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. 

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.

 

Forgiveness.

I spent an unjustly large portion of my time, lost in my thoughts of loose ends and times that I hurt others. Unfinished stories, “I’m sorry”s never said, those cut into my heart and reduce my quality of life. It’s true that the longer you live, the more dirt and missteps snowball behind you. It’s rare that we achieve the Hollywood-movie redemption we feel we deserve, or at least crave in order to have a good night’s sleep for once.

Ten years ago, I lost my virginity to a man who loved me dearly. I was a few weeks shy of seventeen, and he was nineteen, and he moved from New Jersey to rent a place and find a job in my city in order to be with me. We were both spoiled, selfish children, ultimately, and the relationship became rocky before its inevitable and explosive death.

John moved back to New Jersey soon after, and I buried him in my mind, the relationship and my love a bitter regret and a source of great guilt and pain. For ten years, it festered, and eventually decayed, a dark wound left in its place, the ashy patch of skin formed by a spider bite that scars a little bit until it fades in the sun, mostly. Every time a “my first time” story came up or relationship pains ached, there it was, the memory of it in the back of my mind, until I forced myself to forget it again.

Last week, I was at the dog park with Mishka, my newly blond hair pinned up and tied with a bandanna, my eyes hidden behind big sunglasses. A couple came in with two small dogs, and as you do in a dog park, we stood over our pups as they said hello, made sure that they played nicely, and then launched into the usual series of questions, “What’s your dog’s name?” “What breed is she?” and recounted stories of their habits and moods. It must have been a full two minutes before I looked up at the man in that couple and realised who it was. My entire body went cold. It was John.

Inevitably, the panic set in. Is it him? He fucking hates me; he must not recognise me! I’ll just keep playing nice. Then, the doubt and incredulity. No, it can’t be him. What the hell is he doing in Pittsburgh? He called this the place where dreams go to die. But if he’s here… oh, he seems to have a nice girlfriend. But wait. Is it really him? It can’t possibly be. Why isn’t he acknowledging who I am?

I realised we were having a pleasant conversation and the mood was genuinely friendly and sweet, on both of our ends. So I resigned myself to it. Oh well, I thought. I can at least have a final memory of John as someone with whom I was once friendly, someone who I once laughed with, and who held me in a loving hug. He used to think I was a wonderful human being. I remembered my own part in the relationship — my sins, my anger — and realised I was no longer angry with him. Not even a little bit. Mostly I felt immense guilt at my mistakes. I was such a vindictive, selfish, moody brat who drove my boyfriend away, hurting him deeply in the process.

The park began to fill up and I turned to talk to a neighbour who had shown up, and when I turned again to see him, he and his girlfriend and dogs had gone.

For a few days I debated emailing him, or finding him on Facebook (we still have mutual friends), acknowledging that I saw him. A part of me was still convinced it was not, in fact, him, and emailing him would dredge up all kinds of terrible feelings and words, for no reason at all. So I left it alone.

Then he emailed me.

I clicked the message with hope, elation, fear, and panic. I forgot to breathe as I read the entire message. He told me he had moved to Pittsburgh in July with his girlfriend for school and had dreaded running into me on the street for months. It ended on a positive note. He wished me well. He had hoped not to have to face his nineteen-year-old self. In short, he had feared all of the same things I did. It had been easier at the time to pretend he didn’t know who I was.

We’re friends now. Ten years of guilt, shame, bitterness, and sadness — lifted like a dandelion seed blowing away in the wind. What a beautiful relief. My entire body was electrified with elation for hours afterward.

 

Jason taught me to ask, “Why is this happening for me?” The answer rang out clear as a bell: Forgive Joseph. Acknowledge his heartfelt apology email from nearly two weeks ago. I logged in to write him back, and then thought, No. I’ll call him.

A ten minute phone call telling him I forgave him, and that everything was okay, was all it took. I paid forward the forgiveness, and the universe veritably shuddered around me as the circle closed. My love for the world and for others and for these two men and for kindness and human empathy was filled to bursting.

 

I feel so incredibly blessed and grateful to have had the opportunity to forgive, and to be forgiven. Confession before God, for me, doesn’t take the shape of confiding in a priest in the quiet of a church. This is a valid form of confession, to be sure, with all my respect for the church as a spiritual sanctuary, but I believe true confession and reconciliation with God comes in the form of goodness for your fellow man.

Matthew 25 states: ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ For me that includes forgiveness. Making amends is so incredibly good for the soul. I felt so wonderful feeling a genuine kindness from someone who I was convinced still despised me, that I knew it was only fair to forgive someone else who I often thought about, despite his moment of cruelty and our subsequent falling out.

People are good. It’s that simple. Often, in our inability to forgive ourselves for our transgressions, we are subsequently unable to forgive others for theirs. I worry a lot about whether forgiving would make me a doormat, if it would open me up to more mistreatment, more abuse. Then I remember the deep regret and shame I feel when I recount the times I had hurt others. If I could summon the immense courage it took to confront them with an open and apologetic heart, what response would I want? What level of forgiveness would I deserve?

It is almost always people we once loved that we now are angry with, or cannot forgive, or who hold a grudge against us. If you found a reason to love them once upon a time, how can you discount those qualities now, consider them less than deserving of your love? Look at it in reverse: If you once deserved the love of another, their anger at your actions or words does not make you now undeserving of love. We are all emotional creatures, afraid of love in as much as we are afraid of rage. We should be more patient with each other.

I cannot be thankful enough for the opportunity to bury the hatchet with a person I knew ten years ago, as much as I am grateful to end a year-long fight with another friend and loved one. No matter what happens from here forward, with either of them, I can live freely knowing that I am forgiven, and that I wholly forgive them.

I’m reminded of this song by Florence and the Machine. “Regrets collect like old friends, here to relive your darkest moment.” Shake it out, shake it off.

The desire to be good.

I would like to think that all people ultimately have good intentions. That everyone falters and fails and that in the end, no one actually takes pleasure or pride in being a hurtful person. I’ll go so far as to believe that even when a person is being spiteful and vindictive, they feel justified in doing so because they have probably received the same treatment. People that project unhappiness onto you are doing just that: projecting. If misery is what you feel, misery is all you have to give.

I told a coworker last night that people will continue to disappoint her and break her heart because few people are emotionally as mature and well-rounded as she is. I gave her that advice because I have been giving myself that advice for my whole life. It has been the only way I have been able to cope with heartbreak and disappointment. I am often let down by the cowardice of others. More than I care to recount.

Last night was a rough night due to work stress. But then, strange silver linings: a coworker who doesn’t like to be touched giving me a comforting hug before I left. Checking my phone to see that I had an apology email in my inbox. The strange thing about that email was that one of the guys at the restaurant last night looked like this person at certain angles. I kept turning my head, thinking, “What is he doing in Pittsburgh? At this restaurant?” Not two hours later, an email from this person — the original, not the doppleganger.

I am forever in the business of writing letters to clear my conscience, to try to make amends, to fix what I have broken. You would think that after the amount of letters I’ve written and sent to people I’ve hurt I could permanently stop causing pain, judging by the harsh penance I demand of myself after every time. But it’s like I never learn. I always find a new way to hurt someone that I love.

I’ve never received a response to any of these letters, either. I’ve been reaching out to friends and coworkers for their perspective on apology letters, and how to react to them, if at all. In the past I’ve felt hurt by the silence on the other end. I wondered if that was ego or selfishness, this feeling of injury — as though by not responding, my letter, my honest effort to fix a mistake, meant nothing and did no good for anyone. As a result, I’ve kind of stopped writing out my apologies altogether. In my mind it has turned into a different kind of penance: be kind and forgiving and understanding to everyone who is still in my life. Do this at all times. Try not to falter, and remove your ego from the whole thing. There is this quote by Mother Teresa, one about doing good, and being kind. Essentially it says, People who you are kind to may hurt you. Be kind to them anyway. And that’s the true path, that’s the way to live and I believe it 100%. But it’s a really, really hard path some days. And I really, truly believe it is the best way to live your life.

Anyway, this apology letter came after an unabashed and cruel one written to me nearly a year ago. It was honest and forthright, and owned up to the mistakes and cruelty. I respected it for its bravery. Now I’m at a loss for how to respond. Is it worth salvaging a relationship where respect has been lost? I fight with everyone I love, but I never name-call. I never use abusive language. I feel like that’s really important to me. What do I do about forgiveness in this situation?

I had made my peace with this situation. I wrote a letter, and I burned it, and it became the subject of a performance art piece. I can’t pretend I don’t think of this person, ever, but I had relegated him to memory because it made the most sense to do so. Forgive, don’t forget, but move along. Be at peace about it. At what point do I stop being a kind person and become a doormat? What does it mean to respect myself in the context of past relationships and forgiveness? Jesus says forgive. But does that mean I sweep it all under the rug and start over again, pick up where I left off with somebody? Or do I say, No. You hurt me once. I made my peace. I appreciate your apology and respect your bravery and kindness in giving it. I’m glad you are at peace. But I can’t let you in again.

Then I wonder how I would feel if I ever needed to beg forgiveness from someone whose heart I broke. And that is a very real situation in my life. Obviously I would accept the final decision of the heartbroken. But would I be happy enough for them to put away my guilt, my shame, my desire to have them back in my life? Empathy. It confuses everything when I’m just trying to make a rational decision.

Why do I even need to decide right now? Why don’t I wait until I’ve mulled it over, search my soul, look for the signs I place so much trust and faith into? Ultimately I need to make the decision that a good person would make. I’m just having trouble figuring out what that is.

I’m sure it’ll come to me.

 

On blank pages, and filling them, slowly.

I suppose it’s time to bring up the fact that I was rejected from my first-choice (only choice) graduate school. It happened back in February, and it took me this long to swallow my shame and my ego and write about it here. To add insult to injury, the e-mailed rejection letter was followed up by a paper rejection for state residency nearly two months later. Really, Michigan? That state has become the land of disappointments for me, first with the crowning heartbreak of my life hailing from just outside of Detroit, now followed by a rejection from a school into which I put a solid chunk of time and effort to make a good impression.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m not quite sure what I would do in graduate school. Maybe teaching and making art isn’t my path.

I spent about four weeks wallowing in the rejection, during which time I started working for a burger and whiskey place, and then my new excitement set in: I would learn everything I could about alcohol. I have a brilliant palate, I can taste all kinds of subtle nuances when it comes to tea, wine, food, and so forth. I just know nothing about this new world. Being from a wine background, with the most topical of knowledge of vodkas due to my parents’ preferred drink, I knew next to nothing about beer, its process, varieties, and so forth, and even less than that about the various spirits. So I did what I do any time I want to know everything about something: I took out a million books at the library and went into full-on mental sponge mode.

It’s a funny thing, working in the food and beverage industry. You tell one person in charge that you have a sincere and vested interest in learning, and suddenly you’re networking organically with restaurant owners and managers, cocktail geniuses, distillery owners, beer distributors, representatives, and on and on and on. It’s very exciting and extremely humbling to be around people who are experts in a topic you know very little about — you ask all kinds of questions, and those people, feeling empowered by the questioning, expose you to an entire world of things you should read, listen to, or try. It’s quite fun, actually, not being in charge for once. It’s a wonderful thing to be in a brand-new environment, know what it means to be a good listener (and a good employee, where applicable), and simply have fruitful conversations all day, every day that you come into work.

I’m working at another local place that opened up recently, a craft beer and browns bar with food themed to pair ideally with various beers. Everything on tap is local, which is fantastic, because it creates the very real ability to meet the people who are making the beers that I pour during every shift. And that just gives me another opportunity to learn something new.

 

There are more things, other things, that I want to write about. Things I want to talk about regarding work relationships, new friendships, re-connections with old friends and potential bridge-rebuilding. Things I want to say about how to heal from a misstep with another person, how terribly I am affected when someone so clearly and obviously dislikes me even when I do everything I can to show that I am actively working to fix my mistakes. There are things I want to write about disappointing my parents, about trying to do right by both the people who love me, with caveats, and the people who love me absolutely and unconditionally.  There is always something to write about self-acceptance, self-respect, dare I say self-love (the hardest challenge of my life). But I haven’t written in a long time now, and there’s too much to express in one post, and too much to say that would span hours and days. I’ll write later.