I'm sitting in the basement of the Manhattan hotel i've been contracted for as I type this. My day has been filled with nerves and frustration, mostly centered on job related things...but largely centered on the potential extension of my contract/continuation of my being employed. it's been a strange day.
but nothing compared to the email that i just got.
My friends brother passed last night. I don't know anymore more than that, I'm sure they are exhausted and emotional.
But all i can think of is...how? why? how can you even begin to think about unexpectedly planning a funeral for your brother...a mere 9 months after you were unexpectedly planning a funeral for your mother. Where does a task like that even start? Why was my friend chosen for this path.
I have no idea...It's something I cannot comprehend. It's something I can't make sense of because there is no sense to make of it. We've been told since childhood that life is not fair, but this is the epitome of unfair.
I know my friend, she will be strong and steadfast and the funeral will probably even have moments of laughter. I don't know how, but she will find the good in this and come from a place a love. She and her 2 other siblings will find a way.
But dammit, I just sat in a funeral home, in a church and watched them bury someone they loved, too early and to quickly. It was only 9 months ago...it just happened...
So for now, I cherish the relative simplicity of the uncertainty of employment. The funny thing? If i was standing in front of her, she would be asking me how I am...give me her good wishes. In a dark hour for her, she would worry about me.
So today, I worry about her. I think about her, her family...pray for them to be covered and for the solitude of spirit to be able to walk through this.
My mother really hates my ex husband. Honestly, most of the people who were in my life a decade ago when he left me, literally collapsed in the middle of the street crying and begging...most of those people aren't fond of him. And why would they be? He was cruel and calculating, planning his filing of paperwork to end our marriage down to having all his suits at the cleaners...he waited until various stars in his evil sky aligned...and then surprised me with paperwork on Monday in the middle of summer.
Sometimes you don't know you are grateful for something until later...
All this time, my mother has maintained hating my ex husband. His name comes up from time to time and my mother ascertains that as far as she is concerned, he can ingest feces and expire. Her hatred is real.
But the thing I'm grateful for is...it's freed me from having to hate him myself.
To steal a sentiment from my favorite movie of all time "Steel Magnolias"..."You know I never worry mama, because I know you're worried enough for the both of us." My mother hates enough for two...and it's a gift i'm grateful for.
Now i'm trying to sift through the ashes of Smash's and my's relationship and yet again, my mother and a majority of my friends have come to rescue with enough hate and enough anger to encompass me too. Thereby freeing me of needing to weigh those emotions myself.
Hatred is tiring, but it's even more tiring when you're already hurt and exhausted and embarrassed. Knowing I have "haters by proxy" allows me to focus on positivity. Knowing that I have friends who would, if asked, make a public scene to uphold my honor and his embarrassment is oddly comforting. I like knowing that "my people" are spread out and far reaching...and that above all, they love me. Love me enough to shield me from the pain of hating someone, from the embarrassment of being hurt and from the overall sadness of knowing that the person you loved lied and lied and lied.
i have about 9 half finished essays to that I've twirled around with for the past week or so...either because they don't sound right or so much has been going on in my head that trying to write ends up wildly off topic...
i've been lost in a fog of "me"...selfishly letting the world, or at least my world, revolve around me.
i've read and said the statement "be kind, for everyone is facing a battle" hundreds of times and think, in my life, i've tried to do the best to i can live by this.
tonight, while i have been contemplating certain levels of misery or how things have tabled out or how I don't feel as horrible or miserable...i realized...i've been so lost in my own battle...and my friend, my dear sweet, slightly insane friend, is fighting a battle so difficult that if i was in her shoes i don't think i'd even realize there WAS a sun...much less light to stand in.
I have only been to her hometown three times in my life. Once to attend her wedding and two other times to attend the funerals of both of her parents. Attending her father's funeral was a first for our crew. The first time the troops had rallied and the wagons had circled to attend one of our parents funerals.
As a group, we did not attend another one until 9 months ago, when her mother went from "somethings wrong with my mom" to "it's not good" to an email from one friend letting the rest of us know that her mom had passed away. It was 9 months ago, the middle of winter and the troops circled again, to drive across a snowy tundra to be together.
Last week we got a message, her brother, who has been been paralyzed from the waist down since a car accident a few years after her dad's death, was found unresponsive and is on life support. As we got the news, she and her sister were boarding a plane to sunny California, to deal with some decidedly un-sunny things. As I write this, he's still unresponsive, on life support and have just gotten the news that they believe there is permanent brain damage...but they don't know because he's still un-reactive.
but see, i've been living in this fog, where my own hurt is the greatest, where each day i assess how i'm feeling and what i think i can handle. and nothing is happening to me. i'm going to live, i'm going to be fine. I might cry or get melancholy when i hear certain songs...but the world, the world will spin madly on and over time, my heart will heal. I'll love again, i'll hurt again...
My tragedy feels very small. Not quite 9 months ago, my friend buried her mother. Tonight she is sitting at her brother's bedside and not knowing what will happen or if anything will happen.
People, teenagers and angst ridden 20-sometimes bemoan that life is unfair. And they are correct, it's not. How can one family loose their father, find a new normal...loose their mother and still be in the process of finding a new normal, only to find that normal is further off than they could even imagine?
I feel small and selfish. The world is spinning madly on and I can't do anything but think and pray for my friend...and even then, my own misery, my own uncertainly is larger on my mind than the uncertainty she is facing. My life will right itself and go back to normal. Her "normal" is going to be all new.
It is said, tritely, that God only gives one the things they can handle. I know this to be true. I also know, for all her unique brand of crazy, there is no person more loyal and loving than able to cope than my friend. They will survive to find whatever new normal is facing them and they will do it with love and laughter. Because that's who they are.
But tonight, I find myself wishing I was less like me and more like her...selfless and strong and able to find the sunshine on the darkest days.
i made it to chicago and back...and did not loose my mind in the process.
...thank heaven for little victories.
I'm actually not certain what i felt when I walked into the house: relief? sadness? freedom? confusion? some where tied up in all those emotions is what i was feeling.
as the cab rounded the corner onto my street, i was trying pinpoint exactly what emotion i was feeling. whatever it was, it was not the one i was expecting.
I had been expecting to feel the bottom fall out, much like the feeling when you go over a hill in a roller coaster. i was waiting for that...but for all my thoughts about the situation, my stomach did not fall out and as we approached the house i was anxious. perhaps to get it over with, to kill the ghost, to get it done. Nothing I could think of at the present time was going to be as difficult as walking into the house, but i only had to do it once and once i did it...it was done. There were no more mysteries, no more wandering WHAT...just a lot of figuring out WHAT IS.
the house looked remarkably similar for having lost 50% of it's residents. Smash had mentioned in the EMAIL he wrote me to let me know he HAD ALREADY moved out, that he had left a few things that we had bought "for the house". I walked into the house and the living room looked pretty much as i had left it, albeit missing the TV in the corner.
So i did was any intelligent girl does...stopped, poured myself a glass of wine and then went looking to see what everything looked like.
the back room, which had been Smash's studio, was pretty much completely empty. That was hard to take. the bookshelf in the bedroom was gone as well. I did take a moment to pause at the somewhat ridiculousness that he took the time to take the IKEA bookshelf down and apart to take...but not other stuff. but all of that is neither here nor there.
i walked around for awhile and looked at everything, waiting and pausing and taking stock in my emotions. I was sad, which was undeniable. This was the first physical and tangible sign of the new life I am going to be leading and no matter how much i've been humiliated or how much this is a positive step in my life...it's also hard to see an empty room. I started thinking about things i had in the basement that i could bring up to fill up the room and make it look more whole.
it turns out that i have a whole room's worth of spare possessions, which i brought up from the basement and staged in the room. I bought a rug, it really tied the room together.
i also kept at the front of my mind the type of person it turns out i am dealing with. This is a person who openly cheated on me and secretly humiliated me, who hid truths from me and lied to my face. This is a person who attempted to turn around any time he's been questioned about ANYTHING into an assault on me. I tried to remind myself that I will be happier, that happiness is a choice and that is what i am choosing.
and then i called my mom. I cried a bit at that point, but overall, i could not get over that i felt "free" free from having to worry WHAT he was going and to whom. Where he was, why he was lying, what the truth was. Free to not worry about him and not to feel inadequate because i did not anticipate his move.
i realized that, no matter how sad i was, that the nights of me crying myself to sleep because the man that i loved wouldn't touch me in bed or didn't notice the efforts i put in to attempt to make him happy. Days of being nervous from when he got home, not knowing what his mood was going to be and knowing that my feelings would be hurt when he ignored me. all the having to make excuses for him or telling my family and friends "half truths" about both his care of me and grammatical and spelling atrocities, well...that stuff would be over.
i wouldn't have to wonder if he was contacting fetish porn websites or "chicks with dicks" on craigslist, because it's no longer my issue or feel guilty about asking him to buy dinner...
because these are no longer my problems.
It does NOT make it hurt less. I'm still putting this all back together and figuring out what personal happiness and letting go mean for ME...and there are still battles to be had and tears to be shed...
