It was the Saturday night that followed my 39th birthday, and He had taken me out to celebrate. I was trying as hard as I could to make things work, because as God is my witness, that’s all I really wanted. After endless amounts of soul-searching, skin shedding, “Flight 438”, and The Flyboy, I knew exactly what I wanted our marriage to be, and exactly what would need to happen to accomplish it:
We have given ourselves a year or maybe even longer. He needs to do some serious soul-searching and self-repair as well if this is ever going to work. He too has been damaged by his past, our past, and also needs to shed some skin. We have tortured and abused each other to the point of no return but our history together has got to count for something. We are living here together and will remain married on paper but are separated in every other way. He’ll do his thing, I’ll do mine … basically nothing will change, as this is how we’ve existed for years. Only now there are no false pretenses or expectations as to what we either can or can’t make of this farce of a marriage. I won’t lay in a bed with him or any other man for that matter and give myself completely unless I can honestly see myself as beautiful and whole in someone’s eyes as I felt in yours. That is what I want, that is what I need, and after 20 years of living this way, I will settle for nothing less! What I want and need probably most of all is to finally be able to have my own husband, the man I’ve been chasing endlessly around for almost 20 years, try to begin to see who I am, what I am, what I’ve become and be the one who I can truly connect with, and not in the imaginary way it has been this whole time. Maybe, just maybe, then the years of chasing Him will not have been in vain and the hole he left in my heart can be patched and filled. This next year will be about legitimately trying to find and repair ourselves, separately. When the time is right, and who knows when that will be, we’ll begin to spend some time together, try to get to know the new, healthier people we will hopefully each be becoming and see if there is any shred of hope left between us other than our kids that we can salvage. I honestly don’t foresee that happening at this point and I think He is a little more hopeful than I’d like Him to be … There is so much water under our bridge and so many damaging things have been said between us over and over and over … many of which still ring inside my ears, and probably His even as I write this. But I will give it my best effort for the love of my children and also because I do love Him as well. Twenty years are too many to throw away and something tells me that if ever it were possible for Him to really look at me and see me as you did then our relationship could truly come full circle.
The events that followed dinner are much too personal to share and there are less than a handful of people in this world that will ever really know what happened between us that night. Sufficed to say, the only gift I really wanted from my husband, the man I’d been chasing endlessly for almost twenty years, was the defining moment of what would never become of the rest of “our” lives. I’d finally taken the risk and given Him “everything”: Myself, my hopes, my dreams, my secrets and all my precious vulnerabilities. Not only did He throw them all back in my face, but he also threw into the faces of my own father and son. Terrible, awful, horrible “secrets” I had shared with Him in an effort to make our marriage real once and for all and after all those years of praying for a safe place to just be “me” with him … things that no father or son should ever have to hear. He extinguished any hope I’d dared to have for our marriage and single-handedly put the final nail in our coffin. There would be NO going back this time. The fairy tale was finally over and I’d be leaving the palace for good.
RIGHT HERE
I know I’ve been mistaken, but just give me a break and see the changes that I’ve made. I’ve got some imperfections, but how can you collect them all and throw them in my face? But you always find a way to keep me right here waiting. You always find the words to say to keep me right here waiting. If you chose to walk away, I’d still be right here waiting, searching for the things to say to keep you right here waiting. I hope you’re not intending to be so condescending – it’s as much as I can take. But you’re so independent. You just refuse to bend, so I keep bending till I break. But you always find a way to keep me right here waiting. You always find the words to say to keep me right here waiting. If you chose to walk away, I’d still be right here waiting searching for the things to say to keep you right here waiting. I’ve made a commitment – I’m willing to bleed for you. I needed fulfillment. I found what I need in you. Can’t you just forgive me? I don’t want to relive all the mistakes I’ve made along the way. But I always find a way to keep you right here waiting. I always find the words to say to keep you right here waiting. If I chose to walk away, would you be right here waiting? Searching for the things to say to keep me right here waiting. {Staind}
Yes, it’s true. I really have become a princess. But what if I was meant to be a QUEEN Why don’t I trust him? Why don’t I trust this? Why do I constantly challenge every little thing he says and does? Why does he give all these extraordinarily beautiful things to me? What does it mean? What’s it all for? Why can’t I follow him? WHY WON’T HE LEAD ME? Why can’t I fucking believe in him? Why can’t I let him touch me? I mean really, really touch me. Why am I so afraid for him to see the real me? The angels are here for me just waiting beneath my broken wings. Or maybe they’re the ones making my wings keep moving. I do have vision. I do have my sight. I do want perfection – perfectly imperfect and RIGHT! I cannot keep lying, regardless of my shame, and I truly do admit that I am partly to blame. I care no more. I CAN BEAR NO MORE! I’ll say no more. I can’t give him anymore. I QUESTION EVERYTHING!
QUESTION EVERYTHING
She was a princess; she could’ve been a queen. She had the angels beneath her broken wings. She had the vision; she had the sight. She wants perfection, she wants it right. Who cares anymore, what’s right anymore. (I question everything) I won’t lie, I’ve never been ashamed. I don’t mind admitting I’m to blame. I care no more; I can bear no more. I’ll say no more, I can’t give you anymore. (I question everything) He lives in darkness, there is no progress. He knows the demons, the lie within him. He has no vision; he has no sight. He hates perfection, it wasn’t right. Who cares anymore, who’s there anymore. (I question everything). I won’t lie, I’ve never been ashamed. I don’t mind, admitting I’m to blame. I care no more; I can’t bear no more. {Five Finger Death Punch}
The plane has officially landed, so, where do I begin? I have absolutely no idea! Now is the time for me to sit down, reflect and try to put down in words exactly what has transpired since that destined moment that you passed “the message on the napkin” over to my tray table, my Angel from Flight 438. (As if I haven’t bombarded you with enough of my words already!) If anything, please remember that this is more mental therapy for me than anything, so once again, be patient. What follows is complete and total honesty and clarity – with myself, from within myself and due largely in part to you. This will be hard because there are so many things I don’t want to leave out, but I have to believe that somehow, someway, you will be able to fully understand and believe that these words come from a depth in my soul I truly never knew existed, and they are probably the deepest feelings for another human being, other than my kids, that I have ever felt or known. Here goes …
By now I assume that you have read “The Diary of My Perfection”. What did you think? Best seller? Has the picture of all things Kitty Cat become any clearer? I tried so hard to convey to you in person the fact that somehow over the years I have managed to rip myself apart at the seams into this extremely jaded shell of a human being that’s broken into a million pieces. The same goes for those people that have surrounded me. I feel as though my existence in many peoples’ lives has jaded them a bit as well. But perhaps my story helped you understand the magnitude of it all and helped more intensely clarify exactly how lost I have been here inside myself for SO many numbing years. I have been unable to feel a single, real thing, except for where my three babies are concerned, and until now they have been my only connection to human feeling, compassion or spirit.
As you have probably gathered by now, and perhaps even within moments of knowing me, I am very much comforted, enthralled and kept alive by my son’s existence in this world, and he, along with my daughter, are the only true successes that I have ever known … at least until now. All good then. If I leave this world tomorrow, I leave successful! Christian, despite all odds, is and will always be one of the most incredible human beings I know. I am certain that just as his strength of character and wisdom have enlightened and inspired me there will be countless other lives He will have touched along his way before it is all said and done. I made him! My daughter? God, I wish you could have met her! She is one of the most strikingly beautiful and amazing creatures I have ever laid eyes upon, both inside and out, and her smiles alone have been more than enough to sustain me in the worst of all my days. I made her!Even that tiny wonder that greeted then left me in only a few short hours of time … broken, yes, but perfect in every other way. I made her too! And as painful as it was to watch her life slip through my fingers, and as haunting a memory it is for me to live with, I find it surreal that I was able to hold that little girl in my hands from the moment she came into this world until the moment she left it. How many mothers can say that? Sometimes Henrik I’m almost thankful she’s gone. Does that make me depraved? Who knows? I look around at this place that we live in. So much evil, ugliness and disdain. She never had to know it. She just got to be tiny and innocent, grace us with her overwhelming presence, then leave this place completely unknowing and unscathed. This, I think I’ve found, was the blessing behind her very short existence. You know, I think I’ll keep running with that so that perhaps someday the agony I feel when I think about how it ripped my heart out watching her struggle and gasping for air will begin to fade. I truly hope that in time I will be able to reconcile those two things within myself so that the healthier of the two thought processes overtakes and consumes the other.
Can I tell you Henrik, and could you ever really believe me, when I say there were moments during our time together, I wasn’t actually sure that you were real? Be it not for the fact that my son and the other boys on that plane confirmed that you were indeed on it I might still not know whether you were real or imagined! A more likely scenario was that you were an actual Angel sent from to me from God. Man, it sounds too ridiculous and again I am sitting here saying, “No Catherine, you can’t say that to him. It’s weird and creepy and this poor fucking guy doesn’t need to hear this.” But as you can see, I’ve gone ahead and included the sentiment because it is very real to me and I feel as though I have nothing else to lose. Do you remember that during our visits there were times I just reached out and touched your face with my hand? I needed to feel your skin to convince myself you were real! Do you know how long I waited for a single human being to come looking for me inside this darkness? You can’t even begin to know. Please refer to “The Diary of My Perfection” and more specifically to the final plea I made to God just days before I left for France:
Well then, how about an angel? Can You send me another angel, and preferably one a little taller than two feet, and older and wiser than 15? Someone I can talk to? Someone to hold me and make me feel alive? How about someone who doesn’t think I’m just whining? Someone who understands my heart, my pain, my grief. How about one person that will look beyond my surface to find the broken little girl hiding inside herself? Someone who will hear me and not say everything is okay. How about someone who doesn’t think I’m perfect, or that all the things I have should preclude me from feeling any pain? And can You send me a hug, or a kiss, or a touch? Will anyone even want to touch me?
That was just rhetoric! A genuine prayer, but not one I was expecting to be answered. I cried out to God, and yes, I meant what I asked for, but it was more sarcasm on my part than anything. I think I told you that as I boarded that plane to France, I did so hoping for only the best in my wish to “leave some things behind” but not really expecting it to happen. I have almost become comfortable dragging these demons with me everywhere so a more likely outcome, which I’d have been fine with, was just a much-needed vacation with my son. Nothing more. Nothing less. I am all too accustomed to NOT getting the things I truly need or want!
Henrik, you walked onto that plane and stopped my heart! Like my daughter you too are strikingly beautiful and sitting beside you gave me peace. I just kept watching you, and the more I watched, the more I had to know you. Then watching you watch that baby? It melted me from the core in mere seconds. One sweet smile in that child’s direction and I was absolutely done. I wanted to jump out of my skin, into your existence and know who the hell you were and had NO IDEA how I’d manage the plane ride home if I couldn’t speak to you (although as you know I did try to resist). Everything inside of me just wanted to keep that hat pulled as far down over my eyes as possible and just “cry and think” my way home. What were you thinking? Only God Himself knows. Well, God and you that is. Can I tell you something else? When we parted ways at the airport that day, I can honestly say I did not think I’d ever hear from you again. For one thing, and to reiterate, I wasn’t even sure you actually existed in the first place. Those ten hours were just too sweet to be real. Second, I was scared to death thinking that you were just been being polite and kind since you were all but trapped with me there. I honestly didn’t think I’d hear from you again, which was fine, because just those hours alone carved a decade off filth off my soul.
So why was I compelled to slit open every one of my veins and so quickly spill the entire contents of my soul into your lap? I instantly trusted you Henrik and I don’t do that. I trust no one and am highly skeptical of everything and person I see. You looked into my eyes when we spoke and kept me there. I tried but couldn’t look away. I don’t do that either. In fact, that’s one of the things I’ve always had a problem with – making eye contact with people. Maybe that’s because I’ve been too afraid that if I actually did look someone in the eyes when I was speaking, and they actually looked back at me they’d see the rotted-out schism between my mind and body and run as far away as possible. I am petrified of people Henrik. Scared to death of anyone not of my womb. Surface level is all I can do. Nothing deeper. Don’t need it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversation on the plane. Remember, I told you that the night before I had shed the very first layer of my skin with Adoram. But Henrik it was dark outside, and we were staring out into the ocean. When I spoke, I was just “speaking” and he was listening. It was almost as though I was a song playing on a radio that he couldn’t shut off. Poor fucking Adoram. The first of two innocent bystanders foolish enough to ask me “what’s wrong”. The first true casualty in the war of reconciling my soul. We drank, I cried, he stretched out his sleeve and wiped away my tears. But he wasn’t actually looking at me! I was in a very safe place talking to him … in the dark, no eye contact. But with you? Looking into your eyes comforted me and I wanted to stay there because it felt so good and safe. Do you remember what I wrote in The Diary about Gia? Some of the sweetest moments in my life have been those mornings she grabs my cheeks with her tiny little hands, forces me into eye lock and says, “I Love You Mommy”! It’s a miracle that she somehow intuitively knows this is what I need. But how did you?
So then, what of all our visits and chats? You have blown me out of the water Henrik and I’m not sure what to do with it. You hugged me so many times and with everyone I felt a steady release of pressure from deep within my core. Each time you hugged me my breathing got a little easier and the tight grip that constantly clenches the pit of my stomach loosened. That night when we stood in the parking lot? Do you remember that hug? The one where I had my face pressed sideways against your back and you pulled my arms around to the front of your chest? I could hear your heart beating Henrik and can still hear it even now! It sends chills up my spine when I close my eyes and remember. It was at that very moment that I decided if you were in fact an Angel you had to have been the kind that could actually manifest itself into a human body, because how else could I have felt so much from a being that didn’t exist?
The night that I gave you the music and the medal you were so concerned I had given you so many pieces of myself, but what had you given me? God man, you did give me a piece of yourself. Can’t you see that? How can you not see that? You gave me your kindness and true compassion and you gave me your eyes so that I could begin to find myself. You made me want to look into the mirror and try to see what you were seeing! For 16 years I have searched for my own reflection in another person’s eyes but could never find it. I looked into the mirror and felt ugly. I felt dirty, empty and invisible. I see the way people look at me but have never really understood it. What the hell could anyone possibly see? There’s nothing here. I’m hollow. “Lights, smoke and illusion!” Please, please, please Henrik, hear what I am saying: Last July, when it was finally time for the doctors to take the bandages off my chest and stomach, I came home and couldn’t even walk past a mirror, much less look inside one. I knew then that my destruction was finally complete but just didn’t know how to reckon myself with the reality. That’s when I decided to not EVER search for my missing reflection again, whether in a mirror or through the eyes of another! I just gave up. Two full days passed before I was finally able to take my shirt off and I couldn’t actually look at myself for weeks. When the day finally came, I just stood there and cried. I touched my scars, held my stomach, dropped down to my bathroom floor and cried for so many hours you can’t begin to imagine. I thought my life was over, which was par for the entire course, and I knew from that day on I would NEVER show “myself” to another living soul, whether physically or emotionally. When I was done crying, and God I remember this like it was yesterday, I stood up, wiped away my tears, straightened my shoulders and began to devise a plan that would allow me to continue the “grand illusion”. I got dressed, got in the car and had Him drive me to a little shop across town that carried prosthetic implants I could stuff inside my bra to disguise my mutilated chest. I walked back out of that shop a whole and “perfect” woman again. Got back home, pulled into the driveway and never looked back. I have played the game very well I might add with the cards I’ve been dealt in a manner that would cause no one I love to suffer.
So, then what of all that? Do you know that although you never asked (and I have to tell you I am more than impressed with your fortitude of principal), if you had I would have very willingly given myself to you? That’s what you gave me, Henrik … Breathe. Desire. I trusted you and trusted myself and would not have been afraid to let you see me. That is such a huge thing for me to both say AND realize. Every time I walked away from you, I walked away wanting to look into the mirror to try and see what you were seeing. That is what you gave meHenrik! You made me feel alive and important. You asked nothing from me and made me believe it was possible for someone to genuinely care for me as a human being worth trying to know beyond the surface. You made me feel beautiful! Absolutely, intensely and extraordinarily beautiful! I can look into a mirror now because of you and I’m no longer afraid of what I’ll see!
So, let me begin to close by letting you know how things are going for me now. As you can imagine, He is hurt, angry and wrecked beyond belief. You read it in his email. I can’t really say that I blame Him and if the shoes had been reversed, I probably would have written you something even worse. These weeks have been painful for Him. He feels jilted and remorseful and is finally beginning to realize the role He played in my becoming what I have over the years and how badly I needed Him all the while. We’ve talked and talked and talked some more and today I told Him all about you. Things no man no would ever want to hear from his wife: “A stranger walked onto my plane, into my life, ripped open my heart and saved it. I love him. Here are the reasons why.” Every one of the thoughts and feelings I have expressed to you herein have been made abrasively clear to Him by now and He knows that for as long as I’m alive on this Earth I will always hold a candle for you and that I will always eagerly await our communications. I think He’s sorry He’s not you and He wasn’t the one to reach me inside here, especially given the fact that He’s had almost 20 years to be the man who I felt so compelled to trust and give every single piece of myself to but instead chose to take me for granted. He understands that although we’ve decided to try for our children’s sake to co-exist and perhaps somehow repair the 19 years’ worth of mutual abuse, that either way I will always want you to be a part of my life. I told Him that if what He wants is for me to lie to Him and myself and say you never really mattered to me, that you will ever stop mattering to me or the two weeks between us never happened I would never be able to say and mean it. Lying to Him that way would not only be unfair to Him but would belittle one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever known, and I simply refuse to do it. I must convey all these things to Him somehow, clearly and concisely Henrik and still can’t believe that I have to do this. Again, with me and my recent cases of “don’t do it Catherine” but then I do it anyway. He is hurting so much but I won’t lie to Him, myself or anyone else ever again!
So, now are you beginning to understand? You know, along with every other thing you have given me, these last weeks have also helped bring closure to one of the most painful chapters of my story, the life and death of my relationship with Mitch, my “blaze of glory“. I loved him Henrik, so deeply, and as much as I possibly could have given the heart I had to work with at the time. But you see, he and I came together at intersections in our lives where we had both begun unraveling. We were equally broken and sick together and hid our pasts away within the safety of an unconditional love. I found him, or he found me, not sure which one, not too long after my rape. He was recovering from his own self-destruction and had only recently spent four years at Angola State Prison in Louisiana for a series of really stupid decisions. He too was violated inside that place, many times in fact, and his time in prison hardened him in ways that even he didn’t realize. We shared that bond – the violation of our most sacred temples, our bodies. I didn’t even have to tell him what that night in the parking garage had done to me. He already knew firsthand! So, then we came together, each having found a safe, warm place to be broken. There were nights that this man, this six-foot, three-inch vision of masculinity and strength would cry himself to sleep in my arms because he couldn’t find his reflection either! He too was an illusion to most everyone he knew and all he saw when he looked into his mirror was a body with its manhood completely excised from its being. He’d served the sentence but was never able to leave his prison. There were so many times that he would look at me and say, “Thank you Catherine … thank you for loving me. Thank you for letting me be me again.” He said I made him feel alive inside for the first time in all his years and that he had never felt so completely safe with another person. He said that each time we were together he was more able to leave his stolen virtue behind and remember what it felt like to be a man. But you see until now I didn’t really understand how profound his words to me were. I appreciated hearing all the things that he would say and the gratitude and sentiment he showed me every single day we were together. But only now do I understand exactly how he must have been feeling. Henrik, for ten years I have tried to understand “why”? Why did God put Him in my life only to take him away? What was it all for? What did it mean? I can’t believe that a decade later I finally understand: It was ME God placed in HIS life just as YOU were placed in MINE! The plan was never “forever”. Maybe I was his Angel? That man was tortured from the inside out for all that he’d done and had been through and was an empty, walking shell when I found him. I know with every shred of my being that the night he left this world he left knowing how beautiful he was and how it felt to be truly valued! He died having known compassion – true and unconditional love and friendship – and having been able to give himself, show himself and be “seen” by another human being completely. I did that Henrik. I did that! I did for him that you have done for me and now I can finally let him go.
We have given ourselves a year or maybe even longer. He needs to do some serious soul-searching and self-repair as well if this is ever going to work. He too has been damaged by his past, our past, and also needs to shed some skin. We have tortured and abused each other to the point of no return but our history together has got to count for something. We are living here together and will remain married on paper but are separated in every other way. He’ll do His thing, I’ll do mine … basically nothing will change as this is how we’ve existed for years. Only now there are no false pretenses or expectations as to what we either can or can’t make of this farce of a marriage. I won’t lay in a bed with Him or any other man for that matter and give myself completely unless I can honestly see myself as beautiful and whole in someone’s eyes as I felt in yours. That is what I want, that is what I need, and after 20 years of living this way, I will settle for nothing less! What I want and need probably most of all is to finally be able to have my own husband, the man I’ve been chasing endlessly around for almost 20 years, try to begin to see who I am, what I am, what I’ve become and be the one who I can truly connect with, and not in the imaginary way it has been this whole time. Maybe, just maybe, then the years of chasing Him will not have been in vain and the hole He left in my heart can be patched and filled. This next year will be about legitimately trying to find and repair ourselves, separately. When the time is right, and who knows when that will be, we’ll begin to spend some time together, try to get to know the new, healthier people we will hopefully each be becoming and see if there is any shred of hope left between us other than our kids that we can salvage. I honestly don’t foresee that happening at this point and I think He is a little more hopeful than I am. That is probably because I truly don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look into His eyes and not see the huge joke He sees in me reflecting back. We’ve pushed each other and pushed each other and then pushed each other some more and now it seems we’re so far away that all this could be pointless. There is so much water under our bridge and so many damaging things have been said between us over and over and over … many of which still ring inside my ears, and probably his even as I write this. But I will give it my best effort for the love of my children and because I do love Him as well. Twenty years are too many to throw away and something tells me that if ever it were possible for Him to really look at me and see me as you did then our relationship could truly come full circle. How we’re gonna make that happen? I have absolutely no idea. I think He does truly love me somewhere deep inside, but I need to know the reasons why. Does He love me because I am the mother of his children, and He doesn’t want to hurt or leave them? Does He love me because He only thinks He loves me, and He really doesn’t want to give up or fail? He needs to find an honest place, as painful as that may be, to land when it comes to me. I think right now the person who came back from France is scaring Him half to death and maybe He has no idea how to love the “healthy person” that actually knows for the first time in her life what she truly wants and needs.
Like me, He has a lot on his plate and now it is His turn to deal with the demons He’s been harboring inside himself. What worries me most is that I’m not even sure He realizes how damaged He is inside because I know if we’re ever going to truly be able to love and know each other and have the actual, “real thing”, He will first have to come to the place that I have. That’s a little scary though because there is a fair enough chance that once He dissects it all from deep inside out, He’ll realize that He never even loved me in the first place. That too is a chance I will have to take in all this. Only God knows if will ever be possible for us fully connect on every emotional and physical level the way that I know I need to. It’s just going to take some work. Lots of time and lots of work. I feel very sorry for Him because I know that He’s hurting. Far above and beyond everything else that this next year will bring He will also have to reconcile himself with the fact that He now lives here with not only me, but yet another ghost in my heart as well. Your shoes, my friend, will be incredibly hard for Him to fill but now I know that just about anything is possible. Maybe, just maybe, God will send Him an Angel too.
In the meantime, know that I am fully aware that within the confines of these pages have been set forth so many open parameters that you may feel as though I have overstepped any possible bounds of reality. You may actually find after having read this letter that you think I am surely insane and perhaps it would be in your best interest to say goodbye, call me a “friend of sorts” and walk away scratching your head. I am prepared for that consequence, won’t like it, but will accept it if I must. I will respect any of your wishes as far as which category you would like to place me to best suit your life and needs. I can’t really imagine how I would feel if I was in your shoes. You’ve just been handed a lifetime sentence of lingering in my life and mind. Only, you can choose not to accept the “in my life” part of your sentence and simply walk away. Fortunately, your participation is not at all required for the latter. You are here in me for as long as I’m alive and there is no amount of time that will ever change that.
Oh, and one last thing. You know by now that one of the things we shared was a similarly intense love of music and that in my life when I have been unable to “otherwise speak” or “feel” it has always been my music. So, here is the song of my life. “So Far Away”. I imagine that it is the one song that will be playing the loudest in my head if the day finally comes for me to walk away from here for good. God only knows that sooner or later it may be time for me to move on once and for all and start over fresh somewhere else. Believe it or not, I kinda love you Henrik. You truly ARE an angel to me! Please pray for me and my family, as I’m sure you already are, and more than anything please take these words for whatever they are worth to you. Or don’t take them at all. Either way, they remain. Catherine
SO FAR AWAY
This is my life – it’s not what it was before, all these feelings I’ve shared. And these are my dreams that I’d never lived before. Somebody shake me cause I, I must be sleeping. Now that we’re here, it’s so far away. All the struggle that I thought was in vain. All the mistakes one life contained; they all finally start to go away. Now that we’re here it’s so far away, and I feel like I can face the day. I can forgive and I’m not ashamed to be the person that I am today. These are my words that I’ve never said before, I think I’m doing ok. And this is the smile that I’ve never shown before. Somebody shake me cause I, I must be sleeping … I’m so afraid of waking. Please don’t shake me. {Staind}
I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I’d cry for a week.
Everyone was packing for the journey back to home, but I was on pins and needles. Since my bags were ready, I’d decided to walk down to the water to clear my head once more before we left. On the way down the boulevard in Beaulieu-Sur-Mer, I ran into our tour guide, Adoram, who was heading back to the hotel after having been out with our driver, Pierre.
Adoram was a lovely Israeli man who everyone on tour fell in love with. I the sensed that he was an empath who was deeply concerned with the human condition, and it was clear that he fervently loved not only France, but even more so his job sharing it. He didn’t work from a script; his musings came from a place of pure love and adoration as he described the things we saw. He’d even managed to capture the attention of the boys who were the reason for our trip, which of course was a feat. As you can imagine, your average teenager wants as much to do with the history of a foreign country then waking at 6:00 a.m. on a summer vacation in the first place. Adoram and I had spoken often while on tour, and on several occasions he’d commented that I’d seemed even “farther away” than the trip itself. “How are you, Cat”, he asked me many times, but I would just change the subject, as I didn’t want to become too heavy and truly wanted to stay immersed in the experience.
That night, Adoram and Pierre had caught me heading down to the waterfront around 9pm, as they were heading back up. He wanted to know where I was going, and didn’t want me wandering alone in the dark. So, he turned to Pierre, uttered something in French, then turned to follow me back down the hill.
Well Cat, I’m not thrilled with you out here alone in the dark like this, so you can go and sit by the water as long as you like, but I’m afraid I’ll be joining you.
After much resistance on my part, but insistence on his, and having repeatedly said my stroll was for sightseeing only, we finally began talking about life in general and then about “what had me staring so far out the windows of the bus each day“. He was such a good listener, never once interrupting my thoughts, and in fact was quite easy to talk to. “What’s really bothering you, Cat”, is what he wanted to know. With that, I talked, then cried, then drank Sambuca, then cried and talked some more, then breathed … then finished.
When I was done telling him all “the things”, he fixed his gaze upon the shoreline like a deer caught in the headlights as we sat quietly staring into the abyss for what seemed like eternity. “Okay”, I said, “THIS is where you pat me on the back and tell me how beautiful my life is NOW!” Still, no response. “… AND”, I continued, “THIS is where everyone else usually tells me “everything’s gonna be okay and everything happens for a reason“. Then, he turned to me and spoke the words I never knew I’d needed to hear:
No, Catherine! NONE of this is okay, and none of this may EVER be okay! You have had some HUGELY rotten shit happen to you, and I can hardly believe that you’re still here to talk about it!
Adoram Schneidleder … my beautiful Israeli tour guide … the first of any to validate my broken feelings and help me begin to shed my skin on the coast of France in the wee hours of dawn. I’d begun to find my voice!
As we walked back to the hotel, I felt lighter than I had in what felt like a century, a sensation I couldn’t quite relate to. Yet, somehow it felt SO good! He hugged me so tight before I headed to my room. I thanked him profusely and said I felt as though I was about to have a truly restful sleepfor what was left of the morning. And? I DID! I laid my head on the pillow and closed my eyes for the first time in years and drifted peacefully to sleep! No drugs. No alcohol. No food. No anesthesia. Nothing to medicate my slumber! I fell asleep on my own and awoke feeling reborn.
The lobby was abuzz that morning with clamoring of travelers and their suitcases. Adoram was busy answering questions, directing traffic and saying his goodbyes. It felt a little uneasy with him at that point, as I wasn’t exactly sure how he may have received and digested our conversation just hours earlier and was a bit uneasy to approach him. It had only been a couple of hours since he had brazenly walked through the gauntlet of my mind and he had to have thought I was insane. When we got to the airport though and immediately after he hugged me goodbye, he handed me an envelope with this note inside:
Dear Cat,
Since on tour there are not many moments for communication, and tomorrow we probably won’t get the chance, I decided to write you a note. Your story – that you shared with me last night – is huge. I did not at any point feel that you were being either inconsiderate, selfish or just “needy” by sharing it with me. And, if having “unloaded” some weight with me has helped you see things clearer, then I actually feel honored to have been able to help. No fears whatsoever. And I hope you will sleep as well tonight as you did last night and that you will continue this way forever. I understand that it was important to unload – and probably being in a foreign country and doing with a stranger who would listen was the best way. I’m happy to have been that person for you. You have gone through some real heavy shit. Don’t ever forget it! And, don’t lose to consciousness of your inner strength. You have it – it’s there! Don’t forget to take care of yourself – of your needs and desires – while you give everything you have to your family. If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of them. I am sure they love and need you. I know Christian does. I can see it in his eyes and in the way that he looks at you. Take care of yourself girl! You’re a wonderful woman and you’ve got lots to give others and to yourself! It was a pleasure meeting you!
~ Adoram
SHED MY SKIN
I am not alone. I live with the memories; regret is my home. This is my true freedom. Express all the feelings of what I’ve become. I watch the rising sun. I hope I find some peace today. It seems I’ve gone away. It seems I’ve lost myself; it seems I’ve really lost my way. It seems I’ve lost myself; it seems I’ve shed my skin. Are you ready for me to purge my love? Are you ready for me? A bitter sinking feeling. Awake to the fact there’s no going back to this world in which I was living. I’m searching for something but found less than nothing.
This trip is almost over, and while I’ve made a strong push against The Dragon, part of me is still so sad. The tours have been long and the sights overwhelming, but I am at home in this country. Being here brings me a grounded sense of wholeness and peace that’s impossible to describe. Its history beckons me and calls to mind that although these last sixteen years have felt so treacherous, they’re merely a blip on the radar of my life.
As I’ve wandered here through each village in a perpetual state of eyes wired shut, I’ve imagined having been here in some other space and time walking these very same roads. What did it look like? How did it smell? How did it sound, taste, and feel? So many battles have been fought here and many of these sights have been desecrated and rebuilt, if only to emerge even more breathtakingly beautiful than before. Countless pools of human blood, sweat, and tears have soaked these fervent soils, yet still her flowers bloom.
So, what does France tell me? What does she scream to my soul? It says that humanity is but a history of sometimes less than optimal circumstances leading to either growth or death in endless abound. Each sunset begs the opportunity for me to leave the past behind and awaken to a horizon that hands me infinite choices, beginnings, and endings. My history can really mean something if I let it, even if I never personally witness the outcome.
I analyze everything, I know what you mean. I answer by questioning all that I need. And I want you to surrender, I want you to see all the signs, all the faces inside of me. I see I’m not perfect, but that’s all I see. Lost in a portrait in a picture of me … this can’t be everything I see. Then my canvas is incomplete. Your color’s everything to me, and my canvas will set me free. My outline’s solid and made up of crying. And nothing’s that you say just burn my eyes. I want to surrender; I want you to find some comfort in the spaces between the lines. {Trapt}
Even before Your hand made the Heavens. Even before the breath of all mankind. Even before we had to be forgiven … You were on Your throne. You were on Your throne. You reign. Glory in the highest, You reign. Let creation testify by Your name. Every knee will bow and every tongue proclaim … that Jesus reigns.
So, what exactly is happening here? I’m not quite sure what I’m feeling. When I heard this song today, literally every bone in my body and accompanying muscle attached started aching in the best way possible. Surely this must mean something? It’s like He’s trying to tell me something by speaking directly to my soul. He must have heard my prayer:
I need to talk to You. Or rather, I have some questions, so please just be perfectly honest. You’re not done with me, are You? Is my bright destiny just up ahead? Is it happening even as I write this? The future’s gonna be good, right? Things are gonna start getting better? Those two babies you sent need their mom to be okay so I can help them reach their own destinies. Can’t You just wave Your magic wand?
Why was he crying when we pulled away? I didn’t understand it at all. Was he crying for her, or because Christian was leaving, too? Or did he somehow know that I was never coming home again? The distance between us is light years by now, so surely, it’s not me he’ll be missing. My roommate … my friend … my “hero”. I mean, he truly is all those things that I’ve said before: Self-made, hard-working, and I’m pretty sure that he’s been faithful. Nineteen years of going back and forth can’t have been a complete and total lie.
Even so, we are only roommates … nothing more and nothing less. In my heart of hearts, I think I’ve always known that he never really wanted to marry me in the first place. Maybe someday he’ll realize it, too. We kill each other, sling mud at each other, and rip open each other’s raw wounds. We were a toxic collision right from the start, and I’ve known this all along.
I’ve stood in front of him begging and pleading at least a thousand times now, but he keeps telling me to just go away. He’s always said that his words are only ever said in anger, but his actions and inactions always spoken volumes. He lives in a place a million miles away from me, so, why then was he crying? Wasn’t this what he wanted?
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass!
I’ve often said that he’s never left my side, but that’s not really true. I have been on my own where my mental wealth is concerned, and now he just thinks I’m a raving lunatic. “A pathetic, joke of a human being”, he once said. “A huge fucking joke of a human being!”
Oh, God, there goes my daughter. The limo is pulling away and she is crying, too. What I’m most scared of in this very moment is that the tiny dancer waving goodbye to her mommy is in danger of becoming me. Is this what I want her to become? What if she gets into a tangle of her own with my dragon? What if she turns 38 one day and can’t find her own reflection in the mirror? That baby will learn what she lives, and will only become the woman I teach her to be. So, how can I teach her to become a strong and healthy woman when I don’t know how to be one myself? How will I teach her to love herself when I can’t practice what I preach?
LOST REALIST
My independence is calling my name, a doubtful voice divides my faith. My independence only hesitates an unsure choice I can’t embrace. You’re gonna have to carve me, carve me from stone, right to the bone or I’ll end up alone. I’m paying the role of someone in control. Why do I rush to slow down? Why do I rush to slow down everything? Will the dice ever roll? When will I ever know? Will the plot ever twist, or will I still resist? I’ve been playing the part of a lost realist. My independence is turning the page, tomorrow comes we start to fade. My independence only complicates, it’s not enough to meet half way. I only keep what I give awa
It’s down to this: I’ve got to make this life make sense. Can anyone tell what I’ve done? I miss the life … I miss the colors of the world. Can anyone tell where I am? ‘Cause now again I’ve found myself so far down away from the sun that shines into the darkest place. I’m so far down, away from the sun again. I’m over this. I’m tired of living in the dark. Can anyone see me down here? The feeling’s gone. There’s nothing left to lift me up back into the world I know.
(3 Doors Down)
I need to talk to You. Or rather, I have some questions, so please just be perfectly honest. You’re not done with me, are You? Is my bright destiny just up ahead? Is it happening even as I write this? The future’s gonna be good, right? Things are gonna start getting better? Those two babies you sent need their mom to be okay so I can help them reach their own destinies? Can’t You just wave Your magic wand?
Do You ever hear me crying, and if so, does it even bother You? And what ever happened to that “Sea Of Forgetfulness” I’ve heard so much about? The one where YOU forgive and WE forget, then move on about our way. It’s just not working with all these ghosts inside my head. Can’t You just make them go away? That memory of me on the front bench of that truck? The smell of the beer on his breath? Can’t You just erase it? Or how about that boy who hit the wall and cracked his head open? I could definitely do without THAT one. And what about the day You dropped that tiny girl in the palm of my hands JUST so I could watch her suffocate? You know? That same tiny girl who TRIED to hold my hand, but couldn’t even grasp my finger. I’m NOT loving that. It’s not working for me at all! I get it, she’s gone.I was there, don’t You know? Help me understand why I had to give her back. It’s just not natural. That’s NOT how it’s supposed to go. MOMMIES AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BURY THEIR BABIES! It’s enough. I’VE HAD ENOUGH! Please can You take this away?
Am I still Your daughter, or did You forget me? Surely You remember how it felt to watch Your Son die. Well, I’m dying, too, and I’ve had ALL that I can handle. PLEASE won’t You help me? You’re God. You can fix anything! Are You mad at me? What did I do? Oh, wait, I think I know. Well, can’t You just forgive me for that now?
Well, then how about an angel? Can You send me another angel? Preferably one who’s more than two feet tall and older and wiser than 15? Someone I can talk to. Someone who will listen. Someone who wants to hear what I have to say. Someone to hold me and remind me that I’m alive. Someone who will look beyond my surface and find the broken little girl hiding inside my soul. Someone who doesn’t think I’m whining, or dramatic, ungrateful, and pathetic. Someone who doesn’t think I’m just a crazy fucking bitch, or that all the “things” I have should preclude me from feeling pain. Someone who’ll accept my broken heart and all my darkness and not hold “me” over my head. I NEED A HUG! Can You send me a hug? Or a kiss? Or a touch? Will anyone ever want to touch me?
“I keep trying to find a life, on my own, apart from you. I am the [Queen] of excuses – I’ve got one for every selfish thing I do. The disease of self runs through my blood – It’s a cancer fatal to my soul. Every attempt on my behalf has failed, to bring this sickness under control. Tell me, what’s going on inside of me? I despise my own behavior. This only serves to confirm my suspicions that I’m still a girl in need of a Savior.”
(D.C. Talk)
🎶
This song is my mantra, yet how many times have I listened to it? Over and over and over again, but I can’t actually swallow the words. Instead, I just swallow every bit of rage and sadness that is hiding within me, then release it into a dark and obscured oblivion that I cannot find my way out of.
My “disease of self” has overtaken my life. My teeth are rotting, my throat is raw, there’s a permanent scar etched across my knuckle, and oh, yah, I think I’ve given myself cancer. My heart is arrhythmic, I feel dizzy when I stand too fast, and I’ve cracked open some blood vessels in my eye. I’m seeing a doctor tomorrow and I think I may have to cop to my little secret for the first time in my life. Dear GOD, please give me the courage to tell the truth! I’ve been locked inside my bathroom every night while my precious daughter sleeps peacefully just footsteps away from the door with this slow and steady process of suicide.
I never thought I would be one of those women who let an eating disorder control every aspect of their lives, and I don’t believe in “statistics”. I’ve known long well that this was never about the food, but rather, some pathetic attempt to continually purge myself of a lifetime of guilt, shame, and rage. It was the sick sense of order I thought I was maintaining over the contradiction which had become my existence:
My Rules!
My Choices!
My Food!
MY CONTROL!
I’ve worked so hard to plan my days carefully and carve away my quiet time with her. For more than half my life she’s been the keeper of my deepest and darkest secrets. I’ve trusted her unconditionally with the most painful of my feelings that I could let to the surface, yet somehow, she has betrayed me. My lifelong confidant brought me a comfort and safety that I’d somehow forgotten to know and satiated the emptiest places inside my body and soul with a satisfaction of fullness and order. We were euphoric together, and sometimes almost magical, but that calm, quiet happiness we shared never lasted for more than a moment, and all too quickly brought the continual shame and self-loathing which is all I can see in a mirror. My euphoria would end, so we’d begin the dance again to the most hypnotic rhythm of them all.
Time has had its way with me … My broken, tired hands can’t build a thing. The wires that have held me still embedded now in flesh, define my will. The idle of my days has won, the empty I have fed has made me numb. Despite what you will find in me, the failures of my past still swell beneath. I need a heart that carries on through the pain when the walls start collapsing again. Give me a soul that never ceases to follow despite the infection within. Our careless feet leaving trails, never minding the fragile dirt we all end in. This is where I find my fall … The cares that held me life don’t work at all. And every step away from here is closer to the plague I hold so dear. Awaiting my end … Breathing in the day that finds me new … Redemption begins, bleeding out the flaws in place of You. {Demon Hunter}
Hold me now I need to feel relief. Like I never wanted anything. I suppose I’ll let this go and find a reason I’ll hold on to. I’m so ashamed of defeat. And I’m out of reason to believe in me. I’m out of trying to get by. I’m so afraid of the gift You give me. I don’t belong here and I’m not well. I’m so ashamed of the lie I’m living right on the wrong side of it all. I can’t face myself when I wake up and look inside a mirror. I’m so ashamed of that thing. I suppose I’ll let it go ’til I have something more to say for me. I’m so afraid of defeat. And I’m out of reason to believe in me. I’m out of trying to defy. I’m so afraid of the gift You give me. I don’t belong here and I’m not well. I’m so ashamed of the lie I’m living right on the wrong side of it all. Hold me now I need to feel complete. Like I matter to The One I need. I’m so afraid of the gift You give me. I don’t belong here and I’m not well. I’m so ashamed of the lie I’m living right on the wrong side of it all. Now I’m ashamed of this. {Seether}
Well, perhaps actually penning the words to a complete and total stranger was the just the pin prick my heart valves needed to effect the slow release of toxins from my system. I mean, so much of what I wrote to her was true, but then again, so much of it was a lie. Everything about her and what I could gather from her story showed me that somehow, somewhere, there is a light at the end of every tunnel. Could it be that my resurrection is much closer than I know? It truly feels as though I am getting a little closer to bridging that proverbial gap.
My “surface level only” policy where relationships are concerned is fast becoming a sham and I desperately need to make the words therein my letter to her real. In the meantime, I’m still alive, though not-so-well here in my beautiful ivory tower as I continue my rule over a magical kingdom where everything appears to be perfect. “Queen Catherine The Perfect”: Perfect life … perfect family … perfect house … perfect car … perfectly happy, with all the perfect things that accompany my perfection. I’m the envy of every woman I know, covered in diamonds from head to toe, with a loving husband by my side at every turn (or so it seems). I play this perfect role so that my family remains happy and blissfully unscathed by all the secrets from my past, and so the painful memories I have yet to leave behind don’t interfere with their lives in any way.
It seems like only yesterday when a stranger took my innocence, and since that moment Fate has continued to rape me. It’s been just about a year since I entered that hospital, spirit broken, but body still somewhat whole. One week later I walked back out, leaving behind the last remnants of what once made me a woman. The physical scars that I wear now are now clear and tactile proof that I am nothing but an empty shell. These years were not imagined – they were real! At night sometimes I cry, grasping my pillow tightly so the precious baby girl sleeping beside me doesn’t hear. Then in morning I awake and prepare myself for the day that awaits and walk out of my bedroom an illusion. My children greet me with their glorious smiles, ignorant to my pain, and this is the way it is.
Despite the seemingly outward perfection, my soul is hollow, and I feel alone, abandoned, and sick, if not “a cancer” to the entirety of mankind. The mental camera in my head just can’t seem to help itself from constantly flipping back and forth through all the erosion, toxicity and filth inside my mind.
Each day that passes is drawing me closer to something spinning hopelessly out of control. My day of reckoning is fast approaching and may be just around the corner. I can feel the ripples just beneath my skin as my realities are boiling to the surface. The unrelenting knot in the pit of my stomach and heart is getting tighter with each day that passes and it’s getting harder for me to breath. I am shaking, anxious, and, oh, yeah, a total fraud!
Just up ahead, I think I can see the front of the proverbial bridge, but how can I make my legs actually move across it? If I actually make it across, what there will I find? Are there secrets about myself and even my “seemingly perfect childhood” that are still yet for me to discover? We shall see. Dearest Catherine, “Queen Of Perfection”, surely you can perfect this dance?
THE REAL LIFE
I wanted to find somewhere to hide, and I opened up and left those fears inside. And I wanted to be anyone else, only to find that there was no one there but me. But I woke up to real life and I realized it’s not worth running from anymore. When there was nowhere left to hide, I found out that nothing’s real here, but I won’t stop now until I find a better part of me. I let those hard days get me down, and all the things I hate got in my way. I could have screamed without a sound, I found myself silenced by those things they say. But I won’t stop now until I find a better part of me that’s out there somewhere, and it can’t be that far away. That’s where I’ll find myself, and I’ll find my way out. That’s where I’ll find out. {3 Doors Down}
Let me preface by stating that never once in 38 years have, I done something this crazy; that is, writing a letter to a complete and total stranger. Let me also tell you that those who know me well know that I am not the type of person who is easily impressed by fame, fortune or even people in general. To me, the true measure of a man (or woman) is forged by the spirit of the unseen things inside their hearts. That being said … My name is Catherine and I only live a few miles north of you in Fairview, Texas. I just happened to catch the middle of your “Whose Wedding Is It Anyway” episode this week. Since I only caught half of the show, I don’t really know the whole story. Yet, from what little I did decipher, I want you to know how completely taken I was … and inspired!
I have had a good life. I come from a loving home, my parents are still married (40 years this July), both hard-working, upper-middle class people who built their successes with only blood, sweat, tears and their own hands. I am perhaps obscenely if not codependently close to my parents and only sister, and in fact have the very good fortune of living only six doors down from Mom and Dad and seven miles away from Sis. I see or speak to my family daily, and they are integral parts of my children’s lives. My husband is also a self-made, hard-working man who, after having been told repeatedly by his physically and emotionally abusive stepfather that he would never amount to anything, has created a more than abundant life for our family out here in Fairview. The man has worked made it his mission to give us nothing but the absolute best things this world has to offer. Thus, he has more than exceeded even my own expectations of him.
Despite all this, lately many a day has found me feeling intensely sorry for myself and not able to truly “bridge the gap” between the very intense last decade and a half that I have struggled with and the life that I now live. I was raped in 1992 when my husband and I had only been married five months, became pregnant, divorced, had a full-blown nervous breakdown, suicide attempt, and a whole lot of other stuff in between. Eventually, though, I found my way back to “the man who wasn’t supposed to amount to anything”, a man who patiently waited for me to find my way back home. We remarried in 1998, and things were getting back on track. But alas! Can anything ever be simple and peaceful for too long?
After trying to conceive for 4½ years we finally became pregnant with our second child, a teeny tiny little girl who died in my arms only four hours after her birth in 1991. Meanwhile, a serious of rather unfortunate events have caused my own breasts to become, what I am told, something like that of a cancer patient. I cannot look at my bare chest in the mirror and cannot let my husband see me naked or touch me. So, then, although I am truly blessed in many, many ways (not the least of which blessings is the very healthy and happy little girl that we finally did conceive, who is now 2½ years old), I do find myself wallowing in self-pity many a day. So, that afternoon I was tiptoeing through the bedroom, so as not to wake the sleeping baby in my bed, carrying some towels I had just folded to the closet. On the way I stopped at the nightstand to grab the remote and lower the T.V. volume but happened to point it at the screen right at the moment you were walking out of the dressing room to reveal your beautiful gown to your wedding planner. There I stood paralyzed, clutching the towels over what’s left of my chest with one hand, holding the remote with the other, completely frozen and enthralled by the story. I couldn’t stop watching, and then I started to cry, and by the time you made your vows, the remnants of my morning mascara had already found their way to the bottom of my chin. At first, the tears were a combination of true joy for you, and sorrow for me. But then something changed. I saw the way you looked into your husband’s eyes while you were saying your vows. You looked like a little girl standing in a room filled with every wish and dream she had ever had! Then, it dawned on me. Here was this beautiful, mature, amazingly courageous woman who had looked death straight in the eye only a year before, only to find herself a survivor facing her future! After everything each of you must have experienced in your lives on the way to that exact moment … two lifetimes of intricacies and fullness, battles fought and won, you stood there in front of each other not taking a single second for granted. Then, there was me … scarred, yes, but alive and healthy in a house filled with the love, laughter, happiness, and joy from my children’s voices. My future is right here in front of me, and it has been all the while. How ashamed I am of the things I have taken for granted!
Why it took me so long to “get it”, I have absolutely no idea. But then again, I’m a firm believer in not only fate, but also the theory that “there’s a meaning in every moment”. I believe that God Himself had me fold those towels and carry them back to the bedroom at the exact He did for the sole purpose of catching my attention, opening my eyes, my ears, and my heart, and finally beginning to “bridge the gap”.
What an amazing inspiration you are, Marlane! I can’t remember ever having seen a more beautiful bride in my entire life. Sadly, marriage is not the sacred institution that it used to be. People make vows flippantly and then break them, as if they are only cheap souvenirs that can be thrown away and replaced. Get married, get divorced, nothing gained/nothing lost. Unfortunately, statistics show that sooner or later, someone I know … perhaps my Mother, Sister, or God forbid, my own Daughter, may have to face such a battle before it is all said and done. Should that day ever come, I can only pray that I or my loved one will be able to face it head-on in the graceful and beautiful manner that you did. You are a remarkable woman, and please know that you, and your story, have not only inspired, but challenged a complete and total stranger to never, ever take another moment for granted. Thank you, Marlane, and God Bless You!
Just take a look inside this haunted place. No soul alive is left alive, not one single face. This desecration that is alright, this devastation in my life. What’s killing me are all these things I do from hate. Don’t excuse me when I am the one to blame. No, I can’t explain why all these things I do from hate. Don’t excuse me when I am the one who’s haunting me. This final breath we have to take defeated by my own mistakes. Your devastation that proceeds your life, exposing the answers even if it burns me alive. {The Leo Project}
So many tears, so many prayers, so very many years! On July 18, 2005, God sent you to us, our Bitty Tiny Princess, our precious baby girl! By the time you are old enough to read this letter, you will no doubt have heard the stories (probably over and over again) about just what we went through to get you here and how very special you are! You are a miracle Gia, a true and living miracle!
As I am writing this, you are exactly 8 months old and already a shining star! You’re a constant joy in all our lives, making us endlessly laugh and smile. You should know that since the day that you were born not one of those days has passed that someone or another hasn’t commented on what a beauty you are … always smiling … always happy … and always with that sparkle in your eyes!
I promise you, Gloria Catherine, that I will do everything in my power to give you the best of what this life has to offer, not the least of which is love, security and home. You are surrounded by people who have been under your little spell from the minute you were born, especially your Daddy and Christian. These are the men who you adore most of all, and who no doubt you will be driving completely crazy by the time you turn 13! Oh, my Gia, what a life you have ahead of you! You are a treasure beyond measure beyond our wildest dreams! I will journey to you along the way, starting here with this first book, so that one day you can look back at the memories, the story of your life, and just how precious you are. Always remember, no matter what, that you are a living angel, and although it will be years before you understand what this means, please know that I will literally break my own heart into a thousand pieces before letting anyone else break yours. You are my brand new start.
Gloria Catherine, who soon became our “Gia” and yet another phoenix rising, finally graced us with her presence on July 18, 2005, about a year and a half after Gina Marie left us. She was then, and has since remained, the perfectly beautiful storm of a dancer who for so many years would just grab my face every morning and say, “I love you beautiful Mommy” as if she somehow intuitively knew that forcing me into that eye-lock was cleansing, preparing and allowing me to soar through each new day that has become our journey.
And so to, it was that my first true prince, my one and only son, has alongside his new sister remained one of my few and only heroes. Up until that, and sadly even more so in the years to come, he had seen, heard and felt more so much more than any human’s fair share of emotional turmoil, abuse and suffering. My babies were my lifeforce and every breathe that I was taking, and I was determined to find a way to get out of the web we’d all been born to. There is nothing I wouldn’t have done, given or sacrificed for either of their futures, up to and including myself.
How could I have ever imagined that on this bright, crisp morning I would leave my house blissfully fat and pregnant, only to return two days later once again empty and shattered? At a little more than halfway through my pregnancy, I woke up with what I thought were only cramps. I wasn’t too worried though, and in fact, had even tried convincing my husband, who wanted to take me to the hospital just to be safe, that I was fine and could wait until Monday to see the doctor. We had finally gotten settled into the new house, and on this particular Sunday there were NFL playoffs that I didn’t want him to miss. He was exhausted from the move and deserved a day off, and I knew that even a “quick trip” to the ER could possibly mean hours of our Sunday, and I just didn’t think it was necessary.
I thought about calling my parents, but opted not to worry them unnecessarily, as I truly believed that everything was fine and didn’t want to wake them. When we got to the hospital, we waited to be seen for almost an hour, all the while, my pain continually increasing. By 9am, I decided to go ahead and have him call my parents since they were probably awake by then, just to keep them in the loop. He never actually spoke to them, though, but instead, an aunt who was visiting at the time got the message. He told her what was happening and asked her to let them know, but also that everything was probably fine and we’d call them when we got home.
While Pete was on the phone, I’d gone to the restroom. No sooner did the door shut behind me did I realize that something was really wrong. As I walked back out towards Pete, I collapsed in the lobby and was soon being rushed to the ER. Meanwhile, against my instance to the contrary, my parents had already left their house which was just a few miles from the hospital.
Ten minutes later, and not less than two minutes before I delivered her, my Mother found her way to my room. There she stood holding my right hand while Pete was holding my left when Gina Marie, our precious baby girl, graced us all with her brief but powerful presence. She was 9 inches long and weighed just over a pound.
The few hours she lived were the longest of my life, and there are no words to describe my anguish. The baby I had prayed desperately for on my literal hands and knees had been cruelly ripped from my womb and now I held her broken little body in my arms. She kept trying to hold on to my finger, but her tiny hand was too small to grasp it. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as I helplessly watched her gasping for air and struggling to live, then watched her take her very last breath.
I struggled for so long to find a single good thing that came from all that heartache and trauma, as it is something I will truly never understand. But what I can tell you is that there in that otherwise frigid hospital room, racked with grief and agony in my very darkest of hours, I had never felt so truly loved. How blessed was I to be surrounded by all the people I loved and cared for the most and who loved me in all the best ways they knew how? My husband, who after all he went through to bring that little girl into my life, and who despite my best efforts to push him away never once in our lifetime together at that point had ever physically left my side. My father, who despite his shortcomings, did seem to love me in all the best ways he knew how, and despite our many battles, I know would have traded his life for my daughter’s in that moment. My sister and one true and unconditional rock, there at the foot of my bed on her hands and knees sobbing inconsolably for the indescribable pain that I was in, that if she could have, I know she would have taken from me. And, of course, my beautiful mother who has loved me all the days of my life and I was blessed to have standing beside me when each of my children came into this world, and then again when one of them left it.
Where’s the Navigator of your destiny? Where is the Dealer of this hand? Who can explain life and its brevity, ’cause there is nothing here that I can understand. You and I have barely met, and I just don’t want to let go of you yet. Noah, hello, good-bye. I’ll see you on the other side. Noah, sweet child of mine. I’ll see you on the other side. And so I hold your tiny hand in mine for the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face. Heaven calls for you before it calls for me. When you get there save me a place. A place where I can share your smile and I can hold you for more than just awhile. Noah, I’ll see you on the other side. {Michael W. Smith}
This Diary entry is being written and backdated to this official release date of “Battlefield 1942” to memorialize the planting of one of the most important seeds to take root in our family’s tree … the “officially unofficial but also very official” establishment of “Embach Armory” (23 years from today). Wowser! Now, that was one hell of a long sentence, was it not? I don’t know about you, but I clocked it at 49 words!
On a beautiful day that fall, they picked me up from my office downtown and we headed to the courthouse to get remarried. Our family was reunited, and my husband’s wish had finally come true … I WAS GOING HOME!
Things were going well, and we immediately started trying to have another baby. We built a house in not far from mom and dad and His business was flourishing. He wanted me to quit work and come home full-time so that I could finally get some rest and focus on our family, which I did not object to at all! We were happily anticipating that I would soon become pregnant and finally give Christian the sibling he so much wanted.
But you see, that wasn’t quite the case. After the first six months of trying to conceive we began to worry, but doctors said that we shouldn’t be too concerned until we reached the year mark. That year came and went and so did the next. All the while we’d been undergoing treatments with a fertility specialist in Plano and finally, after years of anxiously waiting, I became pregnant in September of 2003. Our daughter was due to be born on my husband’s birthday the following June. Earlier that summer, we’d begun construction of a new home, closed on it two days after Christmas, and began moving in the first week of January 2004. I was overwhelmed with the joy of our impending arrival and things couldn’t have been looking brighter. The years of longing for the baby I so much wanted were all behind me and my dreams were coming to fruition. I just knew that God had special plans for our family, especially given what we had all walked through to get where we were going. If only we had known.
WALK ON
And love, it’s not the easy thing. The only baggage that you can bring, not the easy thing. The only baggage you can bring, is all that you can’t leave behind. And if the darkness is to keep us apart, and if the daylight feels like it’s a long way off, and if your glass heart should crack before the second you turn back … Oh no, be strong. Walk on. Walk on. What you got, they can’t steal it, no they can’t even feel it. You’re packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been – A place that has to be believed to be seen. You could have flown away, a singing bird in an open cage who will only fly, only fly for freedom. What you got you can’t deny it, can’t sell it or buy it – Walk on. Walk On. You stay safe tonight. And I know it aches, how your heart it breaks, you can only take so much. Home, hard to know what it is if you never had one. Home, I can’t say where it is, but I know I’m going. Home, that’s where the heart is. Leave it behind. You’ve got to leave it behind. All that you fashion, all that you make, all that you build, all that you break. All that you measure, all that you feel, all this you can leave behind. All that you reason, all that you care, it’s only time and I’ll never fill up all my mind. All that you sense, all that you scheme, all you dress up, and all that you see. All you create … all that you wreck … all that you hate … leave it behind. Walk on! {U2}
Christmas came to find me still deeply grieving, but trying desperately to keep my eyes upon The Cross. In all the Christmases we’d been divorced, however, He and I had always managed to go shopping for Christian together during the holidays. This year, however, I didn’t want to go, as I was still feeling very sorry for myself and not that much like shopping.
This particular Saturday, however, would be a day to surely remember. He came to the house that morning, walked into my bedroom where I was still buried under the covers, opened the blinds, ripped off my blankets, and told me to get out of bed. We were going shopping for Christian that day and he wasn’t gonna take no for an answer. Despite my best efforts to avoid any Christmas joy, and after much cajoling by Him, by noon we were out the door and headed to the malls for a day filled with holiday shenanigans. We shopped and laughed, ate and laughed, then shopped some more and ended up having some dinner. It was probably one of the most beautiful days that I’d ever had in my life, and one that I still fondly carry in my heart.
The next day, we decided to spend more time together, only this time with our son. We shopped a little more, then went to have some lunch, and they even went to a special Christmas themed service with me at my church.At the end of the evening when the two of them drove me to the parking lot where I had met them and left my car, He leaned over to give me a hug goodbye. Instead however, He kissed me. When the kiss was over we both turned to see the look of astonishment on Christian’s wide-eyed face – his hands were over his mouth and he was smiling:
Kiss her again, Daddy! Kiss her again!
… at which point he physically pushed our heads together with his innocent young hands, and the rest is merely history.
INTO ANOTHER
Slowly I heal the love that’s found it’s way on to another path in times of change. Crossing that bridge alone, hoping our strength will hold. Should they let go then let me lay. Let me lay. Show me a sign to a light that shines one direction into another – sheltered peace of mind. Somewhere I lost a piece of memory, but somehow I know my legs will carry me. Searching for circle’s end, hoping the wounds will mend. Should this scar, then it was meant to be. {Skid Row}
The months that followed his death are a blur to me. I soon returned home to my parents’ house, where I spent the majority of my time either locked inside my room or just moping around feeling sorry for myself. I was so angry at God and couldn’t believe He would let this happen! I’d figured that by then He’d have known I’d had enough already and was willing to just let me be.
It wasn’t long before I realized that as a Christian I had to accept this as part of His plan, however much I disagreed with it. It was my son, once again, now six years old and wise beyond his tender years for all that he had already been through, who gently reminded me one morning while sitting out front of Mom and Dad’s house setting free some butterflies that we had grown from a kit, that …
Mommy? Mitch is like a butterfly now, right? He got his wings and flew home?
Something has changed in me, and I can’t believe ten years have gone by since I’ve felt alive. When I was a child, I can remember everything so well. But now that I’ve asked, I find, who am I? Watching the sky and praying for rain to come and wash away the tears from my eyes and I’m down on my knees begging You please. Give me life – drown my darkness in smile make it all worth my while so that I can lay my head and rest facedown. Paint me a picture of all things oblivious now. I’ll show you the reasons to hate to hate. Pain by the fistful in a haze of being alright. Right on cue into my veins. Watching the sky, and I’m praying for rain to come and wash away the tears from my eyes and I’m down on my knees begging you please. Give me life – drown my darkness in smile make it all worth my while so that I can lay my head and rest face down in misery. Facedown in your memory. {The Leo Project}
It was the eve of his 34th birthday, and he started the day by making good on his promise to pick my son up from school, meet his teachers, then take him out alone for the very first time so they could have an important talk. So, he took him out to lunch, told him he wanted to be a permanent part of our lives, then asked his permission to marry me. It was a powerful and PIVOTAL moment for all of us, and Christian was beyond excited.
When their date was over, he took Christian to my mom’s then returned home where I was already getting ready for his birthday party that night. We had originally planned to ride out on our separate Harleys and meet up with some friends for dinner, but my bike wouldn’t start, so we rode out on his bike to the The Blue Goose in Addison where they were waiting for us. We celebrated all night long and he excitedly told everyone that we were getting hitched!
After dinner, he wanted to go play pool, so we all gathered out front of the restaurant to caravan in the cars that were available since none of the boys had any business driving anywhere. We wanted them to leave the bikes at the restaurant, take the available cars to The Fox & The Hound, then return to get them later when they were sober. He kept insisting that he wasn’t drunk, though, and refused to leave that fucking devil bike behind. Before I knew what was happening amidst the chaos, I turned my head to see him and his friend sitting on their bikes revving the engines. I ran towards his bike frantically begging and pleading him not to go, but the bikes were so loud, he was beyond inebriated, so, he didn’t even notice, much less hear me. As they pulled out of the parking lot and made their way up Belt Line Road, I swear I knew I’d never see him alive again.
Just Past Midnight, May 30, 1998.
Not long after, he hit a brick wall, less than half a mile from our destination. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and it was estimated that he’d been going at least 90mph. Once again, my life was as mangled as he was. That first true king of my heart, who up until that point was the only man other than my son who I’d ever truly loved, been loved by, or let see me “naked“, rode off with my heart hin a “Blaze Of Glory”.
SILENT LUCIDITY
Hush now, don’t you cry, wipe away the teardrop from your eye. You’re lying safe in bed. It was all a bad dream spinning in your head. Your mind tricked you to feel the pain of someone close to you leaving the game of life. So here it is, another chance. Wide awake you face the day! Your dream is over or has it just begun? There’s a place I like to hide – a doorway that I run through in the night. Relax child, you were there, but only didn’t realize and you were scared. It’s a place where you will learn to face your fears, retrace the years, and ride the whims of your mind. Commanding in another world, suddenly you hear and see this magic new dimension. I will be watching over you. I am gonna help you see it through. I will protect you in the night. I am smiling next to you, in silent lucidity. If you open your mind for me you won’t rely on open eyes to see. The walls you built within come tumbling down, and a new world will begin. Living twice at once you learn you’re safe from pain in the dream domain – a soul set free to fly. A round trip journey in your head. Master of illusion, can you realize? Your dream’s alive, you can be the guide but … I will be watching over you. I’m gonna help to see it through. I will protect you in the night. I am smiling next to you in silent lucidity. {Queensryche}
I returned from the gym to find Mitch pacing frantically as I pulled into the driveway, but before I could put the car in park, he jumped into the passenger seat and said, “DRIVE! We have to get to the hospital NOW!”
Fifteen minutes later, in a family-filled emergency room, He and Mitch finally got their chance to meet. Mom, Grandma, and Christian had been in an accident!
Amidst all the chaos and before I even realized it, I found the two of them outside of the emergency room in what seemed to be a heavy conversation. According to Mitch, they’d been speaking about the expectations and boundaries they had for one another, and when the conversation was done, they shook hands and returned to the waiting room. It was a 10-ton weight off my shoulders because I still loved Him and very much needed his approval before I could move forward with Mitch.
The six days that followed the accident were a whirlwind of excitement! Mitch was overjoyed that He had given him his blessing and went full steam ahead with the plans he had for our future. He had called his mom that Sunday night, gone to see a jeweler on Tuesday and called his travel agent on Wednesday. He wanted to get married on a beach in Tahiti the weekend of my birthday that September. Especially exciting was the fact that Mitch had asked that he finally be allowed to go Christian’s school, meet his teachers, be added to the “pick up list” and take him out to a special lunch that afternoon, just the two of them, which, he did. If only I’d known that on what began as a beautiful day chocked full of hope for an entire future things would go so tragically wrong.
DECLARATION
I’ll take you just the way you are, imperfect words inside the perfect song. I feel you closer than you are, but I’ve been waiting far too long. It’s my declaration to anyone whose listening … You’re my inspiration as I stand alone against the world. Cause you love and you bleed, and you stole my soul to set me free … It’s my declaration. Do you care what I believe, ‘cause I’m still breathin’? Or that I wear your heart upon my sleeve? Sometimes I think you never knew, the only truth I see is you. It’s you. And are there any words to say that would ever mean enough, when the light runs from the day, will the darkness be too much? Will I ever be enough? {David Cook}
Home became the haven I didn’t really like to leave as I recovered from “what lied beneath” one of the most twisted mind fucks of my life. Eventually, I started feeling better and started working out again at a gym I’d been a member of for years. Lol! If only I’d have known that not going back to his gym in an attempt to eradicate myself of his presence would ultimately prove to be pointless. “Hoovery MacHooverson” would always be lingering in my atmosphere. But, hey … AT LEAST I TRIED!
It was my very first visit back to that haunt that I’d made eye contact with this very cute dirty blond. We flirted back and forth a lot and I enjoyed his quiet attention, but it was months before we ever really spoke one Saturday night at what I’d only thought was an empty gym. Little did I know, he’d been there, solo, too, watching me and waiting for his moment … then it happened! He’d walked up behind me, pulled the microphones from my ears, and our much-anticipated conversation began:
So, why aren’t you out with your boyfriend right now? It’s Saturday night! Why are you alone here?
An hour later, we were at dinner across the street, and soon thereafter an item. Kirk Mitchell Boone was a strikingly handsome Cajun boy from Haughton, Louisiana, with whom I had a lot in common. He was genuinely kind, treated me with respect, and always kept me laughing. With him, I felt a safety that I’d never really known, and although I was careful not to jump into something serious too quickly, by the end of that year I just knew he was the one.
He was everything John wasn’t. There wasn’t a manipulative, narcissistic, self-serving bone in his body, and he never once took me for granted. We were very happy and even my family loved him, but I had firmly decided I would not bring another man into Christian’s life unless I knew he’d be the last. I’d kept their contacts brief, which was something Mitch agreed with and respected. I was so happy, and things couldn’t have been better.
Even Christian’s dad seemed to have resigned himself to the fact that Mitch wasn’t going anywhere, and though He’d claimed to still love me, He could see that I was truly happy. In the two years Mitch and I were together, though, the two of them had never met in person and had only ever spoken on the phone a few times when He would call the house. That was about to change …
On this cool, crisp day in November, John asked me to meet him at a church in Sachse, Texas where he had been invited by one of my new “Christian” friends and mentors,Angie, who he’d befriended as well, to attend a Power Team evangelism show and also be baptized afterwards. He said he had something exciting to tell me that night, and based upon the tone and context of the conversations we’d been having, I had every reason to believe that he was going to propose to me. Imagine my surprise then when after the baptism I was led into a room in the back of the church where he was standing beside Angie and her entire family of people I’d truly come to admire and respect. It was then that John told me that he was “so sorry”, but over the months, “God had called them together”, they’d fallen in love, and had been hiding their relationship from me.
There I stood, just as I had 20 years before, numb and sick with the same stinging, disconnected pain just beneath the top layer of my skin on the day of the Spic and Span. I walked out of the church heartbroken and alone and just started driving on a 300-mile round trip to Oklahoma City and back. I’d just danced with the devil, a narcissist of unspeakable proportion, who after all was said and done “hoovered me” for years to come, but that’sanother story for another time.
When I arrived back in Dallas, it was just about time for the Saturday parking lot meet with Christian and his dad for our weekend custody switch. I was wrecked beyond belief but doing everything I could to keep it all together for my son’s sake. I needed not to let what had happened the night before break me down completely, and by this stage in the game I was a pro at stuffing painful things down and pretending they just didn’t exist. Despite my best efforts, though, I consciously decided to pick a fight with my ex-husband so I could just run away and avoid having to fake my way through a “normal” weekend visit with son. I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, had just experienced the second biggest bombshell of my life, and although I didn’t know it, was less than 15 minutes away from the first of my nervous breakdowns. I went back to my parents’ where I’d been living at the time, swallowed every single pill, capsule, and liquid medicine I could find in my bathroom. I JUST WANTED TO GO “HOME”!
The details of that morning were never very clear, but I do remember lying there, just rocking back and forth and screaming that I wanted to be with God. It was my sister who first realized what I had done to myself and called 911. Meanwhile, my ex-husband and son had followed me home because he’d been concerned that something was just “off” at our meeting and was worried.
My parents were ballistic as my sister frantically pulled me out of the bed to the bathroom to make me vomit everything I’d swallowed. While I cannot and will not ever say that I actually died that day, what I can say is that something did happen within my body and soul in that moment that not only defies logic, but as well everything I’d been taught to believe about life, death, and “hereafter” in my cradle Catholicism. It was “something”. I went “somewhere”. “Somewhere” I can still hardly fathom. No, I never saw “the light at the end of the tunnel” we often hear people speak of when they’ve had a near death experience, because again, I don’t think I was actually dying. Rather, there was a numbing, soothing, lulling void in my mind, as if I were being cradled in blissful nothingness by every single hand from every single shred of the universe at once. It was ethereal to say the least, and even still when I think of it I want to cry, but not in a sad way, in a joyous one. That moment devoured and immersed me in something so much bigger than my simple mind will ever understand, yet at the same time I very much do understand it.
Meanwhile, my Christian, a mere five years old at the time, managed to slip through all the chaos and come to me. He, too, was ballistic and frantically crying, but had taken hold of my wrist and was patting my back as though HE were the parent consoling their child. Up until that point, I hadn’t been able to focus on anything in the room, because everything around me was just “dark”, yet I could very clearly hear everything my son was saying:
Mommy, God’s not ready for you to go Home. He wants you to stay here and be my mom.
It’s imperative to note that although I could see his mouth moving and hear the words he was saying, it was not Christian’s voice I was hearing. I firmly believe, and will never be convinced otherwise, that it was God. God, Himself was speaking to me through my son. He’s real, my friends. HE’S REAL!
I stayed in the hospital for a few days until the state committed to a psyche ward where I underwent intense treatment for clinical depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and the sorely delayed but much needed rape counseling I’d never gotten. My whole family was involved in this process, which was something that by then that we were all in dire need of.
Looking back now, I realize that I didn’t want to die that morning, I just couldn’t pull myself out of the black hole that I was in. I was lucky. Very lucky. I made it home in time for Christmas that year feeling lighter and happier than I had in years, clear-headed, focused, and internally combusted with a fire in my soul of epic proportion. Despite the unbelievably selfish horror I had put them all through, my entire family welcomed me home again.
As for the devil? He never ONCE turned back see what he had done! It was such an easy choice for him to just discard me as the unwanted “baggage” he’d once referred to as my son. As for me? It was everything, because I loved him (or so I thought), trusted him, and had given him every piece of my already broken heart I could have given.
As for her? Her betrayal of me “in Jesus’ name” literally murdered my soul and caused spiritual damage within my heart and psyche that would take years to recover from. Perhaps you’ve heard it said:
The devil doesn’t come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you’ve ever wished for.
Well, it wasn’t for years that I’d finally understand that they were two of the actualdevil’s own. He, the consummate wolf in sheep’s clothing, and she, by the name of “Angela”, the most beautiful angel of Light I could have known. My friend, mentor, and “sister in Christ”, with a pit viper’s tongue, a knife in her hand, and a smile on her face as she plunged it into my back.
Indeed, it was my darkest hour to discover what really lied beneath the surface of two of the most truly evil “things” I’ve ever encountered. How starved these vile creatures must have been that my heart became meals for his very small affect and her insignificant, insecure and thirsty, insincere ego.
WHAT LIES BENEATH
Take a breath. Hold it in. Start a fight. You won’t win. Had enough. Let’s begin. Never mind. I don’t care. All in all, you’re no good. You don’t cry like you should. Let it go if you could when love dies in the end. So, I’ll find what lies beneath your sick twisted smile as I lay underneath your cold, jaded eyes. Now you’ve turned the tide on me ’cause you’re so unkind. I will always be here for the rest of my life. Here we go. Does it hurt? Say goodbye to this world. I will not be undone. Come to life. It gets worse. … Don’t carry me under. You’re the Devil in disguise. God sing for the hopeless. I’m the one you left behind.
Despite the turmoil in my life otherwise, I had found my way to a new and different kind of church that was totally different from the Catholic religion I’d been born to and raised in and began exploring this new and intriguing “Christian faith”. I’d started attending Tommy Nelson’s Metro Bible study every Monday night at a Presbyterian church in Plano where I soon began making new, Christian friends and genuinely trying to head in a more positive direction. I truly loved my new “family” and all of the warmth and unconditional acceptance I’d found therein and it wasn’t long before I began feeling not only a stronger bond with Christ, but more so than that, just “stronger” all together.
It was March of 1996 when I finally asked Jesus into my heart and I took every opportunity to attend church functions and Bible studies, which of course put a strain on my relationship with John. We were spending less time together and he appeared to be somewhat threatened by my burgeoning mental wealth and time spent with many new friends. Things were also getting better with my family, and my ex-husband and I were fast developing a healthier relationship for our son’s sake. This, too, threatened John, and he became jealous of certain bonds that were being strengthened and renewed. Remember, when our relationship had begun, I had almost completely severed myself from all of them, which of course made me vulnerable outside influences. John had all but ridden up on a white horse to “rescue me” from what he had begun to convince me was a toxic, emotionally abusive, and unsympathetic family.
In the meantime, I foolishly believed I “loved” him, and indeed, I did truly care for him, but at the same time, I was very confused. I could feel myself being pulled apart at the seams in too many directions to quantify, and the fact that he would continually mock my newfound faith and friendships wasn’t helping at all.
The greatest irony in all of this was that later that year John became involved with a church group of his own and had even started attending some Bible studies with me. My friends were becoming his friends and things were looking up! We were talking about marriage, he had shown me the receipt for the ring he’d claimed to have already purchased, and had even taken my parents to dinner to ask for their blessing. If only I had known what truly lied beneath his facade and that I’d be dealing with this hoovering narcissist for virtually the entirely of my coming life.
RESCUE ME
Walking in circles just to see how far I go gets redundant for me again. I follow the path burned by all those come and gone by the wind that blows. Won’t you please, won’t you please rescue me? Don’t You leave, don’t You ever leave my side. Send in the doctor please, I believe I have bad news, this man is bloody, and his heart is bruised. We can fix him Lord, we can fix his broken heart, but can we prevent him coming apart? Now it seems like the changing shade again, burning embers light the edge around the flames.
I enjoyed working downtown and made a ton of friends there, including some of the vendors who came around each day for our printing. They spent their days wooing us to get and keep our business, and since our firm outsourced most of their copy work, we had real and consistent relationships with them.
One of those vendors, who I considered to be a friend, waited for me one night after a very late day of work in an empty parking garage connected to our building and changed my life irreversibly. Unfortunately, I chose not to tell anyone what happened that night, as you may have heard it said that women who are raped often block the experience from their minds completely in self preservation. Well, I was “that woman”. I called in sick the next day and the entire week that followed, but eventually I had to go back to work.
Day after day, he would come through the office and even stop at my desk as if nothing ever happened. I was completely crumbling inside and my already unstable marriage was crumbling with it. “If only I hadn’t befriended him. If only I hadn’t worked so late that night. Had I sent the wrong message and led him to it? Maybe I was dressed inappropriately?”
I tried desperately to keep things together at home, but had almost instantly become cold and distant towards my husband who had no idea what had happened to me that night. All he knew was that I had become unbearable to live with. A few weeks later, though, while at a family reunion in New Mexico, I became pregnant with our son. Although I was able to change my immediate focus, inside I was internally combusting.
Six months into the pregnancy, I was in a hit and run accident and went face first through my windshield when a driver that was attempting to cross three lanes of traffic clipped the front of my car and sent me spinning head-on into a wall. I was unconscious for a couple of hours and my nasal cavity was shattered. By the time the swelling subsided enough for the surgeon to completely assess the damage, I was eight months pregnant. So, I went through the reconstruction only moderately sedated and with a blindfold over my eyes. Ironically, however, because of my bulging tummy the day of the accident, the seatbelt was tucked under rather than across it. When I went over the steering wheel, the baby went with me, which the doctors told me is the only reason he survived.
KNIVES
Sitting in your room, this boredom overcomes you. It’s all you can do not to fall asleep. Searching for that certain piece of mind, you will find it … searching for what’s yours to keep, it’s yours to keep. And in my opinion, don’t be justified by what this world has to give you. And in my opinion, don’t be satisfied hate. Poor girl … she has no idea what it’s like to forgive. She cries at night with hatred inside her heart. If she could only see the pain he caused her soul maybe she would see it and see this pain right from the start. If maybe things had gone your way then maybe you’re life wouldn’t be so sad. If only things were what they said, it’s not the rips that bleed, it’s the knives to blame. {The Leo Project}
I headed off to college in Corsicana, Texas, which was a welcomed and necessary escape from the scene at dear ole Allen High. At college, no one really seemed to care about the color of my skin, as everyone was just so different. Different colors, creeds, and backgrounds … different Gods, and diverse perspectives. It was there that I realized I was only a tiny piece of this multi-cultured tapestry of life, and it was also there, during my freshman year, that I met my future husband.
Dear GOD, was he good looking! Solidly chiseled, six foot two, 200 pounds, and deep green eyes to get lost in! We met at the local YMCA, and after many months of cat and mouse began dating andcontinued dating once I graduated and transferred to another college in north Texas.
My little sister had finally caught up with me and began her freshman year at the samecollegeas me. We lived together in our own apartment, an experience I’ll always treasure.
By then, however, I’d developed a full-blown eating disorder, and at one dropped down to a 100lb size zero. My obliterated self-esteem had finally caught up with me and I’d gone almost an entire year without keeping a meal down.
My family tried to help me, but I was much weaker than my “dragon“. No one, including myself, understood what my disease was really about in the first place, which not only didn’t help, but ultimately just perpetuated my self-mutilation. After being hospitalized and intensely counseled, I dropped out of school mid junior year so I could go back home and recover, which I did, or at least I thought I did, the Christmas of 1990.
As for the guy? Sometimes I’m ashamed of how I insinuated myself into every aspect of his life in what could probably be compared to stalking. That January, after a bit of coaxing by my father, he asked me to marry him. My mom, sister, and I spent the next ten months planning our “fairytale” wedding for which no expense was spared.
We were married on October 19, 1991. Things were relatively simple for us back then. He worked a warehouse in Corsicana and planned to becoming a fireman. I became a paralegal in downtown Dallas and loved it. We made the cutest little home and began our life together.
In being honest, I was young and somewhat spoiled at the time, such that looking back, I realize that I was so busy preparing for the wedding that I completely overlooked preparing for being wed. Even so, it seemed as though we loved each other enough and were relatively happy. Things might have been just fine, but what came next became the catalyst for almost two full decades of struggling in the dark with a mental illness that had been manifesting in my fragile psyche since childhood.
STAINED GLASS WINDOW
Just beneath the rafters in a church of stone laid a stained glass window in the attic all alone. A work of art forgotten – a treasure thrown away. Taken from the sunlight, it was just a useless frame. Oh the things in life we take for granted, the things of wonder we could know. I want to be illuminated, full of Heaven’s light, shining through my life. Let the window of my heart reveal your love. I took the stained glass window and held it to the light … years of hidden glory reappeared before my eyes. Every brilliant color glowing like a fire. Full of revelation and created to inspire., Thirsty for your morning sun. Let your love in me unfold, all this beauty to behold. There’s a stained glass window in the soul of man – a pattern of perfection that was made with holy hands. With the light of heaven pouring through each pain, truth in all it’s splendor is revealed and will remain. {Clay Crosse}
We moved to Allen from Providence, Rhode Island, in 1979, back when Allen’s population was a handful of thousands. My mother, sister and I were three of only a handful of Hispanics when we arrived, which soon became one of the deepest and most toxic roots of my lacking self-esteem.
I’ll never forget the day when a gym teacher of mine, Coach Spann, made his way to the middle of the floor. As he reached for the mic to call us to attention, a very cruel girl all but leveled me in front of a gymnasium full of my peers during one of my deepest childhood traumas:
Look how Spic and Spann these floors are!
I remember that humiliation like a million tiny needles stinging my leather brown hands and feet as if it were happening this instant. In my mind, it seemed as though everyone was laughing at me, and all I wanted was to crawl under a rock and die. The funny thing is, at the time I didn’t even know what it meant. “Spic? What’s a spic?” It wasn’t until the friend that was sitting beside me leaned in closely, as if to shelter me from the trauma that I didn’t even realize I was experiencing and asked if I was okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?
A spic is a Mexican or wetback. She was making fun of you for being so dark.
I don’t remember how I finally made it from the gym floor to the bathroom but do remember staring into the mirror and crying. It was on that day that I began to despise myself and the skin I lived in, and though I did manage to have a handful of truly good friends until graduating high school in 1987 (many of whom after almost 40 years are with me still today), that moment scarred me for years to come.
Thank God for my family back then. At home, I was “safe”, with a roof over my head and my Mom never more than a heartbeat away. Looking back, I can’t remember a moment that she missed. Not one single lunch, class party, field trip or game, and never a “latched door” for us to come home to. From what I could see at that point in my life and for many years to come, my mother would have torn out her own beating heart for the sake of those that she loved despite her outwardly gentle appearance.
Of course, then there was Julie, not only my sister, but one of my truest, lifelong friends. She’s been my rock, my sounding board, and one of the only people in this world who’s ever truly understood me. So close are we that over the years when I’ve heard people talking about their sibling rivalries, I’ve been perplexed. Julie is everything that I am not, and together, we make a whole person! She, too, over the years has suffered many of the same prejudices as I, only her much more so since she’s always been so much darker than me. Through it all, though, we have always stuck together and never once in my life has she abandoned me!
… and so it began … the real story behind the fallout of my own life:
It was a gloomy Sunday afternoon in mid-April of 1979. My sister and I were two blissfully ignorant little girls playing on “the rock shaped like a whale” in the front yard of our home in Johnston, Rhode Island. Mom was in the house, more than likely preparing Sunday dinner, while my dad was at my grandparents’ just a few miles across town for the standing “Sunday cawfee” with his brothers. The next thing you know, he came barreling into our driveway with a screeching halt, engine running, driver’s door open, as he ran inside the house then came running right back out with a lead pipe in his hand, at which point he jumped back into the car and peeled out headed to “somewhere”.
The next thing you know, my mother came running out the front door after him while frantically directing me and my sister to hurry up and get in her car, which we of course did without question, at which point we were flying down the street at only God knows how many miles per hour headed to “somewhere” we weren’t sure of, but from what we could tell, we were headed in the direction of my grandparents.
Yup, that’s where we were headed alright, as were what appeared to be the entire fleet of police cars, firetrucks, and ambulances that were also headed in that same direction. Yup, that’s where they were going, too! As we approached the entrance to my grandparents’ plat, she quickly realized the chaos that had ensued, ended up having to park her car more than a block away, then just started running towards my grandparents’ with me and my little sister just running along behind her. When we finally made it to their driveway, this is what I remember …
My father and all three of his brothers were at fists literally beating each other half to death in my grandparents’ front yard while my Grandpa was standing in the middle of it all hollering for them to stop and trying desperately to pull them apart. Meanwhile, there was Ida, inside their house but just behind the screen door, dawning the consummate Italian grandmother’s kitchen smock, a smirk upon her face, standing staunchly with her arms crossed and resting on her midsection.
My mother was screaming as the police, too, were trying to break the brothers apart. And of course, the many nosy neighbors who had all come out of their houses were standing amidst the breaks between all the emergency vehicles just watching it all go down.
Me and my sister? We just stood there watching everything, not at all realizing that life as we’d ever known it had just come to a bloody and embattled end.
By the time it was over, my father and his brothers had been separated into their own corners, and although I’m not 100% certain of this fact, I do believe that each of them had been arrested and taken to jail. Well, at least I know my father was.
My mother ended up bailing him out that night and the rest is but my “New England history”. Within a short couple of weeks our house went on the market and sold, then my parents packed themselves, me, my sister, our two Doberman’s, and what small amount of belongings they could fit into a very small U-Haul trailer that followed us down the road to “Goodbye Rhode Island … goodbye home … goodbye family … goodbye Grandpa, aunts, uncles, cousins, church, school, teachers, friends … Goodbye EVERYTHING we had ever known … don’t know where the FUCK we’re actually going, but we’re DONE!”
And then? It was done, and all I can remember was driving for the next few days … and driving and driving and driving. I think the plan was to just keep going towards California, but my mother had family in Texas at the time who we stopped in to visit, rest, and reboot from the long haul.
So, we stopped in for what were only supposed to be “a couple of days”, and? We never left. Texas was our home now. Like it or not. Love it or leave it. This was the way it was. We’d run away from everything with the very first of the fallout kids to proceed the line of “fallouts” that would come …
FALLOUT
Another rebel runs against the grain. A loner is born. He’s filled with anguish but deep within he’s dying every day to find his way. He is lost. So consumed. Can you feel him somewhere in the fallout? He’s someone just like you who’s lost to find the truth. Can you hear him? From the fire he cries out for the answer to be shown as he dares to walk the fallout on his own. So frustrated. He walks the line alone. Courage sets him apart. He is so faithless. All he once embraced he now disowns. He let it go. All the while he still waits. Can you feel him somewhere in the fallout? He’s someone just like you who’s lost to find the truth. Can you hear him? From the fire he cries out for the answer to be shown as he dares to walk the fallout on his own.
{Alter Bridge}
“25 Rotary Drive” … aka “The Day Of The Sunday Fallout”!
Although I’m only four years old at the moment, how little do I know that a beautiful, tremendous MACHINE that is running the race of his life today is going to become such a bittersweet, beautiful, and beloved part of my story:
If there were just one moment in time I could travel back to and personally witness, it would be the Belmont Stakes when that magnificent, TREMENDOUS machine defied every odd stacked against him and made a mockery of all the people drunk on SHAMpain up in the crowd. If you’ve never seen the movie or read about “The Horse That God Built”, do it! It’s so much more than just a movie about a horse. It’s the story of what can happen when one living creature truly believes in another and how faith can make miracles out of anyone. That’s what made OUR little family what it is today, by the way … a miracle of FAITH! I’m so damn lucky to be surrounded by people I ‘ll never stop believing in as I watch them run their races with no reins!
I was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and outside looking in, our family was picture perfect. My sister and I were raised by parents who chose not to divorce despite the multitude of odds stacked against them and years of turmoil and dysfunction that besmudged our family tree. My mother bore the brunt of childrearing, which as it turned out was not probably for the best and the primary reason I have manywonderful memories of New England. She did the best she could to make a safe environment for us. She suffered, struggled and sacrificed in every possible regard for the sake of everyone under our roof, most especially my father, and certainly for me and my sister. She was there for everything she could manage to be present for considering that she worked so hard at a career she’d built over years with Texas Instruments and Raytheon, and through that career she made sure my sister and I had all of the things we would need to get out there and survive, not the least of which was college educations that she paid for on her own. She took each of her roles as wife, mother, daughter and daughter-in-law as dutifully and faithfully as she possibly could under any and all possible circumstances. At one point in our life my father’s mother had even come to live with us after my Grandpa passed away and thereto mom took the brunt of her overall care and well-being, which I have to tell you is something I still don’t understand to this day, because my grandmother was a mostly cruel and selfish human being who cared nothing for my mother whatsoever, yet happily and selfishly enjoyed the many comforts and caterings to her every whim that my mother alone provided her alongside everything else she had on her already full plate at any given time without any regard or consideration for her overall care and well-being. What Ida wanted, Ida got, no matter the cost to my mother, and this was just how it was.
My mother didn’t exactly have a fairytale childhood much less was there an appearance of anything “picture perfect and charmed”. Born the second oldest of eight children, she’d been raising kids since she was old enough to change a diaper by the time she’d met my father. Her family demographic was probably near poverty level and I know for a fact that she never owned a store bought dress or new pair of shoes until after she married my father. Her Catholic faith was very strong though, and at one point she’d even considered becoming a nun. Life took her down a different path however where she would stumble upon the man and his family that would test her faith forever.
He was the youngest of four boys, born eleven years after the last. With a headstrong iron will, despite the psychological abuse he suffered at his mother’s hands, he managed to create a life filled with the most beautiful things for us out of literally nothing at all. Over the years, many have come to know him as a Midas Touch, as everything he’s ever touched has turned to gold. His father, Ernie, was one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever known. He was loving and kind, caring and thoughtful, and all about his family. The man was a saint by even the harshest standards and I’d be hard pressed to find any shortcomings in his character. In the 18 years I knew him, I never once heard him raise his voice or a fist, and never once heard him say anything unkind about another. Which is not to say that he never ever said them, it’s just that if he did, he never let his impressionable grandchildren see it.
To this day I smile when I remember the “worst word” I ever heard him say: “Garl darnit!” This was his version of profanity, and it took a fair amount of anger or frustration to get him there. My Grandpa was the polar opposite of any man I’d ever known until the day I met my late husband, but I’ll get to that much later. Sufficed to say, my beautiful Grandpa was then and still remains one of the brightest stars that has led my pathway from the sky. The legacy he left behind was one of true love and kindness and the memories he left are completely unsoiled in my heart and soul. Of course, he was but a mortal man, and with that it is certain that just like all of us he’d had his moments, grievances, “grudges” and maybe even “yelling, screaming and profanity”, but as any truly good man and father should have, he was wise enough to shield the younger eyes that were watching and ears that were listening to anything less than truly impeccable words. Little did I know that he’d set a standard by which to judge any other human man against so deep inside my psyche that after his passing, it would take years for me to both understand and finally find that man.
Ida, my father’s mother, as we later found out, hid a dark childhood secret of her own, and thus led a miserable existence. Even from the grave she managed to pit her sons against each other throughout the entirety of their lives by manipulating them with her contingent based system of affection and reward. If she didn’t get what she wanted, when she wanted, how she wanted it, the regard to her sons was always the same:
I’ll fix you! I wash my hands of you! You’re nothing to me! I’m done with you! YOU’RE NO LONGER A PART OF THIS FAMILY!
Although my grandparents were not necessarily wealthy, Grandpa was a hard worker and they never wanted for anything. This suited my grandmother well. Unfortunately, that “what have you done for me lately” mindset funneled its way through to our own family home and ultimately almost cost me my sanity and life. Again, I’ll get into that later. Sufficed to say that in my lifetime, up to and including my very darkest of hours, I, too, have fallen prey to that familial gift that never seems to keep on giving and had all but blackened and asphyxiated our family tree. Dozens of times since as old as I can remember I’ve heard the very words that my father and his brothers grew up hearing from their own mother’s mouth:
I’ll fix you … I wash my hands of you … You’re nothing to me … I’m done with you … YOU ARE NO LONGER A PART OF MY LIFE!
It wasn’t until I was in my late 30’s that I began to recognize that my “picture perfect” childhood was nothing but a farce, and now I’m going to speak my truths, no matter the cost, because at this point I have NOTHING left to lose but the lovely Venom suit that’s been wrapped around my body from the moment I drew my first breath. Welcome to the pages of my life …
PAGES
What happens to a man when he spills his heart on a page and he watches words flow away then his feelings lie on the page alone there waiting for someone who cares to read them, to open their eyes to see them, to see if they can make his thoughts their own, to find out that maybe your life’s not perfect? Maybe it’s not worth what he gives away? You can see that this broken soul is bleeding. So, you can see your feelings inside yourself and wander through my heart. Letting you see through me now only consumes me. Forget your pain … you watched me fall apart. What happens to a soul when it’s trapped inside his emotions and all of these words he’s spoken, they bind him to the life he’s left behind, and every new step he takes he knows that he might not make it to all of these dreams that he has yet to find?
The Diary Of My Perfection 