Jennifer L. Place's Blog, page 2
July 9, 2013
Breaking the Patterns
There are so many aspects of abuse that are cruel – the flashbacks, the fear, the feeling that you aren’t and will never be good enough to be loved. The hurt, the anger, the sadness. The memories. Those memories that are a stain you can’t get out, no matter how hard you scrub, like red wine on a white carpet.
Apparently it’s not enough to feel unworthy throughout your life, in friendships, relationships, your job, as a parent. It’s not enough to sometimes realize that thanks to one person’s actions you find yourself in a pattern of seeking out the same behavior in others, over and over, trapped in a cycle. Seeking the same dysfunction with a different face. Because it’s what you believe you deserve. What you believe you’re worth.
You believe you’re worth the violence – blows, slaps, shoves, punches.
You believe you’re worth the cruelty – the swearing, the curses, the demeaning epithets and insults. When those things just aren’t enough….there’s more.
I’ve endured all of these. I thought I’d broken the pattern, put it behind me. I did break the pattern, but it’s not behind me.
It’s there with me, like my shadow, waiting for its chance to reveal itself when I’m weak. When I’m too tired to fight it, fight the memories, fight those lying beliefs.
What’s crueler than the scars abuse leaves on those who have been abused?
It’s making that person you’ve chosen to be with feel like one of the abusers.
It’s finally breaking the pattern and finding someone who won’t hit, who isn’t cruel, who doesn’t control you – and letting that person see the naked fear in your eyes during an argument. Showing that terror and expectation of an imminent strike – even though that’s the last thing on their mind, that they would never raise their hand to you. That they would never utter those cruel words that another did in the past.
It’s not being able to completely outrun the past, outrun learned behavior, outrun expectation. It’s pushing that extra inch during an argument to see if they will hit you. It’s pushing that innocent person to the brink just to see if they’re like all the rest.
It’s unfair.
It’s wrong.
It breaks my heart.
What makes it worse is the eight years I’ve spent not being abused, not being talked down to, not being controlled and that fear is still there, just under the surface, waiting to see if I just haven’t pushed hard enough yet. Making me want to push just a little more.
Making me cruel. Making me the abuser.
Making me into all of those things that I so hated when they were done to me.
Making me repeat the pattern – only this time, I’m the offender.
Instead of being open to being loved and loving in return, I retreated into fear. Into patterns that are seemingly impossible to break. And in so doing, I’ve made myself into one of the monsters that terrified me.
But maybe there’s a way out. Maybe the realization can point us down the path toward forgiveness. To forgive our abusers – not absolve them, forgive ourselves for enduring it, and forgive ourselves for becoming it. Maybe knowing this, knowing that in the absence of abuse, recognizing this can start to help us heal. I’m tired of being afraid. I’m tired of believing that love always comes with painful side effects. I’m tired of doing to someone else, someone who doesn’t at all deserve to suffer for someone else’s sins, what was done to me.
Today I commit to breaking this goddamn pattern once and for all.
May 30, 2013
Letters to My Child Book Trailer
Here is the trailer for Letters to My Child - available now in ebook format and print from Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com!
April 12, 2013
Second Chances Book Trailer
Here it is, ladies and gents, the book trailer created for my novel, Second Chances
January 30, 2013
The God Awful Genetic Gift
Dear Michael,
You recently managed to earn your first black eye. That’s normally not something a boy gets for the first time at the age of five, but you certainly are a precocious child. I fear that this is due to the unfortunate genetic gift I’ve given you.
I come from a clumsy people – both the Places on my father’s side and the Ollivetts on my mother’s side of the family. We’re bright but bumbling.
It’s a terrible affliction, this complete and utter lack of grace. We fall down at the most inopportune moments, the worst locations.
Grammy – the Ollivett side – falls down at the drop of a hat and that’s not because she’s eighty. She’s been falling for years. She loses her eyeglasses and her wine glasses all the time too but I suspect those things are unrelated.
Grandma Lorrie – my mom – gave me the worst introduction to horseback riding imaginable when I was nine or ten. I was so excited and had begged for horseback riding lessons. When Mom finally capitulated and took me for my first lesson, Mom rode first while I was getting my gear on. I watched her horse trot into the center of the ring and geared up for a jump…..and then Mom fell off the damn horse. She falls down all the damn time now too. Usually it’s outside and she bangs a foot, a wrist, an ankle…she has trouble staying upright.
Your Aunt Heelo….where I do begin there? I’m not sure who wins the sash for More Clumsy – me or her. Heelo tripped on a wet floor in a Stop n’ Shop and broke her foot, which resulted in two surgeries, a lawsuit, and many months of a cast. She tripped walking up the stairs at the Eveready Diner the night of Aunt Karen’s memorial, just barely keeping from flashing her rear to the whole of Route 9G. One of my favorite falls was when we lived in the house on Mulberry Lane. We had a long wooden walkway leading up to the front door. There was about three feet of walkway before a small step, probably about three inches high, leading to another three feet of walkway. Heelo was running to the front door when the toe of her shoe got stuck on the lip of the small step and she did an abrupt, high speed face plant into the wood. I’m laughing right now as I remember the sharp “thwap!” sound her body made as it crashed. I don’t remember laughing harder at any other misfortune that’s befallen her, except for maybe when our Beagle peed on her. That one is a close second, if not an outright tie.
Your grandfather managed to drop the top support pole of a swingset he was putting together onto his leg, tearing a huge gash into his shin that required quite a few stitches, if I remember correctly. He is the only person I know who’s been attacked by a baby elephant. I’m sure there are other people in the world who have been charged by a diminutive pachyderm but I don’t know those people and I witnessed this magnificence firsthand.
We’d gone to the Catskill Game Farm (which, sadly, is no longer. I’d have loved to have taken you there) when I was about fourteen or so. There was a young elephant in a small ring, its foot chained to a post in the ground, the chain at a humane length, and the ring was made out of logs, about two and a half or three feet above the ground. My father suffers from some form of disability where fences and lumber rings do not dissuade him from attempting to get nearer the enclosed animals. He’d done it more times than I could count with feeding giraffes, so why no one thought he’d go straight for the elephant like a moth to a flame is beyond me. I suppose it’s my fault as well.
Anyway, Dad thought it a great plan to throw one leg over the log and try to feed the elephant some of those weird crackers they sold to feed the animals that kind of smelled like big chunks of Cracklin’ Oat Bran and tasted like sawdust. Maybe the elephant was afraid of Dad’s beard or just didn’t like crackers or was perhaps pissed to be chained in a ring of lumber, but regardless of his motives, the elephant charged Dad. He was on a chain, as I said, so couldn’t reach him but no matter, I don’t care how tough you are, if an elephant charges you, you are going to get the hell out of Dodge.
Except it didn’t go quite as planned. Instead of making a swift exit by pulling one leg back over the log, Dad slipped, ripping his goddamn jeans from crotch to ankle. In public. Because what zoo is deserted, ever?
Ripped. His. Goddamn. Pants.
Did we go home? Hells no. We’d just gotten there. My industrious, MENSA-member father, gathered some extra denim at the knee and tied the pantleg up, semi-camouflaging the fact that he was half wearing a skirt. At least the wound in his thigh from an errant nail or something in the log wasn’t to a major artery.
And this brings us to me.
I’m pretty sure one of my first mishaps was going down a slide face-first – under the watchful eye of my step-grandfather – and planting my face in the ground, resulting in my teeth going through the inside of my lip. I don’t remember that one, just heard about it secondhand. But I know me and it definitely sounds like something I would do.
When I was in kindergarten, we had this great jungle gym on the playground that looked like half of the Death Star. I used to like to climb up a little ways, hook my legs over a rung and hang upside down. Ordinarily I was pretty good at this until the one time I knocked myself out when I swung back too vigorously.
One of my dad’s favorite stories that he still enjoys retelling to this day is when I knocked myself out on the muffler of the family car. It was winter and we had THE BEST driveway of anyone we knew for sledding (go ahead and ask anyone who’d been to the house on Mulberry Lane and I dare them to dispute it) and sucked for everything else. It was a big hill, steep, unpaved, with a giant ass turn in the middle with a landing. Thank god for that landing in the winter because when that bitch froze, you were lucky to make it to the landing and usually you could only do that after getting a running start from the road (all the while praying no unsuspecting people were coming from either direction on the road). When it got bad, we’d park the car on the landing at the turn and then have to hoof it the rest of the way up the driveway, trying not to fall on your ass.
I was young, I have no idea how old, maybe six or seven, and Dad had the brilliant idea to send me down the driveway on my plastic sled with Bandit, our puppy. I got set up in the sled, holding the wriggling Bandit, and Dad stood in the driveway, legs wide so he could take a picture as his eldest daughter and smallest dog went hurtling down the ice crusted, snowy driveway.
Hurtle we did. Right down the driveway and underneath the goddamn car. Knocked myself out on the muffler. I don’t think Bandit was quite the same after that. When I was sixteen, I fell down the stairs on Thanksgiving at Aunt Patti’s house. Everyone thought I’d killed myself.
The following year, I fell in the Smithsonian Museum while trying to trip either my dad or Uncle Bob, subsequently spraining my ankle and breaking my foot. That was the last time we went as a family to Aunt Patti’s for Thanksgiving because I am too accident prone.
When I was away at college, I was alone in the dorm room I shared with my roommate Sara, and got out of bed to change the song on the stereo. Sara and I, in an attempt to create more room for storage in our small rooms, had our bed frames up on cinderblocks. I rose from my bed, stepping onto the floor without noticing the clamshell case to my VHS copy of The Muppet Movie under my foot. Plastic VHS cases slide across linoleum like a sex waxed surf board over the ocean. I shot right past the stereo, probably having to listen to Sara’s damn Shabba Ranks CD, and flew across the room, landing underneath Sara’s bed, at first not understand how the hell I’d gotten there. I had a bruise on my bicep the size of a dinner plate that was the color of an eggplant after that. I’m still not sure how I got that bad boy, I think I must have thrown my arm up in the air and smashed it into the bedframe on impact. Regardless, it was impressive.
Most recently (I have fallen many times in between college and now, please don’t think I had a dry spell that lasted THAT long, the preceding were just the most noteworthy), your father and I were goofing around in the kitchen and your father tried to “dip” me, like we were dancing. It ended with me flailing my arms like a drowning person and falling to the floor in the kitchen like a sack of stupid, graceless potatoes.
Considering the way you ended up with your black eye, I fear I’ve cursed you. And I apologize in advance for all the slips and falls and bumps and bruises you will no doubt incur in the years to come. I’ll make sure we have the best medical coverage available.
Two weeks ago, I was out having dinner with JJ when I received a text message from your father, saying “Table 1, Michael 0” with a picture of you with a super puffy eye. Evidently, you were running around (normal) with the dog (also normal) and Ruby got underfoot, you didn’t notice (normal again, for you and the dog) and you tripped, therefore sailing eye-first into the edge of the coffee table, which may be made of the hardest wood known to man, or at least available in the 1970’s. The up side to this was that you were home from school for a few days (unrelated to your injury, there’d been a snowstorm) so I didn’t receive any phone calls for visits from Child Protective Services or your teacher.
Your little legs have been a patchwork of bruises since you learned to walk. Like your mother, you have no idea from whence they come. Get used to it, that doesn’t stop.
So consider this my formal apology and the explanation of the long line of graceless bastards that have come before you. But hey, at least you won’t be boring! Farting and falling are two of the funniest things in life (to me) so you should definitely learn to embrace the ridiculous.
December 31, 2012
What a difference a year makes...
Last year I posted a blog bidding goodbye to 2011. I suppose it only fitting that I post one to say farewell to 2012.
As I spoke of hope last year, that it would be my word for 2012, I was at one of my most hopeless times in my life. A lot of 2012 was spent without any real hope. A good portion of this year was spent floundering, trying to find my place in this world and find my direction. I've struggled with clinical depression for a lot of years and went through most of them on my own - no medication, no nothing.
I failed at many things this year, I failed people in many ways. I failed many of the people who mean the most to me, the ones I hold most dear.
But I did do something I have always been terrible at - I asked for help.
With that help, with that direction, I was able to salvage parts of me that I thought were gone forever. I was able to work to repair things I believed unable to be salvaged.
A year has taught me so many things about myself and about other people. It's taught me who I am and who I want to be, who I can be.
Last year I listed the people who I learned from in 2011. This year I will list only two, not to say I only learned from two people because that would be incorrect. I learn from everyone, every day of my life. But these two people deserve the mention.
Michael - who teaches me every day about patience and hard work and the simple joys of being 4 and 5. He teaches me that I need to take the time out to be silly, to wrestle with a little kid. He shows me who I want to be in being his mom.
Aaron - who's taught me a million things but mainly about love and being loved in return.
I've often spent my time fluctuating between thinking I'm completely imperfect and thinking I'm a superhero who can accomplish anything without asking for help. I'm figuring out now that I really exist somewhere in between and that it's okay.
I'm okay with letting 2012 go without looking back. I'm grateful for the positives....and for some of the negatives, because without them, I wouldn't have learned a damn thing.
As we usher this year out the door, I'm ready and willing to enter into 2013 with a clearer head, an unbreakable heart, and hope.
As I spoke of hope last year, that it would be my word for 2012, I was at one of my most hopeless times in my life. A lot of 2012 was spent without any real hope. A good portion of this year was spent floundering, trying to find my place in this world and find my direction. I've struggled with clinical depression for a lot of years and went through most of them on my own - no medication, no nothing.
I failed at many things this year, I failed people in many ways. I failed many of the people who mean the most to me, the ones I hold most dear.
But I did do something I have always been terrible at - I asked for help.
With that help, with that direction, I was able to salvage parts of me that I thought were gone forever. I was able to work to repair things I believed unable to be salvaged.
A year has taught me so many things about myself and about other people. It's taught me who I am and who I want to be, who I can be.
Last year I listed the people who I learned from in 2011. This year I will list only two, not to say I only learned from two people because that would be incorrect. I learn from everyone, every day of my life. But these two people deserve the mention.
Michael - who teaches me every day about patience and hard work and the simple joys of being 4 and 5. He teaches me that I need to take the time out to be silly, to wrestle with a little kid. He shows me who I want to be in being his mom.
Aaron - who's taught me a million things but mainly about love and being loved in return.
I've often spent my time fluctuating between thinking I'm completely imperfect and thinking I'm a superhero who can accomplish anything without asking for help. I'm figuring out now that I really exist somewhere in between and that it's okay.
I'm okay with letting 2012 go without looking back. I'm grateful for the positives....and for some of the negatives, because without them, I wouldn't have learned a damn thing.
As we usher this year out the door, I'm ready and willing to enter into 2013 with a clearer head, an unbreakable heart, and hope.
October 14, 2012
Goodbye
The words below weren't written by me, but by a friend...a friend who tragically lost his wife a year ago and wrote this, wanting for her to be remembered.
“good bye… I love you… always and forever.”
For the ten days I sat in that hospital room… the machine attached to her never stopped beeping… it somehow gave me an odd reassurance that she was still alive. This beeping became part of my being… every change, every different sound registered immediately in my head as normal or not. I could put my head down on the side of the bed and close my eyes while holding her hand knowing exactly what was happening just by the sound of the beeps. The beeps were comforting but at the same time disheartening… sustaining her life but siphoning mine away… Every beep… a dagger to my heart… every time…
She was confined tightly to her hospital bed… her body was motionless… Countless tubes adorned her mouth… blood was stained on the beautiful porcelain skin on her cheek… her long thick red hair… once so flowing and enthralling was reduced to a tangled nest… unwashed for days… stained in blood, sweat… and my own tears. She would have never liked this… laying there… looking like this. She cared about her hair… her skin… how she was perceived. She had the gentlest soul but never wanted to appear helpless. But there she was… helpless… clinging to a fragment of life. Helpless was a feeling I knew well… for the ten days… I could do nothing to help… I could only watch her… and hope… for a miracle. But no matter how she looked… she was always the most beautiful woman in the world to me… and that no matter what was said to me, I never gave up hoping for a miracle…
I became obsessed with watching the numbers on the monitor. They would fluctuate but never in a good way…. never in a way that would promote the slightest bit of hope. My tear stained eyes would stare endlessly at the bags of sedation hug at the hospital bed’s side. As they would dissipate… they too would beep… louder and louder and louder… till a nurse would come in and hit a button…. It seemed like an eternity for them to come in… More beeps… more daggers… more tears.
I spoke to her often… searching… hoping… for some sign of acknowledgement. I tried to talk to her like there was nothing wrong…. like this was some sort of temporary set back that we would laugh about in a few weeks. I’m sure the shaking in my voice betrayed me but I kept the façade up and kept talking to her. I told her how much I loved her. How much I needed her. How much she changed me. I sang to her songs about love… about loss… and about how much she meant to me. I shared stories and the support others had shared with me… every email… every text message… every facebook post people sent to me were read to her. I just wanted her to hear how loved she was. She spent her entire existence not realizing how much she meant to be people. In all honesty aside form me, her family and a few friends… she thought the world didn’t understand her… didn’t want her… didn’t love her. I was thinking maybe it would wake her up… to realize how much she would be missed by so many besides me. I know that she heard them… I would see tears form in the corner of her eyes when I read them. I know they touched her heart. I can never thank everyone enough for that.
Over time, my hope started to fade. I found myself in the hospital bathroom, staring in the mirror often. The few days of no sleep aged me… the bags under my bloodshot eyes were black and prevalent. I was desperate… I had no other choice and no other option… but to abandon my principles and get down on my knees and pray… not for me… but for her… and all those that loved her. I made the promises all desperate men make… the bargains… the pledges… for her… but to no avail… there was still nothing… no sign of recovery… no sign of hope… no sign of life… If there truly was a god… I was forsaken long before that moment…
As I watched her in that bed, my mind could not suppress the thought of how much she hated this. She never wanted to burden anyone… she felt a five minute out of the way stop on the way home from work to pick up a pizza was too much of a burden for anyone… I could only imagine how she felt about this. If she could see the worried and sad looks on all our friends and family… if she would know how much my heart was being completely torn out of my chest… she would have felt guilty. She always felt guilty… but she never was… that’s what made her truly special.
A honk would permeate the air often… a loud, abrupt honk that would send chills down your spine… it signified a cough… she coughed… a lot…. as the tubes bothered her throat and made her do so. Her forehead would wrinkle in obvious discomfort when she did this… The nurses would lie and say she isn’t in pain… but really what are they supposed to say… that she is in terrible discomfort and pain? The nurses’ lies are justifiable as the truth can do no good… but… despite their lies… I know what I see… she hates this… everything about this. She just wants to be let go. She just wants ME to let her go.
The doctors would stream in and out of the room daily… disgusting vultures more concerned about how her organs would be used and who would next occupy her bed rather than trying to do anything to comfort me or save her. They had the blackest souls I ever met… they were so eager to push me to give up… to just cut off the one person who ever made this life worth living. She was more than my love, more than my wife… she was the reason the sun shined in my world… the reason the birds chirped in the morning… the reason my lips could make a smile… the reason my voice was capable of laughing… the reason my blood was warm… and the reason I breathed. Black souls like theirs would never understand… their darkness could never be able to accept a soul of pure light like hers… they would never know what it was like to love to someone like that… so I almost can’t blame them for being so heartless. I felt sorry for them more than anything… although I would have loved to throw them out a window out every time I was pushed to make a final decision and give up hope.
Not that the ten days didn’t contain any hope … there was a fleeting moment once. The nurse moved her and her eyes opened wide. I jumped up and my tears of joy were coupled with a cautious smile as I looked into those beautiful big brown eyes and said “hi baby… hi baby… hi baby”. I remember feeling so happy… maybe… she would respond… maybe… my miracle occurred… maybe… not… there was nothing… no response… no life behind the eyes… no soul left in her… they were only opened eyes… with nothing but emptiness. She shut them only a few seconds after she opened them… and I would never see those beautiful brown eyes again. It was a moment I will never forget… the moment that made me realize she wasn’t coming back… the moment all hope was extinguished from me.
Eventually the lack of sleep and the exhaustion of endlessly crying caught up to me… my body was broken… my mind destroyed… my heart was missing… I had nothing left inside me. I was at wit’s end dreading what I had to do so I became nasty… would yell at anyone who tried to console me… would push away anyone who offered any words of hope. I could no longer tolerate anyone… I just needed to be alone with her… so I could figure out just why life would be worth living without her. Something to this day, a year later, I still can’t figure out.
A few more days passed and the doctors and nurses were getting more and more aggressive… There is only so long they would let this continue… only so long they would house a lost cause. I was brought inside a private room where the options were coldly laid out before me… put tubes directly into her throat hooked up to a breathing machine… and find a permanent care facility for her where she would spend the rest of her days comatose in this condition till her heart gives out and she dies. The most I could hope for was that she would open her eyes from time to time… but they would be the same lifeless eyes that have haunted me everyday since that fleeting moment of hope… Or… to let her go… to sign away her life… to remove the life support… to give up on her and our life together… and let her die. They all say you will never regret making a decision that is obviously the right choice… but they are wrong… the right choice can be regretted every single moment of every day. I don’t care what people tell you about how it was what she would have wanted… the guilt of signing off on your wife’s death… giving up on her… and on your dreams together… is a heavy burden that I still can’t figure out how to carry.
My decision was made and there was no turning back… I stood at the edge of her hospital bed, already regretting my choice. The nurses left the room and pulled the curtains and shut the doors. I would have one final moment alone with her to tell her every last thing on my mind. I told her I loved her... that I’ll miss her… I promised her I would never love anyone as much as I loved her and I would find a way to make her proud of what she made me. I asked her to keep watch over me… I would need an angel to watch out for me as living without her would no doubt let darkness creep back into my soul and lead to careless decisions and irrational acts. I asked for her forgiveness for all the mistakes I made with her… for all the stupid things I did and thoughtless things that I said that caused pointless arguments that seem so trivial now. My final words to her were simple, “when they pull the life support… just go… do not fight it… just pass peacefully and quickly. Your job is done here.” Through all the tubes and wires… I found my way to her head and I kissed her one last time… the last time my lips would ever touch hers… and said “good bye… I love you… always and forever.”
“good bye… I love you… always and forever.”
For the ten days I sat in that hospital room… the machine attached to her never stopped beeping… it somehow gave me an odd reassurance that she was still alive. This beeping became part of my being… every change, every different sound registered immediately in my head as normal or not. I could put my head down on the side of the bed and close my eyes while holding her hand knowing exactly what was happening just by the sound of the beeps. The beeps were comforting but at the same time disheartening… sustaining her life but siphoning mine away… Every beep… a dagger to my heart… every time…
She was confined tightly to her hospital bed… her body was motionless… Countless tubes adorned her mouth… blood was stained on the beautiful porcelain skin on her cheek… her long thick red hair… once so flowing and enthralling was reduced to a tangled nest… unwashed for days… stained in blood, sweat… and my own tears. She would have never liked this… laying there… looking like this. She cared about her hair… her skin… how she was perceived. She had the gentlest soul but never wanted to appear helpless. But there she was… helpless… clinging to a fragment of life. Helpless was a feeling I knew well… for the ten days… I could do nothing to help… I could only watch her… and hope… for a miracle. But no matter how she looked… she was always the most beautiful woman in the world to me… and that no matter what was said to me, I never gave up hoping for a miracle…
I became obsessed with watching the numbers on the monitor. They would fluctuate but never in a good way…. never in a way that would promote the slightest bit of hope. My tear stained eyes would stare endlessly at the bags of sedation hug at the hospital bed’s side. As they would dissipate… they too would beep… louder and louder and louder… till a nurse would come in and hit a button…. It seemed like an eternity for them to come in… More beeps… more daggers… more tears.
I spoke to her often… searching… hoping… for some sign of acknowledgement. I tried to talk to her like there was nothing wrong…. like this was some sort of temporary set back that we would laugh about in a few weeks. I’m sure the shaking in my voice betrayed me but I kept the façade up and kept talking to her. I told her how much I loved her. How much I needed her. How much she changed me. I sang to her songs about love… about loss… and about how much she meant to me. I shared stories and the support others had shared with me… every email… every text message… every facebook post people sent to me were read to her. I just wanted her to hear how loved she was. She spent her entire existence not realizing how much she meant to be people. In all honesty aside form me, her family and a few friends… she thought the world didn’t understand her… didn’t want her… didn’t love her. I was thinking maybe it would wake her up… to realize how much she would be missed by so many besides me. I know that she heard them… I would see tears form in the corner of her eyes when I read them. I know they touched her heart. I can never thank everyone enough for that.
Over time, my hope started to fade. I found myself in the hospital bathroom, staring in the mirror often. The few days of no sleep aged me… the bags under my bloodshot eyes were black and prevalent. I was desperate… I had no other choice and no other option… but to abandon my principles and get down on my knees and pray… not for me… but for her… and all those that loved her. I made the promises all desperate men make… the bargains… the pledges… for her… but to no avail… there was still nothing… no sign of recovery… no sign of hope… no sign of life… If there truly was a god… I was forsaken long before that moment…
As I watched her in that bed, my mind could not suppress the thought of how much she hated this. She never wanted to burden anyone… she felt a five minute out of the way stop on the way home from work to pick up a pizza was too much of a burden for anyone… I could only imagine how she felt about this. If she could see the worried and sad looks on all our friends and family… if she would know how much my heart was being completely torn out of my chest… she would have felt guilty. She always felt guilty… but she never was… that’s what made her truly special.
A honk would permeate the air often… a loud, abrupt honk that would send chills down your spine… it signified a cough… she coughed… a lot…. as the tubes bothered her throat and made her do so. Her forehead would wrinkle in obvious discomfort when she did this… The nurses would lie and say she isn’t in pain… but really what are they supposed to say… that she is in terrible discomfort and pain? The nurses’ lies are justifiable as the truth can do no good… but… despite their lies… I know what I see… she hates this… everything about this. She just wants to be let go. She just wants ME to let her go.
The doctors would stream in and out of the room daily… disgusting vultures more concerned about how her organs would be used and who would next occupy her bed rather than trying to do anything to comfort me or save her. They had the blackest souls I ever met… they were so eager to push me to give up… to just cut off the one person who ever made this life worth living. She was more than my love, more than my wife… she was the reason the sun shined in my world… the reason the birds chirped in the morning… the reason my lips could make a smile… the reason my voice was capable of laughing… the reason my blood was warm… and the reason I breathed. Black souls like theirs would never understand… their darkness could never be able to accept a soul of pure light like hers… they would never know what it was like to love to someone like that… so I almost can’t blame them for being so heartless. I felt sorry for them more than anything… although I would have loved to throw them out a window out every time I was pushed to make a final decision and give up hope.
Not that the ten days didn’t contain any hope … there was a fleeting moment once. The nurse moved her and her eyes opened wide. I jumped up and my tears of joy were coupled with a cautious smile as I looked into those beautiful big brown eyes and said “hi baby… hi baby… hi baby”. I remember feeling so happy… maybe… she would respond… maybe… my miracle occurred… maybe… not… there was nothing… no response… no life behind the eyes… no soul left in her… they were only opened eyes… with nothing but emptiness. She shut them only a few seconds after she opened them… and I would never see those beautiful brown eyes again. It was a moment I will never forget… the moment that made me realize she wasn’t coming back… the moment all hope was extinguished from me.
Eventually the lack of sleep and the exhaustion of endlessly crying caught up to me… my body was broken… my mind destroyed… my heart was missing… I had nothing left inside me. I was at wit’s end dreading what I had to do so I became nasty… would yell at anyone who tried to console me… would push away anyone who offered any words of hope. I could no longer tolerate anyone… I just needed to be alone with her… so I could figure out just why life would be worth living without her. Something to this day, a year later, I still can’t figure out.
A few more days passed and the doctors and nurses were getting more and more aggressive… There is only so long they would let this continue… only so long they would house a lost cause. I was brought inside a private room where the options were coldly laid out before me… put tubes directly into her throat hooked up to a breathing machine… and find a permanent care facility for her where she would spend the rest of her days comatose in this condition till her heart gives out and she dies. The most I could hope for was that she would open her eyes from time to time… but they would be the same lifeless eyes that have haunted me everyday since that fleeting moment of hope… Or… to let her go… to sign away her life… to remove the life support… to give up on her and our life together… and let her die. They all say you will never regret making a decision that is obviously the right choice… but they are wrong… the right choice can be regretted every single moment of every day. I don’t care what people tell you about how it was what she would have wanted… the guilt of signing off on your wife’s death… giving up on her… and on your dreams together… is a heavy burden that I still can’t figure out how to carry.
My decision was made and there was no turning back… I stood at the edge of her hospital bed, already regretting my choice. The nurses left the room and pulled the curtains and shut the doors. I would have one final moment alone with her to tell her every last thing on my mind. I told her I loved her... that I’ll miss her… I promised her I would never love anyone as much as I loved her and I would find a way to make her proud of what she made me. I asked her to keep watch over me… I would need an angel to watch out for me as living without her would no doubt let darkness creep back into my soul and lead to careless decisions and irrational acts. I asked for her forgiveness for all the mistakes I made with her… for all the stupid things I did and thoughtless things that I said that caused pointless arguments that seem so trivial now. My final words to her were simple, “when they pull the life support… just go… do not fight it… just pass peacefully and quickly. Your job is done here.” Through all the tubes and wires… I found my way to her head and I kissed her one last time… the last time my lips would ever touch hers… and said “good bye… I love you… always and forever.”
October 4, 2012
The Empty House
This morning when I stopped for coffee on my way to work, I happened to see the the man who lived next door to us when I was growing up. In the course of our conversation, it came up that he is trying to buy my old house, as it's been abandoned. Abandoned. Walked away from. I drive by the house every now and again and over the last year or so have wondered if anyone was actually living there anymore. It was always kind of overgrown and difficult to spot through the leaves but it's gotten progressively "woodsier" around the house and driveway, which is why I asked if it was inhabited anymore. I know it's not the first house to be abandoned - especially in this day and age. And I'm not about to go on a tear about foreclosures and the state of the economy or anything of the sort. It's sort of sad, isn't it, when you think about the place you called home as a child now sitting lonely and forgotten? Nevermind that the people who moved in after you probably changed a bunch of things, the outer shell was still that house, the yard had still been part of home. I was four years old in that house. I disappeared in the grass when my parents first looked at it because the grass was so tall. My brother and sister were infants in that house. Heather learned to walk in that house. Michael scooted around the living room there. We had awful rugs - punk ass orange and mustard yellow in the bedrooms. There were mustard appliances. I blew the door off the microwave there by trying to bake chocolate chip cookies in a metal pan. I got my finger stuck in an electric mixter's beaters. We went sledding down the driveway, sometimes crashing into bushes. I managed to knock myself out on Uncle Ned's muffler when my sled went under his car. Dad found a nest of mice in the first shed we had. I had my rabbit in his hutch outside. I played in the runoff stream on the side of our property and tried to find treasure. I played in the orchards and picked raspberries. We had the only mulberry tree left on Mulberry Lane until the town cut it down. Dad tried to put together our swingset and one of the poles fell on his leg and cut it wide open. I burned my kneecaps on the exhaust pipes of his motorcycle there. I had bunk beds there and sleepovers and roasted marshmallows in mayonnaise jars and plastered my walls and ceiling with posters and pages ripped from magazines. I made my first attempts at writing a book in that house. We had Night of the Living Bands that Suck in that house and listened to Billy Ray Cyrus on my mom's stereo. I played Barbies and Nintendo and put Pledge on the floor to see the dog slip, which was funny until my mom slipped instead. Well, it wasn't funny to her.
That house provided the venue for my valuable lesson about the physics of flinging ice cream cake into a spinning ceiling fan. It introduced me to the absolute terror of a "crawlspace" where I was convinced if I went three inches into it, I would end up with a nest of spiders in my hair.
My sister got suspended in that house for flipping off the bus driver. I wished I'd flipped her off in my day. The rotary phone in the kitchen had a cord on it that would stretch all the way to my bedroom at the opposite end of the house, where I would talk to my boyfriend all night long. Do you know how hard it is to silently dial a rotary phone? Next to impossible, but I mastered it.
There are a million more things I remember about that house and some of them feel as though they happened yesterday. I wonder if there is still writing on the inside of the cabinet doors in the hallway by the bathroom. I wonder if any of the impressions of the Place family are still there. I don't know if I should hope if it gets torn down or not. While there are a lot of bad memories in that house, there are a lot of good ones, too. That house may have lost all of its traces of us....but we will never lose our memories of it.
That house provided the venue for my valuable lesson about the physics of flinging ice cream cake into a spinning ceiling fan. It introduced me to the absolute terror of a "crawlspace" where I was convinced if I went three inches into it, I would end up with a nest of spiders in my hair.
My sister got suspended in that house for flipping off the bus driver. I wished I'd flipped her off in my day. The rotary phone in the kitchen had a cord on it that would stretch all the way to my bedroom at the opposite end of the house, where I would talk to my boyfriend all night long. Do you know how hard it is to silently dial a rotary phone? Next to impossible, but I mastered it.
There are a million more things I remember about that house and some of them feel as though they happened yesterday. I wonder if there is still writing on the inside of the cabinet doors in the hallway by the bathroom. I wonder if any of the impressions of the Place family are still there. I don't know if I should hope if it gets torn down or not. While there are a lot of bad memories in that house, there are a lot of good ones, too. That house may have lost all of its traces of us....but we will never lose our memories of it.
December 31, 2011
Bidding Goodbye to 2011
There are people who get caught up in the sentimentality or perceived deeper meaning of New Year's, that when the clock strikes midnight, the world changes and the slate gets wiped clean.
I'm not one of those people.
What I am, though, is perhaps a mixture of believing and not.
There are those who are always eager to sweep the current year behind them, convinced that this year has been the worst of their lives, and cannot wait to usher in the new in all its promise.
I'm not one of those people either.
Each year of our lives has its own trials and conflict and sadness and loss and disappointment. We suffer hardship every year but there are also good things that happen as well.
My best friend told me the other day that amidst all of the bad, there is also the good. But the good is in moments which seem fleeting, like laughing your face off at someone acting ridiculous or singing your heart out to a song that moves you or seeing the look of wonder on a child's face. The bad, however, is so much easier to recall, to string together in a larger tapestry. It's easier to focus on those things as we move forward to restarting the calendar for the next year to begin.
Lately it's been easier for me to see the negatives instead of the positives, focus on the sadness instead of on the blessings I've received this year. I'm no stranger to struggling with depression, it's been a presence in my life almost as long as I can remember and lately, it's been a bitch to bring myself to get out of bed a lot of the time.
As I've read the wishes of people on Facebook today, offering up their words to the world, wishing them a Happy New Year, it gave me pause about all the things that have happened during 2011. And many of them were truly wonderful things. Those are the events I must concentrate on.
A friend sent me an email this week about deciding on my "word" for 2012. A word to be my theme, my talisman for the year. A word to cling to when I do find myself struggling. A word to carry me through the days that are harder. I scoffed at the idea, most of those self-help things just make me feel stupid. What word could I possibly choose for the course of a year, for a period of time that I have no way to anticipate what its days will bring?
I chose one today.
Hope.
I chose it for many reasons. I chose it because of the wonderful things I've read from To Write Love on Her Arms, an organization that inspires me, which speaks to me on my own struggle with depression. Because hope is real. I chose it because of people who surround me; people whose strength is also an inspiration. People who, despite the odds, recover and get up and fight the good fight no matter what is thrown at them. People who are stronger than I could hope to be. People who hold me up when all I want to do is fall down.
I've learned so much this past year and I don't want to go into a new year forgetting those lessons.
My sister has taught me about perseverance. About always doing your best for your family.
My husband has taught me about stability, of quiet reserve. Of being my roots.
My son has taught me about wonder and innocence.
Chrissy has taught me about kindness. That friends are found in the unlikeliest of places sometimes.
Jeff has taught me about determination.
Shayne has taught me that sometimes we all need to ask for help, even when it's the last thing we want to do.
Julie has taught me about believing in your dreams. That if you work hard enough for it, you can achieve what you want most.
Lisa has taught me about endurance.
Ken has taught me about strength of will and defying the odds in his amazing recovery from an injury to which we thought we'd lose him.
Jackie has taught me about friends, about accepting and loving someone without judgment. About loyalty and love in standing by Ken and not accepting any outcome other than the ideal - and getting that outcome. About opening your home and your heart to people you haven't known all that long.
Pri has taught me that you can influence people - in a good way - without intending to.
Amber has taught me that my words and thoughts can inspire people. That the things I say get through. That I can reach someone more than half my age. She and the other students in Creative Writing Club have taught me that being young doesn't mean you don't have something important to say and that the rest of us should listen.
Mary has taught me about the endurance of friendship. That 15 years can go by without seeing one another but when you do, it's like picking up your favorite book and the story is the same as it was the last time you read it and it's just as wonderful as it was all those years ago. That old friends are some of the best friends, that they will be there when you need them most.
Emilie has taught me about determination. And that it's okay to not know precisely what you want at any given moment. That it's better to weigh your decisions before acting rashly and making the wrong one.
Jes has taught me about resilience, of the importance of family and protecting yourself and those you love. About absolute bravery. About being an outstanding mother. About true grace under fire.
Patrick has taught me about courage born of fear. He has taught me that you keep fighting, even when you're down. He's taught me to never give up. He's taught me that no matter how broken inside I may feel, that person is still capable of good things. He's taught me about being a mirror. He's taught me that the smallest gesture can be enormous to someone else, from the lyrics to a song to stretching out your hand to help. He's taught me about acceptance, about being gentle on myself. About believing in someone, about holding people accountable without judgment. About faith. Together, we've learned that so long as you've got someone on your side, shoulder to shoulder, you can conquer anything.
With all of these lessons fresh in my head, I will bid goodbye to 2011 on good terms, with acceptance, and will look to 2012 with eyes of hope and a heart ready to accept what will come in the days ahead. I will hold my head high. I will accept the challenge of a new year. I look to the new year with an unwavering resolve. Tonight, we are all alive to welcome in a new year and that is a blessing and something to be thankful for in and of itself. That is not lost on me.
So in those moments when I feel I have little else, I will have hope.
I'm not one of those people.
What I am, though, is perhaps a mixture of believing and not.
There are those who are always eager to sweep the current year behind them, convinced that this year has been the worst of their lives, and cannot wait to usher in the new in all its promise.
I'm not one of those people either.
Each year of our lives has its own trials and conflict and sadness and loss and disappointment. We suffer hardship every year but there are also good things that happen as well.
My best friend told me the other day that amidst all of the bad, there is also the good. But the good is in moments which seem fleeting, like laughing your face off at someone acting ridiculous or singing your heart out to a song that moves you or seeing the look of wonder on a child's face. The bad, however, is so much easier to recall, to string together in a larger tapestry. It's easier to focus on those things as we move forward to restarting the calendar for the next year to begin.
Lately it's been easier for me to see the negatives instead of the positives, focus on the sadness instead of on the blessings I've received this year. I'm no stranger to struggling with depression, it's been a presence in my life almost as long as I can remember and lately, it's been a bitch to bring myself to get out of bed a lot of the time.
As I've read the wishes of people on Facebook today, offering up their words to the world, wishing them a Happy New Year, it gave me pause about all the things that have happened during 2011. And many of them were truly wonderful things. Those are the events I must concentrate on.
A friend sent me an email this week about deciding on my "word" for 2012. A word to be my theme, my talisman for the year. A word to cling to when I do find myself struggling. A word to carry me through the days that are harder. I scoffed at the idea, most of those self-help things just make me feel stupid. What word could I possibly choose for the course of a year, for a period of time that I have no way to anticipate what its days will bring?
I chose one today.
Hope.
I chose it for many reasons. I chose it because of the wonderful things I've read from To Write Love on Her Arms, an organization that inspires me, which speaks to me on my own struggle with depression. Because hope is real. I chose it because of people who surround me; people whose strength is also an inspiration. People who, despite the odds, recover and get up and fight the good fight no matter what is thrown at them. People who are stronger than I could hope to be. People who hold me up when all I want to do is fall down.
I've learned so much this past year and I don't want to go into a new year forgetting those lessons.
My sister has taught me about perseverance. About always doing your best for your family.
My husband has taught me about stability, of quiet reserve. Of being my roots.
My son has taught me about wonder and innocence.
Chrissy has taught me about kindness. That friends are found in the unlikeliest of places sometimes.
Jeff has taught me about determination.
Shayne has taught me that sometimes we all need to ask for help, even when it's the last thing we want to do.
Julie has taught me about believing in your dreams. That if you work hard enough for it, you can achieve what you want most.
Lisa has taught me about endurance.
Ken has taught me about strength of will and defying the odds in his amazing recovery from an injury to which we thought we'd lose him.
Jackie has taught me about friends, about accepting and loving someone without judgment. About loyalty and love in standing by Ken and not accepting any outcome other than the ideal - and getting that outcome. About opening your home and your heart to people you haven't known all that long.
Pri has taught me that you can influence people - in a good way - without intending to.
Amber has taught me that my words and thoughts can inspire people. That the things I say get through. That I can reach someone more than half my age. She and the other students in Creative Writing Club have taught me that being young doesn't mean you don't have something important to say and that the rest of us should listen.
Mary has taught me about the endurance of friendship. That 15 years can go by without seeing one another but when you do, it's like picking up your favorite book and the story is the same as it was the last time you read it and it's just as wonderful as it was all those years ago. That old friends are some of the best friends, that they will be there when you need them most.
Emilie has taught me about determination. And that it's okay to not know precisely what you want at any given moment. That it's better to weigh your decisions before acting rashly and making the wrong one.
Jes has taught me about resilience, of the importance of family and protecting yourself and those you love. About absolute bravery. About being an outstanding mother. About true grace under fire.
Patrick has taught me about courage born of fear. He has taught me that you keep fighting, even when you're down. He's taught me to never give up. He's taught me that no matter how broken inside I may feel, that person is still capable of good things. He's taught me about being a mirror. He's taught me that the smallest gesture can be enormous to someone else, from the lyrics to a song to stretching out your hand to help. He's taught me about acceptance, about being gentle on myself. About believing in someone, about holding people accountable without judgment. About faith. Together, we've learned that so long as you've got someone on your side, shoulder to shoulder, you can conquer anything.
With all of these lessons fresh in my head, I will bid goodbye to 2011 on good terms, with acceptance, and will look to 2012 with eyes of hope and a heart ready to accept what will come in the days ahead. I will hold my head high. I will accept the challenge of a new year. I look to the new year with an unwavering resolve. Tonight, we are all alive to welcome in a new year and that is a blessing and something to be thankful for in and of itself. That is not lost on me.
So in those moments when I feel I have little else, I will have hope.
November 24, 2011
Thanksgiving Indeed
Today is Thanksgiving and while we're all eating our turkey and counting our blessings, I wanted to take a few minutes while the turkey is roasting, the family is making their way over and the boy is attempting to nap to acknowledge my own blessings.
This year, much like many others, has had its ups and downs. Every year has its own ebb and flow of the good and the bad. I think often I cannot wait by this time to be rid of each year to start fresh. Instead of concentrating on the negative, I'd like to look at the positives as I try to be more positive.
This year marked the opportunity I was given to talk to the students at two high schools about my book. It has truly been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I love my writing but I love helping more. I've talked about this before, but teenagers are scary (Thank you, My Chemical Romance, for putting that notion into song) and somehow I managed to reach a few. This morning I received a text from one student (Mini Me!) wishing me a happy Thanksgiving and this afternoon I received an email from another student who thanked me for the advice I've given her, without knowing it, through my blogs. I burst into tears when I read that. Thank all of you - students and faculty - for allowing me into your days, your lives, your hearts.
My uncle posted today on Facebook that he was thankful for his nieces and nephews - that without us, he wouldn't be here. I can't conceive of a world without him in it and I'm thankful every day that he's part of our lives.
I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful for their support, their love, their humor and the sense of "home" that they offer me. Without them as my foundation, I'd wash away.
I'm thankful for my son, for all he teaches me every day. Kindness and patience and wonder and amazement. I'm thankful for each day I'm granted to spend with him, to raise him.
This year I almost lost a very dear friend. There have been many dark days for him but as they've gone by, he and I have both realized that brighter ones are ahead. I've learned that when someone is at their worst, they need you at your best. I've tried very hard to be that. I've learned never to give up on someone, to have hope that they can do better, be better. He hasn't disappointed me in that.
I've learned and am thankful to know that there will never be a day when there are no more things to learn, even about myself.
I'm thankful to have my second career in writing, to have been given the gift to share my words with others, no matter how frightening that is. I'm thankful for the unending support of people I never would have imagined would offer it.
I'm thankful for the new friends I've made this year and the way they've changed me.
When you stop to think of all the positives, change your perspective a little, things stop seeming so dreary. It shouldn't take a holiday from work to make me see these things, but perhaps now that I have, I can continue the idea of Thanksgiving into every day.
This year, much like many others, has had its ups and downs. Every year has its own ebb and flow of the good and the bad. I think often I cannot wait by this time to be rid of each year to start fresh. Instead of concentrating on the negative, I'd like to look at the positives as I try to be more positive.
This year marked the opportunity I was given to talk to the students at two high schools about my book. It has truly been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I love my writing but I love helping more. I've talked about this before, but teenagers are scary (Thank you, My Chemical Romance, for putting that notion into song) and somehow I managed to reach a few. This morning I received a text from one student (Mini Me!) wishing me a happy Thanksgiving and this afternoon I received an email from another student who thanked me for the advice I've given her, without knowing it, through my blogs. I burst into tears when I read that. Thank all of you - students and faculty - for allowing me into your days, your lives, your hearts.
My uncle posted today on Facebook that he was thankful for his nieces and nephews - that without us, he wouldn't be here. I can't conceive of a world without him in it and I'm thankful every day that he's part of our lives.
I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful for their support, their love, their humor and the sense of "home" that they offer me. Without them as my foundation, I'd wash away.
I'm thankful for my son, for all he teaches me every day. Kindness and patience and wonder and amazement. I'm thankful for each day I'm granted to spend with him, to raise him.
This year I almost lost a very dear friend. There have been many dark days for him but as they've gone by, he and I have both realized that brighter ones are ahead. I've learned that when someone is at their worst, they need you at your best. I've tried very hard to be that. I've learned never to give up on someone, to have hope that they can do better, be better. He hasn't disappointed me in that.
I've learned and am thankful to know that there will never be a day when there are no more things to learn, even about myself.
I'm thankful to have my second career in writing, to have been given the gift to share my words with others, no matter how frightening that is. I'm thankful for the unending support of people I never would have imagined would offer it.
I'm thankful for the new friends I've made this year and the way they've changed me.
When you stop to think of all the positives, change your perspective a little, things stop seeming so dreary. It shouldn't take a holiday from work to make me see these things, but perhaps now that I have, I can continue the idea of Thanksgiving into every day.
November 9, 2011
The Other Side of the Door
And this is the companion piece for yesterday's post...
The other side of the door….
Days of loneliness. I suppose the days aren't nearly as bad as the nights are. The days I've always spent immersed in work. There are never enough minutes or seconds or hours to complete everything, to ponder and review the things I need to look at for the future, to plan, to scheme. The nights are worse.
It's the time I used to spend with him.
Nights spent talking about our lives, our plans together. Spent laughing at television. Spent cuddling at the couch. Furtive, coy glances at one another over dinner. Retelling stories of our twenty year history, years spent together and apart.
It's the nights I dread the most. There's this hole in my life that I can't seem to fill. Now, instead of preparing dinner with him in my kitchen, each doing our own task and with the occasional slap of the dish towel on my rear end, I microwave leftovers or eat cheese and crackers. I can't remember the last time I actually tasted the food I ate.
I've spent days trying to make sense of the worst betrayal I've ever felt. I feel as though I've been torn inside and I can't heal.
Every moment spent idle has been filled with thoughts and memories of him. The mussed look of his hair in the morning. The stubble on his cheeks when he hasn't shaved in a day. The way he spends what seems like days brushing his teeth. They way he looks when his glasses slip too far down the bridge of his nose.
For every good thought or memory, there is its opposite. There is the sound of his voice coming clean about relapsing. Coming clean about the sanctuary he sought in the arms of another. The arms of another when so much time had been spent telling me of how my arms were all he'd ever need, ever want.
What was real and what was a lie? How do you come back from that?
I spent so many years longing for the right time, longing for the day when we could be together. So many years dreaming of what it would be like, to finally be his woman and he my man. We'd spent an almost idyllic year and a half since we'd reconnected. The fairy tale we'd both imagined had seemingly come true. Not without cost, not without baggage. But happy nonetheless.
Or so I'd thought.
I wasn't so naïve that I was unaware of his demons, his past…even his present. I knew the things that haunted his eyes, the fear I could see in those eyes when he thought it was hooded and hidden from me. I was never ignorant. I entreated him to open up to me, to confide in me.
To trust me.
I fought to be where I had been. In one day, in one conversation, it was all ripped from me.
How do you look at yourself in the mirror when you have been your most honest, your most giving, your most loving…when you've done everything in your power to make someone feel loved, feel worthy and they spat all your words, your pure emotions back in your face? How do you heal from a wound that reopens every time you breathe?
He wants to talk to me. He wants to explain. How can I find it in myself to listen?
Everything in life is a risk. He was a risk. I knew there were no guarantees. I signed on for the ride. I signed the disclaimer, giving my heart to a junkie. A damaged junkie, at that.
But this…this was so much worse.
How do you live with yourself knowing your love, your care wasn't enough? How do you live knowing you weren't enough for the one you loved with a passion, an intensity, a purity that you'd never experienced before in your life?
How do I go on from this? How do I recreate my life around this hole?
There's a knock at my door. It's beyond late. No idea who would be coming by at this hour. I'm in face cream and pajama bottoms and my fluffiest socks. Anything to try for some comfort and solace. I mute the television and head to the front door.
I glance out the peephole, thinking maybe someone has the wrong door.
They don't.
It's him.
Why?
I'm frozen in place. I can't speak, can't move. I stand there, stupidly. I've gone "tharn" like the rabbits in Watership Down.
"I know you're there," I hear him say. His voice sounds so raw, so desperate, so earnest. I look again out the peephole. His face is wan, gray. The bags underneath his eyes are pronounced. My heart breaks just a little more as I stare, transfixed. He looks terrible. He looks as destroyed as my insides feel.
The words pour out of him, a slow trickle at first and then he gains his momentum. He is trying so hard. So, so hard.
Part of me…part of me is torn. Part of me wants to hear his explanation, his reasoning. His sorrow. His request for forgiveness. Here, in short bursts, are the truths I've been looking for. Here are the words that are the root of the situation. The hurt, the fear, the all encompassing sorrow he has carried in his heart every day of his life. He is breaking my heart. Again.
My hand flies to my mouth to stifle a sob. I feel the tears, hot and angry and so sad as they run down my cheeks. I see him in my head as the little boy he once was, the little boy who lost his innocence too early. The little boy who no one protected. The little boy who tried so hard to keep the appearance of normalcy. The little boy who wanted to be good, to be loved. To have someone hold him and tell him all was right with the world and he was perfect. To sing him to sleep. Inside he is still that little boy.
He is the definition of failure to thrive. He's existed. And existence is not living. It's a sorry excuse. It's the wax figure of a real person.
My chest hitches. I want to cry. I want to yell. I want to hit him. Repeatedly.
His words…there is so much in them, so much behind them and not said. But how can I forgive this? How do I trust again?
All of life is a risk, I remind myself.
All he's ever wanted was someone to believe in him, I argue with myself.
I believed in him and he betrayed me, my head says.
I don't think I can turn my back, my heart says.
He has a problem. I know that. Can I walk away knowing that? I may never allow him back into my heart the same way, but can I walk away knowing what could happen if I shut him out? If I become another in the tally line of those who gave up on him? Who contributed to those feelings of inadequacy, of failure that he carries?
I can't. I can't walk away. I know he loves me. I know he's flawed. I know he needs help.
I can offer the first gesture. I can try again.
It is no guarantee of the rest of our lives, no storybook. But it is a start. It is faith. It is knowing the soul I've seen inside his eyes, his heart, beyond the grave errors he has made. I refuse to give up on that man. Not yet.
I hear him turning to leave.
Drawing in one last breath and holding it within my chest, I throw caution to the wind and put my heart on the line and open the door.
Sometimes, we just have to follow our hearts and pray they don't lead us astray. I've invested too much to give up yet.
I stand aside to allow him entry - into my home and back into my heart.
The other side of the door….
Days of loneliness. I suppose the days aren't nearly as bad as the nights are. The days I've always spent immersed in work. There are never enough minutes or seconds or hours to complete everything, to ponder and review the things I need to look at for the future, to plan, to scheme. The nights are worse.
It's the time I used to spend with him.
Nights spent talking about our lives, our plans together. Spent laughing at television. Spent cuddling at the couch. Furtive, coy glances at one another over dinner. Retelling stories of our twenty year history, years spent together and apart.
It's the nights I dread the most. There's this hole in my life that I can't seem to fill. Now, instead of preparing dinner with him in my kitchen, each doing our own task and with the occasional slap of the dish towel on my rear end, I microwave leftovers or eat cheese and crackers. I can't remember the last time I actually tasted the food I ate.
I've spent days trying to make sense of the worst betrayal I've ever felt. I feel as though I've been torn inside and I can't heal.
Every moment spent idle has been filled with thoughts and memories of him. The mussed look of his hair in the morning. The stubble on his cheeks when he hasn't shaved in a day. The way he spends what seems like days brushing his teeth. They way he looks when his glasses slip too far down the bridge of his nose.
For every good thought or memory, there is its opposite. There is the sound of his voice coming clean about relapsing. Coming clean about the sanctuary he sought in the arms of another. The arms of another when so much time had been spent telling me of how my arms were all he'd ever need, ever want.
What was real and what was a lie? How do you come back from that?
I spent so many years longing for the right time, longing for the day when we could be together. So many years dreaming of what it would be like, to finally be his woman and he my man. We'd spent an almost idyllic year and a half since we'd reconnected. The fairy tale we'd both imagined had seemingly come true. Not without cost, not without baggage. But happy nonetheless.
Or so I'd thought.
I wasn't so naïve that I was unaware of his demons, his past…even his present. I knew the things that haunted his eyes, the fear I could see in those eyes when he thought it was hooded and hidden from me. I was never ignorant. I entreated him to open up to me, to confide in me.
To trust me.
I fought to be where I had been. In one day, in one conversation, it was all ripped from me.
How do you look at yourself in the mirror when you have been your most honest, your most giving, your most loving…when you've done everything in your power to make someone feel loved, feel worthy and they spat all your words, your pure emotions back in your face? How do you heal from a wound that reopens every time you breathe?
He wants to talk to me. He wants to explain. How can I find it in myself to listen?
Everything in life is a risk. He was a risk. I knew there were no guarantees. I signed on for the ride. I signed the disclaimer, giving my heart to a junkie. A damaged junkie, at that.
But this…this was so much worse.
How do you live with yourself knowing your love, your care wasn't enough? How do you live knowing you weren't enough for the one you loved with a passion, an intensity, a purity that you'd never experienced before in your life?
How do I go on from this? How do I recreate my life around this hole?
There's a knock at my door. It's beyond late. No idea who would be coming by at this hour. I'm in face cream and pajama bottoms and my fluffiest socks. Anything to try for some comfort and solace. I mute the television and head to the front door.
I glance out the peephole, thinking maybe someone has the wrong door.
They don't.
It's him.
Why?
I'm frozen in place. I can't speak, can't move. I stand there, stupidly. I've gone "tharn" like the rabbits in Watership Down.
"I know you're there," I hear him say. His voice sounds so raw, so desperate, so earnest. I look again out the peephole. His face is wan, gray. The bags underneath his eyes are pronounced. My heart breaks just a little more as I stare, transfixed. He looks terrible. He looks as destroyed as my insides feel.
The words pour out of him, a slow trickle at first and then he gains his momentum. He is trying so hard. So, so hard.
Part of me…part of me is torn. Part of me wants to hear his explanation, his reasoning. His sorrow. His request for forgiveness. Here, in short bursts, are the truths I've been looking for. Here are the words that are the root of the situation. The hurt, the fear, the all encompassing sorrow he has carried in his heart every day of his life. He is breaking my heart. Again.
My hand flies to my mouth to stifle a sob. I feel the tears, hot and angry and so sad as they run down my cheeks. I see him in my head as the little boy he once was, the little boy who lost his innocence too early. The little boy who no one protected. The little boy who tried so hard to keep the appearance of normalcy. The little boy who wanted to be good, to be loved. To have someone hold him and tell him all was right with the world and he was perfect. To sing him to sleep. Inside he is still that little boy.
He is the definition of failure to thrive. He's existed. And existence is not living. It's a sorry excuse. It's the wax figure of a real person.
My chest hitches. I want to cry. I want to yell. I want to hit him. Repeatedly.
His words…there is so much in them, so much behind them and not said. But how can I forgive this? How do I trust again?
All of life is a risk, I remind myself.
All he's ever wanted was someone to believe in him, I argue with myself.
I believed in him and he betrayed me, my head says.
I don't think I can turn my back, my heart says.
He has a problem. I know that. Can I walk away knowing that? I may never allow him back into my heart the same way, but can I walk away knowing what could happen if I shut him out? If I become another in the tally line of those who gave up on him? Who contributed to those feelings of inadequacy, of failure that he carries?
I can't. I can't walk away. I know he loves me. I know he's flawed. I know he needs help.
I can offer the first gesture. I can try again.
It is no guarantee of the rest of our lives, no storybook. But it is a start. It is faith. It is knowing the soul I've seen inside his eyes, his heart, beyond the grave errors he has made. I refuse to give up on that man. Not yet.
I hear him turning to leave.
Drawing in one last breath and holding it within my chest, I throw caution to the wind and put my heart on the line and open the door.
Sometimes, we just have to follow our hearts and pray they don't lead us astray. I've invested too much to give up yet.
I stand aside to allow him entry - into my home and back into my heart.
