awakenings

Dear Bee,

I’ve been sitting near your questions for a few days now, aware of them waiting, each an invitation for me to move into a space of remembering the long, agonizing moment that I couldn’t believe at the time would ever live in the realm of memory. I sit here in a dark, cozy lounge, drinking a Cosmo. Wondering where to begin. Knowing that whatever responses I’m able to offer may give you comfort, a sense of not being alone, and knowing how that counts for so, so much. And also that you will move through this in your own days, your own way, finding your own places of what you are able or choose to tolerate, where you are able or willing or unwilling to negotiate with yourself or someone else, your own places of learning that you cannot break another human being, that choosing your own presence and wholeness will bring only more love into the world.

But I know the fear. More like terror. Sheer terror. And later the guilt, the body-curling loss. The disbelief mingled with the laser-sharp clarity.

How did I find the strength to tell the truth?

I’m not sure I did, as much as it was the truth that kept telling me. It was unrelenting, visceral, fierce, raging, refusing to be pushed back just as a river cannot be made to flow upstream. Once I knew–and I knew in an instant, a song, a moment of my eyes catching hers for that extra beat. I knew that the beautiful life I had built stood on a fault line bigger than the San Andreas, I knew without a word, without thought, shuddering, violent, feeling-knowing.

I did not let go easily. I told the truth within a few days of that experience–sat on the couch one night and said, “I have something to tell you.” That was the kind of marriage we had. The kind where we told each other things. His initial reaction was shock, and then to flee, to bail, to say, “This is not what I signed up for.” In the months that followed–and I am condensing a lot here–I feared he would hang himself in the garage. I feared that I had “snapped him down the middle.” I fought with my knowing, or tried to. “How could I leave, how could I leave”–this was a constant question that plagued me. My body was on overdrive for months; I’d wake up at dawn with my heart pounding as if I’d been running. There was deceit. I felt a total rejection of him to my core, cried every single time we made love, or tried, despite my attempts to stay open to him. My body said “NO.” It roared. It raged. It railed against him. All I wanted was to go to her bed, surrender. I read Adrienne Rich and wept. I feared for our kids.

It was tormenting. Torturous. I consulted friends and family. My mother insisted that I turn my attention back to the sacred commitment of marriage. I raged some more. I lost fifteen pounds from an already small frame.

I see the difference here, or part of it at least from what I understand of your story, which is that you are suffering in silence. He may be in denial, but the communication between you is buried. I don’t think one is easier than the other; one of the wrenching things about my process was that he went back and forth between raging, hurt, rejected, terrified husband (and little boy whose father died), and amazing, seeing, loving friend who understood that I needed to come out.

I could no longer cover his pain or take care of the family system. The toll this took on me during the few years leading up to this moment with increasing intensity just exploded, no longer containable. I remember blurting out to a therapist, “I DON’T WANT TO BE MARRIED.” But, you see, I was married, for a decade or more, to a man who loved me beautifully, unconditionally. He used to say he hit the jackpot with me. And we had babies. Magic. And yet. And yet. My other refrain. And yet.

Was there relief?

Yes, in bursts. Fits and starts. Moments of searing freedom, exhilaration, letting go, sexual pleasure and hunger beyond anything I had ever, ever experienced. And there was grief, so crushing I thought I would die. And rage, a lifetime, that poured out over the course of many months. And confusion, and doubt, and longing to go back, to go home again, and enough drama to make up for decades of avoiding drama. So many pictures of each of these in my mind. And yet–you will have your own story, your own pictures, your own moment of moving through the thing that still lies before you, that feels insurmountable, the thing that consumes you, robs you of sleep and presence and appetite.

Finally one day, we stood in the woods. There was no one else to consult, no more time to take to see if “things would shift.” We stood under a tree, summer sunlight streaming down through the fullness of the leaves. And we called it. We surrendered. I told him that this life force was flowing so powerfully through me, from my vagina through my core, up and out of my mouth, a flow that could not, WOULD NOT, be reversed.It was a quiet moment, followed by many harsh moments and deep, illuminating conversations and shutting down and sorting out years of projection.

How could I face myself?

Every single day, I have had no choice to but to keep going. To face myself in the mirror, sometimes looking destroyed, sometimes sexier than I ever imagined, sometimes depleted and aged, sometimes bleak, sometimes hopeless and scared, sometimes shaking with resentment or shuddering with guilt. But never once has the mirror cracked.

How do you gather the strength it takes to snap another human being right down the middle?

He did snap. He broke. Bereft. Angry. Hurt. Alone. Lost. Abandoned. But slowly what became so, so clear was that he was already broken. I did not break him. I did not abandon him. His father did that, when he was a small boy. For many years, I protected him. And being with him protected me from myself, too, the raw power I knew was there was did not know how or was afraid to access and let out.

I saw that he was broken the day I met him when he spoke of his childhood. There he was, exposed without my comfort, faced with his own survival. And I could not bear responsibility any longer.

I will close for tonight.

Send me your next questions, and I will share what I can.

Please, Bee: be good and gentle and patient and forgiving with yourself. Feel you way. Trust what you feel. Take your time. Everyone, so many people, told me, “You’ll know.” Oh, how I doubted this. “But HOW will I know?” I wailed. “WHEN will I know?” And then I did. I just did. Not that that was that, but those moments do come, and you can’t force or rush or push them. I hope you can rest a little there.

With so much love,

Moonchild

I am drifting further away with every breath. He senses it, I think – my movements, however small, vibrate along the ghost of a chord that once held him fast to my insides. When I take a few steps away, even just to pick something up or go to the bathroom, he is instantly vigilant.

Where are you going?

Mummy, come back and play with me.

NO, Mummy. Stay here.

It is simultaneously heartbreaking and suffocating. I cannot go anywhere without being followed by the patter of his footsteps, the impatient tap of his hand. Self-reflection requires solitude – at least for me – but he allows me none. The anxious rope of his voice repeatedly tugs me backwards; I am not sure whether I resent this or am grateful for it. Often, it is a mixture of both.

He is not quite three years old, yet he is more attuned to me than D. is. Sweet and exquisitely sensitive, he mimics my moods so accurately it hurts me to watch him: for weeks now, he has been weepy and bad-tempered without ever seeming to know why. As he lacks the all-too-adult capacity for denial, his face crumples in the most innocuous of moments and he gravitates instantly towards me, crawling up my torso like a kitten. It is all I can do not to weep along with him, but instead I do what I know I must: I rock and stroke, whisper and soothe. I rub slow circles on the small of his back. I kiss him.

I lie.

I have learnt that skill all too well from his father. The man worships denial as though it’s his life source. Never in my life have I met someone so capable of ignoring the elephant in the room; it could be trampling over the furniture, crushing everything in sight, and still he would deftly step around it and paste on a smile. I used to find it astonishing, and would try poking him into an argument just for the fun of it – after all, nobody’s that perfect. I used to joke that his loudest expression of anger was a sigh. After growing up with a volatile father whose temper was fierce and unpredictable, it didn’t exactly seem like a problem.

Now, however, I just find it exhausting. I cannot fix anything if he will not admit that it’s broken. My once unwavering sense of honesty has all but been strangled into silence; it takes me months if not years to work up the courage to talk about our problems, and within minutes he has changed the subject.

I’m so tired. I’m so unbearably tired. I need to be strong for my son’s sake; I need to somehow find the courage to confront this before it gets too big. But years of crushing who I am for the sake of everybody else has taken its toll: there is nothing left in me to give. I am finding it difficult to care about anything but getting the hell out of here. My job, my degree, my house, my future – what does it matter, really? What does it matter when I don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning?

I’m sorry. I’ll try to be a better mother, a better girlfriend, a better daughter. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt anybody. I’m sorry. I tried my best to make you all happy. I’m sorry. I’m gay.

I’m sorry I’m gay.

I’m not sure exactly what started it. I have been creeping towards this conclusion with my eyes squeezed shut – sightlessly groping the dark for some answers, even as I refuse to admit asking the questions.

The books, I think, were a large part of it. It’s hard to read with your eyes closed, but I managed it. Sugar Rush. The Price of Salt. Pages for You. All of them were beautiful, but none contained whatever it was I was searching for. Until then, at last – Dear John, I Love Jane.

Ah, so that’s it. It is possible to – ? Oh, okay. But it doesn’t apply to me, not really. No, no. I’m sure their husbands were lovely, but they’re not D. He can, even now, pull me back from this. He will see the book and its title and he will ask me what’s wrong. We will talk until our voices are sandpaper-dry and then go to a relationship counsellor, who’ll show us spider diagrams about communication and give us ‘intimacy homework’. In six months we’ll be back to normal, and I’ll fall for him even harder than I did when we first met. In six months I will have forgotten.

But. But –

I finished reading a book about ‘ex-gay’ Christians last week. It was rather formal in description, with most of the emotion buried beneath academic lingo – but still, it tugged something loose inside my head. The self-loathing, the fear, the seemingly endless struggle to redirect desire – ah, yes. I know this. And now, whether I want to or not, I am unravelling at a vertiginous speed.

Our son slept over at my mother’s yesterday, and I spent the evening soundlessly begging D. not to touch me. Put simply, I am running out of excuses. Perhaps he sensed my stiffening reluctance, or perhaps he was too tired – either way, he did not try. The only contact we had was when he laid his palm on my right knee, gently rubbing away the residual ache of past injury. I let him, needing the platonic relief of his warmly circling hand.

I read parts of Dear John again, only this time the stories had an echo – the eerie resonance of my own truth, bounced back at me in the words of another. I tried to sleep but could not shift the disquiet that pulsed in me like a second heartbeat; dread formed a cold, hard ball in the base of my throat. Eventually I switched off the bedside lamp, letting the darkness cocoon me from the question of his eyes.

This morning I pressed the imprint of my palms into the steam of the shower screen. I allowed myself to cry, my hot tears indistinguishable from the water that sluiced over my face. I said the words – only in my head, but god help me, I said them – and found myself shaking fiercely, unable to stop. I felt naked in a way that had nothing to do with bare skin, and everything to do with exposing myself to the purest truth.

I am coming undone.

There once was a time when I could forget the small details. The colour of his eyes mattered less, somehow, than the look in them when our skin connected. The shape of his mouth was never as important as the texture of his kiss; it was the direction, not the form, of his hands that I followed. For a little while, I felt far more than I saw.

Now that I see him with clear eyes, I remember everything: his palms are square and callused, and my fingers are longer than his. His lips are a plump blush of surprise in the angular planes of his face. His eyes are the softest kind of green, like spring lime. I remember what he looks like when he wakes up (sulky-eyed and bushy, with hot red cheeks), and how he likes his coffee (one sugar, a generous splash of milk). I remember how long his hair has to grow before it starts to curl, and what his favourite dish is when we order Indian food. So how is it, with all these details, I have never known him less?

I collect the memories like valuable coins, displaying them in frames and on shelves; they are the glittering punctuation in my family stories. Look, I say, holding them aloft in my outstretched palms. Look at how well we fit.

I am trying to convince myself more than them, I think. Besides, they already believe it’s true – and there is a small part of me that grieves over that. Because even as I fight to prove the perfection of our union, I am thrashing for release. I am praying that someone will know me well enough to look past the colourful blanket of my words and see the dropped stitches, the threadbare wool, the gaping holes that I seem to be carrying everywhere with me now. I have pretended so hard for so long that I cannot remember what is real any more. And I wish more than anything that someone would show me. That I would not have to make this decision alone; that in finding answers from a third party, I would be absolved of guilt. That I alone would not be responsible for tearing my family apart at the seams.

That wish will never come true. I am honest enough with myself to know this, even as I hope otherwise. I allowed myself to get to this point and only I can choose where I go from here. Whether or not I will ever have the courage to say the words out loud is still a question mark at this point; even thinking them threatens to snap me in two. I have to wrestle with my conscience in silence, until I figure out whether I can handle the weight of one essential truth: I cannot heal myself without breaking somebody else.

I remember when I first got here. Doe-eyed and swollen-bellied, I shuffled from room to room; my fingers hovered and fluttered, birdlike, from surface to surface. Having been brought up in narrow, poky terraced houses, I could not get used to the sheer amount of space. Not just one bathroom, but two; not just two bedrooms, but four. A garden, with raised vegetable beds and fruit trees, offered up bright splashes of colour: crisp orange peppers, glossy red apples, the speckled yellow-green skin of under-ripe pears. High up, poking out from beneath the leaves, fat purple plums clustered like bruises.

My previous misgivings, and the shapeless terror that had tugged me from sleep at the thought of moving in with D., surrendered in the wake of my awe. Somehow, miraculously, this was ours. With all this at our fingertips, how could our family do anything but thrive?

In my state of wide-eyed ignorance, I failed to grasp one essential truth: that space is created through distance. The two are intrinsically linked; as one grows, so the other swells in its path. Sure, we have space. But sometimes all it does is allow us to get lost.

Not long after we moved in, the baby exploded into our lives like a cannonball. My reaction was not what I expected. Instead of slipping comfortably into my new roles as housewife and mother, I felt as though I was in fancy dress. I shuffled through my days in a mass-produced, ill-fitting costume that tripped me up at every turn. No matter how hard I tried, everything felt far too big for me. The person I had once been disappeared into the cracks of the floorboards. I did not have the energy to search for her alone.

My son was a difficult baby, and his near-constant cries tore into me until there was nothing left but holes. Each day, I put him down for a nap and then walked to the other end of the house, putting enough distance between us that I could not hear his shrieks. I tried desperately to keep on top of the housework – dusting, mopping, ironing, vacuuming – but there was so much of it that I eventually gave up trying. Every room I entered was littered with toys, paperwork, clothes, plates, cups, bottles. Just looking at it made me want to scream. But in the end, I had nowhere else to go.

D., having been raised in a house three times the size of ours, was accustomed to space. He used it as a shield. When he came home from work at the end of the day, I would pepper him endlessly with questions. I hoped that he would share some of his life with me, since I no longer had one of my own. He never did. I could not reach him no matter how hard I tried – and I did try, every chance I got – so eventually, I gave up on that too. I retreated inside myself, seeking solace on the internet and in books, not listening to him even when he did speak. Most of the time, he barely even noticed.

This house – our house – was a curse as much as it was a blessing. When my heart hurts so much that my body wants to jackknife with grief, I can drift out of sight before D. notices I’m gone. I can slip into another room, shutting the door, shutting my eyes. I can pretend that my son and I live somewhere small, a place where my outstretched arms will touch him no matter where we are standing. I can pretend I am in a relationship where I am not always alone. I can pretend I am somewhere I don’t need to pretend. I can pretend I am elsewhere, everywhere…anywhere but here.

I was nineteen when D. found me – I always think of it that way, as if he rescued me (poor, straggled waif) from the side of the road – and I had such faith in us, the blind kind of faith possessed only by the very young. I had my doubts, of course, but my feelings for him were centre stage; anything else was simply a shapeless murmur that I could tuck discreetly behind the curtains. I turned down the nagging soundtrack of my doubt in favour of a softer melody, one which he and I could move to.

And we did move. Oh, did we ever move. We had a peculiar sort of rhythm – lilting, hasty, charmingly uneven – but we made it our own. We were reckless and stupid and utterly beautiful. We spun so fast it was dizzying, straight into parenthood and village life, with three cars and a business and a four-bedroom detached. Often, I would put a foot out of place just to slow us down, but his gentle brand of confidence was infectious and he coaxed me back into the circle of his arms with little effort. Young, clumsy, overeager, I wanted so badly to know, to learn. Again and again, I begged him: Show me. Tell me. Teach me to dance.

Ever the patient instructor, he did as I asked. In return, I threw myself into us heart and soul – and I believed. I believed in him, and in me, and in us. I believed in our family, and in our home. Most of all, I believed I would never again experience a love so unshakably fierce. Even as the music began to skip, and our steps began to falter, I thought for sure that we would dance together forever.

I tell you this for one reason: so that you know what I felt for him was real. I could not lie about that even if I had wanted to; I am just not that good an actress. When the shit hits the fan – and I know now that it will; I can feel it coming – I want everyone to know that. I want him to know that.

I didn’t lie. I didn’t know.

Prop 102 would amend the Arizona Constitution to say "only a union between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state". This issue is on the ballot for November 4th, even though Arizona residents voted on, and rejected, this issue just two short years ago.

This time around, the “Yes On 102” campaign has a huge budget to spread their message. Their billboards, signs, and radio/television ads are everywhere right now. It’s easy to let that make us feel invisible, marginalized, hopeless….but now, more than ever; we cannot afford to let that happen.

Consider this a call to action! We want to counter those images and messages of divisiveness, exclusion and prejudice with images of inclusion, equality and acceptance.

If you live in Arizona take a picture of you in front of your “No on 102’ lawn sign, print a sign for your car window and take a picture of that, or stand in front of one of the “Yes” signs holding your own handmade sign that shows your support of equality and your desire to defeat this proposition. Kiss, hug, hold hands, flash a big peace sign…whatever you’re inspired to do.*

If you live elsewhere in the country, but want to show your support, make a sign of your own celebrating acceptance, equality, love.  Involve your children, neighbors – heck, get your pets in the mix too – just make sure to write “No On 102” somewhere on the sign!

Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

To that we add, never underestimate the power of a simple photograph. Our pictures, taken from the heart, often speak louder than our voices ever could. Collectively we believe these images will carry our message of equality forward and outward – spreading a wave of positive energy that will help us defeat this proposition once and for all.

*Just keep it legal folks – nothing obscene or vulgar, and definitely nothing against the law – no graffiti or defacement, keep it positive!

Please blog about us, link to us, send our information to your friends and family.  Consider making a sign or taking a pic and uploading it to our flickr group or email it to noon102@gmail.com.  Add us as your friend on Myspace (and make us your top friend until the election) or join our group on facebook. Check out our ‘Get Involved’ page for more ways to help, and make a donation to help us fight against this proposition.  Every little bit helps.

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Can we adopt this commercial in Arizona to counter the “Yes on 102′ folks? Brilliant.

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.

What do you do with the pictures? What happens to eleven years of snapshots and cheesy portrait studio enlargements, wedding albums and vacation pictures? Horrid Walmart engagement photos that stand as a forever reminder of a very bad hair day, murky underwater snorkeling shots of unidentified fish in Hawaii, precious photos of the first moments of parenthood?

What do you do with the shriveled balloons he bought you on your first valentines day, the souvenirs from your trip to NYC in the spring of 1999, with the birthday cards filled with sappy handwritten notes? How do you split up a decades worth of personalized Christmas tree ornaments, carefully chosen during a holiday shopping trip each year – even the pets’ names carefully added in with permanent marker. Who gets the home videos – hours upon hours beginning with teary eyed ‘I do’s’ and extending through first breaths and birthday parties and wobbly steps and Christmas mornings?

Who keeps the locks of hair lovingly saved from the first hair cut? How can you divide the stick figure drawing of your family of four, proudly rendered at preschool in bright crayola marker? What about wedding rings engraved with words of forever and partially filled in baby books and anniversary gifts and ticket stubs and random shoeboxes full of 11 years worth of collected nostalgia?

When you are faced with separating two lives that have been wholly intertwined for so long you discover that you are surrounded by representations of that relationship, both concrete and symbolic. Your house is filled with a million symbols of the bonds, of the happy times when anything seemed possible, of the family you built and the history you shared and the plans you made.

When all is said and done, and it all comes down to the final weeks of living under the same roof, those mementos are all that remain of both dream and reality. Keepsakes of a life that no longer exists, they are both more priceless and more meaningless than you ever thought possible.

And the final question lingers…what on earth do you do with the memories?