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.

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.