Drawing blanks: broken nose, mending heart.

That famous saying “We only hurt the ones we love” applies to my rapidly-growing Doberman puppy. Last night, I came home from a jog to be greeted by my overjoyed Mishka, who ran ahead into the house after giving me kisses and a rambunctious dog-dance. I bent down to untie my shoe, not knowing that in the next four seconds, I would find myself sitting on my kitchen floor, screaming hysterically. My little danger-dog ran back into the kitchen just as I stooped toward my shoe, and whammed his skull directly into my face, breaking my nose.

 

[This morning, 12-15 hours after the initial break. I look like an avatar.]

So here’s the part where the Story of My Life comes into play: on Saturday I have a modeling job at a very well-advertised, high-end charity ball. For the last month, I’ve been looking for modeling work, an agency to represent me, any work based strictly on my looks and my ability to walk in heels. I finally find one, and of course my nose gets broken. 

My default response to bad luck (and I’ve had my share of said bad luck for the last five years — must have broken a mirror in college while I was drunk) is to laugh in its face. Besides, at the moment, it kind of hurts to cry. And sneeze. And twitch my nose. And for some ungodly reason, chewing hurts right inside the bridge of my nose. 

 

Probably due to my relatively positive outlook on life in general, and my new year’s resolution this year to practice active gratefulness, I’ve dealt quite well with loss and destruction this year. To wit:

1) While I was in Ireland, I received an e-mail from a man who I  had considered a close friend, an artistic liaison, and a confidant. I can say with total certainty that it was a two-way street. We helped each other, picked up the phone when the other called, gave each other feedback, and supported each other when things were rough. In this e-mail, he told me, quite literally, to fuck off, and that I had brought nothing but harm to him, and that he never wanted to hear from me or see me again. I made a performance piece in which I documented making peace with his decision. Looking at the date of that video now, I realise it was two days before his birthday. 

2) I returned from Ireland in July to discover that my complex and troubled cat, Habibi, who had been mine for four years, had left ten days before my arrival home. Our relationship was always strange, because she’s a complicated animal, but I was the one human that understood her ways and loved her with her flaws. Having her leave was heartbreaking for me. Just last night, I dreamed she came home to me. My subconscious tortures me with my losses. 

3) Two weeks after I came home, the man I believed was the love of my life, the man I had written to almost every day while at my residency in Ireland, asked me for space, something that slowly turned into the dissolution of our relationship. When I am in crisis, I still think of calling him. It is hard to quit the person who had promised to love you unconditionally, especially when you are so hard to love and so full of complications. As I write this now, I delete his number from my phone, an excruciating decision that brings me to tears. 

4) I confronted my abuser from four years ago at a party. It’s a theme party, one which I have worked at for the last seven incarnations, and it is distinctly my turf. I have kept politely away from jazz clubs and things that are his, though he hardly deserves this kind of consideration from me. He was with his girlfriend, who likely has (well, had) no idea about the kinds of things he’s done. (And continues to do: four years after attacking me in an alleyway, he publicly slanders me at every available opportunity!) I made it a point to illuminate those things when I blocked the doorway with my body and intimidated him into leaving. I would never have been able to do it if my best friend Anna-Lena had not been there. Her unadulterated strength and self-confidence imbued in me the power to stand up for myself as a woman. It was a pretty amazing Lifetime-movie-moment. Unfortunately, because confrontations are just awful on my psyche, I laid awake with an ulcer the entire night. 

 

I didn’t realise the magnitude of the many losses and breakdowns I had suffered this year until just a week ago, driving in my car and thinking about all of it. Years ago I may have allowed this sort of thing to push me into a depression, but because I am getting gradually stronger, and more optimistic, and because I have internalised active gratefulness since January 1st, I have only taken today to make a catalogue of my failures. There are others, of course: my broken nose in the face of (no pun intended) actively seeking modeling opportunities, the man who stopped speaking to me because he fell in love with me and could not handle my emotional distance, and general financial and family woes that are ongoing. 

Much like the letter to J.A.C., which I burned in the backyard of Juddy’s house at dusk, I am writing these all down to make sense of them, and to make peace with them. The letter I burned verbalised my regret, but it also thanked God for allowing me the privilege of having J in my life for as long as I did. People stay in your life as long as necessary for your enrichment. Whether by their own hand or by Fate’s, they leave when it’s time. To wish for them to stay is human nature; our own selfishness craves as much love and support as we can possibly reap. 

Or maybe all this means is that when Mishka bashed his head into my face, he knocked something loose and I’m finally making sense of the world.