On grief and loss: a hundredth meditation.

I’ve lost my voice. I retreated into silence when I became weary of myself. It is so much easier to drink, and laugh, and fuck, and mute my emotions under the crushing wave of busy work and cheap thrills.

I’m ready to speak again.

Garrett came back into my life after three years. I never stopped loving him in the three years I didn’t see him, with not even a photograph to sate me — except for the one on Instagram — and when he walked up my driveway, getting out of the same car he used to drive me around in, he was different, but still my Garrett. He had aged a little, and had prominent white in his now-long hair; new glasses that flattered his face; a well-defined chest and the same hands I never forgot, not once, not in three years. Garrett. The love of my life.

It has been a year of loss and pain for me. I have been weighted by my memories and my vulnerability and exposure like I never have before. It’s funny; they tell you you’re supposed to get stronger as you age. I don’t feel stronger. Just more weathered. My trunk has more rings on it, and there are more names carved into my bark; nails hammered in below the flesh; my sap drips from the holes, and I do not feel stronger. My roots are simply deeper now. I’m harder to knock down. But I feel the strong winds more acutely now; there is more surface area that feels the bite of frost.

I went through and deleted our entire email correspondence (every desperate plea for an answer, for a face-to-face meeting, for closure, for clarity, for forgiveness — I asked for so much) and every photograph I had saved of us. Then I sat at my desk and fended off a panic attack. That was it: a spotless mind, just what I had prayed for. The healthiest decision, in the eyes of therapy and friends and self-help lists online. His Made In Detroit shirt, the ruby pendant he gave me for a birthday, and the mix CD on which he had painstakingly typewritten a track list, complete with a hand-scrawled love note inside, sits inside a wooden cigar box in my living room. I had plans to hold a tiny funeral and then winter came two days ago and froze the ground. I am desperate to bury it before the new year. I can’t have his wraith trailing behind me into the next year. I will lose my mind. I will never recover if I don’t do this.

I used to pretend he was dead because I could not justify the level of grief I carried for three years. Now, with my therapist’s permission, I am finally working through the grieving process without shame or secrecy. It must end, though. It will end, right? When? Will I ache like this for the rest of my life? Will I ever find someone who will love me the way he loved me? Will I ever love in quite the same way, quite as wholly and immensely? Or will I have this aching empty space in my chest until I am 93 and breathing my last?

It would have been easier to have never met him, never fallen so madly in love, never had him torn away from me, never grieved like this. I would not be as  complex or as world-weathered or as compassionate or as emotional or as humble or as mature, but I would give all of that back to never have to feel this way. Unhappiness is not a beauty mark, or a badge of honour. Grief is painful, and raw, and sickening. It feels like having your guts ripped out every time someone speaks his name. There is nothing fashionable about melancholy. I would return all poetry in exchange for my heart’s peace and a head not haunted by ghosts.

It is hard, today.

 

 

 

Stormy weather.

It’s raining today, the kind of rain accompanied by wind that brings autumn swiftly into the year. I weeded the garden at the front of the yard earlier this week, and my compost bin is full of yellowing tomato vines and an assortment of weeds and grass. I had the hedge in front of the front porch removed on Saturday morning, and with the front garden freshly emptied, my front yard feels big and empty. I cut two jack o’lanterns and placed them on the freshly painted ledge, and with the chilly nights cutting into the day’s humidity I’m beginning to feel the year dying.

The neighbours across the alley from me had a death this morning. Cardiac arrest. It feels hollow out here on my back porch; the wind sweeps through the tree canopies and a mournful crow caws out the presence of ghosts. I found out about it just now when I heard weeping. I brought over a loaf of banana bread to express my condolences for an obvious tragedy. There are cars parked all along the alleyway, family members and friends gathering for support.

I myself am still an open wound. The second court hearing, the one he stalled for to hire a lawyer, occurred yesterday morning. I got the equivalent of a Protection From Abuse, for a three-month duration. I intend to finally buy a gun in that time, both for my own safety (I have so much more to lose now, in my little home) as well as in case he decides to come exact his revenge when the time period is up. I just need to know I have something to protect myself with if he — or anyone — breaks through my dogs, my alarm system, and my locks, but I doubt he will show. I’m not that important to him, after all. Kevin says I’ll never see him again. So does my father, but when he says it I worry a little. Daddies want to protect their daughters no matter the cost. I assured him this court case meant it was all over.

I came home from the courthouse yesterday morning and poured myself a cognac and a hot bath. I was gentle on myself all day, but even still, I find myself to be more defensive, mistrustful, combative in the days since the original assault and breakup that led to legal action. I am incapable of social situations. I can rally, be my usual cheerful and gregarious self, but inside I feel empty, unsure. I am more defensive with the people I love. I want to argue, to fight, when they bring up anything that isn’t easy or mundane conversation. I feel like I’m being judged and attacked at every step. I know in my heart and mind that it isn’t true, but the reaction remains the same. In the court waiting room yesterday, I felt legitimate waves of nausea, to the point where I looked around the room and located the trash bin in case it came to that. I trembled so much that at one point my teeth began to chatter. I will thank God until the end of time that I did not have to look into his eyes, black like a shark’s, and that my lawyer settled the whole case before it went to the judge. He brought two witnesses, probably to attest to the only side of his character they’ve ever seen: Dr. Jekyll. They did not witness or bear the brunt of Hyde’s wrath, and I was frightened of their version of the partial truth.

Sometimes I hate that I am the one everyone is honest with.

It was vindicating, to a point, winning in court. It made me feel that I could be believed and trusted. I’ve only ever told the truth about all of it. Regardless, I only ever tell the truth when I am asked. Annoyingly, even when I am not asked. I think the worst part for me was anticipating that I would not be believed.

Going through all of this has made me question the way that I look at relationships. How much should you allow the fog of love to cloud your vision? And how much of myself do I create for me, and how much of it should cater to my partner? I am currently incapable of accepting criticism. I am so angry over what happened with D that I refuse to trust a man when they bring up anything about me. D gas-lighted me so consistently and made me feel less than so often that I am on the offensive when a man raises a concern or a doubt regarding me. I find that I’m having trouble believing anyone.

I know this is not constructive. I know I have to go back to the way I was, strong and opinionated but leaving room for the benefit of a doubt. I don’t know when — or if — I’ll return to that point.

I am used to being honest about all things, vocal about everything I think and feel. I am beginning to think there’s no room for that version of me in the world. The more powerful I get, the more opposition I feel from not only my enemies (obvious as well as hidden — D), but from people I believe love me. Now I am weak from all the fighting and have only my sharp claws to defend me from pain, real or imagined. I’m not so good with people anymore.

He took so much. I allowed him to take so much. This is about forgiving him for my own mental and physical health as much as it is about forgiving myself for making such a big mistake.

It will rain all day. I know because my headache has lasted for two days now. The storm has to break. Something has to give.

 

 

 

Time and contrast.

Relationships exist relative to each other, or in contrast to them. In the wake of this recent breakup and the legal issues surrounding it, I’ve been blessed to be able to see my other human relationships as they truly are, rather than how I viewed them in fair weather alone. The older I get, the easier it becomes to cut someone out of my life. Though I suppose nowadays it’s not so much a momentous and painful amputation so much as it is a gentle push. A push away from me, a push out of the innermost circle of my friends and trusted ones, a nudge to the outside edges. We will say hello. I will be civil, kind, I will offer a hug and inquire about your life, but I will not let you in any longer.

When you fight your way through a terrible breakup in which your loved one abused you verbally and mentally, gas lighted you, retaliated by causing physical harm to you and those around you, it becomes less about who will be there when I’m crying about my bad day, and more about who will be there to reach out and say, ‘I understand. I sympathise. I support your openness about your situation, and your ability to take legal action.’ I had people who I haven’t seen for years, or those who I have never been especially close to, reach out via message and text and phone call, simply to show their support. On the other hand, I’ve had people who are supposed to be my closest confidantes say absolutely nothing. And it’s staggering, really, to see that kind of response from a person to whom you’ve shown nothing but loyalty and faith in the years of your friendship.

Am I angry? Resentful? No. Not nearly the way I thought I would be. I am so exhausted from carrying the burden of my recent trauma that I am simply relieved to see others as they are, and see with clear eyes who to trust versus who to keep at arm’s length.  It is sad that some of the people becoming arm’s length acquaintances were people I counted as close to me. But what is there to do, other than be grateful for the time I did have with them, and to focus my affections on those who have proven to be there for me in the darkest of times? It is a relief to be able to see who my fair-weather friends are. They will, and do, remain friends. But they are not the people I will invite into my home for a meal and a long chat over a bottle of wine.

Similarly, this human trauma has caused me to forgive those against whom I held a grudge. The comparative betrayals in my recent history have allowed me to choose grace over rage, kindness over coldness. There are all kinds of secret blessings in the violent and terrible betrayal I suffered at the hands of D.

Kevin tells me I have extremely high expectations of others, the same expectations I carry for myself, and perhaps he is right. I do expect people to always be brave, and always apologise, always forgive, always fight the good fight and choose others over themselves. I admit I do not always do these things myself, but I actively strive for them. I am constantly attempting to only think of myself, especially in tough times — a “Save yourself, screw the rest” mentality in order to survive — but it’s not in my nature, not the way I was raised. My priority nowadays is to be in service to others, after years and years of petulant selfishness allowed me as an only child. I can’t forget, however, all of the times I failed as a friend. It is as important for me to try to forgive myself and do my penance as it is to forgive others for their missteps. Meredith tells me I should demand loyalty of my closest friends. I simply request it, and allow others to show me their true colours. Sometimes it takes years for the reveal. Sometimes it takes only months. But I am forgiving everyone lately.

One day I will even forgive D. But that doesn’t mean that in forgiving him I would ever be willing to be in the same room as him again. The forgiveness is really to assuage my soul. To let go. To be light. (Meredith, again, tells me I carry too much weight. She is right, of course. But my weight is all that I know — the weight of my memories, regrets, longings, fears, hopes, histories. In writing I simply set down the weights, but I do not erase them. I memorialize them, in the hopes that I will learn from them. And they are all beautiful. They are all gifts because they have all been lessons. Jason Kirin taught me to ask “Why is this happening forme?” and it is the most useful advice about growth that I have ever received.)

Certainly, I am still crawling out of the wreckage, in many ways. I still drink more than I should, and smoking has reemerged as a passing habit (as I write this, I light my third cigarette). I am still not fully capable of being impassive the way I have always been in a professional setting. I let things get to me — shitty customers, confrontations, and so on. The court hearing is on Monday and until then I cannot rest easily. I pray, over and over again, that he won’t show, and then the PFA resets automatically to a three-year duration, and I don’t have to look at his face and feel a combination of death and sadness and fear. Social events are no longer something I agree to easily. I have skipped several USBG events, even though I am a highly active member running for a position of office, because I will never forget how my blood ran cold when I was told he had come to an event that night looking for me, assuming I would be there. I should care more that this might jeopardize my running. I know I should care more, and yet I retreat into my shell, into my home which finally feels safe and warm again, and choose to avoid asking for special treatment or deference from the current council members. I’m an adult, and there is no crying in restaurants, or much of anywhere else anymore. I quietly temper my expectations and try not to ask anything of anyone.

Eventually this pack will run out and I will get back into an intensive workout regimen and work will pick up and I will stop thinking too much (maybe). The court date will come and go and the days will rush headlong into the end of the year, leaving all of this unpleasantness satisfactorily in the past. But for now, I am waiting, scratching tally marks into the walls and feeling the time tick in my bones. This will pass. I will keep on fighting for myself. I will live and I will mean it.

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.

 

Pittsburgh notebook: heatwave

Pittsburgh is in the midst of a sweltering heatwave. I joke with everyone that it must be 200% humidity in the city, and with every time I repeat it, it becomes less and less of a joke. Mishka is bored out of his skull, because it’s too hot to reasonably spend a large portion of time outside, and I can’t take him on errands with me because even with all the windows down in the car, I am afraid of him getting overheated during the shortest excursion into the bank or a store. That being said, I do take him out once a day at most, testing the sidewalk with the back of my hand so his paw pads don’t burn. We’ve been making excursions into “town;” West End Village roughly a mile down the hill from the house.

There’s a little hardware store on Wabash that I take Mishka into when I need odds and ends for the house. There’s no air conditioning, but the ceilings are high (probably 15-20 feet) and a breeze that blows through the back door and spills out to the sidewalk. I needed two-inch-long screws and the owner, an older white man, went through a shelf of boxes tracking down the right gauge, length, and head for me. As he rang me up I could feel beads of sweat run from the back of my scalp, over my shoulder, and down into the front of my shirt. A few doors down is a little bodega that sells lottery tickets and percolator coffee. I took Mishka into there for an instant cappuccino and ended up buying a $1 lottery ticket, and Mishka got a peanut butter dog bone on the house. That’s the nice thing about living in this neighbourhood — every place I go seems to be fairly dog-friendly. Everyone wants to say hello to Mishka, and with the heat being as oppressive as it is, he’s even more mellow than usual.

One walk like that (45 minutes tops) and the dog is out for the day. I’d like to say I do it to free myself up to get things done, but with no central air in the house and the humidity being what it is, I spend my afternoon lying around on the couch and watching shows I’m only half-committed to on Netflix. I sat with a giant pitcher of lemon water and a big bowl of popcorn yesterday afternoon, when the beau texted me to let me know he was coming over. He found me melted to the couch with popcorn all over my face and lap. “Aren’t you sexy right now,” he said with a grin, plucking popcorn off of my cheek. Maybe if it had been ten degrees cooler I’d care enough to have cleaned up.

The garden is doing well, though. The last few days have brought thunderstorms, and my cucumbers are swelling to gargantuan proportions. I found two hidden away under dinner-plated-sized leaves that were each the size of my face. (I brought them on my lunch date earlier this week with my best friend Alex, and upon his arrival, wordlessly handed him the plastic bag with two giant cukes. He stared at me, his face contorting into a confused and amused expression, and then laughed.) Everything is growing like mad, and the rains do nothing to abate the heat. My back door is made of old wood, and it has swollen in the door frame over the last week to the point where I have to kick it and throw all of my weight into it just to get it to open. I’ve resigned myself to walking round to the front door to let myself in. Just one more thing to add to the list of home improvements: buy a new kitchen door.

Last night when my dear friend and former professor Roger came for dinner, we ate steaks and drank red wine and I achieved an almost-instantaneous headache. It was my first day of alcohol after a week of teetotalling, and the impending storm coupled with dehydration and wine created the perfect recipe for pain. We sat in my living room only half-watching an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and I remembered a brilliant essay by Joan Didion called Los Angeles Notebook. It seemed the perfect thing to read aloud, given the atmosphere of mishaps and strained communication I’ve been experiencing all week amid the heat.

As I type this, I’m sitting on my back porch and the thunder is rolling in the distance. A very light sprinkling of rain is passing through, and I’ve just hung the whites up on the line to dry. A part of me wants to take them down and throw them in the dryer, but another says, Let them soak in the rain. They’ll dry tomorrow either way. The forecast promises 90 degree weather.

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.

 

Obligatory anxiety post

The days are full of such strange dichotomies. In the same breath I realised why I’ve been friends with one person for 14 years and why it’s time to cut ties with another whom I’ve known for nine. 

Amazing how simply unfriending someone on Facebook does the deed for you; to cut someone away who has found countless ways to be tactless and cruel and hurtful and dismissive. He gaslighted me and said mean things and was crude and tasteless when I needed kindness and care and discretion. 

On the other hand I still have in my life the first man I loved, at 15, young and bright-eyed — on the first day I met him I fell in love. We spent a day at Kennywood with mutual friends — met up at 11 am and by 9 pm we were in each other’s arms, smitten totally and completely. And he remains a dear friend to this day. His friendship has always been available to me, even after long periods of not speaking or seeing each other. Each hangout is like it was only yesterday that we said goodnight or see you later, and it’s friendships like these that sustain me in my loneliest hour. To know that there are people like this who live in my heart and who will never throw me away. 

Of course, I get inside of my own head and become my worst enemy at times of great distress, when my anxiety is at its highest. The little mean voice in the pit of my stomach tells me that I am alone, that loneliness is the human condition and no one is really ever there, not really, not in the way I thought. That I am pretending that others love me the way that I love them. That I am disposable, forgettable, not important. 

I know it’s not true. But it’s hard when you’re inside your own head. It’s hard when you can’t believe even the people who love you when they tell you they love you. You only remember that time your mother told you not to leave the man you were with, because you are hard to love. Because it won’t be easy to find someone who loves me this way after him. As though being loved is the only part of the equation that matters. As though loving someone back wholly and completely and fearlessly and intensely doesn’t matter, just that you found someone loyal enough not to throw you away. 

So your anxiety eats away at your skull and you forget your worth and you want to tear things apart and scream but you don’t, you don’t. You don’t say a thing, to anyone. 

Progress in full bloom.

Owning a house and turning it into a home has been one of the most rewarding experiences. Every day I wake up feeling blessed. I have settled neatly into my summertime routine: I let Mishka outside, press reboil on my Zojirushi, grind coffee beans or scoop tea leaves. I head outside to empty the kitchen compost and water my vegetable garden (only after putting Mishka inside, as he goes positively nuts when I turn on the hose, wanting to attack the stream and barking loudly and incessantly until I give in to the game). I do thirty minutes to an hour of reading, deliberately back on my reading game for the last two weeks, and then I carefully plan the rest of my day. I’ve made progress on the house in large and small ways over the past week. I put up new house numbers on the front porch, right above the cheap vinyl stickers placed there before me. I’m having a hell of a time peeling the old stickers on, so for the moment they exist underneath the new ones, a reminder of past tenants and a former incarnation of what “home” meant in this place.

I’m remembering now what my father said when I told him my house number. “1913?” he said, a smile lighting up his face. “That was the height of the Russian Empire!” He said something along those lines, and I couldn’t help laughing because it made me think of the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, where the father constantly ties inventions and accomplishments back to the Greeks. That’s my dad, but with Russia and Russians.

The other day, I set a goal to finally set up my office area. I’m tired of paying bills at my kitchen table and walking my outdated and heavy laptop from room to room like an itinerant. I’m also tired of not having a quiet space specifically designated for office work and for writing — as much as I love to sit on my back patio when I update my blog, I won’t be able to do that when it gets cold outside, or when there’s a torrential downpour and the wind that is forever at play on my hill blows all the rain into my lap and onto my keyboard. My dad tracked down an old (read: not made of shitty IKEA particleboard, not built to be taken apart and put back together with ease) office desk and unloaded it in my garage weeks ago, but I’ve been procrastinating on bringing it into the house. Here’s why: the desk is huge. It’s made of heavy wood — at least the desktop itself, which is easily at least fifty pounds, and cumbersome to boot. It’s too wide to fit up my basement or back patio steps, and too wide to even drag through the upstairs hallway. It needed to be completely taken apart before I could even transfer it to the room where it would live — in my guest bedroom, the one I painted a soft lavender from the noxious pink with which the former owners had tortured the poor unsuspecting walls.

In the time that the desk sat in the garage, no less than four hundred and seventy-two spiders took up in the hollows where the drawers, pulled out and standing separately, were to live. I dragged the desk into the basement before realising it would need to be taken apart as much as possible before being carted upstairs. In the basement, at the foot of the stairs, is where I began to discover the burgeoning arachnid civilization. Mishka is already beginning to learn the screams I emit that are associated with spiders, long-legged centipedes, and all other creepy-crawlies I have intuitively designated as undesirable and horrifying, because he didn’t run down the steps once during the half-dozen times I shrieked and shouted “MOTHERFUCKER” as I simultaneously napalmed the desk with Raid spray and took a vacuum nozzle to every corner. I fought a good fight. I probably have several kinds of cancers now, too. Like a good veteran returning from war, I dragged every piece of that desk up two flights of stairs while alternating between hardened stoicism and the kind of rage-strength that comes in bursts during bouts with exhaustion and frustration.

It took me three hours, in total, from The Great Spider War to Lovely Interior Design Photo, but here is my lovely space:

I have hanging files now, for all my new bills accumulated during the brokest month of the year for a bartender who runs a concert venue, and a comfy chair in which to sit while I lament my water bill as I stare ruefully out the window and will my plants to give me a bountiful harvest already, so I don’t have to spend a small fortune every time I wander into the grocery store.

Speaking of which: the garden is doing quite well. The vegetable boxes I built at the back of my sprawling yard are now home to peppers, tomatoes, some kind of squash (my mother sprinkled some seeds in the front yard during my first week here and now she can’t remember what they are, but I guess we’ll see in a few weeks), cucumbers, basil, and even sweet potatoes — an experiment in itself, since I know nothing about growing root vegetables. (How do you know when they’re ready? Has anyone engineered clear soil yet? I’m in the dark here, literally and figuratively.) The front yard is beginning to yield results. Green tomatoes cluster in hiding under branches, and I even plucked two rather large cucumbers from their vine yesterday. My eggplants and zucchinis are producing the largest and most robust leaves, and perhaps talking to my plants on a regular basis is making me imagine things, but they look positively happy growing out of their plot.

Before I officially closed on the house, during a bout of painting the exterior of the house for twelve hours to fulfill an FHA loan requirement, my mom came and planted three rose bushes — not so much bushes as sad little stems jutting from a shy-looking root system. One died in the first week. The second one, after a week of watering and plaintive begging for it not to die, began to give little green leaves at the base of the stems, though it’s quite slow-going. The third one, after weeks of slowly developing leaves and new shoots, and finally, buds, gave its first flower two days ago.

I am convinced it is the most beautiful flower I’ve ever seen. It’s mine. I made this happen. I grew this perfect thing and now every time I walk into my yard I can’t help smiling until my cheeks hurt.

There is just so much to fall in love with lately.

The weather we have/the life we lead

Poem from 2007.

I have a hundred little bruises claiming patches of the land of my legs
The result of self-uprooting — every several nights a new town, a new bed,
a hundred new doorways and furniture edges
unmemorized into coordinated movements in the dark
or in the drink
and so I bruise, a new curse in a new place issues from my lips

I collect a hundred scraps of paper, the only solid proof and memory
of every place I’ve seen
Receipts of restaurants, museum tickets, even clever beer mats
in a foreign tongue
I stuff these each into my wallet, backs of notebooks, pockets, handbag,
until my life becomes a puppet stuffed with paper
sometimes giving paper cuts to new acquaintances
but I can’t be blamed for my travel-weary clumsiness

Taking to a new place, I learn to call it home
so that in leaving, I feel torn anew
I traveled Prague alone, the lack of friends resulting in a quiet bond
with every stone beneath my feet and under my palm as I touched buildings,
tracing fingers over gothic details and nouveau swirls, learning by heart
the nuances my heart needed

There are a hundred things I perhaps should have said
A hundred more I should have caught between my teeth before they left my lips
A few kisses, a few mistakes — sometimes one and the same
I have been one of two ships passing
I have been a regret
I have been a blessing, a double-edged sword, a pleasure
Once, to my knowledge, the one that got away
I wore many hats, I wore out many shoes — blisters turn to old scars,
a rueful memory due to fade after my bruises

I have lived a hundred years in a span of four months and nine days
loved a hundred people, lost a hundred doubts and preconceptions
learned so much more than I was told I would learn
My heart, my stamina for feeling has grown a hundred-fold

I could not tell you, would I do it the same way again,
just that there is no such thing as regret or accident,
going back and starting over
there is no good, no bad weather
just the weather, just a life to lead

free to be made of what you wish.