mom.

You were swinging from the oak tree, gaze upward and body motionless. I almost lost my breath because I imagined you losing yours. I saw you for the first time that day. Someday--and the thought had struck me completely unaware--you won't be here anymore. Death will take you from me and I will grieve your absence much like the way I have, at times, grieved your presence.

Dear God, you have given me your all in my mother. She loves me painfully imperfectly but she has never once stopped loving me. When I break away from this haven of self-protection and calloused, practiced indifference, I know. I know I love her. I know all she believes in is harmful to me but peace and shelter to herself, and for that reason I must be kind to her soul and to mine.

My mother. My dear mother. Before it is too late, can you see me for who I really am? I am lost and broken and found in that way I can never find you. I am waiting for you to love me in a place you have condemned. I am waiting for the one who birthed me to birth herself. Oh let me learn how to love you before the storm comes to take you from me. 

THINGS THAT ALSO COULD BE TRUE.

THINGS THAT ALSO COULD BE TRUE.

God is multiple. You are god. I am god. There is no god but the image we have been force fed. There is a god and we haven’t the foggiest clue what she looks like, talks like, believes like—yes, perhaps even god herself believes in us.

Boys wearing pink and high heels and flamboyant dresses.  Girls’ polos being buttoned up all the way, her skin a mystery to all but her. How in god’s name did we let materials and colors form a gender construct?

Single hood and “in a relationship with” are states of mind. The happiest ones are the divorcees. The ones in misery are those who framed their certificates of union and love each other dearly. Love is always costly. Monogamy is a social construct and, as such, is not for everyone.

Sex is bonding; sex is bondage. Sex is the most intimate act; sex is the most mundane. Sex is all of these and sex will not save a relationship.

The law is just and we are the criminals.

Mom and Dad were right.

Acquiescence is a crime equivalent to wrong action. Thus Hitler was the citizens, the guards, the nations, you and I. How do we know that, with power and wealth, we too wouldn’t crave more at the expense of human lives?

Art is just as worthy a career path as any. Artists saved more lives than doctors, birthed more lives, and sustained more. All of us, every last one: artists.  Our mediums: pain and life. Pick up the brush, the pencil, the seal, the blade, the hatchet—dirtied and rusted from years of neglect.  You see, destruction is an ally with creation and all good art is inclusive of both.

Every moment lived—if we could veer up and away, off to the far right, past these clouds and human monuments and affronts to humility—every moment lived is fragile and monumental and chosen by us beforehand. We are choosing our fate.  

a year later [post break-up].

i had never seen an ex before today.

in my experience, the cessation of a romantic relationship is akin to death.  one day, you are lovers of body and mind and spirit; you break barriers with your fists and with your vulnerability; your love is steadfast.  then comes the last day.  the last day you see them, hear them, touch them.  that's it.  then it  is mourning over a casket, a casket you must allow rest in fertile soil.  before resurrection comes death; before healing, shattering; before hope, despair.  if you're lucky, you know it, you anticipate it, and your heart prepares as best it can for the chaos, impending and unavoidable.

if luck runs dry--as it did with you, M, it attacks your very ability to breath.  i wanted to leave this earth before i would ever experience a panic attack again.  it hit me, and our mutual friends, out of the blue.  you broke me and i am still breaking and i am still praying, in wide open and desolate fields, for the will to open myself again.

i saw you running and recognized you immediately.  my heart.

oh my heart.  you must love yourself back to life.  affirm the hope where there is hopelessness.  affirm the love that exists in every relationship, not just the ones that carry wedding bands and conceptions and longevity.  affirm peace in the most anxiety-prone circumstances which, for you, leeches on to your day-to-day.  affirm the earth-shattering fact that, no matter the love lost, you will always be a person of worth and beauty.

my return.

Six weeks ago, I vomited pure alcohol.  I recall thinking, I am literally at war with myself.  My body was trying to, simultaneously, seek peace in a remembered haven of numbness, and, protect itself from the liquid it was drowning itself it.  That was the day the sirens rang out.  I am reverting back to old, self-destructive habits that reek of unhappiness.  This will break me.  The panic and shame were the catalysts that triggered another return to sobriety--that elusive, beautiful world where a lady once told me she "finally saw the glory of flowers and trees and breezes."  At the time, I had internally scoffed.  Not today.  I know the sentiment in my marrow.

You see, the excess began to splash over into every corner of my life.  I woke with bruises on my elbows and my memories.  I spent a paycheck on booze and party favors.  The bartender stopped serving me.  She told me I was a mean drunk; he, that my hands and lower lip wouldn't stop twitching and grinding, respectively.  I barely remember either.  I called in sick (and I knew it wasn't a lie; I've been here before and I know right where this leads).  Most of all, I forgot how the world continues to spin and grow and expand whether I'm present for it or not.  Flowers bloom.  Rain pours.  Lungs burst.  Lactic acid collects.  But then I remembered--that day I purged and purged and purged--this is it.  This is not my practice life.  What am I doing?  What can I do instead?

Surrender the need to always be entertained and buzzed and oblivious.  Wake up, dear Rachel.  Every day is renaissance, not just a weekend.  Sobriety is not absence; sobriety is the presence of potential.  Sobriety is not about alcohol.  Sobriety is understanding and compassionate and holding my no-longer-weary limbs upright.  Sobriety is the previous six weeks, yet--even more glorious--sobriety is the past collective moments I chose a different way.  In every "relapse", I have hope stored up in my bones, hope that I can always start anew again.  

i am from.

I am from every idea I create. I am from the idolized doctrine of a man and a woman procreating and from her loins I sprang, struggling for air and separate identity in this strange new world of black and white, broken and saved, absolute and relative.

I am from the bottle, which carried my spirit when my body no longer could. I am from the mirror; my reflection more real than myself.

I used to believe I was from a particular city and a particular set of four walls. Then, overseas, I found I am from everywhere, from all peoples and all nations. I am free from home as address.

I am from an eternal ache, evidenced by skin that breaks apart and binds back together, inchoate music on my strings, the sex of my naivete and youth, the colors I began to see when I awoke from blackout.

I am from her vow, spoken in earnest, lived so fragilely and so humanly. I am from the empty space where his arm should have looped through mine but didn’t, because “I’d rather you celibate than with a woman.” I am from that space and I am not empty, father. I am your child, and always, always will cry out my outrage of being from the dust of your brokenness.

two years later.

i know i need to stop romanticizing our life together.  it is forever in the past and it is more than the good memories, the facebook photos, the deep friendship.  there's a reason why it ended and i contributed to our demise.  but here, in this navarre beach condominium, i can't help remembering the good and how desperately we both tried to fight to preserve it.  it's probably the salt water, the pier of fishermen and fisherwomen, the sun beating away the long winter before us.  for certain, it's the water--the salt of this ocean still makes me ache for you, two years after the fact.  you loved the water.  you proposed to me beside it.  it still was one of the best days of my life.

but the day it ended was also one of the best days of my life.  i never would have gotten sober without it.  i never would have broken the patterns that were breaking us.  i learned humility again, and the value of a single day, the notion that brokenness and healing are such damn bedfellows.  we grow to the extent we break.  i don't think i would have had the three month stint free of trich.  and any time i spend loving myself enough to keep my hands off of myself is blessed time.  

i know i need to stop romanticizing our life together.  it is forever in the past and it is more than the good memories.  i am still learning to let go of your hand and their hands and this ridiculous notion that i am somehow fuller with romance in my life.  i am full in my brokenness and i am remembering you in love and i am grateful.

on dating.

she made me believe that i could love again and god knows, i thought my heart would never allow that after my divorce. she bolstered all the good in me she saw and applauded my success relentlessly. i spent every dime i could on you, thought you were it, my second chance. you never fought with me, not once, during those nine months. we were peacemakers through and through. not a single war waged until the day you confessed you had fallen in love with another woman. i wept like i never had and never will again. panic, panic, PANIC. this will be a pattern for me. this will be my lot.

so then i met another her. this one was not at all like she was. this one was broken and pissed at america and stoned continually and needed me to be mother, father, friend, and mirror, mirror on the wall. she told me "i like you because you constantly tell me how beautiful i am. i could never be with someone who didn't do that." you wouldn't let me run because you needed me to bring you your morning coffee. you wouldn't come out to your friends with me there because you "weren't sure you wanted people to know i was your girlfriend."

and most days, i chalk this up to the perils of dating--inevitable and necessary. but on particularly lonely nights, i lay here in bed and wonder why i choose the women i choose. women who don't want me. women whom i don't want. women who are closeted. i know exactly what i want and need in a relationship but, in the end, the magnetic allure of lust seems to trump all reason. and i enter knowing this is only a detour, this is only a demise waiting to happen. and i try to convince myself this is a part of my story i'm not responsible for and a part that won't affect me.

i now know that a relationship cannot be entered into lightly and that sex will always carry weight and romance for me and that, above all, beauty and vanity is a dangerous combination. from now on, i will weigh the cost and i will believe that a healthy partnership--one that is focused outward--is around this next horizon. and i will not rest in another's arms until i find it. i deserve this and she deserves this and my former lovers--they deserve health and prosperity and partnership.

this will not be my pattern or my lot. a healthy, robust, adventurous and all encompassing love is waiting in the wings.

healing.

 My body heaved tonight for you.  I cried as hard for you as I did in the beginning.  “I miss your companionship!  I miss you!”  I said it to the empty house and I said it so my heart would empty itself of any malice I might have.  I imagined you, whole and happy; free, working ‘til dusk because its dividends were energy and peace—your work fulfilled you again, the way it did in Africa.  You were created for that job, like I was created for mine.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”  I cried.  “I wish you all the wholeness and happiness I couldn’t give you.”  My counselor always tells me to wish this for you and so I do, I force myself to do this, ever time my mind wanders past health.  I know I do this as much for me, as for you.  I do this to move through these days so they become months.

I know I will never love another woman the way I loved you.  That’s both soul-wretching and soul-enriching.  I know the wind will carry us both when I pass, because you will always be here with me.  You will always be a part of my heart.  

goodbye.

I waited these five months to pry my wedding ring from my finger.  I feel naked without it.  Back in January, you told me you wanted a divorce and my gut sank because I knew, that very instant, you meant it.  I knew you had let the rope go on hope.  You were done with us.  And I have fought to let you go in my heart.  I have fought myself endlessly.  Why didn’t I treasure you?  Why didn’t I want the best for you?  The marriage vows have been broken.  We said them to cover our heads, to provide haven, to provide a sense of security.  We said them because we thought our profound love would weather the storm.  What do you do when your love becomes, itself, the storm? 

You sink or swim.  Those were the only two options left for you.  You swam.   

escaping america, part two.

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            The insides of me twisted and gyrated by the time he finished his sentence.  “Stupid immigrants—they come to America and don’t learn English.”  The old me would have tolerated, perhaps even accepted his diagnosis.  The old me, the me that idealized America as being superior in all ways, was naïve and comatose.  Then I became an immigrant and everything changed.  I love the word then.  There is great pain in those four letters, but hope: hope thrums in the conjunction. 

           

When I lived in West Africa, I sweated over the French language: its articles and reflexive verbs and exceptions and idioms.  I spent hours studying at home and transitioned into a child when I walked away from its smug, English-speaking walls.  People spoke too fast, it seemed.  The signs had too many words I couldn’t translate; sometimes I couldn’t even gather the overall meaning.  Africans followed the exceptions, rather than the rules; the informal rather than former protocol.  Whatever: all native speakers—of any language—do this.  We contract verbs.  We sputter out fragmented sentences.  We omit intonation.  We use the wrong tense when we mean the right one.  We do all these things and more, to the point that a foreigner could become proficient in the “formal” use of a language and still be fucked.

           

            All of this simply to say: learning a language is hard.  It takes time, patience, humility, and dauntlessness.  Let’s delight in the one phrase—hell, the one word—we can catch while listening to the taxi driver.  Let’s listen with a hell-bent, industrious desire only to understand more.  And still, our skin will slip off in paper-thin strips.  We’ll only scratch the surface of the language for many, many years. 

           

Why expect more of others?  Why assume an immigrant, who most likely earns a meager wage at best and thus has to work more hours than his American counterpart, has the time or energy to learn English well?  Why place this nation on a pedestal when its people, when I am drifting about, an ephemeral being trying to buy my way to lasting significance?  I am the lost soul.  I am sinking in the very American mire of solidity, riches, and ease.  I am the one who can learn from them. 

I’ll end with her ending.  My sponsor.  I asked her the other day what she imagined the meaning of life to be.  She fisted her hand in the air and said, “Remember this? This is what happens when you drink.  You contract and go inside yourself and great pain comes with contraction.”  Then the fist unclenched; open, receptive.  “This,” she breathed, “this is what we need to do.  Expand.  Always learning, endless expansion: that is the meaning of life.”  This is another word I now love: expansion.  My sponsor wants me to end life like I just began it: with brain cells buzzing  possibilities, with wonder and innocence and an open heart, no matter the breaking. 

And how can I expand with like-minded people?  I must go the way of the immigrant.  I must stretch myself, not for me, but for something I will someday find, not as vision, but as reality.