I had dinner at Baraka with some of the wonderful women that I grew up with in HYOC--my close-to-my-heart Hina, with whom I first moved to New York for our freshman year of college; Joanna, who we figured out I haven't seen since Hina's wedding about 4 years ago, and there only briefly, and with whom I haven't had a more extensive conversation since an opera rehearsal camp 8 years ago; and Jenjen, who came with her lovely partner Raquel. Jam Guy came too, and I was pretty much in heaven between the wonderful company and the food we ate--a lamb tagine, an incredible dish of prosciuto-wrapped dates, and, most memorably, a seared octopus dish that was so much better than I'd imagined, even given how much I like octopus.
Jam Guy and I drove back to Santa Rosa and late that night I fell asleep and dreamed that I was sitting at a table with my HYOC girls again, with the empty seat open and waiting at my left, as it had been for Jam Guy earlier that evening. In the dream we were eating an afternoon kaffe und kuchen--the German version of high tea, coffee and cake at 4 pm--that my mother used to love, especially after a day of shopping. I dreamed that I thought about my mother, and wished so hard that she could join us and that that empty chair was waiting for her.
I dreamed a wish, and in the dream the wish came true: My mother came, smiling, in the best of all her possible moods. She was loaded with shopping bags, the way she would be in some of my favorite memories of her. She sat down in the chair next to me, so happy to be joining us for kaffe und kuchen, so happy with the shopping she'd accomplished. She was happy to see me, too. I didn't know what to do--I knew, even in my dream, that my mother is dead, and that whatever was happening was out of the ordinary. But I was so happy to see her that I decided to pretend that everything was normal. I chatted and gossiped away with her, and the other women there must have been astonished too, but I was totally wrapped up in her.
I was so happy and shaken by her presence that I was crying, all wet with tears, but I was trying to keep my voice normal and keep acting happy and chatty. I didn't know if she knew that something supernatural was happening, and I didn't want to do anything that would make her go away. It was the kind of dream you almost wish you could live in.
I was still happy when I woke up. I thought, there must be something to the fact that in the dream, she was sitting in the place that was waiting for Jam Guy at dinner the night before. I thought--I still think--it was a good omen that she was so happy.
Jam Guy made us coffee and oatmeal with sour cherries and cream, and then we drove to Berkeley to meet with April Higashi, the wonderful artist who is designing our engagement ring. She had found some rubies for us to look over. When we were debating the ethics--both from a human and an ecological standpoint--of a mined ruby versus a lab-created ruby, we had written to April for insight from someone in the industry, and she'd written us a lovely email helping to elucidate both sides of the discussion and really helping to clarify our perspectives.
The first stone that drew me was a small, oval ruby from Madagascar. I hesitated, though, because it didn't seem red enough--it was tending more towards pink. The lab-created rubies looked redder, but somehow too perfect, sort of dimensionless. April said that if we didn't love any of the rubies she could bring more for us to look at, but I was really drawn towards that first one.
When I held it against a gold band, though, it did look beautifully red--red with the little shades of magenta and gold that you see in a glass of Merlot (which isn't, for the record, my favorite wine to drink, but it might be my favorite one to look at). April put some light on the stones, and the Madagascar ruby in the light actually looked redder than the lab-created stones, which made me happy--I really wanted the stone that I'd been so drawn towards to look like the stone I had envisioned in my ring. Somehow all of a sudden it all worked out--I'd been leaning towards a mined stone because of a desire to spend in a way that supports a community in a developing country instead of a corporation; Jam Guy had been leaning away from a mined stone because of the tragic politically-motivated events in Myanmar, where most rubies are purchased, but this stone was not from Myanmar; April pointed out that the stone would look even redder when set and also that she believed that things have energetic properties (which I agree with) implying that if I was drawn to the Madagascar ruby from the beginning, I should pay attention to that feeling. We decided to go with that stone, and on the drive home I remembered my dream, and thought about how everything had fallen into place this morning.
Mom: what a shopping trip it was. Thank you for being happy for me.
Monday, March 31, 2008
I know I split that infinitive.
I thought about it for a long time, and it was just one of those things that works better when it's wrong. If you caught it too, you're crazy like me, and I appreciate that.
I guess it's never easy
Friday morning I was on the bus on the way to the airport. Sitting across from me was a trio of high-school students—three girls, two looking like they were headed straight for the live audience at TRL and one in faded, baggy jeans, a big grey sweatshirt, a loose ponytail and no makeup. Sweatshirt Girl was a little heavy where the other two were thin, and she stared into space while they other two gossiped and whispered. It seemed, though, that they were all friends, in defiance of all the high school rules I remember.
Sweatshirt Girl had one of the TRL girls on one side of her and an empty seat on the other, on which she placed her backpack. About ten minutes went by. A heavy boy, a classmate of theirs, waved at them as he boarded, all awkwardness and self-awareness. Sweatshirt Girl waved back. The TRL girls ignored him.
Then another boy boarded. He wore a striped polo shirt that was ridiculously big on him, his hair stuck up all over the place, and he had these thick, coke-bottle glasses. The heavy boy leaned forward and stuck out his hand for a high-five. The boy in the glasses reached to return the gesture, and the heavy boy suddenly pulled his hand back and pretended to slick his hair (Psyche!). Even he winced a little at his own sad, small joke.
Glasses Boy did not once look at Sweatshirt Girl or her friends, and they didn't look at him, either. As far as I could tell, they didn't know each other at all. But when he boarded, Sweatshirt Girl moved her backpack, and he sat down in the newly-empty seat. They still did not look at each other.
About a minute went by before they looked directly at each other. Sweatshirt Girl cracked the smallest, most circumspect of smiles and waved at him—waved, even though he was sitting right next to him. He did not smile, but waved back. They went back to staring into space. All the while the high-pitched chatter of the TRL girls floated around them—it seemed as though the TRL girls were aware of each other, the heavy boy was miserably aware of himself and everyone else, and Sweatshirt Girl and Glasses Boy were each totally unaware of anything at all, including one another.
Several minutes later, entirely without preface, Glasses Boy stretched, yawned, and put his arm around Sweatshirt Girl. She did not react, except to look slightly more indifferent to everything. The TRL girls did not react either. I wanted to clap my hands and cheer.
Five minutes later one of the TRL girls addressed Sweatshirt Girl. “You're so quiet today,” she said. I couldn't tell if she was teasing Sweatshirt Girl or just making conversation. Sweatshirt Girl glared a little. “I'm just tired. It's early,” she pointed out. (True that, I thought, clutching my coffee.) But then she leaned a little into Glasses Boy and pretended to be very interested in his other hand, the one not attached to the arm around her. She picked it up and peered at it. He said something, gruff, his face still blank and serious.
Suddenly Sweatshirt Girl's face cracked wide open. She smiled and smiled; she laughed out loud, playing with his hand. She brought it up to her face and traced the lines along his palm. She turned it over, peered at the moons of his nails. It could have been the most fascinating, the most entertaining, the cleverest thing she'd ever seen. Glasses Boy said something else, his face inscrutable, and this time Sweatshirt Girl nearly collapsed with laughter. Joy shook her. Finally he laughed too. He held her hand. After a few minutes of this they lapsed back into their calm, inscrutable, staring silence. When they got off the bus, I watched them walk into school—next to each other, walking in the same direction, but, bizarrely, looking away from each other, in opposite directions, practically incurring neck injury in their efforts to not look at each other.
I know how that girl felt. I know that even though she wasn't spending her morning curling her hair or her eyelashes, even though she wasn't picking out the cutest clothes to wear, her whole morning strained towards being on that bus with that arm around her shoulders. I know that she knew how totally in over her head she was, daring and helpless in love, maybe for the first time ever. I know that she was trying to make sure she could still breathe, trying to stay above water, and that's why she only let herself look right at him for a few moments at a time.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Time to deal a little bit
Jam Guy told me this afternoon that he'd heard from a coworker who has friends at my school that my classmate had passed away. I didn't know her; I recognize her by face--she was in one of my classes, and close to graduation. It was D initially who told me about her being diagnosed--less than two months ago!--with stage IV lung cancer in both lungs, which is a shocking diagnosis for a healthy, non-smoking 30-year old. She was the same age as me. I don't know how to honor her life in any real way, because I didn't know her, but I am saddened about the death of someone in my community.
Every day I am grateful--I know I say this all the time. I am grateful for my life in a very large way, but also in smaller ways grateful that I've found a career path that clarifies for me the significance of death within the significance of life, grateful that this path brings me in contact with other people that share similar values, grateful that there is a realistic understanding of death that is part of the practice of being in this field.
What surprises me is that all this understanding does not make acceptance of death any easier.
I know there is a huge element of ego in the fact that I'm so upset by Claire passing away--the fact that she was also 30, also healthy, also loved and in love, also about to graduate and start the career for which we've all sacrificed so much time and energy over the last four or more years. But there it is. It makes me sad and scared, and makes my fear about the precariousness of life swell and roar. It also makes me want to spend all my time connecting with the people I love.
Here is a link to the website that Claire's friends started in order to raise funds for her treatment.
Every day I am grateful--I know I say this all the time. I am grateful for my life in a very large way, but also in smaller ways grateful that I've found a career path that clarifies for me the significance of death within the significance of life, grateful that this path brings me in contact with other people that share similar values, grateful that there is a realistic understanding of death that is part of the practice of being in this field.
What surprises me is that all this understanding does not make acceptance of death any easier.
I know there is a huge element of ego in the fact that I'm so upset by Claire passing away--the fact that she was also 30, also healthy, also loved and in love, also about to graduate and start the career for which we've all sacrificed so much time and energy over the last four or more years. But there it is. It makes me sad and scared, and makes my fear about the precariousness of life swell and roar. It also makes me want to spend all my time connecting with the people I love.
Here is a link to the website that Claire's friends started in order to raise funds for her treatment.
Because I'm not busy enough
with going to classes, preparing for state boards and year-end exams AND finals, traveling to see the amazing boy and my lovely friends and family, taking care of my constitutionally-deficient kitty cat and surfing the enormous pile of clothing and papers that my home has become, I took this quiz that May talked about on her blog.
(Really I took it looking for a distraction--I just found out that a woman in my class passed away this morning. I am sure this seems horrible and insensitive of me, but this is how I deal. I don't want to think about it yet. I am coping. So I take a silly quiz.)
Here are my results:
Random Brutal Love Dreamer (RBLD)
The Wild Rose
Colorful, but unpicked. You are The Wild Rose.
Prone to bouts of cynicism, sarcasm, and thorns, you excite a certain kind of man. Hoping to gather you up, he flirts and winks and asks you out, ultimately professing his love. Then you make him bleed. Why? Because you're the rare, independent, self-sufficient kind of woman who does want love, but not from a weakling.
You don't seem to take yourself too seriously, and that's refreshing. You aren't uptight; you don't over-plan. Romance-wise, sex isn't a top priority--a true relationship would be preferable. For your age, you haven't had a lot of bonafide love experience, though, and this kind of gets to core of the issue. You're very selective.
The problem is them, not you, right? You have lofty standards that few measure up to. You're out there all right, but not to be picked up by just anyone.
(They even put in this little picture of what this brutal dreamer person is supposed to look like. Eerily enough, I'm pretty sure I have this exact cardigan.)
(Really I took it looking for a distraction--I just found out that a woman in my class passed away this morning. I am sure this seems horrible and insensitive of me, but this is how I deal. I don't want to think about it yet. I am coping. So I take a silly quiz.)
Here are my results:
Random Brutal Love Dreamer (RBLD)
The Wild Rose
Colorful, but unpicked. You are The Wild Rose.
Prone to bouts of cynicism, sarcasm, and thorns, you excite a certain kind of man. Hoping to gather you up, he flirts and winks and asks you out, ultimately professing his love. Then you make him bleed. Why? Because you're the rare, independent, self-sufficient kind of woman who does want love, but not from a weakling.
You don't seem to take yourself too seriously, and that's refreshing. You aren't uptight; you don't over-plan. Romance-wise, sex isn't a top priority--a true relationship would be preferable. For your age, you haven't had a lot of bonafide love experience, though, and this kind of gets to core of the issue. You're very selective.
The problem is them, not you, right? You have lofty standards that few measure up to. You're out there all right, but not to be picked up by just anyone.
(They even put in this little picture of what this brutal dreamer person is supposed to look like. Eerily enough, I'm pretty sure I have this exact cardigan.)
Sunday, March 23, 2008
On Friday night
I went out dancing in short shorts, high heels, and a spangly backless halter thingy. No ex-boyfriends came charging out of the crowds at the club to disparage me, and I had a blast--danced for hours with a group of lovely women to fun music with no consequences other than a blister on one toe.
I think dancing is really good for me, and I think wearing fantastically provocative clothes every so often is good for me, too. So take that, ugly voices in my head!
I think dancing is really good for me, and I think wearing fantastically provocative clothes every so often is good for me, too. So take that, ugly voices in my head!
Friday, March 21, 2008
And now I have to write this
because it is looming in a big bad way all of a sudden.
Last night I went out for drinks after class with D. I had one-and-a-half beers. That is not a lot of alcohol, even for lightweight me. I waited a bit before driving home, went to bed, slept a lot of hours, and then woke up with a mind-blowing hangover.
This is puzzling, because I am not really the hangover type, and when I have had hangovers (maybe 4 or 5 times in my entire life) it's usually after drinking loads of something really strong--martinis, Jam Guy's delicious French 75s, or, memorably, a fifth of dirt-cheap tequila in college. Why do I have a hangover today?
I think it's because of one of the things D and I were talking about last night. We were talking about how women and men relate to one another, and the element of control in relationships. We talked about how some men control their girlfriends or wives with physical violence or emotional abuse; D pointed out that often these two things are not all that separate. He said that some men just exude a sense of volatile physicality that states wordlessly that they might lose it and hurt you if you don't go their way. It doesn't matter, he said, whether they've ever gotten physical with you or not--it works to control you at the very basic level of fear for your own safety. Potentially, you end up bartering everything you might ever want for an unreliable promise that you might remain intact.
No one had ever pointed out that particular dynamic to me before--the threat of physical violence being as real as the violence itself. I am sure D thought we were talking from a totally objective, third-party perspective. I stared into my beer and watched the bubbles become untethered from the sides of the glass.
D doesn't know a whole lot about my relationship with the guy I lived with for four years in New York. Most people don't, other than that he was controlling and jealous. This particular ex and I met when I was recording an album for a so-so band in a studio in midtown Manhattan. The ex was directing production on the album. We started dating and everything moved really fast--sped up by the fact that he'd gotten a potentially terminal cancer diagnosis, which turned out to be false, but I was already in fullblown caretaker mode and head-over-heels. Six months later I found a fantastic deal on a semi-illegal sublet in the East Village; he moved in with me.
During those six months there were warning signs all over the place. I think am a pretty damn smart woman, but all of us are stupid in love. He was mad when I got a ride home from a gig with an ex-boyfriend in the band. He was suspicious and jealous when I came back from a trip with girlfriends to Atlantic City--he was certain I had cheated on him. He picked on the provocative clothes I liked wearing so much at the time. I didn't tell my friends this; I wanted so much for things to work. Something about the way he suspected me of having poor character and thought it was wrong for me to have the kinds of fun I did resonated with me--he sounded like my parents getting ready to ground me. It's kind of sick now that I look back at it, but I guess as a little girl a part of me had learned to interpret control and guilt as the way love is supposed to be. I felt a little bit of fear of him; I felt a little bit of nausea when when he put me down; I thought maybe that was how falling in love was supposed to feel: giving up control, helpless.
I feel like I need to explain how I fell for this guy to myself, because what came later seems so obvious now, in retrospect. It's hard for me to understand now how I ended up in this category of women that have been in the situation I was in. I am not weak, but I turned over all my strength without a fight. I liked looking pretty, working all of my sex appeal, and I handed him the keys to that particular racecar. I had been fighting so hard for a real sense of self, one that was just in its infancy at 24 because it was the first time in my life I'd felt able to be more than somebody's daughter or girlfriend or student, and I let him take that infant self and squish her into his idea of what she ought to be. It was a bad fit, but I sucked in and just tried to resign myself to never exhaling again.
It was bad and I only stayed in it because I was in love. I know how cliched and dumb that sounds. I want to say I am not that woman, but maybe we are all that woman, given the wrong circumstances. I am not going to try to justify it, but I am embarrassed now by it.
I didn't tell anyone how bad it was because I didn't tell myself how bad it was. This is how bad it was: If an attractive man came on the television and I was watching it, he would be angry at me all night and sometimes into the next day. Eventually the definition of "attractive man" extended to anyone male that was old enough to have entered puberty and young enough to not need live-in care. If I passed a man on the street and looked at him--even just enough of a look to not run into him on the busy streets of downtown Manhattan--the boyfriend would be angry at me all night, again, and again possibly into the next day. If I breathed or shifted the wrong way when we were sitting together on the couch, he would accuse me of not being attracted to him, which led to accusations of being attracted to other men. If I wore anything besides the plainest and baggiest of clothes he wanted to know what man I was trying to attract.
If I burned the coffee, if I made him an egg sandwich that was too runny or too dry, if I spilled water, if I forgot what day the car needed to be re-parked, if I wanted to cut my hair, if I didn't kiss him goodbye the right way, if I complained about anything: all reasons for a litany of complaints about my character. If I asked him when he was going to have an income again because I was exhausted from working nearly full-time to support myself and another adult while going to school full-time, he simply stopped speaking to me, or meanly suggested I cheat on him if I was so unhappy with him. If I sneezed too often, it was interpreted as a cloying and underhanded way of seeking attention and sympathy.
I grew up in an often-unhappy house; I understand why people take out their sadness on others. Being that other was not a new position for me. I knew everything was wrong, but I also knew that this ex was a man who volunteered in his community, made me dinners sometimes when I was really tired, was very sweet with our pets, held me while I cried for hours when my fish died--so I felt sympathy for him; I thought how awful it must be to not believe that you could be loved as much as I loved him then. And I coped in ways that I can't believe now: when we went out together, or even when I was alone but on our block, in case he was watching from the fire escape, I looked down at the sidewalk. I just walked very carefully and quit looking up. I saw a lot of shoes, cracks in the sidewalk, tiny sick city plants, litter, rat feces. I told myself I'd never noticed how interesting these things were before. I told myself I could live without the sky and the faces of new people. I swallowed his exasperated beratements about how clumsy I was when, inevitably, I bumped into things. I took up knitting to have something to look at while we sat on the couch and he watched television, so that I wouldn't have to justify looking down every time a male came on the set; I finally just quit looking at it at all while it was on, which is surprisingly hard to do in a tiny studio apartment. When he was out of the apartment--which was not often--I didn't turn it on at all, because if I did, he would come back and inevitably ask what I'd been watching, and there was no way to have a correct answer: if it was a program that didn't have a single male in it--like a cartoon, which is about all that was safe--he wouldn't believe me. When he was out for longer periods, he would text me all the time to say he was coming back, just around the corner, might be in any minute, so that I wouldn't leave or feel like I could watch television or do anything other than sit in the apartment in my baggy clothes clutching my knitting needles like a crafty asylum patient. I watched my breathing, making sure it never sped up or slowed in any way that could be interpreted as interest in someone else or a lack of interest in him. I rehearsed even small movements in my head before doing them to make sure that they didn't seem like I was pulling away from him. I tried to say only things that were necessary, that would charm him, or that showed my love for him.
Just once we played a gig together, and when he saw what I wanted to wear--flowing black pants, a batwing-sleeved blouse--he refused, an hour before we were supposed to be on stage, to do the gig. Only after I'd changed into a military surplus jacket and old jeans, removed all my makeup, and begged, did he relent. I was so uncomfortable during the gig. I remembered, like a dream, that once I had loved performing, but in that moment I didn't know who I was being.
When he was angry I was scared of him. He got angry in a quiet way. He got quieter and quieter and would sometimes use a weird sing-songy voice, the way you scold a child for doing something like eating a cookie before dinner, except that with him it wouldn't end there. He would go on to tell me how I clearly wasn't trustworthy, how I was addicted to the attention of other men, how I would never find a relationship worth staying in because no man could ever respect someone so wanton, superficial, scatterbrained. How he saw thought he'd seen a good person within the floozy I was, but now he wasn't sure anymore, but it was too late for him to back out because, in spite of all his better judgment, he did love me and had invested so much time now into our relationship. But maybe love wasn't enough, he said, and maybe he should have known better; although maybe since he'd been so deceived by my devoted, nice-girl act, the only thing left for him to do now was make the best of the mess he'd gotten himself into, the mess of me, and hope that I could eventually mature into someone he could love as an equal.
I am not exaggerating when I say I didn't know it was possible to cry that much or that often. I didn't know what to believe. The part of myself that knew better than to swallow his opinions about me got littler and littler. I went to school with my face puffy and red and blamed allergies. I was afraid of him physically, and he never ever hit me, but he was strong and a trained fighter and the physicality was always just there under the surface. Sometimes it came out, though never at me: he would throw things, punch walls, break stuff. He hit our ceiling with a dumbbell once and left a huge dent; the dog and I sat in the bathroom, the cat under the couch, until it felt safe for all of us to come out.
The dog and I also sat in the bathroom when pizza delivery guys came over, and I said it was because the dog would growl at the pizza guy and scare him, but really it was that I was trying to avoid him confronting me about trying to seduce the pizza guy.
Song lyrics I wrote in those days reflect a loss of self and a fierce attempt at resignation that I only recognize fully now:
There was a girl without a face
She lived alone inside a cloud
And every day there in the sky
She dreamed of being recognized
or
I don't know who you think you've got your arms around
She's already died of fear of letting you down
or
helpless as the tide before the moon
might be the wrong thing to do
but i follow you
or
sunrise!: but you don't dare lift your eyes
it's nothing you ain't seen before anyways
The things that made it possible for me to leave:
One day, he was looking at my email and clicked through messages from a male friend. I reached to stop him from reading my email--he was starting with the sing-song voice, and even though there was nothing inappropriate in the emails, I knew the simple fact that I had a male friend was enough to send him over the edge--and he grabbed one of my wrists, then both, easily in one of his hands while clicking through my inbox with the other. I couldn't pull my hands clear, and when I tried he just gripped tighter, with no change of expression. It hurt, but worse than the hurt was the sense of helplessness, and the clear message that the gesture sent: "If you and I want different things, what it comes down to is that I am stronger than you, and I will use that advantage."
One day, shortly after that, I suggested we get counseling, and he broke the railing of our loft bed. In an act of unprecedented rebellion, I left the apartment, but before I got out of the building I got yelled at by our crazy landlord for something. I came back in tears--the landlord was always yelling at someone and it was usually sort of funny, but it was just more than I was ready to take that one day--and against all logic the ex-boyfriend went out to ostensibly beat up the landlord for making me cry. I tried to explain that it wasn't the landlord that had made me cry, but he was already out the door. (Fortunately, he didn't find the landlord.)
That same day I tentatively brought up counseling again, and again there was an explosion, which culminated in his calling me (I can't forget this) a "fucking freak" and I literally ran out the door this time. It was, of course, in the middle of a thunderstorm. In movies this looks cool and dramatic and super-emo. In real life it sucks and makes you hope you don't run into anyone you know, especially if you're wearing flip flops and a tank top because that's what you were wearing in the house and you ran away without giving weather conditions any thought.
The following week my sister and her wife came to town, and the ex left the apartment and went to stay with a friend. We went to the Brooklyn Pride festival and watched a salsa group dancing on stage. There was a young woman in a red dress who did a little featured dance solo. I watched her and felt a glimpse of recognition--her hips were swaying, her head was tilted up, she was so in love with her own physicality and sexuality. I remembered that feeling and suddenly connected with how much I'd missed it. I love dancing, but there had been so much angst connected with trying to justify a dance outing since living with the ex--the clothes, the men that would inevitably be at the club--that I just sort of gave it up, like looking at the sky, and tried to tell myself it didn't matter. What I realized that day was that it did matter, that there was a kernel of a self in me that was hollering itself hoarse to avoid being accidentally buried alive. I cried there in the festival amid all the happy people out of grief for the years I'd kept myself apart from the girl who loves dancing.
When I left him it was in a hurry and with one suitcase and scared out of my mind for my safety and my sanity. It was maybe harder than anything I'd had to do before. I had my wonderful sister and my wonderful friends--and, thank heavens, a good therapist--helping me through it, an amazing support network of people that saved my life. But I had wanted it to work so much. I was giving up not only on the good parts of our relationship but on my desire to see the goodness I knew existed in him manifest in a real and consistent way. I know now it wasn't going to happen, at least not in any way I could be around for. I know now that the four years I spent with him were meant to teach me some kind of long, grueling lesson. I know that I might not be with my amazing Jam Guy now if it hadn't been for the time spent with the ex. And I am grateful for the experience and for the opportunity it gives me to empathize with other women in the same situation. I know now, firsthand, why you don't leave a relationship even when you know you should, and I know now how little "should" has to do with anything when you're caught up in the thrall of someone who's systematically destroying who you are.
But the reason this is coming up for me today is because of my talk with D last night, because i have a headache and that makes me feel vulnerable, because I am in love with a wonderful Jam Guy and in a safe enough place now where I can start to process my feelings, and mostly because I'm going dancing tonight. I'm going dancing with some wonderful girlfriends from my school, and I'm trying to figure out what to wear, and I'm realizing that anticipating going dancing is not the pure, simply fun thing that it was before I was with the ex. There is a voice in my head that vetoes the things I consider wearing because they're too slutty or head-turning. That same voice tells me I should feel ashamed to want to dance, to make any sort of exhibition of myself, that I can expect men to hit on me if I'm out at a club because that's what men do at clubs, and I should feel guilty because I am willing to go out knowing that this will happen.
I know all these reactions ought to be things I ignore--I should just wear what I want and do what I want and have fun--but they are there, in my head, and I resent their presence there. I want to look forward to this in as uncomplicated a way as I used to. I want to enjoy being a pretty woman in high heels. I want to feel like there is nothing wrong with that. Jam Guy reassures me all the time that these feelings are ok--he is the most wonderful man in the world, if I haven't mentioned that--and I am really trying my best to believe him.
I am going to keep trying my best to know that I am ok.
Last night I went out for drinks after class with D. I had one-and-a-half beers. That is not a lot of alcohol, even for lightweight me. I waited a bit before driving home, went to bed, slept a lot of hours, and then woke up with a mind-blowing hangover.
This is puzzling, because I am not really the hangover type, and when I have had hangovers (maybe 4 or 5 times in my entire life) it's usually after drinking loads of something really strong--martinis, Jam Guy's delicious French 75s, or, memorably, a fifth of dirt-cheap tequila in college. Why do I have a hangover today?
I think it's because of one of the things D and I were talking about last night. We were talking about how women and men relate to one another, and the element of control in relationships. We talked about how some men control their girlfriends or wives with physical violence or emotional abuse; D pointed out that often these two things are not all that separate. He said that some men just exude a sense of volatile physicality that states wordlessly that they might lose it and hurt you if you don't go their way. It doesn't matter, he said, whether they've ever gotten physical with you or not--it works to control you at the very basic level of fear for your own safety. Potentially, you end up bartering everything you might ever want for an unreliable promise that you might remain intact.
No one had ever pointed out that particular dynamic to me before--the threat of physical violence being as real as the violence itself. I am sure D thought we were talking from a totally objective, third-party perspective. I stared into my beer and watched the bubbles become untethered from the sides of the glass.
D doesn't know a whole lot about my relationship with the guy I lived with for four years in New York. Most people don't, other than that he was controlling and jealous. This particular ex and I met when I was recording an album for a so-so band in a studio in midtown Manhattan. The ex was directing production on the album. We started dating and everything moved really fast--sped up by the fact that he'd gotten a potentially terminal cancer diagnosis, which turned out to be false, but I was already in fullblown caretaker mode and head-over-heels. Six months later I found a fantastic deal on a semi-illegal sublet in the East Village; he moved in with me.
During those six months there were warning signs all over the place. I think am a pretty damn smart woman, but all of us are stupid in love. He was mad when I got a ride home from a gig with an ex-boyfriend in the band. He was suspicious and jealous when I came back from a trip with girlfriends to Atlantic City--he was certain I had cheated on him. He picked on the provocative clothes I liked wearing so much at the time. I didn't tell my friends this; I wanted so much for things to work. Something about the way he suspected me of having poor character and thought it was wrong for me to have the kinds of fun I did resonated with me--he sounded like my parents getting ready to ground me. It's kind of sick now that I look back at it, but I guess as a little girl a part of me had learned to interpret control and guilt as the way love is supposed to be. I felt a little bit of fear of him; I felt a little bit of nausea when when he put me down; I thought maybe that was how falling in love was supposed to feel: giving up control, helpless.
I feel like I need to explain how I fell for this guy to myself, because what came later seems so obvious now, in retrospect. It's hard for me to understand now how I ended up in this category of women that have been in the situation I was in. I am not weak, but I turned over all my strength without a fight. I liked looking pretty, working all of my sex appeal, and I handed him the keys to that particular racecar. I had been fighting so hard for a real sense of self, one that was just in its infancy at 24 because it was the first time in my life I'd felt able to be more than somebody's daughter or girlfriend or student, and I let him take that infant self and squish her into his idea of what she ought to be. It was a bad fit, but I sucked in and just tried to resign myself to never exhaling again.
It was bad and I only stayed in it because I was in love. I know how cliched and dumb that sounds. I want to say I am not that woman, but maybe we are all that woman, given the wrong circumstances. I am not going to try to justify it, but I am embarrassed now by it.
I didn't tell anyone how bad it was because I didn't tell myself how bad it was. This is how bad it was: If an attractive man came on the television and I was watching it, he would be angry at me all night and sometimes into the next day. Eventually the definition of "attractive man" extended to anyone male that was old enough to have entered puberty and young enough to not need live-in care. If I passed a man on the street and looked at him--even just enough of a look to not run into him on the busy streets of downtown Manhattan--the boyfriend would be angry at me all night, again, and again possibly into the next day. If I breathed or shifted the wrong way when we were sitting together on the couch, he would accuse me of not being attracted to him, which led to accusations of being attracted to other men. If I wore anything besides the plainest and baggiest of clothes he wanted to know what man I was trying to attract.
If I burned the coffee, if I made him an egg sandwich that was too runny or too dry, if I spilled water, if I forgot what day the car needed to be re-parked, if I wanted to cut my hair, if I didn't kiss him goodbye the right way, if I complained about anything: all reasons for a litany of complaints about my character. If I asked him when he was going to have an income again because I was exhausted from working nearly full-time to support myself and another adult while going to school full-time, he simply stopped speaking to me, or meanly suggested I cheat on him if I was so unhappy with him. If I sneezed too often, it was interpreted as a cloying and underhanded way of seeking attention and sympathy.
I grew up in an often-unhappy house; I understand why people take out their sadness on others. Being that other was not a new position for me. I knew everything was wrong, but I also knew that this ex was a man who volunteered in his community, made me dinners sometimes when I was really tired, was very sweet with our pets, held me while I cried for hours when my fish died--so I felt sympathy for him; I thought how awful it must be to not believe that you could be loved as much as I loved him then. And I coped in ways that I can't believe now: when we went out together, or even when I was alone but on our block, in case he was watching from the fire escape, I looked down at the sidewalk. I just walked very carefully and quit looking up. I saw a lot of shoes, cracks in the sidewalk, tiny sick city plants, litter, rat feces. I told myself I'd never noticed how interesting these things were before. I told myself I could live without the sky and the faces of new people. I swallowed his exasperated beratements about how clumsy I was when, inevitably, I bumped into things. I took up knitting to have something to look at while we sat on the couch and he watched television, so that I wouldn't have to justify looking down every time a male came on the set; I finally just quit looking at it at all while it was on, which is surprisingly hard to do in a tiny studio apartment. When he was out of the apartment--which was not often--I didn't turn it on at all, because if I did, he would come back and inevitably ask what I'd been watching, and there was no way to have a correct answer: if it was a program that didn't have a single male in it--like a cartoon, which is about all that was safe--he wouldn't believe me. When he was out for longer periods, he would text me all the time to say he was coming back, just around the corner, might be in any minute, so that I wouldn't leave or feel like I could watch television or do anything other than sit in the apartment in my baggy clothes clutching my knitting needles like a crafty asylum patient. I watched my breathing, making sure it never sped up or slowed in any way that could be interpreted as interest in someone else or a lack of interest in him. I rehearsed even small movements in my head before doing them to make sure that they didn't seem like I was pulling away from him. I tried to say only things that were necessary, that would charm him, or that showed my love for him.
Just once we played a gig together, and when he saw what I wanted to wear--flowing black pants, a batwing-sleeved blouse--he refused, an hour before we were supposed to be on stage, to do the gig. Only after I'd changed into a military surplus jacket and old jeans, removed all my makeup, and begged, did he relent. I was so uncomfortable during the gig. I remembered, like a dream, that once I had loved performing, but in that moment I didn't know who I was being.
When he was angry I was scared of him. He got angry in a quiet way. He got quieter and quieter and would sometimes use a weird sing-songy voice, the way you scold a child for doing something like eating a cookie before dinner, except that with him it wouldn't end there. He would go on to tell me how I clearly wasn't trustworthy, how I was addicted to the attention of other men, how I would never find a relationship worth staying in because no man could ever respect someone so wanton, superficial, scatterbrained. How he saw thought he'd seen a good person within the floozy I was, but now he wasn't sure anymore, but it was too late for him to back out because, in spite of all his better judgment, he did love me and had invested so much time now into our relationship. But maybe love wasn't enough, he said, and maybe he should have known better; although maybe since he'd been so deceived by my devoted, nice-girl act, the only thing left for him to do now was make the best of the mess he'd gotten himself into, the mess of me, and hope that I could eventually mature into someone he could love as an equal.
I am not exaggerating when I say I didn't know it was possible to cry that much or that often. I didn't know what to believe. The part of myself that knew better than to swallow his opinions about me got littler and littler. I went to school with my face puffy and red and blamed allergies. I was afraid of him physically, and he never ever hit me, but he was strong and a trained fighter and the physicality was always just there under the surface. Sometimes it came out, though never at me: he would throw things, punch walls, break stuff. He hit our ceiling with a dumbbell once and left a huge dent; the dog and I sat in the bathroom, the cat under the couch, until it felt safe for all of us to come out.
The dog and I also sat in the bathroom when pizza delivery guys came over, and I said it was because the dog would growl at the pizza guy and scare him, but really it was that I was trying to avoid him confronting me about trying to seduce the pizza guy.
Song lyrics I wrote in those days reflect a loss of self and a fierce attempt at resignation that I only recognize fully now:
There was a girl without a face
She lived alone inside a cloud
And every day there in the sky
She dreamed of being recognized
or
I don't know who you think you've got your arms around
She's already died of fear of letting you down
or
helpless as the tide before the moon
might be the wrong thing to do
but i follow you
or
sunrise!: but you don't dare lift your eyes
it's nothing you ain't seen before anyways
The things that made it possible for me to leave:
One day, he was looking at my email and clicked through messages from a male friend. I reached to stop him from reading my email--he was starting with the sing-song voice, and even though there was nothing inappropriate in the emails, I knew the simple fact that I had a male friend was enough to send him over the edge--and he grabbed one of my wrists, then both, easily in one of his hands while clicking through my inbox with the other. I couldn't pull my hands clear, and when I tried he just gripped tighter, with no change of expression. It hurt, but worse than the hurt was the sense of helplessness, and the clear message that the gesture sent: "If you and I want different things, what it comes down to is that I am stronger than you, and I will use that advantage."
One day, shortly after that, I suggested we get counseling, and he broke the railing of our loft bed. In an act of unprecedented rebellion, I left the apartment, but before I got out of the building I got yelled at by our crazy landlord for something. I came back in tears--the landlord was always yelling at someone and it was usually sort of funny, but it was just more than I was ready to take that one day--and against all logic the ex-boyfriend went out to ostensibly beat up the landlord for making me cry. I tried to explain that it wasn't the landlord that had made me cry, but he was already out the door. (Fortunately, he didn't find the landlord.)
That same day I tentatively brought up counseling again, and again there was an explosion, which culminated in his calling me (I can't forget this) a "fucking freak" and I literally ran out the door this time. It was, of course, in the middle of a thunderstorm. In movies this looks cool and dramatic and super-emo. In real life it sucks and makes you hope you don't run into anyone you know, especially if you're wearing flip flops and a tank top because that's what you were wearing in the house and you ran away without giving weather conditions any thought.
The following week my sister and her wife came to town, and the ex left the apartment and went to stay with a friend. We went to the Brooklyn Pride festival and watched a salsa group dancing on stage. There was a young woman in a red dress who did a little featured dance solo. I watched her and felt a glimpse of recognition--her hips were swaying, her head was tilted up, she was so in love with her own physicality and sexuality. I remembered that feeling and suddenly connected with how much I'd missed it. I love dancing, but there had been so much angst connected with trying to justify a dance outing since living with the ex--the clothes, the men that would inevitably be at the club--that I just sort of gave it up, like looking at the sky, and tried to tell myself it didn't matter. What I realized that day was that it did matter, that there was a kernel of a self in me that was hollering itself hoarse to avoid being accidentally buried alive. I cried there in the festival amid all the happy people out of grief for the years I'd kept myself apart from the girl who loves dancing.
When I left him it was in a hurry and with one suitcase and scared out of my mind for my safety and my sanity. It was maybe harder than anything I'd had to do before. I had my wonderful sister and my wonderful friends--and, thank heavens, a good therapist--helping me through it, an amazing support network of people that saved my life. But I had wanted it to work so much. I was giving up not only on the good parts of our relationship but on my desire to see the goodness I knew existed in him manifest in a real and consistent way. I know now it wasn't going to happen, at least not in any way I could be around for. I know now that the four years I spent with him were meant to teach me some kind of long, grueling lesson. I know that I might not be with my amazing Jam Guy now if it hadn't been for the time spent with the ex. And I am grateful for the experience and for the opportunity it gives me to empathize with other women in the same situation. I know now, firsthand, why you don't leave a relationship even when you know you should, and I know now how little "should" has to do with anything when you're caught up in the thrall of someone who's systematically destroying who you are.
But the reason this is coming up for me today is because of my talk with D last night, because i have a headache and that makes me feel vulnerable, because I am in love with a wonderful Jam Guy and in a safe enough place now where I can start to process my feelings, and mostly because I'm going dancing tonight. I'm going dancing with some wonderful girlfriends from my school, and I'm trying to figure out what to wear, and I'm realizing that anticipating going dancing is not the pure, simply fun thing that it was before I was with the ex. There is a voice in my head that vetoes the things I consider wearing because they're too slutty or head-turning. That same voice tells me I should feel ashamed to want to dance, to make any sort of exhibition of myself, that I can expect men to hit on me if I'm out at a club because that's what men do at clubs, and I should feel guilty because I am willing to go out knowing that this will happen.
I know all these reactions ought to be things I ignore--I should just wear what I want and do what I want and have fun--but they are there, in my head, and I resent their presence there. I want to look forward to this in as uncomplicated a way as I used to. I want to enjoy being a pretty woman in high heels. I want to feel like there is nothing wrong with that. Jam Guy reassures me all the time that these feelings are ok--he is the most wonderful man in the world, if I haven't mentioned that--and I am really trying my best to believe him.
I am going to keep trying my best to know that I am ok.
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