hold in its palm as much love as it can grasp. it is so uncomfortable, this space, the exposure. and just as suddenly, my heart will slam shut, guarding its own, taking stock of what remains so it does not feel depleted. this can be once or several times per day, hour, minutes. it is the constant yearning to know the joy that only comes with the discomfort of laying my emotional self, and all its trappings, bare for the taking, sidled with the consistent fear that it will only burn me to ruins.
there is something that breaks when you love someone who teaches you to distrust your own heart. i can’t shake his voice in my head, the one that time and again makes me feel unworthy of what should be as natural as breathing. i watch other people and wonder how they manage to trust themselves, and the compass of their emotions, because mine always feels broken. i can never tell if affection is given out of obligation or admiration, or withheld out of spite or fear. i never know if what i imagine i feel is requited, because to know that would indicate that i have known love that was given without a price. the cost has always been my confidence, and a way of navigating the world of affection with security that i’m not sure i’ll ever taste. i want so much to feel the grace that comes from letting down my guard fall to the ground so that i can let another touch my soul in its most tender places. i long to not agonize, my mind spinning in circles, analyzing every word, touch, or exchange. it makes me feel fragmented, the constant thoughts and doubts that rise to the surface gasping for air, convinced that they know we are destined for destruction. and so i lock up the gates, securing my heart in tight, so that if nothing else, i know it will survive another day, even if it does so alone. i had thought the worst was behind me, that the scars from the emotional turmoil i survived would evaporate into dust, blowing into oblivion, freeing me from feeling like a stranger to my own sentiments. instead, left behind is the unceasing critic, the one that whispers how undeserving i am, simply because i was so naïve to trust and love another who made me question how i could allow myself to be treated as if i were inconsequential as a human. it’s an endless commentary that only serves to force me to doubt if i will ever be worthy to know the sweet bliss of affection that comes without the cost of feeling as if i am less than deserving, as if at any moment i will reach inside my chest and discover my heart was never there all along. Deep in the thicket of the forest, the dancer stood on the moist, sweet earth, waiting for the moon to rise. She was barefoot, white tights running down her lanky legs, her corn yellow hair flowing down her back in waves. Down her torso, she was draped in a silver leotard, with a loose organza skirt tied around her waist. She stood in first position, patiently waiting for the moon to reach above the mountain’s horizon. Slowly, the moon began to crawl above the tree line, and the dancer, beginning with a leap, gave herself in rhythm to the moon. For hours, she professed her love with her body, arms long, legs lifted, curved and rolled in circles. Finally, when her muscles could sustain her no more, she fell to the forest floor and inhaled the savory dampness of the moss, rotten stumps and dying leaves. She looked up, hoping the moon’s gentle light would be upon her, but the moon had drifted above the horizon, slowly meandering away toward morning. For weeks, the dancer came every night. Even if the moon sat hidden behind clumps of backlit clouds, or if rain pounded down and snuck its way beneath the fabric of her costume, she danced until exhaustion came and overtook her body, until she felt she might break. One night, after dancing what she was convinced was her very best routine, the girl sat on the forest bed breathing with force. Overwhelmed by the moon’s ambivalence and her endless effort to display her love, her tears began to soak the ground. She lay chest down with her cheek against the soil, and let the watery frustration of her heart pour from her eyes. From somewhere deep and distant, she heard a soft voice: “My dear child, what ails you so?” asked Mother Earth. “My heart has been torn to bits. Every night I come to dance my love for the moon, and every night the moon continues to rise without even a glance my way. She does not love me,” replied the dancer. “How much do you love the moon?” “Oh, I would give anything to bask in her light and know her affection. Can you help me?” The girl pleaded with Mother Earth. “Stand up, dear heart,” Mother Earth directed. After dancer pushed her tired muscles to a stand, Mother Earth asked “What is your name?” “Aspen,” the dancer replied quietly. “Ah, Aspen, take your feet and push them into my skin.” Finding a patch of soil, Aspen buried her feet into the dirt and stood waiting. Slowly, she felt her toes growing downward into the earth, stretching deeper and deeper through multiple layers. Her body began to stiffen, and her torso began to sprout upward toward the sky; her arms shot out from her sockets, and her fingers began to divide and push upward in wavy lines. When her body was finished growing, she felt tiny, small buds gathering along the branches of her fingers and arms, where spade shaped leaves sprouted. They were golden like her hair and reflected silver in the fading moonlight. Aspen spent the day basking in the sun, feeling the energy shift and pulse through her elegant limbs as she inhaled its light and breathed out through her cloistered, golden leaves. She practiced shimmying in the wind, and waited patiently as the sun gently fell into the hillside and brought on the black blanket night. Finally the object of her affection began to appear along the mountainside. Looking up, Aspen shook her top limbs, swaying her appendages; she caught the inquisitive eye of the moon, sitting in the corner of the sky, playing peek-a-boo between the metallic clouds that wandered haphazardly through the night. When the moon’s attention fell on her, Aspen began to dance in the wind, shimmering and shaking for her love. With concentration and ferocity, the moon turned all her light toward the aspen, focusing a small, passionate beam longingly on each nook and cranny of the tree. As she honed in on her, Aspen moved her branches, the spade shaped leaves glittering in the moon’s attention. The more Aspen trembled, the more she reflected back to the moon; the more the moon shone, the greater Aspen glimmered, dancing with iridescence. Finally the moon spoke, “What is your name?” Shyly, the tree replied, “Aspen.” “Where did you come from?” asked the moon. “Every evening, when you would rise, I would dance for you on the forest floor but your light never reached me enough for you to see me. Mother Earth took pity on me and transformed me into this tree so that I could be close enough for you to know my love. “Aspen, you have stolen my heart. I want to admire you from the clear night sky and reach your tender limbs as they reach for the sky to touch me. I want to feel you close and find you always in the deep evening velvet that covers the hills. I want you to show how delicate and startling our love is to the world, and know that when I seek you with my light, you are always reflecting the most loving part of myself back to remind me that you make me whole.” Aspen shivered with requited love, and the moon laughed. “I love you, my dear moon, and want nothing more than to feel the grace of your moonshine.” Each evening, the moon, when the clouds allowed, would scour the earth for its beloved Aspen, searching for her blanched trunk and silver, lustrous leaves. As their love grew and time passed, Aspen shed across the mountain’s forest floor during the winter, when she felt the most intimate with her beloved during the extended cold nights; in summer, she shimmied and danced with joyous abandon. One year, the Aspen fell prey to pests rooting through the mountain trees, and she grew weak, her branches and leaves slashed. Her loving moon tried to heal her with her light, but Aspen could no longer fight. On a warm summer night, as her love rose full, she shook for the very last time in the light of her love. As she faded away, the moon screamed out into the night sky as though she would crack in half, “I will never shine again!” Aspen, before leaving, lifted her branches as far as she could stretch to try to touch the moon, and told her, “Oh, but my moon, how could I have loved you if I never knew your light?” The moon flooded Aspen, lighting every inch, watching as she slowly shrank beneath the tree line until she lie upon the earth in her human form, barely noticeable in the moon’s focused beam. Gently, Mother Earth swallowed Aspen, and then she was gone. The moon was distraught with heartbreak, and refused to shine for many years, hiding behind the horizon and clouds. Finally transcending her grief, the moon rose above the familiar hillside where her treasured Aspen once stood. She felt solitary and heartsick at the waves of ordinary trees shaking in the wind. As the forest greeted the moon, the moon began to feel her loneliness subside, and she threw her beams across the mountain. To her awe, dotting the forest, rising slowly but shining fiercely, Aspen’s tiny saplings waved to the moon as they stood in her luminosity. Taken aback, the moon watched aspens spread across the hills and country in every direction, dancing in the moon’s bright glow. Her heart leapt in joy and love, drinking in their mother’s beauty, slowly replacing the hole her Aspen left behind. Every night thereafter, the moon rose to remember her beloved by watching her children grow, and felt forever touched by her magic. because it has one foot out the door, and one tiptoeing in. it is between worlds, not sure if it wants to collapse upon itself or open its existence so wide it lets everything in. it stands as a metaphor for my navigation as a bisexual woman, straddling the line between the feminine and masculine, and not wanting to choose one over the other.
i can remember the first time i had a crush on a woman, when i was five years old, and the world no longer felt secure to me. i was a survivor of abuse, and here was this girl, i believe she was eight, and she was tender, and she held my hand. when we played house, she always pretended to be the husband, and would kiss me delicately on the lips. i leaned in because she made me feel good about my body and who i was. she had hazel eyes. i am a sucker for hazel eyes. my first girlfriend had such eyes. and the most beautiful smile i’ve ever seen. she was the personification of sunshine and grace. i have never felt as safe as when she would wrap her arms around me. it felt like i was embracing myself in powerful, necessary ways. her heart wrapped itself around my own like a wooly blanket in the deepest freeze, and it protected me from myself: self-doubt, self-image, imaginings, and neuroses. she was so good for me, too good, and in the end i buckled to pressure around me that whispered she wasn’t really what i wanted or needed. except she was. everything and that much more. it was so hard to accept this part of myself for so long. hiding in shame that i felt these longings, not consistently, but in waves. i was curious about the female form but afraid to peek, afraid of my own body, deeply frightened that i was irretrievably broken in a way that was out of the natural bounds. i hated that i would imagine myself with girls, and that it felt so wrong and sinful to do so. i despised that when i finally saw those fantasies spring to life through her, that i let all the self-doubt do me in, and that i broke her heart into chunks and pieces, and with it mine. it has never quite fit back together the same. like the iris, I live betwixt, one foot across the threshold, the other already outside its frame. never will the two meet. i have grown to enjoy a certain peace despite the tug and pull. there is a gentle sweetness knowing that i fall for a human, not just the physical accoutrement that delegates them as x or y. there is a silence in my heart and a quiet in my soul that i am exactly who i should be, because that shame doesn’t live here anymore. Because the Iris, part one: http://hollybaldwin.weebly.com/reflections-of-an-unapologetic-badass/because-the-iris I’m sorry that I’m smart. Smarter than you.
Not as smart. Or as smart as you think. I’m sorry that I’m pretty. Ugly. Average. Exceptional. I’m sorry that I’m too thin. Too fat. Too flat. Too curvy. Almost perfect. Not perfect enough. I’m sorry I have more money than you. Or not enough. That I grew up wealthy. Impoverished. In the middle. I’m sorry I love dogs. Cats. Ferrets. Animals that bite. Those that swim. I’m sorry you wanted my hair beneath my shoulders. Medium. Pixie. Red. Blond. Black. I’m sorry I got the job. The one you thought you deserved just because… I’m sorry you harassed me. That you thought it would be funny to say “ ____.” Or to touch me here, or there. I’m sorry I called you back. That I didn’t call. Ignored your text. Waited for you to text in vain. I’m sorry I hated your silence. I’m sorry you won’t ask me out. Or that you did. I’m sorry I had to say no. That I said yes. That we dated. Didn’t date. Wanted to date but couldn’t. Got married. Separated. Divorced. That one of us died. I’m sorry I wore red. Black. Orange. Pants. Shirts. Socks. That I was naked. I’m sorry you raped me. That I blamed myself. That you blamed me. I’m sorry my body belongs to me. I’m sorry you feel ownership over my body. That you love my breasts, tongue, thighs, cunt, ass. That I hate you loving my breasts, tongue, thighs, cunt, ass. I’m sorry you stopped talking to me. And made me feel disposable. I’m sorry that I left. Stayed. That you were miserable. And you cried. That I became despondent. Or haven’t stopped weeping. I’m sorry that you never stopped yelling. Or beating me. That I didn’t defend myself and tell you to stop. Or that I did and you hurt me worse. I’m sorry I can do something better than you. Run faster. Lift more. Work harder. That I am strong. Weak. Ambivalent. I’m sorry you don’t love your wife. Or she loves me. That I love men. Women. The humans in between. That you had sex with me. I had sex with you. Or we fucked different people. And it was fabulous. Awful. Indifferent. Dynamic. Passive. Hurtful. That I was faithful. Or I cheated. I’m sorry I desired you in the first place. That I pushed you away and stopped wanting you. Or you, me. I’m sorry you didn’t make me cum. Or I didn’t make you cum. I’m sorry you didn’t make me cum enough. I’m sorry I don’t please you as much as you want. Or that I want you all the time. I’m sorry I can have babies. Can't have babies. Wanted a baby. Got pregnant. Or didn’t. Kept a baby. Miscarried a baby. Aborted a baby. Adopted a baby. Loved a baby. Hated a baby. Loved you. Hated you. I’m sorry I held your hand. Wiped your tears. Kissed your mouth. Touched your face. Held you close. I’m sorry I always feel like too much. Never enough. Or nothing at all. I have always pushed the envelope when it comes to how I dress my body. I think that is because I struggled so much with my weight for most of my adolescence that when I finally hit my stride and finally felt body confidence in my early twenties, I wanted to adorn myself with as much beauty and sensuality as I saw fit. It was my sweet spot: I sported fishnets, garters, formal dresses in dive bars, pretty much whatever I saw as fit and worthy, and that made me feel good. For me, feeling sexy feels amazing. It’s an integral part of who I am that I have lost at times, but always come back to throughout my life.
I read an article today about an exhibit of different outfits worn by people that were sexually assaulted, most of them on view to shatter the perception that women are ‘asking’ for it via their dress (I am going to only address assault against women, even though I recognize that it happens to men too. But let’s face it, women bear the brunt of this epidemic by a longshot.) It struck a raw nerve within me. I despise that we are still having these conversations in such a modern age, still need to have discourse about the clothes people wear, still need to debate if what women are wearing insinuates that our clothing choices are responsible for ‘it’, and by extension, us. I can clear this up right now, as the exhibit strives to point out: it does not fucking matter. When I was raped, at the age of 23, I remember exactly what I wore, down to intimate details, but mainly: khaki capris, a white tanktop, and a white button down overshirt. Casual, understated, relaxed, kicking back. The irony that I was violated in country club attire when I usually dressed much more provocatively was not lost on me. I certainly didn’t ‘ask’ for it. I had a casual conversation in a bar with a stranger. I prepared to call a cab to go home, and he kindly offered to take me instead. He seemed nice enough, spilling his sad guts about his failed marriage and ex-wife, as close to harmless as I thought you could get. So I accepted. Next thing I knew, we were driving on roads that were unfamiliar, and he pulled up to his apartment, so he could pick something up. I planned to wait in the car, but it was cold, and he offered me water, which I needed, being tipsy. I still didn’t feel threatened. Then we went upstairs, and he put something on television as I sat on the couch, feeling sleepy. The next thing I knew he was on top of me, and I was stunned. He outweighed me by double. I didn’t know where the fuck I was. I froze. It was horrendous. When my mind wanders back to that experience, I can feel the crushing weight of body on my own, and I remember how I turned my head to the side so I wouldn’t have to watch his face as he took what he had no right to steal. I passed out, and when I woke in his bed, naked, I received the joy of being sober and having him rape me again before he left for work, telling me he would call me during his lunch break, because my protestations and limp body weren’t clear enough indication to him that the sex was unwanted. The memory never fades, and it feels just as fresh every time it resurfaces. When my second marriage was crumbling, and intimacy between my ex-husband was strained, I would often have flashbacks to that experience when he would attempt to initiate something sexual during our downward spiral. It was a horrible paradox of feeling marital obligation toward someone I felt affection for, even when I didn’t want to engage. And I hated myself for it, and I began to resent my husband for wanting to be physical at a time when I was straining to sort out if I still wanted to be legally committed, and if the entire love we had once shared still existed. I’ve heard from other women that they have also felt this same pressure, when they are asked to do things that might feel demeaning, or uncomfortable, and how it is a huge burden to say no to someone you love within that context. But trauma is fickle and funny, and in relationships, it can often rear an ugly head that serves to destroy. Boundaries are so important, as is asking directly for what you want and being clear in your affection, and saying no even if your mind kicks in the machina of guilt that all women seem to have been given as the gift for their femininity. This is so much easier to write than live, but we need to start having conversations about why. Recently, I have very much returned to dressing with the same I don’t give a fuck attitude as I did in my early twenties, mostly because: I REALLY don’t give a fuck as a 41 year old woman. If I could get raped wearing the blandest clothes on the planet, what do I have to gain by denying myself the joy of wearing what I love? As a woman, I have grown weary of trying to censor all the parts of myself for the comfort or self-control of others. And truthfully, it a societal problem: one that continues to allow violators to be given the benefit of the doubt, and that encourages men to view women through a lens of sexual objectification. If I want to wear garters, fishnets, or visible lingerie, I will do just that. Fuck it, if I want to walk around naked, I should be able to do so without having to worry who might take that as an invitation to something they are not welcome to have. My body is not for anyone’s taking, but it is mine to decorate in any form or fashion I see fit. And instead of examining and picking apart those outer appearances, perhaps we should be asking why we continue to allow men to carry imbedded expectations regarding sex, and why we don’t hold them properly accountable when they decide they should be justified in taking what they want, when they want it. It’s enough that I find myself dealing with this professionally, even though I make every effort to dress the part of my staunch care provider role. Yet, I work with male providers who can’t find a way to keep their eyes leveled at my face, whose glances dart to my breasts mid-conversation, and beyond fucking infuriating, it’s insulting. It makes me feel uncooperative, and I often wonder if I should just imitate the same behavior, glancing at the space between their legs, if I wasn’t worried that it might be viewed as enticement. So when I am on my own time, I don’t want to fucking have to sit and weight my options so that hopefully I won’t be considered a walking invitation to sexual assault. I remember when my daughter turned twelve, and suddenly she formed an interest in makeup, and then clothes that were more body hugging, or that showed skin. We argued over appropriateness in circular fits, until I finally realized that I was blocking her own ability to represent herself because of my own trauma and fears. Quite frankly, I hate the notion of living in a society where I feel I need to censor my daughter to keep her safe from people who refuse to accept responsibility for their own losses of control. It also dawned on me that it didn’t matter what she wore, because, as I learned from my own experience, it doesn’t take ‘anything’, except a violator’s determination, for these situations to manifest. Instead, I hope I have instilled in her feminist leanings that she can be, and dress, any way that she pleases, giving a polite middle finger to those who try to sanitize who she wants to be. When her high school initiated a policy that girls had to wear bras last year, it invoked protest and conversation around who exactly would checking to see if this was coming to pass. My daughter was on the forefront of fighting back, and I adore her for it. I read an article by actress Amber Tamblyn that had a quote that summed up how exhausting it is to have to worry about the actions of others: “Every day, women across the country consider the risks. That is our day job and our night shift. We have a diploma in risk consideration.” I am so fucking over having to think of ways to make myself less brash, less sexy, less objectifiable, less noticeable, just so men (and some women) won’t be offended, or unable to manage their impulses. I am, more than anything, boned tired of the heart of this issue: men feeling threatened by women, and their endless fears that they might have to relinquish power as society progresses. So here’s what I have to say to all the men who feel that they should be able to take what they want, or who perpetuate their own twisted perceptions of women to make themselves feel better:
For all the women out there who have been in this same place, who have felt the degrading and raw, internal agony of being violated, know that you are beautiful, you have every right to be who you are, and every right to wear whatever you see fit to make yourself feel good. I am in your corner, and let’s have a conversation, because the fact that we still have to dispel ‘myths’ around sexual assault is a strong indicator of the sickness of our society and how poorly it supports women as human beings. Being a full-time risk manager of our existence is exhausting, and it’s time to make it clear that we no longer wish to bear that burden. Because what we wear should have no bearing on how the world interprets who we are, and it’s more than time to make that message heard. September 11, 2016, will mark the 15th anniversary of the twin towers destruction. For over a decade, I’ve struggled to feel emotionally tied to the attack the United States suffered because I was living abroad in Mexico when it transpired. In January of 2001, after discovering I was pregnant, I moved to Puerto Vallarta to be with my fiancé. We had considered applying for a K1 Fiancé Visa through the Department of Immigration, a process that could take from a few months to years, without a guarantee that he would be granted temporary permission to live in the United States in time to witness the birth. While I could travel to Mexico just by flashing a passport and stay for a greater length of time, he could not come into the U.S. for any extended length, unless he had the right paperwork. In Mexico, the right paperwork cost time and money, and often involved political connections. Instead, I opted to go to him.
Moving to a foreign country I had only visited twice felt like the epitome of romantic travel. At the time, I had seen the best of what Americans felt Puerto Vallarta had to offer: timeshare resorts with luxurious amenities, built on prime real estate along the ocean-side of a former quaint fishing village. Ventures off the property to eat at local tourist trap establishments offering table side guacamole, and nightclubs lining the Malecon with cheap drinks, music pumping into the streets, chiseled doormen beckoning ladies with flowery phrases and compliments. Day trips to Yelapa and into the Bay of Banderas with free drinks and shots passed at the ready as the sun slowly put itself to bed in a blaze of fiery orange and flamingo. In my early twenties, I was smitten by the poeticism of what had been placed in front of me to consume, and I bit hard: I carried the assumption that the life I was accustomed to living would magically materialize once I arrived on foreign soil. Not yet aware of Mexico’s pecuniary underbelly, I was led by a naïve vision of expectation. My first indication that I had arrived with a head filled with naive dreams came in Mexico City, where I had traveled to meet Marcos and his family. Driving around the monstrous metropolis, the economics of the city were clearly presented: the neighborhoods along the outskirts of its huge span suddenly became filled with handwritten, clapboard business signs, junkyards piled high with metallic limbs for cars, citizens panhandling in the middle of the high speed beltway, and mounds of overflowing garbage. On the rolling hills outside the city, trash was scattered along the surface, with shanties constructed from worn boards dotting the countryside, housing the impoverished cast out from the city. I had never seen such desperation and depravity. Once we settled in Puerto Vallarta, my dreams officially vaporized when the reality of living in a tourist town settled into my bones. For a few weeks we rented a room in a no-frills hotel for around $20 a day. My fiancé worked in ‘marketing’. With exceptional English skills, he was able to peddle free tickets to the region’s most popular excursions in exchange for attendance at timeshare presentations. It was seasonal work, unpredictable money and often required him to be out on long afternoon and evening treks to the ocean boardwalk to solicit. But it was quick and lucrative when he could hawk, and we finally saved enough to rent an apartment in Caloso, a neighborhood tucked back into the mountains where many of the indigenous families lived. It was sparse: no phone, television or microwave. Our water had to be purchased in huge jugs, ‘bombas’, to guarantee it was safe to consume. Most of the homes were concrete slabs where families slowly built vertically as their lineages grew, the metal skeletons peeking up through the rooftops awaiting the time when there was enough money to expand with more cement. At the bottom of the cobblestone road leading to our tiny space, a river ran through town, trash tossed along its narrow banks, a wooden bridge connecting our world to the larger beachfront neighborhoods. On a flat field by the river lived a mechanic who attempted to revive my fiancé’s dead Wagoneer. He had a small shed that housed his various equipment, while his family lived in a teetering shack constructed from uneven, wooden beams with gaps between where I could faintly make out movement from his wife and young daughters. Every time we stopped to see him, my heart ached for their situation and their life. His girls, with permanent patches of dark grime along their plump cheeks, often carried their snow white, perfect kitten around outside, watching us with bottomless, chocolate eyes that flickered with speculation. Marcos’s car sat there for months as their alcoholic father produced laundry lists of why he could not get a part or why he needed more money to fix something else he found, until we finally towed it elsewhere. It was easy at first for me to judge him and be appalled by their situation. I came from a country where one was expected to succeed by any means possible, and my upbringing in a middle class, steel mill town only reinforced this ideal. Further, even in our moments of feeling the pinch of poverty, I had family who were willing to help, wiring small sums of money when emergency struck. I had never experienced poverty so raw and unfiltered, sitting in the open for everyone to drink in with his or her eyes. It hurt to swallow. After a few months, tired of relying on my husband and being stuck at home, I landed a job at a hotel in old town Vallarta. For $1.00 an hour, I manned the front desk, solved the petty problems of tourists, made sure guests were comfortable in their suites that twice as big than the shack of the family who lived by the river. I roughly earned $30 a week, grateful that I was making ‘good’ money. Many of those who were employed by the giant, chain resorts were paid $1 a day, with the expectation that those travelling from the U.S., Canada and abroad would fill in the wage gaps with tips for their services. From our tiny apartment in Caloso, where we paid $300 a month in rent, I was travelling a grueling half hour to get to my job, and we were forced to move closer. We lucked out finding an apartment directly across the street from The San Franciscan, so I could rise, prep and walk across the street to work but at twice our rent. Then, September 11th hit, the town just reviving up for tourist season, a hush falling over its usually bustling streets. Americans and others from abroad flocked to Internet cafes to watch mounted televisions replay images of the destruction. When Marcos came home, his tone was an “I told you so” litany of how America had finally got its just desserts. After the initial shock of what he described, I hustled to the closest cafe where I watched the towers as they eventually fell after the second plane unexpectedly crashed. Shortly after, I ran to the phone banks to call my family, where all I received was a busy signal over the next twenty-four hours. The day after, despite its quiet, Puerto Vallarta rustled with the same undertone of reckoning my husband vocalized. People went about their lives as if my country had not been damaged in a crucial, violent way. On the newspapers, editorials coldly pronounced that what devastated America had been a long time coming. American tourists and ex-patriots suddenly no longer felt at home in the silence: shopkeepers began hanging apologies for their wooden reactions to the events: they had needed time to ‘digest’ the event before reacting and denouncing the horror. For the first time, I saw my country through the eyes of the world, unbuffered and naked: we had taken so much, for so long, that it felt satiating that someone finally took something from us. Our colonialism, its roots visible in the raw moments of 9/11’s aftereffect, had finally rebounded in a horrific way. It felt like a terrible karma burning off the centuries of wrongs that had propelled us to the financial and political powerhouse that the twin towers represented. On foreign soil, I processed the aftermath alone and in private, never connecting to the nationalism that the rest of our nation shares yearly from remembering the collective fear. In truth, in the shadow of the tragedy’s events, I discovered that I had never quite felt at home in a bubble of red, white and blue. The global ‘dream’ my country promoted in an effort to secure its own materialistic, consumptive needs, despite the effects its capitalistic policies unleashed across the rest of the world to realize this vision, had always felt more like a nightmare. While I could theoretically say these things out loud without penalty for what would be considered an unpatriotic view, I’ve keep them to myself, because my country is masterful with keeping the appearance of freedom. In truth, the act of speaking ill against the United States draws ire, and it has become increasingly harder to question the status quo since that fateful day. My heart mourns for all those who lost precious lives from a battle that they may have never realized existed, because we have mastered the ability to polish our image even as it rots under the surface. My soul aches for the nearly 3,000 lives that were sacrificed because of greed and determination for dominance at any price. When I see remembrance pictures splayed across social media, the images I conjure are not the same: I see people digging through trash mountains outside Mexico City; the destitute, ebony haired girls with the ivory kitten by the river; and the broken backs of hospitality staff as they trudge home from lush hotels with morsels of cash lining their pockets. I feel the ambivalence of the people when our country’s spirit was torn, when the world flashed its eyes upon us and saw how the trail of blame ran full circle, grief blinding us to our own complicity. I carry deep shame having witnessed atrocities caused by my country abroad; I can never truly feel at home in the United States of America. I will, through a distinctly divergent lens, ‘always remember’ as the rest of my countrymen never forget. i’ve been staring at the symbol glowing on my dashboard, the exclamation point in a horseshoe, the one that has told for me two days that the air pressure in my tires is low. but i don’t know how to fix it, how to measure the air in the hollow tubes, how to calculate what i need to add or subtract so that i can continue moving, because this was always your domain. you always lorded over the car, scheduling oil changes, filling tires, checking brakes, pumping gas. you never taught me these things, hoarding this knowledge, keeping it close.
it’s ridiculous, that this one simple thing, this single task, could incapacitate. i search through the manual, finding nothing that explains to me how i can darken the dash light, how i can move proceed. i turn to the internet, my new husband, and i search, learning about gauges and pumps and how to unscrew the valve covers so that i can place a small tool that reads the pressure. i run to the store, and i look through the car aisle, and i choose what i hope will work, and i go home, and i read directions, finally wandering out to the parking lot. i bend by a tire, and i remove the first cover and hear the rush of air escaping as i place the pressure tool and think maybe I did something wrong, until i see the number pop into the screen. i figure out that the culprits are the back tires, so i grab the small tire inflation machine i have purchased, and i carefully position it on the valve, and when i think it is tight enough, i turn it on, and it sounds like a jackhammer, and it scratches and vibrates against the hot concrete, and i take a guess after a few moments that maybe it has filled it enough. i test it again with the pressure tool, and it is filled exactly where it should be, and i feel a slight rush to know that i am capable of this, that i can do something i have never had to do, that i can live without you, and outside of your shadow, that i do not have to miss you. i fill the other tire, replace all the caps, and i sit in the driver’s seat, turning the key, fearing the light will pop into my dash, except it stays dark, and i feel a wave of relief because my heart not only sighs, but finally believes itself as it whispers: ‘i do not need you anymore.’ unsubstantiated.
it’s just one word, but it is fifteen characters of deep relief i have been waiting to hear for weeks, although it doesn’t take away the deep-seated terror, the one that creeps up at night when the world is silent. this used to be my sacred time, the moment of the day i would long to receive as quiet would descend and i could clearly feel and hear my thoughts, the block that belonged to me and me alone. now darkness swoops and as i approach sleep my body is a restless warrior fighting imaginary demons, and my eyes close but my mind never stops churning, sometimes spitting out fresh new horrors of things that haven’t come to pass but could, the imagery so flagrant, such as the night i dreamt my daughter was taken by a faceless man who stood directly in front of me as i stood motionless and passive, unable to stop his arms from circling her mouth and then pulling her into a black abyss where she dissolved. then morning smacks me in the face and i am scraping whatever energy i can from the 5-6 hours per evening of disturbed slumber to try to face the day, so i exercise too much to pump some fuel into my veins to make through the 9-10 hours i exert helping others when i barely feel i can help myself. sometimes in the middle of nothing, the sorrow sneaks up out of nowhere, and i find myself wiping tears away even though i cannot place their origin, and i seek refuge in places where i know i won’t be found. other times my heart bursts with a volcano of rage that i never knew lived there, bubbling, frothing, seething, and it is all i can do to keep my voice from soaring to a volume that will not burst eardrums or knock people over with its fury. it doesn’t erase the agony of watching my elder children grapple with losing the only father they knew and trusted, the one who they felt earned the designation, or hearing my son plead with me to date women because he doesn’t want another patriarch, and i think that maybe he is onto something because the safest i have ever felt was in the grip of arms that resembled my own, finding comfort and beauty in a body so similar to myself it was like tracing a mirror. except i don’t know if i can ever love the same again, because that requires trust, and that has been stripped away from me as if layers of my flesh were peeled until the soft meat of my soul lay exposed and bare, and then doused with flammable words that spontaneously burst into a fire that engulfed everything i thought i knew about intention, promises, and truth. dread still permeates everything between us. i am afraid that anything and everything could be mistaken for something it’s not, and so i weigh out every word carefully, and i try with futile effort to wrangle and control the minds and instincts of children who just don’t know that what has been spit from their tongues could be interpreted a 1000 different ways, how a simple phrase can be molded and shaped by twitchy adults into an arrow whose sole purpose is to maim, and permanently wound. i live in a world constructed of eggshells, herringbone china, and brittle nails, where i walk with such intention that i can barely allow my lungs to fill with confidence, holding the same oxygen until it is sucked dry, so panicked by the mere thought of ‘what if this happens again?’ that i nearly forsake breathing for the cold comfort of never having to live this nightmare again, except the only love that still exists for me in the world exists in them. as much as the river longs for snow and rain, or the sunflower turns its body to its warm god, they turn and long for me as the rock amidst the chaos of the churning ocean, and even though i can barely draw in air and feel as vulnerable as an open heart, i know they need me, and that will always be enough. Lately, I’ve been pondering the abstract beauty of love, how multifaceted it can be, how it evolves to mean so many different things to so many different people. Part of it is living through the grueling process of divorce, where you begin to question why love suffocates, withers, dies. Another part is reflecting backward through my experiences with love to present day, and seeing how much of my own perceptions have been tested, altered, and stretched in new dimensions. Or as writer Tom Robbins stated, “Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.” I think we have a distinct cultural desire to place love on a pedestal and make it the star of any romantic relationship. And I feel that creates an impossible standard by which we strive to maintain those connections. In any relationship, there are so many different aspects to consider: affection, friendship, intimacy, compatibility, desire, to name but a few. Yet, the one we laud and cherish above all others is love. But what is love, if not the combination of all those other areas working in a syncopated harmony to give us that euphoria? What happens when we ignore the parts, thus inevitably sacrificing the whole? What happens when our expectations, so high from our cultural pandering to this one thing, can’t be sustained or met? It seems we fall apart at the seams, relationships falter, and we are left wondering why things didn’t work. I believe one of the roots of this problem is our presumption that the people who incite love in our hearts need to be, or have, a certain something: a certain height, weight, look, personality, age. We come to the table with our long checklist of what we are seeking, and sometimes ignore the beauty that screams at us to be noticed. How much emphasis is placed in society on finding the ‘right’ person? Are we not trained from a young age to seek the ‘fairy tale’? Often, I think we overlook feelings of affection because they do not fit a template of what we have been conditioned to believe we should want or need. In the process, we ignore what could be meaningful, passionate relationships, merely because our expectations get in the way. Rather than living in the moment and taking love as it comes, we wait in reserve until the right conditions are met. And yet, sometimes our most amazing opportunities manifest themselves in ways we couldn’t conceive or imagine, and it throws us off guard. Usually these situations require us to delve into the unknown, and sometimes into uncomfortable spaces, that stretch who we thought we were, to know the beauty that can be. If we can get past the tiny voice that whispers we must seek endearment via a formulaic design, then those openings we might have otherwise disregarded may be exactly the portals we need to truly enliven and touch our hearts, if we are brave enough to enter. Tom Robbins eloquently sums it up, “We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.” But what is the ‘perfect’ love? I’ve especially been mulling over the notion of non-traditional dyads, or what I like to call ‘Alt-Love’: those couples who test our own comfort and boundaries by shucking the societal norms that we use as a perimeter for our relationship ties, yet who find a way for love to endure. I think of Anais Nin and Henry Miller: he was married, and she not only carried on a passionate affair with him for years, but also felt enormous affection for his wife, June, often showering her with trinkets and gifts. Or Frieda and Diego, whose stormy and passionate romance ended in divorce after he slept with her sister, only to find them remarried for the last years of her life. Reading her journal, she is very clear in her belief that Diego completed aspects of her own self, despite both of their dalliances, that no one else seemed able to fill. Perhaps it was those affairs themselves that gave them the breathing room to reconnect, and find each other anew, reigniting their passion for each other. Anais and Miller also allowed for the freedom for each to come and go as they please, with great affection and respect. There is something daring and graceful about having enough security in your affection to grant your partner the freedom to wander of their own free will, confident they will return. Although I’ve never cheated in either of my marriages (being fiercely loyal is a blessing or curse- discuss), one of my most passionate and long standing relationships found me playing the role of the ‘other’ woman to a man who was in steady partnerships over a span of several years. It’s not something to boast, but for me, that liaison was like a torchlight burning in my soul. I carried so much physical and intellectual passion for him (and I believe he for me) that perhaps us connecting in the everyday, banal world would have seen us burn one another to smoke and ash. The intimacy we shared was unlike anything I’ve experienced. He was the first man to help me overcome a lingering sexual frigidity from the childhood trauma I had experienced. I could confide in him things I had never entrusted another living soul with, and he didn’t judge me, nor betray that confidence. He was beautiful, charming, intelligent, and sexy, and despite naming it otherwise, in hindsight, it might have been its own unique version of ‘love’ I’ve not experienced with anyone else. I flogged myself for years for that relationship, mentally and emotionally, staggering under the guilt and negative karma I saw myself racking up. I felt awful for my behavior, and questioned my morality frequently, despite how blissful it made me feel. I quit him, then returned, several times over: there was an undeniable magnetism, a dynamic push and pull, and it could be deeply fulfilling even if I was left wanting more. When we finally parted ways, it happened organically, with distance and life pulling us in separate directions. But he is that man that could reappear in my life and it would be as if time stood still, not a beat lost between us, my want of him as strong as ever. He was as much my Superman as he was my Kryptonite, and in my more mature years, I have made peace with what we were, despite its unorthodox nature. Love is so complex in how it operates, and how it designates why you fall and for whom. There seems to be no true rhyme or reason, despite scientific studies and our persistent need to attach answers to every mystery, and no ‘perfect’ answer. Some days I feel I could fall in love with everyone I meet, and others, the world seems to be cold and frosty to my bleating heart. I can see potential in so many, yet potential never seems to be enough. It is elusive and slippery, this thing called love, and I am slowly discerning that cultivating it within myself seems to be the best thing I, or anyone, could really do to try to garner its attention and grace to capture it. As Tom Robbins surmised, “Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.” I believe, and hope, if I can do just that, then maybe love will follow suit. Today marks two years of your passing. I still carry this heaviness in my heart that I can’t shake. It lies in wait, then in quiet moments it drowns me, and I feel the day of your death all over again. Despite the days that have past, my soul still feels this jagged tear you left behind when you surrendered your body and took flight.
I remember the day you told me you were going to die with supernatural clarity. We met at Iconik on Christmas Eve, and you gingerly sat with me and explained how they had found cancer taking root in your spine. We had sat in this same coffee shop just weeks before, discussing how you were going to build an online shopping business, your eyes full of enthusiasm for your new venture. You were in remission, then. You were in the clear. You were going to make it. You were a survivor. And in less than 21 days, you found out that cancer had different plans. I could see the resignation in your eyes that morning. Even though you were one of the most impassioned and determined women I have ever met, you just didn’t want to battle anymore. You didn’t want the burns from radiation and the unending nausea of chemo, a life that felt less lived because it was filled with fighting something dead set on claiming your body. It was one of the hardest mornings of my life, hearing you talk about how you planned to just wrap it all up, your wild and precious life, over a casual morning coffee. I still feel the helplessness that washed over me like a furious, unleashed gale. I run a finger across the invisible trails left by burning hot tears. I taste the bitter, curdy feeling of coffee swirling across my tongue. I’ve only been back there once, and walking in was like opening a time warp. I saw you sitting in the window seat all over again, your scarf wound around your neck, and I couldn’t bear to stay. After you broke the news, I took you to an appointment to get a vitamin infusion. You lay on the table and I sat next to you, holding your hand, both of us absorbing and appreciating the silence. You had the softest hands of anyone I’ve ever met, a cross between silk and cashmere. Someone came in and introduced a doctor, and they spoke to you of how illness is manifested on a spiritual level, and how that was where your battle would be won. When they left, you muttered how they didn’t get that you were just going to die, and how you wished that people would leave you to it. So much has transpired in your absence. Some good, some great, some awful. I would give anything to have you here, to hear your drawl, to see your big, green eyes transmit emotion as you listen, to have the chance to hug your warm body that was always infused with the scent of flowers and delicacy. I haven’t been to your resting place yet. I drive by the cemetery all the time, your ashes sitting in wait, but I just can’t bring myself to visit you in a place that can’t possibly be big enough to hold everything you were. For me, that will be the day when my heart has recovered enough to fully acknowledge that you left. It will be the day that the scar you’ve left on my heart has finally grown so faint that it blends, becoming barely discernible, but never gone. My Darling Land of Enchantment,
You may be the only lover I’ll ever need. You get me. You fathom my unending quench for the sublime, for splendor, for the sensual nature of earth meeting heaven, and place me smack in the middle. I never tire gazing on your immaculate beauty. The sky, reaching beyond my vision, the deepest azure that feels like the ocean has taken residence upside-down. Burnt soil rolling for miles, from cowboy kicked brown to brick red, punctuated by the verdant Juniper dotting your hills and lowlands. I love that you inhabit various forms over different miles, that your crags can become ebony as night followed by fields of sand as milky as the sun’s palest rays. You are a multitude of lands crisscrossing into one, much as I embody many women. There is a quality of tranquility here that I have never felt anywhere else. The solid sense in my heart that I have arrived home. Whenever I leave, I think of you like I would a swain left behind, and when I return, my eyes can’t drink you in fast enough. I feel giddy at the approach, recognizing the outline of the mountains, scorched sand, sweeping plains, and the tumid clouds, low hanging and longing to be touched. You own me in a way that no one ever will. I admire that you are wild, open, and free. Unconquered. Untouched. That some of the best parts of you are left for you and you alone. Mostly, you sit in passive grace, but I love that there is an element of danger to everything you touch, despite your allure. Anything could be extreme, and in a moment, you may change your mind to engage the world through furious rain, or blistering sun. You tame my own ferocity, but you also respect when it needs unleashed, and I feel safe in my skin with my feet touching your ground. I know you like I know my own body, the curves and valleys, the peaks and rises. Driving across your unending vistas, dipping down and up, the sun steaming your surface, is pure sensuality, as if my hands were rolling across the surface, soaring when you ascend, sinking when you fall. It takes my breath away, and it only leaves me wanting more. If I could love you any more, I would become a part of you, melting into your skin, evaporating into your scarce bodies of water, softening to become another outcrop. I would evanesce into the breeze, carried by the zephyrs you exhale as your moist, sacred breath. Perhaps when I have perished, my body licked by flames, it will join your own, scattered as sooty ash across the places I love best. My soul will meld into your own: wandering, unbound, and feral. And in that moment, I will taste my one true love, and finally know her kiss. Don’t tell me I’m strong.
Tell me I can be frail in your presence, that I can fall apart, let tears slink down my cheeks in ribbons, bearing secret fears. Let me be limp, pliable, lying my head on your rugged knees to rest my screeching mind. Stroke my hair, let me inhale the sweetness of my toppled guard. Allow me to just be, without having to paint an iron mask. At the sink, the tension is palpable. I brush my teeth haphazardly, because I am rushing to bed. My mind is an endless whirlwind of indecision, and I just want silence. I want my head to sink into a pillow and stop the tape that has been playing in my mind:
How did you get here? How did I get here? How did we get here? I catch your reflection in the mirror and immediately avert my eyes. For days now, I have been compiling a list of all the reasons why I cannot leave: You are the breadwinner. I own nothing. All of our savings were used when you lost your previous job. There is nothing to divide: how do you split the air between two people? The kids will be devastated. The older ones will manage because you are not their biological father, but the younger ones…our son has been through so much in the past few years. Bullying. Homelessness. Death. He is finally in a good place, although I have not recovered. I cannot afford our rent, or any rent. We can barely manage one home, let alone two. I might have to give up my dream of going to graduate school. I am so close to touching that dream. Who will get the dog? I want the dog. You hated the dog when I first brought her home. How will the kids get to school, or dance if we are not together? Will they have to stop dance lessons? Will they hate me? Will you hate me? A mental onslaught kicks in: You are being selfish. What will it do to our daughter? Will she stop gleaming with joy? She cries for you at night when you are just down the hallway. Who will get custody? Will we fight? Will you be angry, angrier than I can imagine? Can I handle breaking your heart? You are my best friend. Can I let that go, even though there is so much winter between us? I let the guilt bathe my body from head to toe. Shame clings to every pore: Do you really want to be alone? Do you know what’s like out there for someone rapidly approaching forty? Your body is a plumper shadow of your former self. No one will want that. No one will want you. This was your second chance at happiness, and it will evaporate. Couldn’t you live with it, even if it feels like you are drowning a little bit more every day? Do your feelings even matter? I get a very short respite when anger fights back: I hate that you are the social one that steals all the air in the room, when you always seem more fun to be with. No one sees what I see: the angry bursts, the flares you call passionate and I that I call fury. You yell at the kids too much, and force yourself in my older son’s face in a way that makes my heart sink and revolt. It’s not fair that time has barely touched you over the past 9 years. My body has been tortured and stretched and altered into a frame that I barely recognize, and I hate that you have stood still in this world. I have given up my career and time and longings, and those years are irreplaceable. An optimist chimes in: There has been so much good here, and so much love. Why is it not enough now? Remember the moments that are tattooed on your heart. He knows you more than you sometimes know yourself. He mostly loves you despite your worst. Isn’t that enough? Finally, as my eyes finally seal together, and as my soul settles in to find peace for a short span of hours, I hear truth bubbling to the surface of my consciousness. Shake off the fear. The timing will never be right. He deserves to be loved by someone who is fully committed. He will love again. You will love again. You will survive. You will heal. You are stronger than you could ever realize. Listen to that steadfast inner voice. Your heart never lies. And then I slee---dream. This past week, I’ve been thinking of my grandfather, who was a veteran of WWII. Growing up, I spent an enormous amount of time with my grandparents, including spending every day before and after school during 3rd and 4th grade, as well as entire months over the summer. They were my safe place, and they left an indelible imprint on who I gradually become as I matured. Their intrinsic love of the arts inspired my own, and through them, particularly my grandfather, I learned to appreciate opera, musical theater, and especially literature. He collected volumes of classical works and French philosophy, several of which now sit on my shelves. He especially loved Montaigne, Camus, and existential thought, instilling the same in me.
He voluntarily signed up to serve in the Navy when he was 17, lying about his age for what he thought would be a grand adventure on the water. He served on a carrier in the South Pacific, and he forever harbored a special love for Gilbert and Sullivan’s musical of the same name. Jacob, aka Jake, whom my son is named for, was the seaman who distilled cherry moonshine in the bowels of the ship, and arrived back home with dreamy photos of him and exotic women from a variety of ports, such as Shanghai. Despite his exploits, my grandfather hated the war, and despised even more what it robbed from him. After returning, the underbelly of the war slowly ate away at his soul, nibbling and swallowing parts of himself as time marched on. He was a raging alcoholic. Not just the ‘get loaded at the VFW and drive home’ type of drinker, although he was that too. He hid bottles across the house, only surrendering and making a go of sobriety when my grandmother, whom he loved fiercely, would threaten to leave. I can remember going to the basement to search through my stash of toys and finding bottles of clear liquid I would later understand to be vodka, pushed into random corners and inside barrels. He and his younger son, also fond of liquid courage, would have confrontations, sometimes jarringly physical, when both were imbibing. My grandfather would often pass out or go to sleep early around 8pm, rising at 2am, in the middle of night, to sit and watch either playboy (when he knew/thought I was sleeping when I visited), or the history channel. I can remember being awake, reading, and hearing the television recounting missions and escapades of the war. Sometimes I would venture downstairs and join him. If he were drunk, he would regale me with slurred tales of his service: the bodies floating in the ports as the carrier cut through the sea, the empty eyes of those who lay scattered and dead, the horror of having to see humans treated like pieces of discarded meat. If sober he sat silent, absorbing the documentary, or movie, he had stumbled on. His favorites were Bridge Over the River Kwai, and anything John Wayne. He once told me if he could go back in time he would have never enlisted, seeing it as his biggest regret. The war strangled his faith. He was an active agnostic on the verge of atheism. He had seen the absolute worst that humanity could enact, and he could no longer believe that there was a god that would allow such horror. It vexed my grandmother, an avid churchgoing volunteer and dedicated Catholic. But it gave him an ability to see people for their core humanity. Out of his six brothers, he was one of the most liberal and non-religious, a black sheep in a sea of white wool. With the resurgence of fascist views and acts of hatred propagating the country, I can’t help but imagine how incredulous he would be to it all. How frustrated he would be with the direction we are headed, the slow march to a possible clash between those who understand that we must refuse reverting back to where we came from, and those who want nothing more than to turn back the hands of time for their own self-interest, despite who it harms. How this might be a trigger for him to turn to the bottle, where he might drown the agony from the mere thought of watching what he survived take root in his home soil. His past revisiting like ghostly memorials, the atrocities he witnessed resurfacing, demanding to know how we find ourselves here once more. |
AuthorReflections of a woman spawned in a cement cocoon... Archives
August 2023
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