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.

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.

Of memories and loss.

It’s not a secret that I was bullied in middle school. From the age of nine to about thirteen, I was constantly reminded by my peers that all of the things which made me different should be cause for shame and embarrassment. My saving grace came in two forms: first, that through sheer defiance, I was determined to live through those years and do so much more than any of my peers were capable of, thereby winning, and second, that I had at least two or three people in my largely heartless school environment who stood by me.

When I was in seventh grade, I befriended a guy in the eighth grade who all of the girls adored. His name was Rick, and we were only ever just friends (in fact, imagining that he was my older brother figure helped me cope with the truth that I ultimately had no one to fight on my behalf), but that didn’t stop the girls in my grade from staring daggers at me for my friendship with him. Rick didn’t give a shit what the girls thought of us. He talked to me in the one class we had together, at lunch, between classes, and at recess. He was popular, on the football team (a requisite for male popularity). I was a nobody, a lone wolf as I’ve so often been.

We reconnected in high school, or maybe it was college, once or twice. I remember one time when we hung out near my house. We spent the evening walking around in the dark, and I remember crunching leaves in warm weather, so it had to be late summer. We went back to my place and he sat on my bed and told me about how he thought I was wonderful, that he thought I was the most beautiful girl when we were in school together. He admitted a childhood crush that I had never known of, one that still has me legitimately floored. I was thrown by the confession, and mumbled a thank you.

He didn’t try to put a move on me, which proved his sincerity. Later, we hugged tightly as we parted ways. That might have been the last time we ever saw each other; I honestly can’t remember.

Rick died yesterday. I found out when a mutual acquaintance posted the online obituary on Facebook. I haven’t talked to him in years. It’s been easily at least six or eight years. If my memory is blurring, and it was high school that I saw him and he admitted his feelings, it’s been over a decade. The obituary photo shows him young, handsome, a chiseled face. When I last saw him he had put on a couple of pounds, actually making him more lovable in my eyes. I wondered when I saw it if the photo was recent. The circumstances of Rick’s death are rumoured suspect. I don’t mean he was killed; I only mean that it may not have been as noble as what he deserved. It’s funny how many things can change in ten years.

Here is what I remember about Rick: he made me feel special and deserving of kindness and friendship when everyone around me told me otherwise. He was kind, and clever, and had an easy-going and charming air, the kind that comes effortlessly when you’re a teenage boy with dark hair and a great smile and everything else that Italian genetics entail. He never once gave in to peer pressure by being rude to me, or by pushing me away because speaking to me could somehow place his popularity in jeopardy. He was a good person. And I am terrified that I never once told him the extent to which he influenced me, the feeling of self-worth he imbued in me when I most needed it.

He was twenty-seven. One year older than me. All I can think is, what if I only had one year until my death? How would I spend my last year? There are so many loose strings to tie up, so many people to speak to, so much to prove. So many milestones I haven’t yet hit, that I chase with desperation and drop when other distractions surface. But I have no idea what Rick has been up to for the last ten years. What I remember is that he was good. It doesn’t matter to me if he was successful in business or if he finished college or what kind of car he drove. I will never forget his name because he was good.

That’s all that matters in this world: being kind to each other when kindness is scarce. Being fearless when it’s easier to run away. Loving when love is under the scrutiny of ridicule. I hope you know how much you meant to me, Rick. I know it’s hard for your family right now because they, too, know you a were good person. I can only imagine the extent to which you lit up their lives. I want you to know that you will always be a part of my memories. It is all that I can give you.