awakenings

{When you spin in circles of writers and witches and wild women – souls who create with the same necessity as they breathe – you sometimes get to read pieces of your own story in the words of another.  My own dear one – the friend who has cradled my soul and dried my tears for six years now -  wrote this poem about the same night I chronicled in the Pivotal Moments post below.  Three years after it was written it still sends chills through my body.  Truth has a way of doing that}

Sometimes we don’t
sing our redemption songs
in temples or stadiums
sometimes we croon out
our saving grace
in dark parking lots
outside of dive bars
at 1 a.m.
and I am playing
her like a piano
I am striking the chord
she does not want to hear
and I know…
I know.
It is knowledge
born of experience
and while I’ve never been
much of a singer
I am holdng her notes
singing her song back
to her here in the dark
and she just keeps talking
and she won’t shut up
and she is babbling about
wishes and wasted chances
and regrets.
and she is not feeling
she is only thinking
and she thinks too much
when what she needs to be doing
if she is going to sing this song
is feel.
I am going to make her feel
that’s the plan, anyway
but how do you make someone feel?
is it ethical?
is it logical?
Is it even possible?
About to find out…
“I saw how you were
looking at her,” I whispered
and she looked like I had slapped her
“That,” I told her, “was longing”
and she stammered,
“I just wish I had a way of knowing
I just wish I had explored this before
I got married”
and I cut her off
I said, “I don’t think you need
to explore anything to have your answer
tell me, if he wasn’t in the picture
would there even be a question?”
ethical?
logical?
possible?
her face crumpled
and I folded her up in my arms
and her aria poured out of her soul
and onto my shirt
and I relived that hurt of knowing
that nothing would ever be the same again
and she shook her head back and forth
against my neck
and her shoulders felt frighteningly
frail
as they shook in my arms
and she shook loose the song
she had held so tight
and she found not only that
she had a voice in there after all
but that she had vast range
and was capable of hitting the
high notes

(there is not one moment, over the past two and a half years, that hasn’t in some way played a role in bringing me to where i am today. This, of course, is true of all of us, of all our lives.  But all of us, looking back, can see with clarity that some of those moments were game changers, deal breakers, where a seismic shift occurred and the terrain of our lives were forever changed.  This, for me, was one of those moments}

The night comes back to me in flashes….

Downtown restaurant. Trendy music pounding on overhead speakers.

Pomegranate martini, tart and strong, filled to almost overflowing. My eyes water on the first drink and a splash spills across my hand and on the table.  My fingers are sticky.

A shared plate, salad with field greens, chicken, cashews, berries, manchego cheese – layers of subtle flavor pleasing my mouth.

My dear one across from me, tightly sprung curls surrounding an angel face.

My questions echoed in her kind eyes.

She is tentative, guiding me towards truth. Saying what she sees with no pressure or expectation.

She knows this space.  She knows me.  Better than anyone.

Her words ‘it is like the ocean’ unleash a longing in me I do not think I will ever be able to answer.

~~~

Later – the parking lot of a gay bar, found via google:

I’m too afraid to go in.

Women enter and leave, I think outloud  ‘they don’t look like me.  I don’t look like them’.

My head is down.  I feel alone and uncertain.

I catalog my heels and makeup and all this fucking effort against them, the way they seemed to exist outside of a world that has always demanded my assimilation.

The way they move suggests to me that they know who they are.

I wish badly that I did.

Shaking my head, pulling out of the parking lot.

Not ready yet.

~~~

Later: another bar, some random dive across the street from the bar we were looking for but never found.

More drinks.  Something pink and sweet.

The bartender is transgender, or a cross-dresser, or a drag queen.  I don’t know which.  I am reminded how small my world is, how little I know.

Flashing LED light show on the dance floor. People watching.  Texting.  Giggling.

A girl.  Tall and thin, sleek short hair.  Skinny jeans.  Young and chic.

My eyes following her.  Laughter and teasing threaded with undercurrent of danger and boundaries that must not be crossed.

My dear one reminding me of what I already know.

My heart pounding and head spinning in a way that is beginning to feel familiar

~~~

Later: In her car

She pushes me.  She knows she has to. Makes me admit, makes me see.  Makes me speak.

Grabs me by the shoulders and turns me around and forces me to face this truth.

I can’t catch my breath.

Sobbing in her arms.  Wailing.  Fists pounding.  Fighting so hard against all of it.

I’M NOT READY. I DON’T WANT THIS. I’M NOT READY. I DON’T WANT THIS.

I can’t do this.

It hurts.  It fucking hurts.  I CANNOT breathe.

The ground collapses beneath my feet and I wonder how on earth I will take one more step forward.

It feels like hours that I cry.  Cry like I never have before.  My head hurts.  My heart implodes.

~~~

Later – home:

My head spins.  The drinks and my emotions combine.  Emotional Inebriation.  Dangerous.

Fuck…it’s all dangerous now.

I bang into the walls on the way down the hallway.

He is there.  He is always there. I always want him there.

I don’t remember what I say, just what I don’t say.

What remains unsaid always seems to be the most important part.

This is where the undoing begins….

{on my desk sits a black fabric journal.  it is a plain, ordinary, nondescript book. from the outside, it looks as if it could not possibly hold anything important.  only I know that it holds the most valuable thing I possess. my story.}

5.20.09

Ever since I read these words they have been swirling through my mind.  How I wish I had this one and a half years ago and could have sent it out into the cosmos to the people that mattered.

I would have taken those words and wrapped them in layers of my heart and dropped them like fairy dust over the houses of my loves.  I would have attached words of my own so my voice could have whispered through the wind and lodged in their hearts so they would know what I could not say.

I have to go away now, for a little bit. I wish I didn’t, but I have to.  This is a lonely journey, you see, and it is impossible for me to be lonely with you in my life.

Please understand (I would plead) Please don’t leave me, even though I am leaving you.  I could not bear it if you did.  I need you so much, especially right now, when I am not able to accept any of the loveliness you have to give.

I cannot take for granted that you will be here when I return.  I cannot be so arrogant as to assume that once tucked away on a shelf you’ll be willing to be brought back out on my timeline.  And oh, how that frightens me.

But, you see, I’m going to be doing things that I don’t want witnessed. Chasing and facing demons that are mine alone.  I’m going to be flying and lying and climbing and crashing and dismantling and I cannot bear your kind eyes on me while I do.  I cannot know you are watching while I bring forth self destruction and devastation in the name of survival.  I love you too much.

I am not strong enough to walk this any way but alone.  I need to know that I can walk it alone.

I will be back.  I pray I will be back.  All I can do is hope, with everything I have, that you will be here when I return.

~~~

The relationships I walked away from then, the most precious of my life, are still being rebuilt.  They are – in many spots – still tender, and tentative, and there is much trust to regain.  Every now and then something happens, and I realize how much I still have to make up for.  I hope that I can.

Sometimes, you know that hurt is coming, and you’ve got time to shore up your defenses and get yourself ready for the inevitable.  You can put on your big girl panties, get solid with yourself and say (in your best Kathleen Turner voice) “i’m ready when you are”.

More often, you get blindsided, wiped off your feet, taken by surprise.  And while life whirls on around you, you sit there on our ass, dazed and confused, shaking your head and wondering what the fuck you’re supposed to do with the brand new gaping hole in your chest.

It goes so well with all the other junk, you eventually realize.  I’ll just wrap it up a little (so it’s not so obvious) and tuck it away back here.  It will fit nicely somewhere between this ache, and that cynicism, and the exquisitely painful memory of the summer the ground gave way beneath your feet.

Then you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go back into the world – hoping to hell that the others won’t pay too close attention to the clusterfuck that once was your heart.

~~~

Tonight I sat in a trendy wine bar, across from a woman who I knew to be my friend.  Not an old friend, but already a dear one.  Our connection had been quick and easy from the start, and I felt a meaningful and deepening bond.

She sat there and talked to me, laughed with me, and looked me in the eye.  And then, after a half glass of wine to build her strength, she confessed.

“I like you as a friend.  I enjoy our time together.  But I’m seeing Sam”.

She could answer the when (around Thanksgiving) and the how (Facebook), but she didn’t even come close to answering why.  Why did he seek her out? Why did she let it start?  Why did they both decide to keep it a secret for two months?

So I walked out of the bar, leaving my Sauvignon Blanc on the round wooden table next to my friend, along with one more piece of my heart.

~~~

Karma is a bitch.

That’s what I’m thinking as I walk at a fast clip down the busy city street.  It is cold, and my tears are stinging my cheeks.  The air burns my lungs, and I want it to.  I want something else to hurt for a change. My heart needs a break.  I imagine them together in the home I helped design and build, in the bed we once shared.  My friend.  My husband.  It’s too much.  I’m being premature and irrational. I think my head is going to explode.

This is what I get, for what I did to him.  For my lack of integrity when it mattered, for my betrayal.

This is how it comes full circle.

But still, out of all the girls in this city, why did he have to choose her?

~~~

The loss of the night is hitting me on multiple levels, and I want to run fast and hard.  I feel like a fucking fool.  You don’t keep a secret for two months unless you know that you’re doing something you shouldn’t.  All of a sudden, his inability to meet my eyes when he picks up the girls seems much more understandable.  I’m vacillating between fury and heartache and I can’t decide which emotion to dive into.

My cell phone is vibrating inconstantly.  She is calling over and over again.  I push Reject. Reject. Reject. Reject. Reject….ten more times before the phone is silent.

I’m crying and raging and walking and walking and walking.  I think I could walk for hours tonight, feeling everything and nothing all at once.

You see, despite the complete incongruity of tonight’s announcement, I knew.  It made no sense in the context of my knowledge or awareness, but I knew.  The instinct burned fire in my gut from the moment I got the text requesting an in-person audience.  I didn’t want to know.  But I knew.  And I still didn’t put on my big girl panties.

~~~

I yearn for blind optimism, for naiveté, for the belief that everything really will be all right.  Instead, I’m making friends once again with numbness, cynicism, and all the other skeptical emotions that love to stand in for unresolved hurt.

And it does hurt, you know.  Even when you are the one who walked away (sometimes, especially when you’re the one who walked away). When you love someone, give yourself to them; believe wholeheartedly in the forever you built – the absence of that reality always hurts.  It is a confusing thing, when you make decisions based on a dream of wholeness, to find yourself simply left with a new and different void.

Sometimes the only peace available must come from the acknowledgement that wholeness is a thing of the past. From understanding that regret is not always the domain of those who have made mistakes. From accepting that this patched up, knocked around, irreparably cracked and flawed soul of mine is what it is, and of it – the best must be made.

~~~

She holds me, once again tonight, as I cry.  Her heart has a seemingly limitless capacity for expansion.  She is completely present for me, even as I grieve this thing, colliding head on with all my unsettled emotions for him.

It has not been an easy year for us.  We spent more of it growing apart than we did growing together, but there has been a shift lately.  A reawakening of partnership, of shared purpose, of commitment to each other and our future.  This night reminds me again what I already know.

I love her.

With this scarred, mixed up, pulled in a million directions heart, I love her.  It’s not the simple, youthful love of one who has not done battle – it’s cynical, and skeptical and unfortunately rough and raw and hard in places.  But it is love.  It is real.  And it has space to become and grow and change.  It is both reality and potential, and more importantly, it is now.

Maezen says to hold your hands out in front of you, wiggle your fingers and remember that this space you can touch is all there is.  All of reality, all that exists, right here in the space around you.  I do that now and realize that from my computer I cannot reach her.

So, given all the lessons I’ve learned in this crazy life, I know that the only smart thing to do is turn off the computer, go to our bed, wrap myself in her arms and let the blessings of my reality lull me to sleep.

He comes to pick up the girls a few times each week, often arriving right at dinnertime.  I cannot seem to let go of the feeling that I am still responsible for feeding him, so I offer him some food.  Minestrone and crusty rosemary bread, pork and pineapple stir-fry with jasmine rice.  Food made for a family that is his, and isn’t is.  He always says no before he says yes.

Just a small bowl, he eventually agrees, and stands at the corner of the table to eat.  He never sits.  Somehow I think it would be too much for any of us to bear.

We talk about everything, and nothing, like it’s really all okay.  And it is okay.  Except that it isn’t, cannot be, not really.

And I am aware, in those moments, that there is no finite end to a breaking heart.

ten years today
and I love him.
truly
still
always
no less than I did then
really, I will love him
Forever

I didn’t know what that word meant
not really
until well after the end
now Forever has a context
that I can grasp

Forever is wedged
like an ache in my heart
between the memories
of his tears at the end
of the red carpeted aisle
and his tears the nights
our daughters were
born
and his tears the day
i choose to stay away
instead of coming when he called.

you know,  love has nothing to do
with gay or straight or
the number i select to represent myself
on some scientifically proposed
continuum of sexuality
or whether this is my definition of
intrinsically right
or someone else’s definition of
inherently wrong

because love lives in
an entirely different
place than dogma
and structure
and schemes of classification
and division
and it even lives in a place
beyond time

today i balance
the need to honor this love
for him
without dishonoring
her
because
both are a part of me
now

you see
regret is not always a synonym
for mistake
and it is true that
self-inflicted wounds
often take the longest
to heal

and so today
ten years later
there is no celebration
no sappy love cards
no declarations
but there is the memory
and those exquisitely beautiful girls
who are the reason for everything

and the love
there will always be the love
Forever.

So you say you want a piece of me?
{but only what you deem suitable, of course}
Certainly not the part that loves a woman
No, best leave that one at home for a while
We wouldn’t want your daughter to see

You miss me, do you?
{but wait a minute, not all of me}
Not the rainbow bits, you’re cool without those
You want the girl you knew before
That tiny sliver of me that was safe to show

Come back into your life, please?
{but don’t rock your boat, thankyouverymuch}
It’s not about a debate, you say
We’ll just wear our rose colored glasses
Special ones that erase all you prefer not to see

The answer is no
{no, we can’t.  no, I won’t.  no, this is not negotiable}
Because it’s all or nothing now, darlin’
Time is limited and life is a gift
And to get either you’ve got to celebrate me with all you’ve got

You really want this?
{think carefully now}
Because I’m going to push you
Far outside your pretty white heterosexual christian fundamentalist bubble
Past sunday school and rationalized prejudice and safe fences built to keep others out

And you need to know
{you really do}
I’m still soft as anything on the inside
But outside I’ve got an edge
And it might cut if you close in at the wrong angle

Because before I had no idea
{not a freaking clue}
What it would be to live a life
Where the random people who stand behind me in the grocery line
Are given the right to cast vote against the quality of my soul

It makes you fierce, somewhere inside
{When you gain a history like this, and this and this}
It makes you ferocious and solid and strong
And tender and gentle and broken and built anew
And you emerge quiet and careful and centered on exactly who you are.

So if you want to open your heart
{and your eyes and mind and the depths of your spirit}
Take my hand and walk into my whole life
Not just a slice of your choosing
Because I’m not leaving anything at home to make you more comfortable

So yes, we can do lunch
{and go shoe shopping and chat about the kids}
But let’s wait till you’re really ready to take me as I am
Because the cost of anything else is far too high
And sweetie, your benevolent tolerance just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

So think about it for a bit
{and I’m sorry if this seems harsh}
But baby, it’s gotta be this way
This is who I am
Take it or leave it.

It’s a funny thing about comin’ home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You’ll realize what’s changed is you.

~ Benjamin Button

~~~

He always told me that the freckles scattered across my legs and arms were worm holes, and I believed him.  After all, they did look suspiciously like the dark spots on the crab apples littering the ground beneath the trees in the lower field.  I worried about this, about when the worms got in, and how on earth they would ever get out. He teased me mercilessly on my summer visits, nabbing me as I ran through the room and trapping me between his legs – in what he called a bear trap – tickling me until I gasped for breath.

He was a woodsman, like his father before him.  I remember the softness of his worn flannel work shirts, the way the scent of the forest clung to his skin, and how his fingers seemed permanently stained with dirt and tractor grease.

He was somehow different from the rest of our noisy crew. He mostly held himself outside the fray, observing the chaos with quiet amusement, chewing on a bit of wheat or a tall piece of field grass plucked outside.  I had a sense, even as a young child, that he was far more comfortable in a quiet stand of trees than he would ever be in the midst of his highly social family.

Today word came, traveling as it does amongst family, from aunt to aunt to mother and finally to me.

You know how your uncle feels about gays and lesbians? He doesn’t think it is right at all.  Your aunt says it would be best if you didn’t come up to visit.

I’m still for a moment, blinking back surprise and sudden tears.  My throat is tight and I summon a bit of bravado that I don’t really feel.

Fine.  His loss.

Yes. My mother agrees quietly.

~~~

On my last visit home this was all just beginning to make its slow, painful ascent to the surface.  After six weeks of idyllic vacation I returned to the desert and within days the foundation gave way beneath my feet, beginning a free fall that lasted for almost two years.  I was nervous about coming home, about finding the courage to present myself to those who have known me since birth, and to stand without apology before them.

I’ve been here for two weeks, and it’s been so uneventful so far as to be anticlimactic.  I had an idea that my differences – that sense of otherness that has been my companion often on this journey - would be more profound here.  Instead it’s been elusive, so much so that I have to remind myself that anything has changed at all.

At home now, amongst the green and the water and the earth that seems infinitely more solid beneath my feet, I’m reduced to my essence.  All the rest swirls out of my grasp and all that’s left is me.

It’s a lesson in layers, in all that I carry with me by choice, all that I hold on to, to protect and comfort and make fierce.  All of that belongs in the desert, it seems.  It has no footing here by the sea.

Without all those labels and identities and protective spells wound tight around me, I am open and simplified.  My breaths are drawn deeper and I can allow the moments to steal over me and make me still. The drive to go-go-go eases up, and all that is left is to be.

From the nomadic childhood existence of a preacher’s daughter, I drew comfort in the eternal sameness of my summer home in the country, nestled along a rutted country road in a protected curve of the Bay of Fundy. No matter what happened elsewhere during the year, this place remained untouched.  It is only now, having changed more than I ever thought possible, that I realize the root of that comfort lies in the knowledge that I haven’t really changed at all.

The crashing waves and the green grass and the ancient trees will greet me and accept me as they always have.  The air, electric with the buzzing of thousands of insects, will touch my face and find that I am no different than I was before.  And when I raise my eyes upward at night in the darkness only found deep in the country, the thick blanket of stars will not wonder who I am. They’ve known me forever already.

Nothing changes, really.  Like the rocks on the beach, we are broken down, carried places, placed in new formations, but always, at the heart of it, exactly the same as we began.  Even if we don’t at first recognize ourselves, we still belong, still exist, are still a part of the same infinite whole.

~~~

His loss?

Not really.  Our loss.  All of us.  His and mine and theirs and yours.

Don’t you see? I want to scream. Don’t you understand? I’m the same girl I was then.

Worm holes and all.

you see
it’s like this…

it’s like
some nameless, faceless doctor
sat me down
in a cold white room
surrounded by windows
and said

here’s the deal…
i can either cut off
your right leg,
or your left

you get to choose
but one of them has
got to go
now

because your two legs
,though both strong
and beautiful
and necessary,
can’t balance your life anymore

so tell me which
right now please
because people are waiting
on your decision
(don’t you feel them watching you
through all those windows?)
and your legs are
quite anxious
(understandable really)
to know which one
will be left
behind

but you must know this
and know in the deepest part
of yourself
he said,
(as he looked me in the eye
and in the heart)
that even though you have the
power
to make this choice
(and not everyone does – so
consider yourself lucky)
you are still going
to feel
for the rest of your life
like a part of you is missing.

…..

don’t you see?
it’s been a year now
more than that really
since this all began
and being with her
is like finding home
and our bodies fit
and our hearts fit
and i fit
and this is right
and i love her
and us
and this life

truly.

but i still miss him
ache for him
ache for us
ache for our children
for our life and the unmet potential
and that third child
(i always pictured another little girl)
we were pretty sure we would
one day have

and when I see an elderly couple
eating together at a
restaurant
or a young family
together doing family things
i feel something inside me
crumple
and hear this sound bubble up
from deep
inside of me
this keening, primal, animalistic sound
of mourning
of grief
of anger
for what can never be
because we won’t ever be
again

and i won’t know what his hand feels
like in mine
when we are both eighty years old
and how can that not feel like a tragedy?
and after breaking that promise
i don’t know if any other promise
can ever count
really, really count
again

because i made a choice
that wasn’t a choice at all

and i have to accept
in the deepest part of myself
that always knows the truth
that although i belong is this life
there is a huge part of me that will always belong
to that life
to him

and to be perfectly honest,
i don’t quite know what
to do about that.

I shared this video and the lyrics to this Missy Higgins song once before. Since the beginning of my awakenings this song has spoken directly to my experience on every possible level, and this new video makes my connection to the song even more poignant – especially considering my post from last night.

There’s an ache that never leaves me, the tears spill over now without warning. Driving down the freeway, lying between cool white sheets in bed at night, standing at the sink staring into space while scrubbing dried oatmeal off of abandoned breakfast dishes… the mindlessness of the activity allows the vortex of my memories to begin that perilous spin. I imagine that if tears could carve a path, there would be well worn furrows down my cheeks by now; rivers and streams and tributaries born of loss and regret. I cannot stop thinking of what was and what can never be again, not because I wish to go backwards, but because I must grieve for what had to be lost along the way.

In the past year I have begun the process of stepping fully into myself, of accepting who I am, of embracing myself and my truth. There was a tendency, in the beginning, to think that this negated all that came before. My recent journey has been all about understanding that my past – the woman that I was and the life that I led – was no less me. My life till that point was no less valid or authentic or right – it was just not the complete story. Who I am now does not eclipse who I used to be – this life no more legitimate than that one. The fact that this is so very right does not need to make all that came before wrong. I do not need to view my life with a harsh divide separating my before and my after. Indeed these are just different parts of the very same journey, MY journey.

It is clear to me that this part of my path is as much about looking back as it is about looking forward. I mourn deeply the loss of my past, my husband and best friend, my intact and happy family. I need to give myself permission to do this, and I need to learn to do it in a way that does not detract from moving forward into a future with my love, with our children, toward a level of independence and personal growth that has little to do with sexuality and everything to do with owning my experience and creating a fully authentic life.

Yes, I am sad right now. It is not a sadness that leads to the sort of dramatic breakdowns that have been all too frequent over the past year. It’s not about guilt or fear or denial or breathless sobbing and raging into the night. It is a quiet, deep, seemingly bottomless sadness. It is a sadness that lives in the memories of happier days, of the loss of the part of my heart that will always belong to him, of the disappearance of a planned future and a life mapped out together. It is realizing that the joy of beginning this life does not have the power to wipe out the grief of losing that life, and of knowing that there is nothing that can be done but let this sadness fall down on me, and cloak me in its shadows.

It is the sadness of acceptance, and I somehow think that it might be the hardest to bear.