The Protagonist

"Write my life," the Protagonist said.
The writer took a long drag on the cigarette. There were no less than fifteen stories already in the works when they met. A week later and the Protagonist had filled the writer's mind with enough narratives to fill a library. 
The writer tugged on the horse blanket and thought.
Where to begin?
If only the writer didn't love the Protagonist so much. How to honor someone with such unimaginable memories?  And when to write?  Their conversation runs hours into days.
Five minutes after the request was made,  and the writer had heard two more stories and was being handed a plate of grilled snook and vegetables.
"...I dragged my mom into the police station and begged them to do something a year before the murder," the Protagonist said as he swirled his glass of Pinot Noir.
The writer,  now carrying the weight of the mantle placed on her shoulders tried to think like a writer.

Prodigal Son

She turned away from the cold, and caught a glimpse in the shadows.
"What's wrong? "
She did all She could do. She pointed to the swingset. The swingset. 
Pat looked, and dropped Sasha's leash. There he was. TJ.  In the same clothes he was last seen wearing,  7 years ago.  The striped tank top pulled awkwardly across his broad chest.

Picture

Please bear with me as I continue to excavate my anger. Each level of acceptance and forgiveness unearths a new level of pain, and with it, more opportunity for healing. 

For the past week or so, I have been noticing old pictures of me in my memories on Facebook.  As they pop up,  I am struck with two thoughts. First, the memory of the photograph, which is always how self-conscious I felt in that moment.  How ugly, fat, and awkward I felt.

Then, my eyes see the picture. I was, in all of those pictures,  beautiful.  Far more than I ever saw or felt. Not hot, or supermodel perfect,  but certainly worthy of being comfortable in my own skin. Which I wasn't. 

Damn him, for squandering my youth and beauty.  Damn me, too.

This is a valuable,  painful,  and all too common lesson. 

I hope I don't forget.  I hope I never again  let someone else get in the way of me seeing myself. There simply isn't any room for anyone else in the mirror.

Dirty Little Secrets

Netflix just released the new season of Orange is the New Black,  and my Facebook feed has been filled with it. That and spoilers of Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead. All shows I watched in another life. In this one, though, my TV addiction is Pretty Little Liars.  I binge watched the first five seasons this winter and missed the addition of season six until today. Five episodes in, and I finally realized the draw for me with this show. 

If you haven't seen it,  it centers around a group of teenaged girls who live in a state of constant terror and silence at the hands of an unseen enemy.  They are living in a state of fear and paranoia where whenever they relax, another threat arises. The emotions they are dealing with are all too familiar for me.

I can relate to their need to put on a false smile and pretend everything is okay, in order to save their loved ones.  They are suffering from PTSD while they remain in a war zone. This is the dramatization of what it's like to live in an emotionally abusive relationship. 

They have been beaten down and fight to remind themselves that they are worthy of love,  life, and peace.  It is by rooting for them  that I am learning to root for myself. 

I sometimes fear that I was too fragile, too battle weary to enter the new relationship that I am in. That may be true,  but it is also true that I am deserving of the love,  laughter, and peace that my current relationship provides.

Maybe it's possible to heal while moving forward.  Short of institutionalization,  we don't get to press pause and heal. Most of us bandage our wounds while we are still on the field. Life has no timeouts.

Radioactive

Sera stretches her legs as the alarm sounds.  She has no idea how long she's been out.  She waits for the bed to release its hold on her.  She finally rolls over and heads straight to the shower.  She waits in line, of course.  The entire dorm just came to.  Like the other drones ahead of her, she hangs her towel, stretches her arms wide, and waits for the spray.  Warm liquid sprays the gray stone.  She turns, to make sure not to miss a spot.  She steps into the towel waiting for her, and follows her tribe down the dormer hall for her check-up.

"We have to make sure you're in fighting shape," chuckles the doctor.  The oldest human on the ship, she makes jokes out of everything.  "Today's the big day.  Let's get you into make up," she giggles as she leads Sera to the war room.  The room is meant to evoke any primative ghosts in the machines, Doc explains.  This is what you've been made for.  Dozens of worlds depend on your ability to defend this side of the galaxy.  Prentice takes her time, shading in reds, coppers, blacks, into images of serpents, bears, tigers, hawks, and other creatures of legend onto her limbs, her torso.

Sera has heard that ancient humans once had a similar procedure, back when humans were flesh and bone.  The repetitive whir of the machine is torture enough on her titanium core.  How brave her ancestors were.

Pressure Points

I spent the better part of the afternoon getting knots worked out of my pressure points, thanks to my sweetheart. As I felt him work his way from my Achilles tendon to a calf muscle that has been giving me trouble for years, tears welled up in my eyes.

I have suffered in silence for years. I couldn't make my pain invisible enough. There is only so much yoga, foam rollers, and tennis balls can do; people need to be touched.

Outwardly, my ex and I were very affectionate. We held hands often, and I rarely entered a room full of people without his hand on my back. But we never kissed. I shouldn't say never. We sometimes kissed during sex. But he wouldn't touch my feet. Ever. No matter how badly they hurt. Asking him to scratch my back evoked a look as though I'd asked him to build me the great wall of China.

By the last year of our marriage, holding hands began with him cracking my thumb. It was painful, and I begged him to stop. But it was the price for touch.

We slept for eight years on a broken bed that hurt my back. Four years into it, I had neck surgery-- it was that bad. He finally broke down and bought a new bed, and six months later had another woman in it.  Man that hurt. Why couldn't he do her on the couch, so I could have taken the wonderful bed I'd longed for so long for in the divorce?

Fast forward to now. I can't lotion my feet without my dear man rubbing my poor soles. That's what he does, what I'm most grateful for. He rubs my soul. He frees my pain.

For so many years, I'd suffered in silence. Hid my pain. Feared sympathy. The only person I told my pain to responded with irritation. He complained for months if I let on that I hurt to anyone. Seriously, that was an actual fight he threw in my face. I'd not hidden the pain from a pulled groin well enough on a double date. He claimed i was seeking attention. I really just wanted to be home. This was his shining example of the depths of my manipulation.

So I built walls. I put on a fake smile and showed the world what a happy wife looked like.

He used to say a lot that another man might buy me flowers or kiss me, but only he loved me enough to take care of me.

Another jewel of his: No one's ever been nicer to you than me. My silent response always was: Isn't that sad.

Letting Go of the Past

In the words of Sting, " I keep the faith in my fashion. ". This Rosh Hashanah, I contemplated the past year. I've been carrying a lot of guilt and shame about getting divorced, and how it's impacting my youngest son. I woke up today, having coffee on the river, thinking of the stones I should throw to atone for my failings. Being raised Catholic, guilt is an easy garment for me to wear. I'm happy to share, instead, where my day ended up.

Tonight, on a bike ride home from downtown, in the rain, I found myself rejoicing. I find rain sacred, and today, it brought sweet revelations.

I was wearing the pants I bought last summer for spin class at the gym when I was getting in shape for the Tough Mudder last fall, where I realized that I had no more desire to impress my ex and he had lost all compassion for me. I was riding the bike our oldest son left behind when he joined the army, a bike my ex hated, but I refused to give up last spring, when I knew the end was near, but before I knew about my ex's affair. My bike was decked out with a new bell, lights, and a basket (basket!) that my new love surprised me with.

I used to love bike riding as a child. Five years ago, my ex and I bought the first bike I've owned since I was in middle school, when my mom's boyfriend turned my bike into a guitar. About a year later, my ex upgraded to a $700 mountain bike, but wouldn't fix my flat. My bike lay unused for years as a result, much like our oldest son's did, for the same reason.

Riding my son's bike, tricked out by my new love, in the rain, jumping puddles, this Rosh Hashanah filled me with the joy in knowing that everything is as it should be. To regret anything of the past year, would be to rue today, which I cannot do. Today is the culmination of all my yesterday's, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.