Speak.

In the weeks following my abusive relationship and the eradication of it, I’m regaining my sense of home. I only moved into this house at the end of May, but I worked so hard in the first weeks to make it feel like it had my thumbprint on it that friends of mine marveled at the transformation during my early July housewarming. “It looks like you’ve been living here for three years,” a friend remarked, and I beamed with pride at the observation.

I have wanted this space since I was 12 years old. I used to sit in my seventh grade homeroom class, and in English, next to my friend Tony Cocco. We talked together about how we both wanted our own homes, and drew out elaborate floor plans in the backs of our notebooks, discussing how we’d have a catwalk across the second floor, how we’d be housemates and have so many pets and it would be the perfect space for both of us. It’s ironic that I’m coming off of the disillusionment of a flawed relationship in my new home, considering how Tony Cocco and I ended our friendship in middle school — or rather, how he ended it. The popular girls in class had an issue with him being my friend — he was cool, I so clearly wasn’t — and picked on him until he was forced to distance himself from me in a very public way. I walked into class one day, before first period had started, and approached him to start a conversation, and I don’t even remember what was said, just that he was cold and rude. I might have asked him why he was acting strange. The next thing I knew, he slapped me across the face, hard, in front of everyone. I burst into tears. I don’t even remember, firsthand, the sensation of sobbing, I just remember the sound of it. If I close my eyes, to this day, at 29, I can hear the sound of my crying as though it had been someone else all along.

He tried to friend me on Facebook a few years ago. Might have been three years, might have been seven. There was a moment there, staring at his name on the screen, wherein I thought of messaging him and cutting him down verbally — I’m well-spoken and I can see everyone’s flaws, I am certainly capable of breaking someone’s spirit if I really want to — but in the end, I simply clicked decline and abandoned the matter forever. It isn’t in my nature to be so cruel. Maybe once upon a time, when I was more insecure, more angry, I was better at lashing out, but nowadays, I think back on the violence perpetrated against me by fragile, ego-driven, deeply sad people, and I remind myself that I am not like them. Not anymore.

 

My mom and her friends, who are basically like aunts to me, came over for dinner tonight. I went full Martha Stewart and made a pumpkin spice latte cake (even though I couldn’t get my whipped cream to, well, whip) and a slow cooker chicken breast recipe, lit scented candles in the bathroom, and made a Cesaria Evora Pandora station. On the back porch for a post-dessert cigarette, I told them about D.O. and what he did to me, the whole thing, how I’m going to court on Monday to attempt to extend the temporary PFA so he can’t come anywhere near me. Natasha said, Please be careful in your future dating, and my mom shrugged and said, How can she? There’s no way to tell anymore.

Regardless, I am adjusting slowly back to who I was before my trust was shattered. Yesterday, the universe sent me a gift. I’ve spent the last however many days needing Kevin and Meredith and the rest of my friends to carry me, since I was a foggy, emotional mess. Yesterday, all of that was turned on its ear. From the beginning of the day, up until the last few hours, I was granted the ability to be in service to everyone else. My coworker, my housemate, my mom and her friend visiting from Russia, even Rocky Votolato, who was performing at Club Cafe, all were in crisis in one form or another, and I was actually able to deliver and come through for everyone who needed me.

The highlight of my night was truly the Rocky Votolato situation — I came into the club early, like I always do, and began setting up the bar, when I overheard Rocky talking to Geno about how their only amp on tour was on the fritz and that he needed to make it into Lawrenceville before the start of the show to have it repaired. I dropped everything behind the bar and drove him across town to take care of it. In the middle of his performance that night, Rocky told the audience how I had helped him out, and that he had bought me a red rose, and could they pass it back to the bar. He dedicated the next song to me. I had to fight to hold back tears in front of the packed room.

The universe always provides, I am convinced: as soon as you learn to read the signs, it’s like watching the pieces of a puzzle fall into place. All of the anxiety and fear of the unknown drops away and you can take a breath again, because you see that every jumbled string will untangle at the end of the sequence, that God/the universe/fate provides. You aren’t alone. I know I’m not alone. And that’s why D failed. He worked so hard to manipulate me, to isolate me, he gas-lighted me in little ways for two months. But I never forgot that I wasn’t alone, and my truest friends never left me, not for a minute. I opened my mouth and I told them what was happening and they banded around me. My voice saved my life. The confidence to speak was a gift from the universe. Every step of the way, I was given someone’s hand to hold. Court on Monday will be nerve-wracking and heartrending, but I am less afraid knowing that I am only alone in the world if I choose to be. I am truly blessed.

Open thou my lips and my mouth shall declare thy praise. 

The year is dying.

The first hints of fall are drawing near. Yesterday, I stared out of the window of my back bedroom while talking to my mom on the phone and I noticed little dabs of yellow and orange in the lush foliage of the neighbours’ trees. This morning, coming off of an emotionally wrought night, I hung sheets to dry in the backyard. The winds were high and turned them into billowing sails of deep blue and purple. (Once, a reiki healer told me my aura was the colour of deep blue and amethyst.) I smelled the air: green, damp, humid.

I was ushered back into the memory of living above Mikey Connelly’s home in his mother-in-law suite. I would stand on the rusted metal landing outside of the kitchen door and stare into low forests of shrubs, limestone pavement; further out, ocean and moody grey skies. I was alone then, yet I don’t think I was aware of it. Surrounded by monsters and gods in an ancient land, cooking fresh-caught cod in the archaic kitchen for English friends, I was struck by the beauty in contrast: the banal and the divine.

Having just come out of a short-lived but abusive relationship, I’ve retreated into myself. My selfless, kind friend moved in with me to help me regain my sense of safety. He’s pushed out the toxicity and given me back my cocoon. When I’m not at work, I come home and rest in my sanctuary. This morning, I cleaned the entire house and put all of my ducks neatly into a row. Control in an unpredictable and callous world.

Outside I hear crows calling to each other. Winter will be here sooner than I could anticipate. The Indian summer is a trickster. Even so, I take off my shoes and feel last night’s rain on the grass, and let myself swim in memories.

 

Perfect fool.

We survive.

It’s all we can hope for. The world crashes down around us and relationships fall apart and people die and pets go missing and jobs are lost and we come apart at the seams, but somehow, somehow we sew ourselves back together, over and over again. Life finds a way. Living is all we know how to do.

I like to think I’ve crafted a pretty cozy life for myself. After years of struggling, I cobbled together an existence that includes a roof over my head, wheels under me to get me to a respectable job; I talk to my neighbours and text all day with friends and parents. I walk the dog, we play fetch, he whines too much and I tell him to go lie down, but at night he cries at the head of the bed and I lift the covers up so he can dive underneath and snuggle against my left side and I am content. I am happy.

Despite all this, things can go so terribly wrong so swiftly. (I’m stating the obvious, of course; that life is fragile and there is nothing I can do to make it less tenuous, less fleeting.) I can be having a benign conversation with my beau across the bar and in minutes, the tone can become truculent, the mood can go south and I can be standing, feeling utterly alone, over my sink with a piece of broken glass, trying to ignore the reality that no matter how far I’ve come I can return to square one in mere moments. All of the old habits, all of the old self-hatred and isolation, can come rushing back — a flash flood rising around my waist and threatening to drown me.

Yes, dear one. Life is fragile and there is no one to really trust, no one who won’t leave, who won’t lie or betray you, because people are imperfect by design. Call it original sin, call it human nature, but we are built to fail, to fall apart, to rise up just to come crashing down. We are the definition of planned obsolescence. Like our iPhones and our cars we are made to be outmoded, we are made to die, we are built to self-destruct after too many knocks, from being dropped too many times or from repeated crashing into walls. Your perfect olive skin, your lovely eyes, your strong hands and the furnace of your body heat — you will grow frail and old and cold and bitter. Yet I still love you for all that you are, and all that you will no longer be.

To love you is the definition of setting myself up to fail. You will die one day. You may die tomorrow. You will accuse me of duplicity. You will snap at me when you lack sleep, you will pick up your keys and storm out of the room when things come to a breaking point. We may have children. We may lose a child. Our mutual tragedies may cement us together or tear at the fabric of the soft, warm thing we’ve stitched together. I will cry too much, and you will call me names, and I will be cruel and withdraw with the ice of a thousand winters as retaliation, and you will say things like, “This is why I never trusted you,” and you words will be swords in my body. But I wouldn’t trade it.

We all know the worst case scenarios. We’ve played it over and over again in our minds, because we are masochistic and it gives us a sick satisfaction, like ripping open a blister or squeezing something we love a little too hard, until it cries out in pain. And so? What have we gained from worst case scenarios? How do we benefit when the ghosts of our selves howl in our ears, drowning out the present, drowning out the way we whisper I Love Yous to each other in the dark? Demons live everywhere. Short of building round rooms to eliminate the corners in which they hide, there is nothing to be done. Like spiders in the basement, we will wander into errant cobwebs every once in a while. You cannot control the webs that are built. You can only acknowledge them and brush yourself off and continue on your path.

Trust in another person, is by nature, naive and blind and stupid. But it is the first card of the Major Arcana, after all: it is beautiful to be a fool. Imagine, being unjaded by the joys and pains that you’ve lived a hundred times before. To love anew. To emerge from a chrysalis into a new love and believe, truly believe, that nothing will go wrong. We think we are strong because we cut ourselves off from others, we steel ourselves from past pains and competing histories and the wraiths of old lovers and dull hatred, but we are cowards for building walls. The human experience is to feel the spectrum of emotions and to love unabashedly, despite the ills of other people and their potentially cruel hearts.

I want to be brave. That is how you make love stay. With strength. With courage. With patience. So stay a while. Rest.