Healing

The Prompt:

What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011? (Author: Leoni Allan)

And there it is.  It’s the question that I’ve been waiting for/dreading since the beginning of this challenge.  Listen, I’m Italian, I was raised Catholic and I’m a girl.  These three things alone lead me to synthesize just about everything in my life with a larger than normal degree of guilt.  I couldn’t, even with the promise of a million dollars or the threat of a bullet through my cranium, give you an example of the last moment I enjoyed without at least a small degree of guilt.  It’s who I am.  You see?  Even here, I’m beginning with a manner of apology in advance.

That said, I want to write this post with guilt locked in a closet.  I’ve told much of my past year’s story already, and I think I’ve made clear that I understand the “wrongness” of some of my actions.  As such, I’m going to tell this part of the story without (further) apology.  Mistake me not: this experience was RIDDLED with a guilty conscience, (and rightfully so!), but it is a story that merits its day in the sun.  Everything in life is multi-faceted, complicated…bedeviled.  But what follows is true; it was part of my year, it’s the answer to this prompt, and it deserves to be told.

What healed me this year were the attentions of a man who is not my husband.

He was taller than me, and dark; dark lashes closing over green eyes that were olive when they looked through me.  He drank whiskey and looked like he should, dark tattoos extending over powerful forearms in macabre faces of black and grey.  He was perhaps the hardest man I’d ever met, and I had trouble not staring in curiosity.  I was unabashedly attracted by the way we looked standing next to one another; a wolf and a lamb.  He was, without trying, everything that I fake–his hard edges were earned, while mine are finely crafted to have an artifice of tough.  I immediately wanted to goad him–to see the flash of anger that surely resided in his workingman’s hands.  I wanted to cut my teeth on him, to tempt fate.  I wanted to look into that abyss, to lure it out.

We met innocently enough over drinks with mutual friends.  I was in his town for a long weekend with a girlfriend, and enjoying a night out in belated celebration of my birthday.  It was, of course, small talk at first: the weather, what I thought of Wilmington, when I’d gotten in and the like.  But as the evening progressed, so did the conversation, running into books and politics and my job.  That night stands out to me as the night that recalled an older, younger (it makes sense, I swear!) version of myself.  I remembered, that evening, what it was like to meet new people, to have unforced, meaningful conversation, and to be engaged on intelligent topics, intelligently.

Over the next few months, and upon my return home, those conversations would continue.  He and I became fast friends.  I discovered in him, a rather kindred spirit.  We had (loosely) similar experiences as children and struggled with the same sort of social anxieties.  looking back on it, I can’t point to one specific thing that made me feel so connected to him, but connected I was.  I was in the middle of one of the most stressful periods of my life, and my chats with him were little oases of relief where I found myself smiling at the considerably NOT small joy of relating to another human being.

As each of my days seemed to get significantly worse and the stress increasingly difficult to handle, I began to count on these conversations and the reprieve they provided.  They helped me to breathe easier, and not choke on the unease and disquiet that was slowly smothering me.  I was getting things in those hours that I’d forgotten I needed.  Attention.  Interest.  Care.  I was using my brain and having a fabulous time talking about things I’d read and what I thought about them.  He was holding me together.

After a few weeks, the conversations drifted past simple friendship.  He wrote me beautiful words that made my stomach leap in that way it does when you’ve met someone new.  When he talked to me, it was poetry and my brain leapt along with my stomach.  I furnished my dreams with his words, and decorated their walls with his images.  ”I think you are so beautiful” he said to me, and I blushed.  Each exchange sent a thrill through the center of my body, and I was careful of what I said, lest my running mouth shattered the world he’d created with his image of me.

When I went back to Wilmington over the summer, I spent quite a bit of time with him.  Our conversations continued, and the bond increased.  Not touching was, admittedly, a Herculean effort.  His proximity, at times, was nerve-racking, if our arms were placed too close together in a cab, or at a bar, the hair on mine would stand up, fairly screaming for that touch.  There was no faking my way out of it with a smart remark or a raised eyebrow, I was attracted.

We spent a couple of full days together, and he introduced me to his life and friends, showing me what he termed, endearingly, “a large time.”  I allowed myself to get lost in those feelings, and reveled in remembering what it was like to be paid attention to, heeded, laughed with and smiled at across a crowded room.

I left his city and continued my summer journey much mended from the cracking shell that I’d become.  I left knowing what I had to do in order to repair my life.  I left with a recharged battery.  I left feeling appreciated, and knowing that I deserved it.  We don’t talk much anymore and have since amended our relationship to a strictly platonic level, but there is no doubt that that experience healed me.  It resuscitated my life at a time when I needed it most.  It’s a plain truth, and unvarnished. It’s hard to admit to because it involved less than admirable actions on my part; but life is untidy, we make of it what we can and carry those lessons with us.

Wisdom

The Prompt:

Wisdom Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out? (Author: Susannah Conway)

Oh sugar, please; wise decisions are generally not my forte.  I cross streets without looking, insist on wearing flip-flops into November, make lefts on red arrows and have even been talked into running a half-marathon (which I did, just to prove I could).  I’m ruled by instinct and whim (and sheer bull-headedness), and while I will replay a situation over and over AFTER it’s happened, thinking it through BEFORE disaster strikes never crosses my mind.  This past year, though, gave me an opportunity to change a pattern.

2010 threw a lot of bullshit my way, but perhaps the largest, and most consequential, was the near-failing of my five-year marriage.  My wisest decision, looking in from the outside, COULD have been staying married.  But it wasn’t.  Time and further reflection proved that without another, WAY more important decision, remaining a couple would have been the stupidest thing I’d done out of stubbornness in a long time.  There was something else remaining, that, unexamined and unresolved, would have rendered my resolution to remain hitched futile at best.

By the time the big D became a viable option, I’d just about worn out my resolve and strength to keep going.  I had a vision of what I wanted my life to look like, and it was time for me to get around to making that happen.  I was weather-beaten and tired and just plain weary of constantly getting shoved backwards.  In the end though, (and after a pretty big transgression on my part) we remained firmly, and officially entangled.

As I said, though, deciding to stay married, and having it work out are two mutually exclusive concepts.  I still resented him, I still hated living here and I was still regularly getting mad about things that had happened BEFORE.  And there we were: it was make or break time, and I had yet ANOTHER decision to make.  THE decision.  And I did.  I held my breath, squinched my eyes, and jumped in, feet first:

I decided to forgive.  And for real this time.

I thought I’d forgiven before.  But forgiveness is a tricky thing, you know?  It’s slippery and elusive.  You may think you’ve done it, but then he’s asked for something, and you’re mad.  Not mad at what he’s asked you to do, but mad at the fact that YOU’D asked HIM to do that SO MANY times in the past only to be ignored.  So FUCK THAT!  Why should you?  Or he complains constructively about something you’ve done.  It’s a valid complaint, it’s something you can work on, but WHY?  Why when LAST YEAR, if you had asked the same, he would have laughed in your face?  It’s then, that you realize, you haven’t forgiven at all.

And it’s standing in the way.

But not anymore.   Instead of replaying old hurts over and over again, I forgave.  For real this time.  Once more, and for the record, I clearly and precisely gave vent to what I hated about before; the things that hurt me, the Deal-Breakers, the stuff that I’d no longer tolerate, the aggression that WILL NOT STAND, MAN!  I enumerated the things that I wanted, needed, HAD TO HAVE in my life.  I listened to the same things from the other side (this may be MY blog, but the marriage is OURS).  And then I forgave.

And so far, that was the wisest decision that I could have made.  I laugh more now.  WE laugh more now.  I’m not so despairing about our future.  There’s a light there now that I thought had burned out.  It flickered at first, but it’s turning into a warming blaze.  I still click “Place Bid Now” without knowing that I’m bidding in British pounds, and I’m frequently found outside the house with clothes too light for the weather, but I’m pretty sure that when it comes to the big ones, my decisions can be counted on as sound.  Especially this one.

Let Go

Prompt:

What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Author: Alice Bradley)

I’ve let go of trying to have it both ways.

It all started with a handshake.  A handshake tells a lot about a person.  It tells you about their self-esteem, about the type of person they are, about how they were raised.  My father taught me early how to shake hands.  ”Jennifer,” he said, “people will take you seriously if you make eye-contact and give a firm, full-palm handshake.”  (He also taught me how to throw a punch, but this handshake thing is something I use much more frequently.)  I shake hands with everyone I meet.  It’s a symbol of respect; an old-school action that’s fallen by the wayside.  When I’m drinking, I will not hesitate to call someone out on their poor handshake.  ”You shake hands like a girl!” I’ll snicker.  ”Would you shake your buddy’s hand like that?!”  It’s always good for a laugh and has become rather a trademark of mine.

It was no different when I met J, the gentleman with whom I’d embark on a modern day love affair….

This past April, I suggested to my husband that we get away for a long weekend.  My birthday was the excuse, but really, we needed some time to get away and be together; to get back to even.  He was in the process of separating from the Navy and had accepted a position in what can only be described as the armpit of Washington State.  I’d left jobs and friends on previous moves, but this one was different.  I’d had no input in the decision, and he’d waved off all of my concerns as irrational.  Day by day, I was feeling less and less a partner in my marriage and more like a roommate.  With no voice in the one place where it should have been the most important, the pit in the bottom of my stomach was growing daily.  Each fresh hurt piled on the previously bruised places, and my eyes shone with resentment and loathing.  I felt small and useless, picked on and forgotten; a small roadblock to be plowed over heedlessly on the way to his fantastic new opportunity.

He looked over me sightlessly and told me that it wouldn’t be possible; there may or may not be a particular “separation” appointment scheduled for him during that time.  In the cult of Navy life, there was certainly the possibility that this was true, but I wouldn’t believe that there wasn’t a way he could have worked around those four days.   I looked at him quietly, wounded beyond measure, and accepted his answer.  In reality, even if I’d had the words at that point, he more than likely would have laughed them off anyway.  I retreated further and nodded my head.  In the past few years, I’d been pushed by tiny degrees so far over my line in the sand that I couldn’t remember where I’d originally drawn it.  This was one more nick on my already pulpy and tender self and I cried myself to sleep.

Battered, I made a fateful decision to fly to North Carolina with the money I’d saved for that weekend.  I had a girlfriend there who assured me that even though early in the season, there was more than a small possibility that it’d be nice enough to laze on the beach.  She didn’t need to tell me twice.  I booked my ticket and went. On the verge of tears almost constantly at that point, I needed a respite….and a lot of cabernet.

For those five days, we adventured and caroused, laughed and drank.  She’d moved there only a short while before, so we had a grand time exploring her new city arm-in-arm, smiling more than I had for the previous year.  That Saturday night, we were out with her friends from work, when we were joined by J, someone else they knew.  I reached out my hand and introduced myself, dismayed to be presented with yet another limp wrist.  I looked up, shook my head and let fly with my characteristic harrangue.  Satisfied that I’d made my point (and made this new-to-me group of people laugh), I took one last drag of my Parliament we all made our way to the next bar.

We all sat in a circle of couches and chatted the time away.  It was the first night in my recent memory that I was meeting people that had nothing to do with my husband or his rugby team or the Navy.  It reminded me with quite a bit of force how far I’d strayed from the girl I’d been before.  We talked about books, and politics and travel and life and not a single one of us waxed into buffoonery.  I was happy, and having a grand time.

Shots were called for, and it was my round, so I headed to the bar to expedite the request; Candy Apples or some such.  J showed up next to me to help carry the shots and to ask that one of the shots be Crown.  ”Whiskey!” I said.  ”Fantastic idea!”  So we changed two of the shots to whiskey, Crown for him and chilled Beam for me, and made our way back to the table for the ‘amateurs’ in our group.  Between the shots of whiskey and our opinions on the ideology of Fidel Castro, this dark and tattooed boy and I became fast friends.

After a sound beating at a round of after-hours Rummy, my girlfriend and I would take our leave, headed back to the hotel and the rest of our long weekend.

With what I know now to be a streak of masochism, I ‘friend requested’ J (and the others) the next day, and was on my way home to Seattle that Monday.  I tried to describe my time to my husband, who listened with only the faintest interest, telling me that “Of course [I] had a good time, [I] was on vacation!”

After our move, because I’d had to give up my job, it had always been the plan that I would travel home for a while to see family and friends.  Further conversations with my girlfriends in NC decided that I’d stop by again for a few weeks on my way up to NY.  It would be hotter, and I longed for a tan and the beach.  It seemed only natural to include my newest friends on the plans as well.

Over the next few weeks, (some of the most stressful I’ve ever had) I chatted regularly with J on IM.  We talked for cumulative hours.  I’d find myself looking forward to going home in order to get on the computer to say hello.  He asked insightful questions and showed a genuine interest my answers.  We’d read so many of the same things and his suggestions turned out to be well worth my time.  He made me laugh, and this small joy made my life bearable.  If my husband was disinterested in my day, J would listen with ears wide open.  If I was on the verge of homicide at work, J would be outraged and petulant.  I was absorbed.

It was maybe three weeks into our friendship when messages started to get cheeky.  And then they went from cheeky to the borderline of inappropriate.  And then they crossed that line.  I was flirting openly and outrightly with someone who was not my husband.  Yet, as wrong as it was, and as guilty as I felt, I was getting something I needed out the relationship.  I was beautiful again, and funny; I was being valued and respected.  And it had been such a long, long time.

My husband and I were into our second week of the move, living in a hotel, when I came out of the shower one morning to find him glowering at me with my iPhone in his hand demanding:  ”Who is J?” My heart sank to the depths at that moment and I was caught, red-handed.  He and I, the night before had finally broached the subject of the big “D”, and I knew right then that he’d think that these messages were my sole reasoning.  As uncomfortable as I was, I came clean and told him everything.  It was a long two days, painful and sickening for both of us, but we decided that we’d try again.

I agreed to stop the inappropriate contact with J, but refused absolutely to give up contact altogether.  I was getting things from him that I hadn’t realized I’d missed.  Our talks about books and his writing had become incredibly important to me.  I was absolutely not willing to let go of those things that had reminded me of me.

It was now the beginning of June, and there were barely days before I was to leave for my foray home for a couple months with a detour first to Asheville and then Wilmington.  I left on a Tuesday night and began my Odyssey.  Over my husband’s protests, I would see J a number of times before taking my leave of NC and heading up to NY.  We spent many hours together.  My girlfriend had to work for much of the first week I was there, and he was happy to show me around and ferry me back and forth to the beach on the days that I didn’t use her car.

We laughed and talked and had a generally large time.  Those days, for me, were punctuated by hostile (understandably) emails from my husband, and sun-drenched hours at the beach in the company of a man who was rapidly becoming a very close friend.

I was cheating.  Plain and simple.  I don’t believe that there are degrees of it.  I was making a cuckold of my husband and I knew it.  Waves of guilt would pass over me and I would wonder what I was doing.  Where did I expect this to go?  Was I honestly ready to leave?  Had I really tried my hardest to get my points across?  Had I made enough effort?  Had I given my husband enough of a chance to be the man I married?  I didn’t know.  But I felt as though I deserved this small bit of happiness; this light, this laughter, this spark.

And so, after I left Wilmington for NY, my correspondence continued.  Thousands of messages and texts.  Pages of emails, hours of conversation.  It wasn’t sordid, it was nice.  To have someone to talk to, to listen to, to share with.  It was what my husband and I had had before things changed so hugely.  It was what I wanted and needed.  And most of all, it was something that I didn’t know if I could get back from the man I belonged to.

I spent a lot of time in NY thinking.  Rebuilding.  Finding myself again.  Figuring out what it was that I wanted.  While I talked to J the whole time, my guilt was constantly growing.  I was being unfair and selfish to someone I’d promised to spend the rest of my with.  What kind of person was I becoming?  This wasn’t me.  Wasn’t who I was raised to be.  This was someone altogether different.  How did I get to this point?

At home, my husband was promising me that he understood.  That he finally got it. That he could be the man I was in love with, the man I stood on an alter with and pledged myself to.  And a large part of me believed him.  So I flew back to him.  Flew back to try again.  Flew back to see if we could both forgive; him my indiscretion and me all the past hurts.

For over two months, J and I continued to speak.  Continued to share our lives and our wishes and thoughts and laughter.  When I was home and lonely, he was there.  When I read something that made me laugh, he was there.  He made it easy to believe him when he said he’d be around for whatever I needed.

But in the end, it was always there.  The guilt.  The remorse.  I was hurting so many people in this equation.  By continuing this relationship, I was continuing to substitute J for what I wasn’t getting from my husband, and I wasn’t giving my husband a chance to fill those voids–to make good on his promise that he could be again everything that I needed.    We could have gone on that way indefinitely.  I was robbing from Peter to pay Paul and it was wrong.  For anything to work, I needed to go all in.

And so I let go.  I let go of J and I stopped standing on the fence.  I stopped all but the smallest, infrequent contact and gave myself back to my husband.  It’s sink or swim time, and it’s the only way.  It’s been a difficult and messy, messy part of my life.  In the end, it was a matter of shit, or get off the pot.  I either needed to allow the man I married to BE that man, or cut the chord and allow us to go our separate ways.  I’m choosing to let him be that man.  I believe in his efforts.  I believe in us.

Moment

The Prompt:
Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors). (Author: Ali Edwards)

It’s hot; so very very hot outside as I step down from the truck. 9am and already 106 degrees in the shade. In the humidity of this North Carolina June day, I’m barely able to shut the door before my sun-browned skin begins to perspire, making me wish for some sort of full body anti-perspirant. Were I on the beach as the past three days, I could explain away this glisten, but here, in the parking lot of a wooded park, I’m just plain sweating.

Last night’s email argument is on a stilted repeat in the back of my mind, and so is my self-reproach for even being in this spot. I’m here, you see, with a would-be lover; someone who has been standing in for my husband providing encouragement and support and genuine interest in ME. It’s a long story how it got this far, but we’re here and about to embark upon what will turn into an entire grand day together. We’re lucky, he and I, to have encountered a parks employee as we begin our search. We’d recognize very clearly later, that had we not, this portion of the day would have proven fruitless. As we follow our guide past a group of what must be summer-campers, I leave my misgivings in a small compartment in the depths and decide instead to embrace my excitement and gladness to be HERE, NOW.

It’s only a short walk, and mostly shaded, but the droning wrrrrr of the crickets and bees and gnats combine with the sultry torpor of the heavy air to call more obvious attention to how actually HOT it is.  Mr Forest Ranger, a man in his 60s seems unfazed by it as he leads the way in his state-issued green Dickies.  He’s perspiring only lightly around his brow and is chattering away about the different plants we’re passing and how his daily life is centered around caring for them.  Conspiratorially, he stops, and makes an obvious decision in our presence.  ”There’s only the two-a yous, so, well, watch yah step and I’ll take yah over here where we’ve got it closed off to the public.  We close it because we don’t want kids tramplin’ everything….but yah look like yah’ll be careful.  So I’ll take yah here….there’ll be betta ones and olda to look at….”  It’s not lost on me that I’m in the south and have somehow found a guy from Long Island–I smile broadly.

Another minute and Mr Forest Ranger stops and says “Ah….heeya we ah”, and looks down.  I have to squat to see, because I can’t figure out why he’s stopped.  Then, as I look down, there on the floor of this state run forest, are hundreds of Venus Flytraps.

Naturally Growing Venus Flytrap

The buildup to this moment has been great, and it’s not just the heat that is overwhelming.  As I stoop over to peer at these teensy miracles that grow naturally ONLY HERE, in a 70 mile radius around Wilmington, I am struck dumb by the enormity of my life.  I am at once remorseful and happy; sad and amazed; grateful and waspish.  I am at internal war for the next cluster of moments.  I rail at my husband for being so daft, cruel and aloof; in this moment, it should be him by my side.  I thank the ruling powers that he is not there to poke fun at my amazement and be generally disinterested.  I marvel at these little plants and at the beautiful friendship growing between me and my companion.  I’m in a spell and floundering wildly between mad guilt and supreme pleasure at being just where I am.

It’s then that I feel a sudden tingling on the back of my right shoulder, and the spell is broken.  I flinch violently to my feet and gasp because it feels like something large is crawling on me.  I manage only barely to get this thought out as a question, and my companion assures me, with an unexpected swipe of his forefinger, that no, it’s not a gigantic bug, but a slick, heavy bead of sweat that has broken loose from its perch and slid wetly down my shoulder into the back of my tank top.

The day will wind on into one of the best in my memory, but it’s those few moments that will stand out.  I will remember being awash in conflicting feeling, in complexity and astonishment at the turns that life takes.  THIS is what it is to be human; the contradiction and the episodes of heavy feeling.  I breathe it in, absorb it, wonder at it.  Today, right now I am alive.  I am alive and it’s these flaws, these perfectly imperfect moments that make me KNOW it.