Loss in the Month of December

It is so hard sometimes to find out who people really are. Especially people you admire. Especially people who are mentoring or helping you. Especially if you find out bad things.

The last month of the year 2014 has been particularly painful. Several months of me being unemployed and searching for the right career home had finally ended, and after barely surviving financially—and I do mean barely, we had just let ourselves breathe. Note to self: exhale with caution in the future.

We were behind on everything—bills, Christmas, anniversary pictures that we usually have done in November—all of it. But it all seemed like it was going to be ok, finally.

Then, I was kind. We were kind.

We were kind to someone whom I had already started to doubt, and that gnawing doubt felt awful. I wanted to deny it, but it wouldn't go away. 

For the last year, I had finally made some progress in my writing, particularly for my book, in workshops and through guidance and support-- and the very person who had been a key part of that, who I had thought so much of, turned out to have a different side, and I had seen it. I was pulling back, but one last time, I got pulled in again. And that one last time cost us dearly. Emotionally, financially, and for me, something went dark afterwards.

The first loss is too painful to write about here. It was the worst and most emotional.

The second loss--all the confidence I had felt in my writing-- swirled away in that one day; a mad rush of all the positive words and moments throughout the last year that were tied to those classes and interactions—all of it got sucked into a black hole and poof! it was gone. Almost instantly. I couldn’t associate any of it as good or true if it came from that person who I now knew as not a good person—even a really bad person. And what did it say about me if I had been fooled or charmed by someone who told me things that may or may not have been true? How hungry was I for compliments and positive feedback? Then, what if it was real? What if she meant those things? What did it matter if it came from her? All that I had learned, all that I found valuable—the things I had written, the progress I had made—the notes, the time, the lessons—I wanted nothing to do with it.

It wasn't just drama or emotion. The writing that I have been doing is so personal, and the most important thing to me has always been that I am doing the right thing in the right way. Now, so much of it feels wrong, especially if the inspiration and guidance has come from someone I now feel is just really, at the core, not a good person.

So what of all this good vs. bad? Who am I really? I can tell you that I have done a lot of soul searching in the last month, and that’s saying a lot, because I feel that in my 45 years I have done my damn share of that already. But really. I asked myself over and over if I am truly kind and what motivates me and if I am a good person. What motivates me to be that? Do I want praise for it? Do I want some kind of reward?

I can remember my mom promising me over and over when I was a little girl, that if I was a good person, good things would happen for me. She would lay the whole thing out—in detail. That if I would do well in school, behave, not get into any bad things-- that I would meet a prince charming-type guy, get married, have lots of money, no worries, and lots of babies, and be happy forever. She would get so excited telling me this. I asked her one day if she had always been good, and without a beat, she said “yes”. I remember my little seven-year-old self, standing there on our green linoleum kitchen floor and I looked around and said, “But you don’t have all of those things”.  She didn’t know what to say. She was clearly annoyed and told me to go play or do something else. I was worried even then. I already saw how the world worked-- or didn’t work--and I didn’t like my odds. But I wasn’t playing for the odds. I wasn’t trying to win a game. I couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t nice or kind, or didn’t do the right thing. I didn’t understand how people just did whatever they wanted with little regard for the consequences. I actually envied those people—and at times— I still do. How did they not worry or fret about things all the time the way I did?

So, the sequence of events that started on December 12 seemed to keep going. We ended up financially wiped out, suffering a huge loss to our family, and then having to further deal with someone who each day just seemed to show me how foolish I had been to trust or believe or be kind to them in the first place. It was both painful and humbling.

Then other little things kept happening, and I honestly felt like I was going to lose it. I was driving home from a work meeting, in a rain storm, and I was stopped at a red light. I was actually sitting in my car thinking perhaps we had gotten through the worst of it. Then – BAM! A car rear-ended me. Seriously. In the second after it happened, I actually laughed and said out loud- “You have to be fucking kidding me.”

It felt like a hard hit. I motioned in my rear-view mirror for the person to pull out of traffic with me into a parking lot. I feared the person would just drive off, but she didn’t. As I waited for her to pull in behind me, I thought- I have had it. I am going to let this woman have it. I am not going to be nice, screw being nice.

I actually got out of my car and slammed my door and almost ran into a woman a little shorter than me, already pleading her case, already in tears. I heard at least one kid crying in her car. She had been Christmas shopping, she was distracted. It was her fault, she was so sorry. Was I alright?—she should have asked that first. She was sorry.

She stood in front of me, defeated…in a Santa hat.

My car was fine. The woman was apologizing, pointing to a small dot on my bumper that I couldn’t see, as we were both getting drenched in the rain. She didn’t do anything on purpose. It was an accident. It was life. And no matter what had happened to me in the last few days, I couldn’t be horrible. I couldn’t be unkind.

I told her to let me drive home and make sure everything was ok, but not to worry, I didn’t think there was a problem. She stood there relieved and we exchanged information. We started to walk away and she asked if she could hug me. She didn’t wait for an answer. As she hugged me, she said, “You are a good person, thank you. Merry Christmas!”

I got back in my car, let her drive away, and started to cry. I don’t know if I am a good person. I don’t. I know that it hurts me if someone mistreats an animal, or a child, or another human being. I know that I lose sleep over these things. I know that I am not perfect. I know that I am not always kind, and that bothers me, especially when I slip and say the wrong thing in the wrong moment—or when I think I have hurt someone.

I know that in December of 2014, I lost a little part of myself and it will take a long time to get it back. That may not be a bad thing, but I think it is a sad thing. I won’t go out of my way to trust or help as easily for a long time, if ever. It was just too costly. But I will hold those dear to me a little closer.

I haven’t revisited my book, and I honestly don't know if I will. I can’t imagine it at the moment. It breaks my heart. I was just so far down that path and in that mindset; it is hard to go another way. I will see what the new year brings.

That’s all I can do for now as the year comes to a close, and as I say goodbye to December…and all that I lost. Wait and see what the new year brings.

Artwork: Head and Heart by Charlotte Salomon

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The Unexpected Lessons of Marriage

As my husband and I get closer to the one year mark in our marriage, I have been thinking about how quickly time passes, and how much has happened in such a short time. It is hard to believe that we have been married almost a year, and together almost two.

Rarely a day passes when I don’t think about all the times in my life that I have settled. I think that word could describe a lot of my life—settling for some friendships that weren’t good for me, settling for treatment from my parents- my father in particular- that I should never have accepted, and mostly settling for relationships where I wasn’t valued, respected, or even really loved.

I think about all those times now, because I am no longer settling and I realize what an incredible, life-changing feeling that is. I wish I could take hold of all the young amazing women out there and make them realize that you should never settle—not in your career, in your family, and especially not in your relationships. I gave up on finding love because I believed that I had outrageous ideas about what it meant, when really, somewhere along the line, I had whittled down my expectations to be so low, that being generally respected and treated well seemed a far-fetched fantasy.

It still amazes me that at work I could talk to a room full of board members, company officers, and management members, suggesting new ideas that I had come up with, stressing my opinions, and handling tough questions with ease, but in my own personal life, I could not take up for myself when someone was treating me like crap. But, I see it with a lot of women—I don’t know why we sell ourselves short, but we do.

I have also realized in the last year how strange and wonderful it can be to live with someone after more than twenty years of living on my own. I have learned to sacrifice and compromise, not in a bad way, just in a normal co-existing way. It hasn’t been easy as I am stubborn, impatient, and did I mention stubborn? Luckily, my husband meets me equally on all fronts, and has also had to adjust to an unfamiliar new way of life—but one that we both want and delight in.

After a lifetime of feeling that I really could only count on myself, to actually let someone in on the times I am weakest is odd and amazing. I cannot believe how much I am myself now, more than I ever have been—hiding nothing, expressing practically everything, and feeling no worries or self consciousness. It is liberating and a lot of times—amusing. One particular thing, that I can’t believe I am about to share, comes from the freeness of living on my own for so long, with only my animals to witness my antics.

I have this habit of…dancing. Not necessarily to music, not at appropriate times, not expectedly. It happens, oh, when I am standing with the refrigerator door open, trying to decide what to choose for a snack, or when I am loading the dishwasher. It is not pretty or choreographed dancing; it is some Elaine Benes-inspired shaking and spazzing that my husband says he now believes is completely out of my control. It just happens, and sometimes I catch myself, but most of the time Shea will jolt me out of my dancing by saying, “Right here”—to remind me that there is indeed another person in the room. Luckily he finds this endearing, and enjoys my embarrassment more and more each time.

But what this has taught me is how right we are for each other, and how truly comfortable and happy I am with Shea—and with myself in this relationship. It has been startling for me to realize that after twenty some odd years of dating, I have never felt so comfortable, so real, so much myself, and I have never really been myself. That’s scary to realize. For so long, I felt I had to be some ideal person/girlfriend/woman, and molded myself to fit what I thought that was, or what the person I was dating thought that was. It is astonishing that it never really dawned on me to be myself—and that maybe that was enough.

I am sure through all those faulty, short-lived, painful, and doomed relationships I had moments where the real me surfaced, but I know that even in longer term relationships, it never felt like this.

Having said that, we do argue- intensely- usually about the stupid things married couples do. I have never had the foundation I have now. Even within my family, I grew up believing that things were so shaky, that one person might leave at any moment—and more often I just felt forgotten in the struggle. Fighting or arguing scared the hell out of me because to me it meant loss and abandonment. This continued throughout all my relationships as a learned behavior. If a boyfriend and I were fighting, even if I was 100% right and it was something I should have fought or defended myself for, I was so reluctant to stand my ground for the fear of feeling it pulled out from under me. I gave in or panicked and back pedaled often just to make it stop. In the end, all I knew was nothing was really better, and I wasn’t being left or abandoned, but I felt incredibly alone.

In watching my friends go through ups and downs in their own marriages over the years, I have given advice, parceling out strong opinions and shock at how angry my friends could get over their husbands not handling a chore they had asked for, or forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning. Then on the other side of the coin, I would talk to my guy friends about their frustrations with their wives, again lecturing them on overreacting and not appreciating what they had. It is so funny how little you know until you are married. For the most part, we both try to take care of each other, but the little annoyances and grievances are there, and I have thought about my advice many times and chuckled to myself. You just don’t know until you are in it how difficult it can be at times, especially since we both had our first marriage at 40 years old, after a long time of being set in our ways.

What I love though, is that we are able to patch things up, usually make each other laugh, and feel stronger after. I know this is our first year of marriage, and this is the “honeymoon” phase. But we have also had to deal with some huge issues- painful, stressful family issues that we shouldn’t have had to deal with- but we have. And I know in my heart that if we can get through this in our first year of marriage, with all of the other “normal” adjustments, we will be fine. For a very long time.

This morning, we went to church for the 11:00am service. I have been honest with my husband about my struggles with religion—what I believe and what I struggle to believe. For my own past pain, for the pain we have both endured in the last year with family issues, for the pain I see in the world, and in my friends lives…for the randomness of lives taken, and repeated tragedies befalling the dearest people… I can’t always make it make sense. I can’t always believe there is a reason or a plan.

But as I sat in a pew this morning listening to hymns sung quietly in the small church where I became Shea’s wife, I knew more than anything that I had no doubts about how solid our marriage is and will be-- no doubts about how beautiful and perfect that November day was when we got married.

And most of all, no doubts about the man sitting next to me.

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About Face

Over the years, throughout the six or so cities I have called home, a letter or email would come from my high school reunion committee. For awhile, they even seemed to lose track of me—not a hard thing to do—as I have moved more than any one person I know. I was fine with that. I really had no desire to revisit an extremely awkward time in my life—and all the players seemed frozen in time-just as we all were then. That was fine by me, too. In a way, it made me feel better. At least back then, so many people expected so much of me—so many high hopes. If no one knew differently, I had achieved everything I was supposed to. So much so that I couldn’t be bothered to make it into town for a visit with old friends, past acquaintances, and school crushes.

The truth was, of course, completely the opposite, at least in my eyes. I imagined a party—all the familiar faces, and whispers behind plastic drinking cups about one another. How wonderful so-and-so looked. How so-and-so hadn’t changed a bit. And of course what people would think of me. Not married, a bit uncertain of my future, and weighing a few more pounds than I would have liked.

So when several close friends began encouraging me to join Facebook, I wasn’t the least bit interested. At the time, the only real social networking I was familiar with was My Space, mainly through my friend’s teenage children, and the thought of anyone my age spending time online for such a purpose seemed ludicrous. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to do such a thing. What a waste of time.

As one of my friends went on to explain status updates and how you could share what you were doing at any given moment—I thought surely she had lost her mind. Who does this?

I can’t remember when I finally took the leap, although I think it might have been to prove to that very friend (and myself) what a bunch of nonsense the whole thing was. And at first, it did seem that way to me.

Then, a few friend requests popped up. Some faces I instantly recognized, others sent me to my bookshelf to find my yearbooks, turning pages—remembering—and a bit shocked that some of these people remembered me at all. I had felt invisible for a lot of high school and there was something revealing in knowing I was seen.

As my friend list grew, I rekindled relationships with people from my past, kindergarten classmates, friends of friends…acquaintances I met through past jobs, through travel, and through the other random moments in life. I found children I was a nanny for in college, all grown up with the same three year old grin hidden somewhere in their expression, and magically recreated in their own toddler’s faces.

It became all a little bit—captivating. No longer were all these people frozen in time---judging me and what I hadn’t done—it startles me to think how self centered and more than a little paranoid that thinking was. My own fears made me believe no one could see past well, the past, when it was me that was stuck in time, forgetting that we all step through trap doors, miss our chances, take new directions. We all do. And we become who we are because of it.

Even my closest friends that I stay in constant contact with have become dearer to me. I do know what they are doing at any given moment when they feel like sharing, and it is a gift. I no longer just hear from Judith through emails or the occasional call. I know that she just got great news, or shares pictures of her son’s visit from college, and I get to be a part of her life again—just as I did when I lived around the corner from her in Atlanta, even though we now live five hours apart.

I join in my friends' joy as they add to their families and share pictures of moments I would have otherwise completely missed. I see us all growing up, doing everything all over the map. And all my paranoid visions of judgment are laughable now. The love and support from people I once only knew from Algebra class and school field trips now encourage me before a job interview or send snarky comments to me when I need to laugh. My heart swells when someone is in crisis, or worries in the ER for a sick child, and a group of Facebook warriors from all across the globe keep thoughts and prayers flowing through message after message lighting up the screen at all hours. It has been a learning experience, and for any naysayers about social media, there is something so connected, real and genuine about it all, and I can honestly say it has enriched my life.

In those small snippets of text that grace the main pages, there is humor, wisdom, sadness, and acceptance. And for me, there has been more. It is how I met the person I love. Through careful steps, shared memories, and more than a little trepidation, we got to know each other. And I am absolutely certain I would never have been able to open my heart any other way. Coming from a shared background, knowing his past, him knowing mine, others knowing both of us (and encouraging a romance)—it was the perfect formula for me to step back into the world of trust.

And I did, one status update at a time.

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