Keeping Time

I'm the sentimental type. I think about anniversaries, they're etched onto my mind in a way it practically helps me keep time. But it's almost been a year and I'm at least okay now, but I still don't understand what happened. I live with a daily melange of feelings of love and hatred, and no place to put them but let them simmer in me and maybe, if I'm lucky, they'll just evaporate.

See just a year ago, my heart would change in a way I didn't think it ever could – though, truthfully, it also didn't. Maybe some people can do the love and let go thing, but I'm not cut out for that. Just a year ago, in spite of this, I finally managed to let go. Then a mere few weeks later a man came into my life and casually charmed me off my feet. Impossibly cool, but aloof so it didn't seem to matter to him that he was cool...which made him even more attractive. (Yes, I see the cliche.) I usually have a good read on people, I kind of get how we work and how we interact with each other, I feel like I can often see through people to their motivations and values. Yet somehow I got duped.

I tried to move on, thought I was ready and it would take someone else proving to me that not all that's left out there are emotionally stunted men who are so cool they'll break your heart without remorse -- icy. I tried to move on and one mediocre or crappy instance after another, I'm finding myself feeling discouraged and yet with clarity. The good old-fashioned way really knocked the wind out of me a time or two, so I go through these phases of attempting to date the modern way: apps. It always seems to go a variety of ways, none of which are successful. There was the zero chemistry guy, the CSG doppleganger who was also too cool for human decency and communication, and the guy who doesn't know what "no" means, or "owe" or "don't". That last one, left me missing the aloof emotionally closed-off guy because at least he was respectful of my body and my "no". And that left me missing the one that couldn't be. Which then made me realize, I need to get comfortable.

I hate being single, because compared to having someone who knows all about your life, checks in on you and thinks about you daily, and is gaga for you, and on and on – compared to that, being single sucks. I wish there were a more eloquent way to say it, but I don't have the patience and, well, it's a thought for another time.

Almost a year ago I was high and dry in life - no job, broken heart still mending, long overstaying in a place that was meant to be temporary. I can't help but look back at that version of myself and envy her. She didn't know life was just winding up to take another swing the second she'd get back up, that that handsome guy stealing glances at the coffee shop would break her heart all over again, too soon and too carelessly. I envy her because she didn't know it would get so hard again.

The me now? She knows that you don't find the real good stuff all that often and you can't force it where it isn't. She knows that no one's really deserved her since the first one. She knows that was special and to look for something like it. Hoping? That's another story.

How #MeToo Got Real

I'd had enough to say #metoo when the wildfire spread a few weeks ago. Even if you set aside the catcalls or "hey babys" of life in a female body, there was Rome.

A crowded subway car, me in light-airy mediterranean pants, and some guy thought it was his prerogative to touch my ass. At first I thought it was just the tight quarters and an accidental graze. However, as the ride went on, I realized it was intentional. I'd always envisioned myself as some kind of a hero in a moment like this, defensive and vocal. After I exited the subway, heart pounding, I went back to my hostel only to turn and leave on the bus headed to the airport to leave Rome. I sat down on the bus, and that's when it set in. I'd had no control over the situation; I didn't speak the language, I was an obvious tourist and I was trapped in that metro car with someone taking advantage of my body, whom I couldn't even see. On the bus ride to the airport, I cried because my body was used without my permission for the gratification of another. 

No one should ever be made out to be merely a commodity for their body.

Sure, the metro was uncomfortable and I was violated, but last night my #metoo got even more real... 

Apparently by the third date a guy can push a woman's boundaries and do things she didn't agree to. I won't go into detail because it isn't anyone's business whom I don't choose to tell, but my body was a commodity; something to be used, in spite of my requests, in spite of my voicing of discomfort and pain, in spite of my "no's". I didn't realize it until I left that something felt off and yet I felt relief the moment I stepped outside. I wondered to myself as I drove home feeling a little numb, was I just sexually assaulted? 

When I settled into my bed, icing my neck to hopefully reduce the appearance of three large, unwanted, protested hickeys, it hit me the answer was 'yes'. The quiet little strange feeling I had was from being cornered, being stuck in a situation where I felt powerless and weak. I'd generally consider myself a strong, independent woman who doesn't live much of life guided by fear. Still, I found myself in a scenario where I was not being respected and I was incapable of rendering a different outcome. Afraid. Intimidated. Scared. There aren't even many times in my life I've actually felt scared. So, as I laid there with a bag of frozen food on my neck, I cried. 

All thanks to the guy who was self-proclaimed "different from the rest." I'd liked him because he was happy-go-lucky and talkative, he'd voiced how he cried easily at movies, he even made me a delicious dinner. That guy made me feel afraid and ignored my "ow" and "ouch" and "no" and "don't". That guy thought he could text me something cute today about how he gave me three large hickeys (never mind that it was clearly against my will), which I had to cake in concealer and cover in a scarf. My response was a lengthier, more convicting and educational version of "Boy, bye!"

I cried a little more this morning, but mostly at the thought of the fear that I'd had. It was something new, this experience. Getting catcalled feels like a weak threat tied to expectation of appreciating the "compliments" and it's uncomfortable; being touched without permission by a perfect stranger is a personal violation and it is frightening; but being made to feel in fear of your safety, and unable to voice the feeling in the moment, that is alarming and disgusting. Other women have been in that position and had worse, and the thought of what happened to me makes me uncomfortable and angry and scared. 

For some reason, I felt I should write about this although I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe because we need to stop blaming women? Maybe because we need to stop saying that women are exaggerating or being "emotional"? Maybe because men need to face the reality of how much more physically powerful they are than us and not take that responsibility lightly? Maybe because women deserve more respect? All of the above.

So, #metoo.


NOTE: I don't write it to be asked about it. I don't write it for sympathy. But if it should help someone feel like their experience is valid and they should tell someone, or seek help for processing a sexual assault, that I wrote it for.

To know again

I have so much skepticism in me, and when I think of curling up somewhere safe and warm -- it's in your arms. You let me be, better than I ever could've understood then. You loved me, magnificent and raw and broken, for which I will forever be grateful and always long to know again, if life should be so kind.

To Put Off the Conscience

My life seems to say to me: remember that time you got your heart broken, oh and that OTHER time, and when you didn't matter to that person enough to have a conversation, or not enough to that person to bother to see you, or that person to pay attention to you?

And it stings. And aches. The place where the wound was gets poked and prodded again, the moment it seems to heal.

And I wish I knew what it was like to be able to put off the conscience and do what I wanted to, even if it hurt others...and yet, there are constant reminders of what that looks like in our world. It is the reason anyone is on the receiving end of something painful, even life-threatening, and I don't want to be the cause of that in someone else's life.

Pain can teach you that you need to harden yourself, or it can teach you not to be hardened toward others; rather to value them. Wounds can cause you to unleash pain on others like a wrath and continue to ache on the inside in a way that oozes outward to infect - or they can cause you to take care not to be a hypocrite with intentional actions and words.

More than anything I find myself prone to indignation that these are the ways we find it acceptable to act and to use the privilege of the time we've been given and one another's company.

That I Love You, I Couldn't Help Myself

I didn't love you just because you were there,
but because I couldn't help myself;
I wanted to spend as many waking moments with you
Learn as much of who you are and what made you that
Hear as much of your thought and as much of your voice
See as much of your eyes meeting mine as possible.
I loved you because I couldn't help myself; You were magnetizing, and I cared about your inner world -- little did I know -- in a way you didn't about mine.
If you would've let me, I would've orbited around you and reflected your wonder back to you.
You didn't,

and I don't know what you wanted, to this day.
I don't know what
I even knew of you -- did I even know you?
Who are you?
That I love you --
And it resounds like a rock
tumbles into an abyss...
that I love you.

Life in the Gray

Lately I'm floating on a sea of so many questions, so much uncertainty. I'm someone who likes to ask, likes to seek, and likes to find. It's been a while since I've found much, but I'm still asking and still seeking. Some of it has been quite painful, I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge the depth of pain that has also been with me through the questions. But I ask. And I seek.

One thing that is not a concrete "answer" but one I'm finding as I ask the questions is that some things in life are just in the gray. There has to be space for wonder and questioning and seeking and growing and stretching and withdrawing. We seem to want so badly to have answers, sorting everything by rule into the black or the white. But I've been finding I cannot live without the questions; I cannot push them away and live as if they do not beckon me to examine them.

Even as I write this, I am sitting a few feet away from a family eating dinner at this same cafe. The couple's young son is questioning everything, and it's like music to my ears. Drink it in young one. Ask the questions and seek to understand.

Because the thing I'm learning is I'm better for seeking to understand rather than just taking things as they come, without wonder. Some answers are harder to come by, and may look more gray than black or white. Learning to live in the discomfort of questions unanswered has made me stronger, increasing my endurance for the gray of life – of which there is so much, if we're honest with ourselves. At first, this state of unknown was taxing, and it's still less comfortable than certainty, but it's helping me become better and stronger, and more empathetic.

And I think that's an option with everything we encounter in life. Not just what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but every pain, every hard place can be something that breaks you down a bit more, or helps you become stronger, and better, even if worn. I'm not to the 'better' yet – though I feel good today – I'm seeing more how there is courage in facing the fear of the unknown and the pain.

by you, I suffer

You...

A beautiful,
dark
figment
of my imagination.

Kanye calls it his beautiful dark twisted fantasy,
but
I don't think
you were my fantasy
cause
even my nightmares
aren't
that dark,
usually I just die
or run and save the world,
not suffer --

by you, I suffer.