gm,

Pews padded blue melt into hardwoods swollen soft in Alabama stick. Like most in the Evangelical American South, my first altered state of consciousness was a religious experience. Unlike most, my father’s voice booms from his pulpit. For a moment, I touch god—or something infinite. I stare at white swirling bliss, and my eyes are wet. I want more, and he says I can have it if I trust and obey. Seven years of innocence damned, he buries me in water and raises me in His life and calls it all salvation. It takes me twenty odd years to de-conflate the eyes of father from the eyes of God.

Those all-knowing eyes glare black and white. God is perfect, man is depraved. Of course, there’s the possibility of skinny sanctification, and it’s imperative, else people I love burn eternally. I build beliefs compatible with the bounded probabilities of salvation. I set my sights on holiness: “I will be who He says to be” and the compulsive self-coercion predictably loops back to the same dark place: “God never fails, it’s all your fault.” I absorb a generalized guilt for existence itself. For my own spectacle of human ignorance and error and illusion, a death away from union with the divine, never quite good enough.

Still, there’s a presence I can’t shake. I feel it when I text you and you say, i was about to text you, babycakes. grey glacier. new years. When you lose the bet and actually get one of my bitcoin private keys illegibly tattooed on your left butt cheek. When I brush and braid your hair and you drip salt into chamomile tea because she broke up with you. When you&you&you&you buy me psychedelic laced lingerie for my birthday, and tell me to take it slow, you know me. I see a kinder god in the ones I love, over and over and over.

So faith persists and evolves. I expand my beliefs to hold space for the humanity I see in you and the humanity you see in me. I learn Greek and Hebrew. Sin is an archery term that translates “to miss the mark,” often employed as, “to confuse who God is.” And who is God? Yahweh names Itself once, and it translates to “I will be who I will be.” And who will God become? I wrestle wisdom literature to pin it: Job (pain), Psalms (praise), Proverbs (order), Ecclesiastes (chaos) and my definition of God expands from a divine test to a divine expression. I find the Bible tells the same story over and over and over: one of finding and losing and finding again. So I do that. I deconstruct the politic of mores and modernity and reconstruct every theological belief from first principles, and I never abandon my faith. It abandons me.

At least it feels that way when the chaos of god’s will moves faster than I know how to survive. Walls break apart around my neck and I can’t breathe. Like most who have their mind broken open, existential terror doesn’t alter consciousness, it destabilizes it. For months, I touch hell—or something infinite. I stare at a black spinning void, and my eyes are dry. I collapse all belief to be compatible with the bounded probabilities of condemnation: you are unworthy, you fucked it all up, you deserve it. I’m down thirty pounds and I can’t stop shaking and I’m desperate. The doctors say the only way out is through, trust yourself. I set my sights on health: “I am who I am,” and the compassionate self-construction predictably loops back to a hazy place: “nobody’s perfect.” I absorb a generalized hurt for existence itself. For the collective spectacle of human ignorance and error and illusion, fully capable of harming and healing, over and over and over.

Still, there’s a presence I can’t shake. I feel it in the subtle sound sand makes as the tide pulls back. In my dog’s laugh when I tickle that spot on his throat. In the whispers from the ceiling fan. In the pleasant sensation that is my own breath. I see a kinder god in and around me, over and over and over.

So faith persists and evolves. I call my parts by name and speak to them in tongues, or some secret language. I practice the jhanas and they’re kind of like that time I worked out so hard I came. I explore the color, texture and taste of raw sensations until their felt wisdom unravels. I expand my beliefs to hold space for the bounded inevitabilities of existence: life always includes suffering (pain), all is exuberantly provocative just as it is (praise), everything changes and ends (order), people are not loving and loyal all the time (chaos). I forgive reality for being what it is. I realize I’ll do this over and over and over. Because there will always be constrictions and resistance to love, and they will always activate our potential to love.

I slip in the back and I notice they took the blue pads off the pews. It looks better. My heels click a little too loudly across refinished hardwoods and my father’s voice barely reaches me from his pulpit. I hear a subtle shake as it strains to wrap words around gratitude. I stare at him, and my eyes are wet. We share a moment—or something finite. I know it won’t last for long, and I know we will do this over and over and over. That is more than enough. It takes me twenty odd years to see the eyes that hold my gaze of god are the same eyes that first held god’s gaze of me. It’s god in me, loving god, pouring out.

Like most who experience divine love, it doesn’t alter consciousness, it becomes it. I expand my beliefs to hold space for the bounded possibilities of love. I see god in the longest thread of every experience. Everyone’s life includes suffering, but the divine thread in devastation is devotion. So we expand our capacity for pain so we can care for each other well. Everything is provocative just as it is, but the divine thread in experiencing is joy. So we expand our capacity for praise se we can revere each other well. Everything changes and ends, but the divine thread in terror is awe. So we expand our capacity for order so we can abide with each other well. People are not loving and loyal all the time, but the divine thread in despair is hope. So we expand our capacity for chaos so we can surprise each other well. I set my sights on wholeness: “it already is” and gratitude, as fickle as it is final, continuously opens a divine place: “I will be who I will be.” I absorb a generalized awareness of existence itself, of the collective spectacle of human ignorance and error and illusion, fully capable of being and becoming, over and over and over.

Still, there’s a presence I can’t shake. It’s when my bones quake at the evidence that you won’t be loving and loyal to me, and I really wish you would. It’s when my teeth sink into my tongue, biting back the whole terrible truth because I don’t perceive you as being able to handle it. It’s when I willingly ignore the conditions of my existence, because I want what I want, goddamnit. It’s when I don’t see my same old copes show up in subtle new ways, trying to hide that I am confused and scared. I become the moment—or something finite. And the humanity, as final as it is fickle, continuously opens a humble place, “will you give me grace?” as I give you grace? as we give god grace? over and over and over? Because nothing new happens without forgiveness.

Like most who experience long-suffering love, it doesn’t alter consciousness, it opens it. It’s been said to love someone means to see them as god intended them. I think that’s true. You’ve always believed in me, even when I lose faith in myself, and I’ve always believed in you. But it’s more than that, too. To love someone is to, like god, hold space for their becoming. Space is a thing more ancient than exacting constructs like words and writing or time and timing—those things they say most of love gets lost between. Space, like god, expands and bends and holds, over and over and over. So I do, because I am faithful to what I love.

Faithfulness is persisting:evolving. Faithfulness is fully holding the disturbing gaze of god’s begotten pain, praise, order and chaos and still caring, revering, abiding, and surprising. So I continue to make space for the full integrity of You&Me&God, because I finally saw that regardless of what beliefs I wrap around my expanding but bounded perspective, we are simply finite forms continuously experiencing the infinite. And when finite forms share a moment of infinite experiencing, the moment becomes us. I&You&You&You become intertwined threads in the everything knit from nothing. Still, if you look closely, the nothingness shines through. It is both a divine expression and a divine test. And the test isn’t easy—are you still looking?

When I am, there’s a presence I can’t shake: We will be who we will be.

***

Influences

Paul Valery

“God made everything from nothing, but the nothingness shows through”

Theodore Dostoevsky

“To love a person, means to see him as God intended him to be”

Richard Rohr, A Mutually Loving Gaze

If we can learn how to receive the perfect gaze of the Other, and to be mirrored by the Other, then the voices of the human crowd, even negative ones, have little power to hurt us. Best of all, as Meister Eckhart (1260–1327) has been quoted, “The eye with which you will look back at God will be the same eye with which God first looked at you.” [1]

Standing humbly before God’s gaze not only unites the psyche but it does the very thing that I know when I teach contemplative prayer. It unifies desire. It frees us from what Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) called the “vertigo of the imagination.” [2] It’s the whirlpool of imagination, looking here, there, and everywhere. Standing before one, accepting God literally allows us to be composed and gathered in one place. We can be in one place; we can be here, now. We can stop always looking over there for tomorrow’s happiness. As the apostle Paul wrote, “now is the favorable time, today is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

The Beatitudes (inhabited blessedness)

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

*

P.S.

Am I doing jhanas wrong?

Harvest, August 2023

300 faces swirl around one as I let a stranger spin me. It surprised me, he’s been one of my best friends for nearly 10 years, and despite living across the country for 7, we’ve only grown closer. I thought I’d know more people at his wedding, but I hardly knew anyone. Tipsy talk two afterparties deep, I get to know them. As I do, I notice slight glimmers of all his subtle changes I’ve admired from afar refract from new faces. He is so much more him than he was 10 years ago, and this crowd of 300 is so much more him than the crowd of 300 that would have shown 10 years ago. Still, I see missing faces spook the swirling dance floor. I’m thankful our relationship changed, but never died.

Sometimes loving from a distance feels sad. If it were up to me, all of my people would live in some form of communal housing and we’d, idk really, maybe just like be there… chill….love what we love…create good things for joy….drop weighty tears…eat lots of good bread??? It’s a fantasy I’ve let die. But folding into the pitchy mass singscreaming a Brittney banger, I feel overwhelmed that someone I love is loved well, day in and day out, by these people who I don’t know or love. I feel thankful for the ways they’ve changed him. It feels open, expansive. So much is happening in the name of love.

*

How does one inhabit an already murdered world? My resolution is to nurture it. I’ve left a garden in every house I’ve ever lived in, including short term rentals. My friends gift me rare seeds for my birthday. I usually have dirt under my fingernails. My roots run Alabama Southern so for weddings I get french tips to cover, but they’re quick to break from clawing soil. At one point, I had 283 species under my care, not counting all the weeds whose names I may never know. I still thanked each one for her sacrifice—if only a garden were a wilder thing. But it’s not, it’s a tedious defense against death. Clawing at earth’s soft heart, I try to imagine what this San Marzano Heirloom might feel. Did the toil of life feel painful? So much is happening in the name of growth:

A Shun knife ruptures mother’s flesh, seeds fingered from her to drown for three days in a wet ferment. The ferment dehydrates in the sun and shriveled seeds lie in dormant darkness until it’s time. Time bends forward on heating pad and artificial PAR at ~600 nanometers. Time sprouts. Time turns the shocking perils of environment into leaf, stem, root. Root sifts through moist warm soil, and time unfolds towards collapsing sun.

The practice of gardening changed my relationship to death. I once feared death so much that I’d overcrowd beds so I didn’t have to kill sprouts. Killing on the cusp of potential somehow felt more criminal than surviving stunted only to die. For a long time I saw death as end (threatening) rather than change (neutralizing). Shun knife in hand once again, I try to imagine what this San Marzano Heirloom might feel. Did the pluck of death feel painful? So much is happening in the name of alchemy:

500 degree broil with unpeeled onion and garlic until flesh blisters limp. A blade breaks all to juice. Melt milk in the form of butter, render juice, melt milk in the form of cream. Time simmers. Slowly release extracts from freshly cut oregano, basil, parsley. Melt milk in the form of pecorino. Serve with bread.

How does one inhabit an already haunted house? My resolution is to nurture it. The practice of cooking changed my relationship to life. I’m a home cook, but I train like I’m not. I’ve moved eight times in the last ten months, and carried 57 spices with me to each stop. I have over 1600 recipes pinned, but I mostly cook from memory or make-shit-up-as-I-go these days. I think about how you can taste bone marrow rice in your heart at least once a week. I’ve made hundreds of meals for friends old and new. I like how food not only nourishes, but plays. I like to study what my people are drawn to (M likes sour notes, J thinks he likes umami but actually likes salt, M actually likes umami), and tweak recipes to dance on their tongues. I gather them like a brief bouquet and try to imagine what they’re experiencing. So much is happening in the name of connection:

M pokes at a blueberry, trying to place it in chili where it doesn’t usually belong. We like the sour undertones, what is it? We’re not laughing at the joke T made because we’re still thinking about what she said. We look down and to the left when she does this. We’re the only ones still thinking about it. T is eyeing the cooler, we’re deliberating a third beer. R throws her fork on the ground and laughs, a game we like to play. We look at dad every time she does it. We’re having the most fun.

A friend of mine once said “beauty is symmetry, and symmetry is change without change.” Everything alive changes, it’s a property of alive. And change ultimately moves toward symmetry, toward balance, toward equilibrium, one way or another. Even death is beautifully programed to balance a complex system. A complex system in balance still changes, but never does.

How does one inhabit an already beautiful life? My resolution is to nurture it. The practice of friendship changed my relationship to myself. Something about being loved well, day in and day out, by changing people lets me love my changing self. And I am changing, but I also never will. I’ll still relish weathering the care and chaos, the pain and change, the life and death that goes into co-creating beautiful relationships. I’ll still carefully choose the deaths that expand, and defend against the ones that don’t. But more than anything, I’ll still savor the teary enjoyment in simply witnessing you unfold like something brief and wild and Southern sunned. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? How we’re still changing, how we never do. So much is happening in the name of a gift of god.

*

I see god laughing, we’re having the most fun.

***

Dinner Party Notes
June 29, 2024

• The best ligurian focaccia you ever did have & so simple too

• Miso glazed carrots with carrot top pesto

• Homemade hummus

  • 1 can chickpeas

  • 1/3 cup tahini

  • 1 lemon, squeezed

  • 11 ice cubes (makes texture fluffier than water)

  • 1/4 cup olive oil

  • garlic cloves to taste (I like 4)

  • salt, then add more

  • crushed cumin if you like that

  • mix in a food processor, if too thick, add some water/ice, if too thin add oil/tahini/lemon juice until you get a consistency and flavor you like

• Moroccan spiced salmon with lemon yogurt sauce

Waves I & Waves II by Giordanne Salley

“Look! Look at all the angels!” He loves to tell this story. He saw an empty choir bannister, but my six-year-old-self swore she saw more. I couldn’t tell you, I don’t remember it now. If I had to guess, I probably saw shadows. I only know the story because he keeps telling it. I like that he does, it’s fun to imagine.

Some relationships are more complicated than others. I read the discourse. Is love conditional? Is love unconditional? If you love it unconditionally, do “you” love “it” at all? I used to say “not everyone gets to experience unconditional love, because not everyone gets that from their parents, and that’s the only place it’s appropriate.” This used to make me feel pretty sorry for myself, but it doesn’t anymore. I think everyone feels this to different degrees. Everyone’s parents are just parents, including mine. 

My mom is the only person in her family who still talks to her dad. Her dad is the meanest, just ask his eleventh wife, or any of them. My mom calls him every Monday on her way to work. I asked her why once. “It’s an eleven minute drive. I can do anything for eleven minutes.” “No mom, why?” “The Lord commands me to honor my Father.” I used to think less of her for this, but I don’t anymore. Everyone’s parents are just parents, including ours.

I think capacity to love is conditional; conditioned from the moment a warm chest smothers screaming breath. For us, conditions swirled in the air like secondhand smoke. It could wreak enough to choke, hold your breath, longer with conditioning. Then we didn’t really notice anymore, different conditioning. We learned to claim our own conditions — how we like to love and how we like to feel love. We found pockets of better air. They felt so rare we wanted to contain them, but that’s a fatal solution. The act of breathing itself changes the air. The act of breathing itself changes us.

Lord, help me to let go of my anxieties and trust in you. Help me to love my children like you do - unconditionally, fully. I shouldn’t have, but I went through the book I found in her room titled How to Parent Adult Children. I think about what she wrote in it frequently.

Maybe love can be unconditional, but capacity to love isn’t, so relationships aren’t. So sometimes it feels like the whole ordeal suffocates in tightly held conditions, stuck with only sadder places to go, converted into grief. But the act of loving, truly loving, eats away at all the conditions that aren’t love, until love is free.

“That’s so tough, different circumstances, but I’m estranged from my family too. It's ultimately freeing.” 
“I'm so glad that's been freeing for you. Different circumstances, but we actually do still talk. Only in ways I find healthy for where I'm at, and maybe I’m delulu, but I think things will get better in time.” 
“Seriously?” 
“Why not? I’m changing for the better, so one way or another, things will get better. This process feels right to me.” 

*

We’re moving through rapidly changing conditions. Sometimes this process moves faster than I can process, but I’m still asking the questions: how to hold on, how to hold back, how to let go, all at once and in evolving ways? Do you like how this feels? How I’m holding you? I want it to feel good, how you hold me, but of course sometimes it hurts. It’s hard to hold a difficult position, and I know this is a difficult position for you. Sometimes it hurts how I hold myself, and that’s probably the deeper reason for the pain, anyways. It’s okay, I know you never mean to hurt me, and my pain is my task.

So I find the ways I can hold you, and the ways I can let you hold me. I learn how to bend and where to break. I get comfortable with this because I finally realized that I’ll ultimately face my own uncomfortable parts one way or another. I can work them out with my dad:mom, I can work them out with clones of my dad:mom, I can work them out by showing up in ways that create my dad:mom. So why not just work it out with my dad:mom? I have a dad, and I have a mom, and I don’t want to replace them. I want to love who they were, who they are, and who they are becoming.

So I set and reset boundaries. These little moments create opportunities for uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes they are way more recursive than hoped, sometimes they are way more transformative than expected. It’s not so romantic, sometimes I get tired of holding tension. I find a way to release it, then I find a way to pick it back up. Because change is a patient process, and we’re all open to letting love change us. And when you’re open to this, practice doesn’t make perfect. It’s perfect already. It’s where effort meets grace, and each moment is abundantly new.

“I love you, C. Always will.” “You too, Dad.” Love is will. You have to want it. Capacity to love is skill, and any skill can be learned, but you have to want to learn it, and you have to be brave enough to try. It’s a precious gift to hold you, now, just as you are. If we’re going to hold each other closer, and I want to hold each other closer, there’s a lot we’re going to have to let go.

I let go of as much as possible—drop some dynamics, hold some in forbearance, transcend some in grace. I let go, I find a distance I can hold you at, and I hold so much back. I can always let “you” go, because I don’t want to give you up. If I wanted to, I would. And if I’m honest, I like what letting you go just to breathe you back in a little deeper does to me, how it expands my capacity. Not just to freely love you, but to freely love me, to freely love them.

And that’s it, right? Create the story, forget it, keep telling it, until we know it in our bloody chambered hearts, until it’s fun to imagine, until it’s fun to create.

***

Beloved, shadows are 
a matter of perspective 
born to dance with light. 

Beloved, remember,  
above sun spun clouds the light 
never stops shining.  

Influences

“working through your triggers is realizing that your lovers were just lovers, your job is just a job, your personality is just a personality, your parents were just parents. the world is simply the world. none of it was ever a big deal. none of it was ever a problem” -

“The five actions of god within you: create, maintain, dissolve, forget, remember.” - @loopy

“forgive as much as possible, if only for one’s own freedom” -@tasshinfogleman

A smokes a cigarette on our front porch every morning. I pass her on my london fog with one shot of espresso, half sweet run doubling as B’s walk every morning. B stops to piss on the same bush every morning. She says “I really don’t smoke that much” every morning. I say “never count American Spirits, especially the yellow ones” every morning. She bites the left side of her lip when she smiles every morning.

In the wild, I meet an average of 37 new people a week. I know this because I track their names and how I met them and something unique to them I’ve never encountered before on a note in my phone. Back when I believed in the spectrum as other rather than continuum, I got diagnosed with it. I do have a lot of special interests, but people is the only one special enough to never lose interest in. I love studying people — deconstructing that unique and multifarious mix of needs, motives, preferences, priors, idiosyncrasies, neuroses, gifts; reconstructing the integrative whole. I love studying how people change. I love studying what triggers people to change. More than anything, I love walking with the people I love through change.

M wears a proper suit every Friday and pours tea from a kettle and always brings the chocolate eclairs I mentioned I liked once. He tells me about cracks in the moon, google’s blindspot, and how a woman he fucked on an airplane provoked desperately running from a knife-mouthed soldier. He paints french impressionist tulips we planted and B lays on his feet. Sometimes, he lets B lap a lick of tea from his cup.

My friends say I get more inbounds than anyone they know. Weird flex? Probably. Definitely an uncool thing to say on the internet, the place people come to self-organize around their preferred scarcity problem, often reciprocal love. But attention is simply attention, and it’s not love. Still, I don’t even think my friends mean it as a compliment. But we turned it into a game. Price is right rules my bumble likes, loser buys a round. No one ever busts. I’ve rendered the apps unusable until they make better filters. Who the fuck is selecting on star sign? But I haven’t deleted them yet. Sometimes I like to stupidly slide through my collection of 10,537 smiles. I like to study how so many different people approach connection.

T always has my drink ready before I arrive. She nicknamed it the London Smog and says it’s disgusting. We flirt and share anecdotes about Mother. She compliments my gold earrings when I wear them, so I started wearing them more. Then I noticed she did, too.

People say people are inherently the same. I’ve found people to be so different. Which is what makes connection so special, like the right wavelengths converging in a moment of light. There’s the passing connections — good vibes, right time, enough context, compatible capacity. There’s the persisting connections — any vibes, long time, too much context, deepening capacity. I prefer the latter (love), but get by most days on the former (fun).

M pulls a pillow over her face and tells me I’m self sabotaging. She’s been coughing all weekend leaving us both sleepless. I get defensive, something about how I don’t see it that way, I’d prefer curiosity into my experience over assumptions, I’m allowed to have different values, blah blah. We’re typically growing differently, so our projections typically stretch each other’s capacity. Loving her teaches me to love everyone better, one of the many reasons I love her. We’re holding hands again by morning, also typical.

Sometimes I get a little teary-eyed thinking about how each precious moment of connection compels. So many realized desires are drawn out by the people who found them in us before we ever did. As the collective integrates, so does the individual; as the individual integrates, so does the collective. We don’t become same, we become whole.

No fault, uncontested. It’s the quickest and cheapest way. Four emails to a lawyer, one google sheet allocating assets titled “we’re having the best divorce ever!” two one hour phone calls, $750 filing fee, three signatures, fifteen days on a judge’s desk so everyone can “have a think,” one more signature, one email confirmation, forward it to him too, and just like that your eleven year relationship is dissolved. The judge even fast tracked it, you never had kids, “easy case.”

No fault. At least legally. There’s where you landed: “our dynamic does not allow us to functionally grow together anymore, and growing together is kinda the point of continuing together.” That’s not anyone’s fault. People change, and sometimes the catalysts and rates and vectors break the relationship. Then there’s the process that got you there, riddled with faults, plenty of your own, and you know this.

Uncontested. At least legally. There’s where you landed: “even split, you take the illiquid assets, I take the liquid ones.” You’ve both always been pragmatic when it comes to money, why spend 10% of your walk-away-with wealth and a year of fighting just to pretty much split it evenly anyways? Then there’s the process that got you there, involving contested reality, contested character, contested values, contested family, and a contested kitchen table.

“How long ago did you get divorced?” You get asked this a lot, but you’re never sure how to answer it. 5 months ago, at least legally. This seems to be how people who have never been married prefer to measure it. People who have been married ask when the intensive counseling started (2 years ago) and when the intensive counseling stopped (1 year ago). People who have been divorced ask when screening lawyers started (14 months ago) and when the grieving stopped (6 months ago). You’re asking when it actually ends.

You’ve always said weddings are the best because it’s the only time everyone you’ve ever loved is in the same room, except for your funeral, but at least you’re not there for all that celebratory sadness. Divorces are the opposite - a private, quiet and lonely death buried in paperwork and statements instead of flowers and soliloquies, and everyone you’ve ever loved is thick-tounged sad, and all you can do is watch it. But the most disorienting part about getting divorced is that it changes every relationship in your life. Your marriage ended, but your life is slowly working out how to stay together.

There’s the family dynamics that break: his sister stopped calling you on Wednesdays while leaving volleyball practice. There’s the family dynamics that bleed: he was no longer a groomsman in your brother’s wedding, but he was still your brother’s first call when the best man got into a bad car crash on the wedding day, and he was the first one to get to the hospital. There’s the family dynamics that bash on: he and your dad still lead a bible study together every Monday, and you’re still a sermon illustration, and not in a good way.

There’s the friends close enough to experience grief: start separate group chats, cancel the vacations, cry with me on the phone, cry with him on the phone. There’s the friends close enough to hold your grief: spam the group chats with memes, plan new vacations, let you process out loud. There’s the friends you call to loop in, and there’s the friends you’ll probably never call again because they’re more his. There’s the eleven friends you had to friendzone.

There’s the people who hear about it and reach out in kindness: “heartbreaking news, here for you if you need anything at all.” There’s the people who hear about it and reach around with commentary: “that was fast” surmising the slowest two years of your life. There’s the people in r/divorce who you reach out to with questions: “how long did you wait before you started dating?” “anything you would do differently?” “what was your process for individuation and relational exploration post divorce?” (everyone says wait a year, not a single soul actually did).

There’s how it makes you discover your evolving relationship to your basic needs — time/money/mind/spirituality/work/play/sex/vulnerability as escape/connection/discovery.

Then there’s you, how it changes your relationship to yourself. Divorce introduces tension into everything you care about, and there’s only one person experiencing all that tension with you — you. That much tension can make everything feel uncomfortable, which is natural to conflate with problem. You’ve always figured out creative ways to solve your problems, or more accurately, resolve your tensions. But you’re learning that some problems are better solved with time, and some tensions are worth holding for a time. You’re learning how to be with every part of yourself and your experience in time. Sometimes, you’re letting yourself enjoy it.

Because you know the truth: there will come a time where the chasms between two years, one year, five months, and today flatten into past. There will come a time when people ask you present, interesting questions again. There will come a time where problems, solutions, tensions, escapes, mistakes, and insights connect across your smile lines. After all, connection is always a function of time, and for the first time in your life, you’re spending so much time with you. You’re taking out your own trash, you’re dancing alone in the living room, you’re buying a backscratcher, you’re throwing lifesavers on the ceiling and catching them in your mouth as they drop. Because divorce ends with you, alone. Whenever you’re done with the tension, whenever it’s done with you.

The Little Mermaid, Original Story by Gabriela Valencia

The 7th hit slipped, just an eyebrow raise high. My flinch’s fault, resulting in aftermath more delicate than skin. “Don’t tell anyone, or else Dad will get in trouble.” Trouble meant more pain than I could process, best to avoid. I protected him, like her. I resented being like her. The 8th hit struck like a towel striking water as I swam towards a shell blowing across the seafloor. 

“They did a good job, didn’t they?” They did, but when I touched his left temple it was too gooey to be skin. Through dry eyes, I watched her cry through Tears in Heaven. No note, but choosing Mother’s Day was a clear message. I resented her for it. Through dry eyes, I read the last note he left me: “Got you these. Merry Christmas —your favorite cousin.” I took them, and I closed my eyes. But they opened, so I wrote: 

I woke up. 
In an attempt to release 
tight white knuckles 
by turning limp and grey, 
I’m still here. 
Grip loosened, but sill flush. 
Like a newborn 
too weak to hold anything 
but open.  

I feel embarrassed. 
I feel embarrassed. 
I feel thankful. 
I feel thankful. 
I feel thankful. 

Then I think of you, 
because when you woke up 
you didn’t. 
You got a gun. 

“She’s a self-righteous bitch. Such a liar.” I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep through what’s seeping through the walls. I wasn’t lying, but maybe I was a little too honest. Especially when only one person was honest with me. It’s just campus politics. Why am I screenshotting death threats? Why am I getting job offers revoked? Oh, the articles. I read all the articles about it. There was one I liked, so I reread it. 

The 7th line stuck, welling rare salt in my eyes. “You need to clean your act up, you’re just like your Aunt Glenda.” My drinking’s fault, resulting in aftermath more delicate than consent. I was terrified of being like her. She hurt him, and now he’s gone. “Never tell him, he won’t want to be with you now.” Abandonment meant more fear than I could process, best to avoid. “Dad, I’m not ready, I need time.” The 8th line splintered lives into forks. “Caroline that’s selfish. You’re hurting his career.” I didn’t want to hurt him, and when you’re a child bride, there’s not much difference between a pastor’s kid and a pastor’s wife anyways. I’ve always been competent at my job. So I threw myself into work. 

“What we have is a he-said she-said off company property, and we’ve deemed it was likely consensual.” I answered the questions honestly. March 13th. Couldn’t drive, got in his car for a ride home, but he drove to his. He poured one shot. Then I was swimming in it. No, I don’t know how far it went. Did he tell you? Oh, wow. No, I don’t think I said much at all. I don’t remember, honestly. Do you speak when you’re swimming? You speak to the people on your team, so I started speaking to him. 

“Can you identify yourself in this video? No, you’re not going to have to testify.” An FBI subpoena said otherwise. My eyes joined 12 strange sets to watch a video made by a man who’s guilty of watching a kid who’s naked and innocent. We all see it that way, so why doesn’t it feel that way? They sentenced his life’s bright future as if that corrects the past’s darker life-sentence. Where are my sunglasses? I squint, jasmine squints into my breath, and for a second I can see. I don’t read the articles about it. 

“You’re safe, you’re okay.” He whispered in my ear as I locked eyes with his wife from across the room. A failed cry for help. She didn’t see what was happening. I moved his hand. “Stop.” He moved it back. “You’re safe. You’re okay.” I moved the blanket. She saw. Something flashed before his eyes, and I wondered what it was. Maybe his best man’s view of the pulpit on my wedding day? Maybe his view from the pulpit of her walking towards him on his wedding day? Maybe a hundred wide eyes staring up at his own precious pulpit? He threatened to kill himself. He didn’t, I got the guns. “He’s safe, he’s okay.” She stayed with him. I resented her for it. I stopped speaking to her, but I missed her, so I wrote: 

It just feels boring. 
Is it fucked to call assault boring? Probably. But it is. 
I’ve been here before, but I feel nothing this time. 
I can’t even feel hunger anymore. 
When was the last time I ate? I can’t remember. 
I think no, God.
Is becoming 
No god. 

“If you leave me, your family will abandon you.” I let the truth silently sink in. True enough to motivate 11 years together, and I accepted it may never change. But I changed. I changed the subject to a truth I hadn’t quite accepted. “When was the last time we had sex? I can’t remember.” “You were dissociated.” “Oh… what? Please don’t do that.” “It only happened once. You never want to anymore.” “I just need time. A lot has happened. And that’s not what we’re talking about.” “You weren’t clear enough.” “How is this my fault?” He simply left for work. It made me sad that he couldn’t see why this clearly made me sad. I just let myself be sad. 

“Caroline. Caroline. Caroline. HEY.” He had been waving his hand in front of my face for a while. I didn’t see his hand. I looked down at my own hands. They were shaking, so I clenched them. 

“I need to decide what to do with my hands. Turn you into a spiderweb again, something everybody understands.” I was hurting him. Or was it priors and projections? I wasn’t sure. But when I saw him, I read it in the words on his skin. I didn’t want to hurt him, not him. Hurting him meant more contempt than I could process, how do I fix it? I need help. I’m not okay. I’m not here anymore, and I don’t know what to do anymore. How do I ask for help? I reached, but maybe I was a little too honest. I flailed, I hurt him. He showed more love than I could process, was that really still best to avoid? I didn’t see his hand, so I drowned. 

“You’re rapidly deteriorating towards psychosis. Do you have anywhere safe to go to stabilize?” I answered his questions honestly. Around 2 hours of sleep a night. Like six months, maybe nine, actually longer I don’t know, really. 105? No, it’s not. Umm, like 35, maybe 40 pounds. I don’t remember. What? Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. No, I’m living alone. No, I can’t go back. My friend brought me here. She didn’t know what to do. He prepared one shot. It helped with the shaking. He handed me pills and a list of inpatient referrals. I took them. They kept my eyes open, so I could read all the articles about it. I found one I liked, so I checked myself in. 

The 7th hit spilled, scattering sour candy and smiling faces and ripped out pages across the floor. Good friends, 218 hours of therapy, 18 self help books, strangers on the internet, some ketamine, myself, and god helped. But nothing felt better than beating the shit out of a piñata holding it all. Hitting back, without hurting anyone. 

My eyes strain, trying to find the line where the starless sky kisses black waves. I can’t see it, but I feel it. The wind kisses my sea licked toes, and I feel so small. I feel like weeping, so I do. 

For most of my life, I never called it neglect or abuse, because I called it love. As I grew up, I started calling neglect neglect and abuse abuse, and I panicked like a dying child king. But recently I noticed I stopped, because I’m not a kid anymore. Powerlessness always felt like a self-defeating position anyways. I resented myself for taking it for as long as I can remember. Even as a kid, I felt some level of autonomy, and I always tried to Do The Right Thing. But despite my best effort, it felt like life kept looping all the wrong things, and I felt out of control. But darkness has its teachings. These days, I just say I lived more life than I could process at the time, but in time, life taught me how to process anything. Power under control is a sacred position. I can’t change what happened, but I can change what it means, and I can change how I respond. And I want to, so I do. 

Maybe you’re reading this, and some judgement is coming up. I might, I judge a lot of things I read. Judging the mistakes of a stranger is an easy thing to do, and it feels pretty good. Grieving the mistakes of a loved one is a hard thing to do, and it feels like hell. Grieving your own mistakes is hell. But once you forgive the abundance of human ignorance and illusion, you can see the far side of grief, and there is a far side of grief. It ends right back where it began: love. 

I used to stay in dynamics I didn’t want to be in, in ways I didn’t want to be in them, and I’d call it love, but it wasn’t. It was fear. I feared love because love meant more hurt than I could process. More than that, I feared hurting the people I loved because I couldn’t handle my own hurt. But hurt doesn’t scare me anymore, because I learned how to lick my deepest wounds rather than look through them. That can still hurt like hell, but the tears run hot and taste sweet, because they let me love myself and my people and my god in evermore understanding ways.

These days, I only stay in dynamics I want to be in, and only in ways I want to be in them. Still, I’m starting to see what they’re actually saying. What they’ve always been saying: “The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free.” I used to think I was unlovable, so I feared love. Then I just thought I was unloved, so I desired love. Now, I see I am love. When I give up the desire to be loved, I can see the love in the undercurrent of everything. I am free to create abundant love and share it generously, no matter what happens. So I do.  

“The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free.” - Margaret Atwood