Another premature ending

I heard from "M" today.
She told me that she miscarried.
I don't believe her for a second.
This is so sad.

The things that went right

I spent Christmas with part of my family.

Christmas with the family has been so painful for all of us for so long, we've gone through all the stages of grief about it. First, it was denial - we tried to celebrate in spite of the horrors and the losses and the perpetual confrontation of what had happened. We had bargaining. Sorrow and Anger were frequent holiday guests. Suicide attempts and DUIs were the feature events, with visits to the emergency room and police station.

I tried to escape the family Christmas hell years ago: in an excellent Christmas decision, I visited Hans in the Netherlands for the first time over Christmas - and that was when I agreed to be his girlfriend. He cooked dinner for me and took me to see the windmills at Kinderdijk. It was so lovely. Two years ago, I joined Eve's family in Venice over Christmas: in the middle of the crushing depression left in the wake of Sjors' decisions and the loss of Hans. In spite of the suffering, that midnight mass in Murano with Eve remains one of my favorite memories. Last year, I was in Gabon teaching analysis until days before Christmas, and I returned to Pozzuoli completely exhausted. I hadn't escaped the season, though, and I spent the day on the couch, Skyping people and wishing them happy holiday and feeling like shit. I promised myself that I would never make such a pathetic mess of the holiday again. There are many things about the holiday I disapprove of - but you shouldn't spend it alone unless you do it with a bottle of bourbon and a shotgun and bad intentions.

Christmas this year marks a new phase in the family grief: acceptance. We don't try to make it more than it is. We don't try to put meaning on a tragedy that will never have any meaning. Lee is in Rehab; M is pregnant and considering abortion; Jane is divorced; I've lost the potential for a family of my own. I've lost the only two men in the world I've ever deeply loved, I've been slandered and lost my job. But, for god knows what reason, we don't seem to give a collective shit anymore.

There's something to be said for realizing that the happy ending will never occur. It can be a miserable life if you think you were somehow entitled to happiness - that you deserve it. I thought that I would be able to keep the man I loved more than my life. I thought we would have a family together. It was so real, so close to me that I lived it. And now it is gone.

I had no more right to happiness than anyone else. There are people who have it far worse. I didn't deserve what happened to me. But I also didn't deserve happiness. When you look at it that way, we can all sit around and open presents and eat crepes and just be grateful for the things that went right.

You still there?

Just checking.

Challenging beliefs

Joy got me out of the house.

Maybe I could have gotten out on my own. Maybe not. But it was better this way. It is always good to have friends who throw rocks at your window and make you come out and play when you'd rather not.

I've known Joy for 13 years. In grad school, in the boarding house we shared, Joy was the person on the other side of the wall. I heard her conversations through the cardboard-thin partition, and she heard mine. We became friends and I envied the way she seemed to be so calm, and the way she turned her tiny, dusty room into a sanctuary. I wasn't good at feeding myself in those days, and I still remember coming back to the house on a chilly autumn day and smelling the butternut squash that Joy had in the oven. It was such an un-looked for comfort when she shared it with me, with cinnamon and brown sugar. Joy was the person I told when our family secret began to eat me alive. I've heard that, if you remain friends with someone past the seven-year mark, you will be friends for life. Joy will be a friend for life.

It snowed. A gentle layer of white. This was followed by a freezing rain. But we made our appointment anyway. I wore Wellingtons and sported an umbrella, and Joy wore a weatherproof Patagonia coat. We sat at a tea shop for a while, and then went to the national gallery where we shopped for Christmas gifts and I found a re-print of the medieval music sheets that Chrissy liked so well in Venice. I wandered upstairs for a visit to the Impressionists and Dutch painters whom I always love. Monet and Van Gogh, Vermeer and Rembrandt have always made my heart sing.

We shopped at a Christmas market as the sellers began to close their booths. We bought homemade soaps, and chocolate sauce, and we stopped for Tapas at a Spanish-themed restaurant across the street from my old apartment.

When I first met her, Joy was studying philosophy. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for our friendship: our shared love of philosophical inquiry. Last night, over wine and potato omelet, and thin slices of beef, She deployed the Socratic method on me.

"What are you afraid of?"
"What is the belief at the basis of that fear?"
"Is it true?"
"Can you absolutely know that it's true?"
"How do you react...how does it feel in your body, when you believe that thought?"
"Who would you be if you no longer had that belief?"

I think that I am more introspective than most. I think that I subject my thoughts and decisions to far more analytical rigor than any person should. I've been critical of people like Sjors who buy-in to a belief system and external social construct at the cost of their own happiness and I've thought I was a forward-thinker. Over the years, I've shucked the belief systems I was raised in, and I assume that I am a data-driven analyst.

I assumed the problem with my pain was my inability to grow emotionally or spiritually - it was never a problem with my mind. But perhaps the problem lies elsewhere: perhaps I have not deployed my analytical abilities sufficiently. Perhaps I have not challenged my own personal beliefs.

Certainly great evil has been done to me. I feel that it wound be naieve or ignorant to turn away from these things. Similarly, I feel that it betrays the profound experience I shared with Sjors if I were to challenge my beliefs about that relationship. But now that the door is open, I think it is only right to begin the inquiry.

Distracted

While I was traveling with the girls, I made a deliberate decision that I would not think about what had happened with my Company (of course, the date of termination was the same day that I flew out). And I did my best to not think about the shit that MIVD pulled, or the future I lost and the man I loved. It is never good to count your losses when you have to keep things together for everyone.

But I am back now. In my apartment. There is nobody to take care of and no sights to see. There is no one here to break through the darkness and so the darkness and I sit side-by-side on the couch. We share a bag of pita chips and watch "The Fashion Police" because we don't give a shit but can't be bothered to change the channel. It is harder here. The sadness turns itself into fatigue and un-focused wandering. I want to work but I can't find the attention or the drive. I can't do the dishes. I don't shower. I tell myself that I will shower after I run. Sure.

I awakened early this morning. I put on the coffee, and told myself that I should find a new academic journal to submit articles. As ever, I try to focus my pain into good work. But everything is so diffused and I feel so tired. I want to go back to bed.

I made some phone calls; answered some e-mail messages. I spent a few earnest minutes working on my Italian. In spite of a rainy forecast, the sun was still bright on the cold day. I went to the farmer's market on main street. As I walked, I called my mom. She was at the department store, trying on pants. She put the phone on speaker. We didn't have much to say. I thought about "M" but didn't say anything to her about it.

At the market, I bought apples and yams and kale and carrots. On a whim, I picked up a 3-foot-tall Christmas tree for an obscene $30 because I spent last Christmas on the living room couch and that sucked. I carried it home and set it in a corner. I don't have Christmas decorations so I found whatever sundry items I could: the palm-sized Zebra Sjors gave me in 2010, earrings from an African market, and wine-glass charms I picked up in Zaanse Shans in May: a sterling silver windmill and a tulip, and a wooden-shoe.

I met Ann and Josh for yoga at 1600, but only barely because I got on the yellow-line train instead of the blue-line train and got off on Eisenhower instead of Van Doorn. Which was stupid of me and which meant I had to take a taxi from King Street to Van Doorn if I didn't want to miss the class. So it cost me.

 

At least I showered after yoga. And I spent a good 45 minutes talking to Tony, catching him up on the evolutions of my business.

 

They say that good living is the best revenge. But I don't want revenge. I want what was taken. 

 

 

 

Her decision

I learned from my friend "M" that she plans to have an abortion. She is five weeks pregnant. She is in her late 20's and working a stable job. She has been dating the same man for the past four years. He is nice but he is also an alcoholic, so she doesn't want him to have any say in what happens.

"M" says she doesn't think she has enough of a support system to have a kid. She worries that she is a smoker and taking anti-depressants, and she thinks that this would harm the fetus. I said, "Sometimes its difficult to do something for yourself - but it becomes possible if you're doing it for someone else - if you're doing it out of love."

She said, "I don't want you to judge me if I have an abortion."

But I will judge her because I don't want her to abort. I'm glad that she has the choice to - that we live in a country where a woman can decide for herself what is right for her. But it feels so sad to think that there is a person we haven't met yet, who would have "M"'s eyes and her laugh - and that this person wouldn't get a chance to even start. Every day, lights flicker and go out. Nelson Mandela died yesterday and that was a very bright light indeed. I think, "what if this is a bright light?" and I feel, because it is "M"s and because I love "M" it must be a bright light.

"M" said, "I don't want to be a single parent. I wanted to be more stable than this. I need more support."

I said, "You'll figure it out when it comes down to it."

She said, "I don't think I want to."

I said, "I can raise your child. I can be a single parent if you need me to."

She said, "I couldn't stand watching someone else raise my child."

I would do it.

Many Worlds in One

In grad school, my favorite course was Quantum Field Theory. The instructor was Alexander Vilenkin, a brilliant Cosmologist from Russia who had taught himself the field after his PhD in Biophysics. An pale, introverted man with sensitive eyes, he wore sunglasses even indoors. His classes were a pleasure: it was like hearing music to a symphony that I could never duplicate, but I could certainly appreciate. I would spend hours after each class, painstakingly copying his words and blackboard work.
There were four of us in the class: a man from Pakistan, one from Spain, and one from China. At 22-years-old, I was the sole female representative. Already bludgeoned and extremely self-conscious about my gender and my perceived inadequacies related to an obviously inferior brain, I had resorted to wearing baggy shirts, shapeless corduroy pants and hiking boots - as though the clothing would hide my identity. My hair was cut very short. This did not fool anyone.
I was always excluded from study sessions. The boys in the class (I call them "boys", not men) would complete the homework assignments as a group. I would work long hours alone, trying hard to internalize the mathematics and force my way to the correct solutions. It was a difficult chore to compete when we were graded on a curve. My sole advantage was my passion for the subject and my desire to learn. I was hungry for everything Dr. Vilenkin taught, but so fearful that he would discover my insufficiency. One day, after a particularly grueling assignment, I finally knocked on his door and asked for help. He carefully guided me to the conclusions I needed. I went back to him after another assignment, and another. He was always so generous with his time and his mind.
Towards the end of the semester, Dr. Vilenkin turned up from an equation he had written on the board and called out my name. "What is the answer?" he asked me. I flushed hotly, desperate to escape his scrutiny. Anonymity had long ago ceased to be my shield and I was so exposed.
"I'm afraid to answer," I said finally. "What if I'm wrong?"
"Ah," he said, nodding thoughtfully. "But imagine the rewards if you are correct!"

I read Dr. Vilenkin's publications now. I own his book on Topological defects, a brilliant theory (which recent observations have shown to be an incorrect solution for dark matter). In 2011, when I believed I would marry Sjors and move to the Netherlands, I had a conversation with one of Dr. Vilenkin's colleagues at the University of Leiden who did work on String Theory, with the idea that I might be able to do postdoctoral work with her.

But that was a future that did not occur. I consider these things now in a way I never felt before: the future I longed for and never had. So then I feel Dr. Vilenkin's research in a different context: the philosophy of my own life. There is the "Many Worlds" theory which has come to dominate much of my physics theology: if we live in an infinite universe, there are worlds identical to ours, with our clones conducting much of the same behavior. But with subtle changes. In one world, I bought juice yesterday instead of milk (and so-forth). Most decisions we make do not dictate the end-state of our lives. But there are some that do, and these are the ones that haunt me. In another world, I ignored Sjors when he asked me out. I never spent time with him. Hans moved to Italy and we had children together and married. In yet another world, I am with Sjors now. I wake up beside him and have grown to know and understand his children. We have children of our own and I am filled with joy instead of sorrow.

Perhaps it is the closeness of these alternate worlds that causes me such pain. I awakened this morning at 0500, next to a man for whom I feel mild affection, and I was filled with such pain and longing I had to escape the room so that I could cry in private. I am glad to have some moments of kindness and attention in my life, but it is made unbearable when I see, across the infinite distance, the variations in path which gave me this present pain, and which has given another self joy. What would it be to wake up tomorrow and switch places with her?

Keeping the Memories

I've been too busy to write. Too busy to think. I've been the last one to bed and the first one up in the morning - pushing, prodding, and generally bossing everyone around Italy. Ordering them when they're sluggish, encouraging when they're tired, feeding them when they're hungry and being generally tyrannical when they won't go to bed at night. In the past week, we've covered down on all of the important bits of Italy. I don't know when Laura and the girls will be able to come back - for that matter, I don't know when I'll be able to return, either. So its best to get as much in as possible. That's been my philosophy. I make a list here because I want to remember and I doubt my ability.
1. Venice: the Doge's palace, St. Mark's Square, Murano, and Santa Maria Della Salute (didn't make it to the Acadamia)
2. Verona: Juliet's house and random city streets after I lost the car.
3. Florence: the Duomo, the Uffizi Gallery, morning run along the river by myself, the Acadamia and the David (where Rachel and Chrissy stood transfixed for more than an hour and still didn't want to leave), and then teaching the girls how to haggle for prices at the street market.
4. Rome: The Metro system (Rachel decided then and there that she would live in Rome), the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain with Gelato, and the Pantheon with Coffees and hot milk and wine outside; the Colosseum, and the Forum.
5. Pozzuoli. Bananarama and Villa Avellino where Fabio had set aside Eve's old place for me to stay!! We walked along Via Napoli and ate at Acqua & Farina. Spaghetti al Fruiti di Mare.
6. Pompei. Sorrento. Positano. Amalfi.

It has been sweet and beautiful to be here: to take people I love here. But it is also so poignant and sad to remember what was taken from me.

I have memories of Venice at Christmastime: watching Tim and Eve dance in San Marco Square and the glass blowing in Murano. I remember waking Eve for Midnight Mass and walking back to the hotel with dozens of others, carrying paper bags with candles inside, moving their silent precession along the canal and over the bridges. I was so sad then, but the memory is not a sad one. It is beautiful.

I was here in Naples and Sorrento. I fell in love here. Three years ago last Thursday Sjors broke apart his phone so that they wouldn't track him, and he drove with me in my little Nissan Micra to Amalfi for the first time. We held hands and hiked up a cliff face in the rain. We drove past churches and I longed to stop at one, find a priest and marry him there. We arrived in Amalfi after dark and walked up the steps of the Cathedral together. Inside, I talked too loudly to the caretaker in my bad Italian and embarrassed Sjors when we were "shushed". Sjors bought me chocolate and danced with me in the shop while Madeline Peroux played in the background. On the drive back to Pozzuoli, Sjors shared his intentions with me: to leave his organization, and to begin to deal with the memories that had kept him frozen for so long. There was such hope in that one sweet day. I have taken friends to Sorrento and Amalfi since then and every time, I've layered on another memory, sweetening the depth of the experience.  I am a lucky person. I was lucky to find the person I would have given my soul for. That moment of realization and understanding, a deep incomprehensible knowledge of another person and unexplainable deep love. This is a rare thing.

I remember traveling to Florence for the first time and seeing Botticelli and Michelangelo and lighting a candle for Sjors in the Duomo. This last Thursday, I awakened in the early morning hours, and went for a run as the world began to stir. The sun was rising. The streets were quiet. I was such an anomaly in my running clothes, pounding out a rhythm on the cobblestones, men turned to look and smile at me. I ran into the Palazzo Vecchio courtyard, saw “The Rape of the Sabine Women” and “Perseus and Medusa”. They looked cold and waiting in the pale morning light. Then I ran across the Ponte Vecchio and into the side-streets on the opposite side of the river. The sun was rising, making a golden pink glow over the river. It took my breath away.  I talked to god - without the hostility I used to feel. The latent anger and sadness that surges to the surface and pulls me under. Instead, I had a sense of immediacy. Of presence. It is difficult for me to speak Sjors’ name to divinity. It is like a question I’m forbidden from asking. But I said it anyway as I ran. I prayed for him. In the Duomo, I lit a candle for him again.

In Rome, I remembered every visit as an echo of the last - ringing through the years and resonating my body: the first time in 2008 I traveled to the Sistine Chapel, worried that I would never see it again and I feeling so amazed and fortunate to be there. I traveled to Rome again by myself on November 29, 2010 - the day Sjors left Naples. I stayed at a hotel on Nomentana and awakened in the night, crying out and feeling Sjors crying out for me. I walked around the city - especially the Spanish Steps where Sjors told me he would meet me - where he said he would ask me to marry him.

In St. Peter's Basilica, I remembered the prayer I'd uttered aloud five years ago: "I give you the fire of my mind". This time, I escaped my charges for a few minutes, and made my way back into the chapel, and I knelt at the pew. I considered that I may have given god my mind several years ago, but it is my heart that needs the caretaking now. I tried to give this to god, too. But he did not seem too eager to take it. Again, I found myself reiterating the prayer, "I give you the fire of my mind". So if I give god the secret places of my heart, he will have to take them - but it seems he has use for my mind still.

Pozzuoli is the most difficult place for me because the pain of the betrayal is very present. . Here, I feel that I have returned home, but I know that I must leave.

If Sjors had not lied. If the Command had not been cowardly. I would be here still.

But I have such sweet memories here. For three years this was my home. It has my heart. I have my memories. I will always get to keep the memories.

Hierarchy

 

 

The political system in Venice developed as a mechanism to serve corporate interests. I suppose this is true everywhere - but that the primary difference lies in the expression of the corporate interests. In most instances, the mechanisms of control by corporations are through political ego and pacification.

 

In the U.S., corporations purchase access to politicians by donations to political campaigns, and then provide valuable "education" and "support" to ignorant and narcissistic members of  the House of Representatives and Senate who ensure the interests of those corporations in sometimes horrendously damaging ways. Whose interests were served sub-prime lending practices, or genetically modified food or Fracking? [In the next 100 years, we will look back on the contamination of our food and water supply as one of the most self-harming things we've ever done - with far-reaching secondary and tertiary effects of public health nightmares, and a decline in our intellectual base.] We may feel that our politicians represent our interests because of our status as a "democracy" but conflict between public interest and corporate interest nearly always results in a win by the corporations. In Africa, the corporations are largely external and the flow of resources extractive - therefore political control and their control of the political system must happen through a mixed form of diplomacy and bribery which maintains the illusion of sovereignty, but which ultimately leaves the country short-changed and suffering.

 

In Venice, manufacturing and trade were entirely self-contained and self-sustained; a situation unique (in my observation). The state was executed by a bevy of mid-level bureaucrats hand-picked for their positions for life by a coalition of nobility tradesmen. To ensure that politicians knew their place in this hierarchy, the office spaces of these bureaucrats were pathetically Spartan - including the un-heated mezzanine offices of the most powerful political appointee of Venice (appointed for life), the Grand Chancellor. 

 

Corporate interests were integral to the survival of this small city-state, and were fundamentally enmeshed with the political hierarchy. Trade secrets were therefore state secrets; and to betray manufacturing or shipping information to an outsider was high-treason. Traitors were sought out and identified by the covert and feared "Council of Ten", and confessions were extracted through interrogation and torture by three Judges from the nobility who executed judgment under cover of night and beneath hooded robes. 

  

The Doge's palace was a strange manifestation of this system: it was, in every way possible, a prison. The official prisoners were kept in stone cells beneath the palace, or as "Piombo" in the torturous rooms beneath the lead roof (Cassanova was kept here). The bureaucrats worked in offices just above the prisons - leaving relatively minor distinction between their own lot and those of the unfortunate men trapped in the cells beneath. Even the Dodge, in his fine palatial rooms in the level above this, was not allowed to write messages freely, or to choose his schedule or his friends. As much a prisoner as his counterparts in this building, his movements and ideas were carefully controlled and monitored by the ruling class.  

 

Political and corporate power both seem so arbitrary. It seems to me that these social constructs are no more "fundamental" or "real" than the rules invented for children's games. Of course, the price for disobedience is higher and we play for bigger stakes, but we have invented the rules and might we not change them? The first step is in acknowledging that these are not fixed. We can disobey. It is our obligation to disobey when our conscience tells us we must.

 

I have often, in the past few years, pondered the social constructs that frequently dictate our behaviors - primarily because Sjors seemed so ruled by the society he was raised in, and the society he chose. The only thing he needed to do in order to be happy and true to himself was to disobey. For a time he did disobey - and it was in that beautiful time that I learned who he was. I knew him better in those months than he knows himself now. When you agree to sacrifice yourself to the will of the state, you must confine your thoughts and ideas and conform them to the rules of the game. Never leave your office. Never leave the palace. Never leave your cell.  

 

 I often wonder about the people who monitored our correspondence, and the men and women in MIVD who take the time to read what I've written. What is it you look for? Additional information? You tried to use my correspondence with Sjors to paint a picture of me that was not true - but you had to edit my words to create the lie. Consider the possibility that you serve as score-keepers to a game that has no more meaning, and no more virtue, than the bureaucrats who lived above the stone cells and who subsumed themselves in the goals of the nobility.

Venice with my Nieces

We are in Venice now. I bought the tickets for Anne and the girls last May, when I intended to give them a vacation and to give myself an excuse to take a break from the brutal schedule I'd self-imposed through my support to the Dutch Navy mission and to the African assessment teams. There was no way to know then how different my life would be when the date rolled around.
As of Friday, I have lost my job with a company whose only condition for staying on was that I confess to a lie. I have been transferred out of my post in Italy, and forced to stop my programs because the same Dutch Intel folks at MIVD who invaded my privacy three years ago this week invented the lie to cover up their own misdeeds, and because the man I once loved more than my soul, turned on me to save himself.
These are the facts of the situation. But they do not comprise the emotional reality of my experience now.
I am so much more at peace now than I was two years ago when I visited Venice for the first time. Then, I was in a job I loved serving people I loved, and living in a place I loved - but this was not enough to lift me out of hell. Then, I was in agony, separated from Sjors and praying that he would live up to the promises he had made, believing that the fault for our separation was with me: because I had not believed in him enough, not trusted him enough, and because the depression spawned by his actions had nearly subsumed me.
Now, there is some peace in my soul: a self-knowledge and a sense that, in spite of the pain, there is something bigger which might give meaning to this life which seems so devoid of joy.

Rachel and Chrissy are in love with Venice and I am giving it to them, and this is a wonderful thing. I arrived 4 hours before their flight so I was able to get to the hotel and check in before they arrived. I took the ferry and bus back to Marco Polo Airport and collected them. All three had been trying to learn Italian, and it was so fun to listen to their words.
They rode on the back of the ferry in the dark as we wended our way to the hotel near the Acadamia. We offloaded their gear and I took them on a midnight walk to San Marco's where Rachel stood reverentially at a place she had longed for, and Chrissy danced around and spun in one of the pink polka-dot ponchos Anne had purchased for all of them (I traded my tech-raincoat with Rachel on account of the extreme mortification she felt, visiting this holy-of-holies in an enormous plastic tent).

It was early-up this morning, and a moment of concern on my part when I whacked my head hard on the under-side of the staircase and gave myself a mild concussion. The goose-egg wasn't too troubling, but my pupils dilated differently and I had trouble seeing. I worried that my situational-awareness and problem-solving might be compromised. Fortunately, all seemed to be well and the headache diminished throughout the day, and the eyesight improved.
We visited the Basilica of San Marco, and walked along the waterfront, finding trinkets and souveneirs. We took a ferry to Murano and perused the glass-shops. And we ate pizza at a restaurant there.
We found the church where Eve and I attended midnight mass two Christmases ago: San Pietro Martire.  This was a strange experience. I usually don't like churches, but we lingered in this one, each exploring our separate ways. The walls were plaster, painted with frescos, and the ceiling was dark wooden timbers. Chrissy lit a candle, and I spotted Rachel kneeling at an altar.
I have, on occasions, prayed in churches. My last prayer was in May when I visited the Oude Kirk in Amsterdam after seeing Sjors. Then, I prayed for him. Today, I prayed for myself.
I can't seem to ask for the things I long for most. It is still too tender. There is too much pain to look at directly. But if there is a god, and if that god is personal: knows me and loves me, then god is aware of the magnitude and depth of the pain and, today, I felt able to hand it over.

 





Champions and Cowards

We are at the end. In a few hours, this chapter will be closed. 

I am awake now. At times throughout the day yesterday, I experienced a sense of foreboding or dread. Today, it mellowed into sadness.

This is bearable now because J mounted a last rage on my behalf. The man who has always urged and counseled caution, who tried to talk me into compromise, finally sent a scathing condemnation of the company to opposing counsel. It was incredible. I am a woman grown accustomed to cowards - and he became a champion. In his diatribe, he described the extreme lengths to which the company had gone in order to avoid an amicable agreement. Then he wrote, "If you will forgive me the dramatic flare, it seems like [the company] has decided that it wants its pound of flesh.  [My client] will not play along."

When I read the message out loud to Eve,  I couldn't stop crying. It was such a relief to have someone else fight for me. And it was a good defense.   

Yesterday, the company made it a point to reach back and insist that they will not change their stance: to let me know that I could change my mind and confess to a lie, and come back to the fold or be terminated today. It is strange that they should take the trouble to assure me that their position has not changed. I feel no reciprocal need to tell them that my position remains firm.

Perhaps they believed I would flinch. But it is easy to hold your ground when you are not bluffing. From the day I reached out to Mac and tried to get his organization to release Sjors, I have never bluffed. I did not compromise my integrity when I thought my life was on the line - so why would I compromise it now when the price is my job?

I spoke to J yesterday afternoon. He seemed hesitant - maybe he felt wary about the way I would respond to the news. I found myself trying to comfort him. As though he was the one who has been through three years of hell. "I knew that I risked losing everything if I held my ground," I told him. "I was not ignorant."

My mom called me and I told her the final minutes. She is angry on my behalf. "You were only trying to do good. Why is it that people who are trying to do good are falsely accused?"
But I contested this. "I entered this with my eyes open," I told her. "I knew that I was inviting hell on myself when I tried to help Sjors. I did it knowingly."

It would be naieve in the extreme to believe that I could play at such stakes and not lose everything. For a long time, I thought that I might be putting my life at risk, and I was still willing to move ahead because I was fighting for Sjors - for his truth and his freedom and his integrity. And I would have paid any price for that. Now, I am fighting against the lie that Sjors told.

I enter today with my dignity in tact, and the knowledge that I passed this test: I have not capitulated. Even when it cost me. And it has cost me so much.

Strangely, after all this awful news, the worst moment came when I discovered yesterday that Sjors' friend, E, "unfriended" me on Facebook. E had remained my "friend" during these long years and months when Sjors turned on me. This affected me deeply and I feel a level of pain that I've managed to avoid for nearly a year.

Two weeks ago, I wrote to E and told him what was happening with my job. If Sjors felt remorse for what he had done, I thought he might want to help - and I wanted to give him a way to do this. Perhaps this was wishful thinking on my part: a hope that Sjors would regret his actions. Not because this would help me - but because I believe that he has harmed his soul by compromising his integrity so tremendously. Perhaps this would help him I gave E J's contact information.

In this moment of a terrible blow, I know now that Sjors does not feel remorse for what he's done

Three years ago, I met you. Three years ago, I saw the most joyful and beautiful soul. I honor the person you were, the person you wished to be. I feel grief and loss and sorrow for the person you've become.

Latvia, eh?

Hmmm. Why not just change the referring url again? I enjoyed it when you were honest about your *.nl status. It was even fine when you changed the referring url every time I posted: *.de, *.ph, *.tw... You realize I can see you, right?

Today, it doesn't bother me particularly, but I don't feel much like including you in on the discussion. Really horrible things are happening because of the evil you've done.

The worst part is: I'm trying to get work done in spite of it. I'm still trying to keep the programs alive that should have died when you shot me down. And I'm not discriminating about who benefits from my work. I don't even mind if your navy and personnel get the value. But would you please, please stop being evil motherfuckers? Stand loud and proud. Be honest about your affiliations.

I'm not feeling particularly vindictive right now - but god help you all when that button gets pushed!

Happy holidays from the U.S. It's Thanksgiving next week. I know you're focused on your Zwarte Piet controversy right now so you may not be aware, so allow me to remind you.

This is a sad time of year for me. It was three years ago that I fell in love with Sjors, not knowing he belonged to you. This time, three years ago, I was detecting your interference in my privacy. Weeks later, I broke off my 2-year relationship with Hans the day before we went to his parent's house for Sinter Klaas. I was going to marry Hans, you know? I might have even had a couple of good Dutch babies by now. So, thanks very much for fucking with my life.

Your continued interference and evil only breathes life into this monster you've created. Pain does not crush me as you had hoped. It fuels the fire.

Truly awful

When given the chance to be nasty, awful and punitive, the company took it. I am not impressed. I am disappointed. It would have been just as easy to be decent. Amazing fuckers.

Uncompromising

"I find your altruism admirable," man #1 said. "But you may have to compromise. I know you want to build U.S. Security and increase the capability of African partners - but you also have to look out for the bottom line. You're a business now. You may not be able to do exactly what you want in the way you want it. You may need to subordinate your ideas to someone like RAND or Booz Allen"
He looked at me in a way that he meant to be father-like. He meant to be helpful.
"I understand what you're saying," I told him. "But I assure you that my idealism is not drawn from naivete.  I am well aware of the risks I take by keeping ownership of my ideas and pushing the programs I think are important. I choose this way because, although I need to make money to survive, I am not driven by money. I am driven because I have ideas that work. I want to make the U.S. programs work."

Four hours later, on another, unrelated issue, I found myself on the phone with man #2 who was also advocating compromise.
"Once again, they've given me something I can't sign," I told him. "How can I agree to sign something that says I don't think they've done anything illegal or unethical when I believe they have done both?"
He answered: "That depends on how much you want this to be over. You have to ask yourself what you want to get out of this."
"I've held out on principle and truth when I fought the Dutch bastards. I held out - and didn't sign a lie when my job was at stake. Why on earth would I compromise now - for the sake of 8 weeks pay?"
He assumes it is money that matters to me. Not truth. This has never been the case for me. Truth will always matter more.

Some days, the world is full of judgment and sorrow. And there is no way to amend it. Some days, I can't make it feel any better.

Sunlight

I am here. In the sunlight. I am not ashamed of myself, nor anything I've done. I have never compromised my integrity. I have not allowed my actions to be motivated by fear. I can look at myself in the mirror. Can you?

You have taken so much from me. Deliberately. With cruelty and disregard. You have corrupted and conspired and stolen and planned against me and attacked me. You have done terrible things. You acted from fear and malice. You wallow in shadows. You fear truth.

I am one person, with only my mind to protect me. But I am strong because I know myself. I have never let myself be corrupted by you. And I speak truth.

I do not fear you. I pity you.

"If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that abhorrence, anger, pride, and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice, and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little...finally, it isn't a matter of reason. Finally, it's a matter of love." - The Character of Sir Thomas More in "A Man for All Seasons"

Walkabout

I went for a long walk today.

There is a cold front moving down from the North. I hear that it will snow in Maine this week. In Alexandria, the air is chilly and the leaves are pouring out of the trees, marking the time like grains of sand in an hourglass.

I have a lot of work to do if I want to make things matter. I try to keep this in mind as I work. It is difficult to keep my face to some distant patch of faded blue when the world has been torched behind me and the heat still sears my back. Even this space is not sacred - and I cannot share the details of my thoughts and actual work because I refuse to let the contents of my mind be kindling for the next blaze. But I continue to work for hours each day.

The conversation between my lawyer and the company soured towards the end of last week and we are looking for some sort of amicable divorce. I wish to have a clean break. Clean breaks are good. It will make the betrayal easier to manage in my own mind. I can fold it and put it into a box someplace.

When I saw Sjors in Amsterdam Centraal in May and I finally felt the break between us, it was the first time in years that I felt relief. It is far worse to have your soul perpetually stretched out, feeling the resonance with your other half, longing to help the other person, longing to touch, to give and receive comfort, aid and support. There is no doubt that part of my soul was taken in the severing. But when I felt the sinews give and finally snap, I knew that I could close out the pain at last. I will never be complete. Never whole. But sometimes I have the mercy of forgetfulness.

I was with someone on Friday when my lawyer called: a date with a man I will call David because the name suits him better than his own. We met before the sun set so we could see the world before it became dark. When I arrived, he was taking pictures of the boats in the marina. He was clever and interesting and poised. We had good conversation. He talked a lot.  He drank a beer and I had wine. We shared an appetizer.

I excused myself when the phone rang, and I watched blankly out over the water while I listened to the story: how opposing counsel had begun to discuss severance because it was more important to my company that I admit guilt for something I didn't do than to retain my good value and hard work. Nobody could say anything about the quality of my work - everything I've done is excellent. But they wanted to be sure that I stitched a scarlet "A" on my clothes.

I returned to David and, on an impulse, told him what was happening. I was surprised to find that he had the imagination and analytical ability to accept and process what I told him, and then offer a unique perspective: "They want you to admit guilt for something you did not do. And, if you don't agree, they will fire you and otherwise harm your reputation...That sounds like extortion to me."

I liked David. He didn't seem bothered by either my covert watchers, nor my new status as an unemployed person. We went to a club and smoked a $20 cigar together and drank scotch. Then we returned to my place and continued the conversation, drinking chocolate wine and green tea. I showed him my reports from the past three years and he talked about his current consulting gig. We opened a pomegranate and tried out a new technique for removing the seeds. He kissed me. The way he used his hands reminded me of the way Hans used to gentle me: tender hands on my skin and hair. I considered how different I am now than I was when Hans first touched me. So much pain and experience carved into me.

I didn't have sex with David, although he stayed the night. The things that have happened in these past few weeks are bound to have an impact. They probably have. I haven't had time to assess the damage, but if I think that I'm not in shock then I'm deluding myself.

I thought about this as I walked today. I also thought about the way that David treated me: with level-headed interest and frank sexual desire.  I was glad for this. I don't know if its possible for me to be with anyone after having (and losing) what I did with Sjors, but it is wrong not to try.

I thought (as I always do) about Sjors. I cannot prevent this any more than I can prevent myself from breathing or collapsing from exhaustion at 4 AM (as I must do in a few minutes). Strangely, the thing that concerns me most is Sjors' integrity. I worry about the damage he has caused to his psyche and soul by behaving in such a cowardly and self-protective manner. I worry that he will live in hell for the rest of his life. We become what we pretend to be. His actions have defined him now - not his feelings nor the truth of the soul that I knew to be Sjors. "In the beginning was the deed". He has made such compromises, and betrayed so fully, the only two ways for him to continue on with his life are 1) to deliberately shut out the screaming voice of conscience that reminds him of his actions against the truth, or 2) to confess and try to make amends. I believe he will try to self-justify and compartmentalize the feelings, but I desperately wish for him to be the whole complete man - the joyful soul I once new.

Continuing

It is really awful what you've done.
It's awful what you continue to do.
You aren't even pretending to not be looking.
I would say that this was innocuous - a nice way of saying, "hello there. Boy, isn't it great that you talk to us and we're listening?"
I would say that this was innocuous. But everything you've done has been malevolent. Everything you've done has been harmful.

Data queen!

So...because of all these continued shenanigans and repercussions in my life, I've been forced to look over the logs and data that I have. Turns out: I kept damn good records. The difference between someone who SUSPECTs that something naughty has happened and someone who KNOWS that something naughty has happened is damn good data collection and rigorous, externally verifiable analysis. And I have both.

I'm wondering how I should publish this. It might make an excellent academic paper. Or an op-ed piece. Possibly a set of short stories, or essays. The possibilities are endless. This was what my painfully-earned education bought me: the ability to collect data, crunch numbers, and recognize patterns.

Why couldn't you have left us alone? Would it have been so awful to let him make his own decisions?  What's next? I publish your misdeeds and you crash my computer or spread a lie about me? I hate what you've done. I hate the effort you've expended for the sole purpose of destroying things. Why waste your energy on this?

I hope that you've been collecting data, too. It should show you that I don't lie, and that I don't back down when the cause is righteous.

Ambiguous

I had to re-live the conversation with Mac. Go over it with my lawyer. Send him the correspondence because the version my company has was Bowdlerized by some fantastic third party (feel free to self-report, my covert friends).

I do not wish to re-live the reasons I wrote to Mac; remember how I was trying to extricate Sjors without harming him; remember how he repaid me later with mistrust, hatred and betrayal. I do not wish to remember the pain I felt - nor the constant fear, wondering if I was in danger and ready to bolt if someone came after me. Nobody ever did. I wonder now if the option had ever been on the table.

But I've kept careful records because I'm a scientist and we take data dispassionately. And we back up our data. And when we conduct analysis, we use the assistance of other scientists - their opinions, their view of the data. Do they reach the same conclusions? What patterns do they see? It helps us have confidence in our results. And we retain the results and all of our evidence for years later. We can publish whenever we like.

I should have gone for a walk while the sun was out. But I had these things to deal with.

And I had documents to create. I need to keep my ideas alive, and relationships and programs that matter to me - in spite of the fucked-up nightmare this has become. It took most of the day.

What does this look like? I wake, shower, and sit with my computer until the sun sets. I fix a lunch of spinach and steak. I grind up fruit and vegetables in the blender. I drink green tea.

Tonight, I walked to a weight-lifting class 2 miles away. It was good to clear my head. It was good to lift barbells and do squats and pushups and 250 yard dashes. It wasn't a competition. But I beat every other woman in the room by a considerable amount. And all but one man.

As I lose the final trappings of the life I used to have, I feel some sadness. But I lost the thing that mattered most to me years ago.

25 years from now

I know a man who is well-respected in his community. He has been married for 37 years and has children and grandchildren. He lives in a beautiful home and is highly regarded in his profession. 

For some reason that I do not understand, he confessed something to me that he has never told anyone. I had not known him long, but something in me inspired him to talk.

He told me about a woman he loved. He was married and stationed abroad when they met and he fell deeply in love with this person who wasn't his wife. He tried to stop himself seeing her - but he couldn't. She mattered too much to him. She loved him in return. At first, he decided he would be with her - they would be together. He put a down payment on a house, and asked her to be with him. But she wasn't ready to leave her life for the gamble. And so they parted ways. Ten years later, they met again. And the same feelings were there - as strong as they had been before. Nothing had changed, except ten years of absence and pain. For three years, they met in private - as often as they could each get away. She had time to consider her previous decision and knew that she couldn't live without him. She gave up the trappings of her life and extended herself as far as she could to be with him. But this time, he couldn't make the sacrifice. It was too much to lose. It was too frightening. He left.

Nearly another decade has passed, and there is not a day that has gone by that she is not on his mind. Every day, he writes her a love note that he never sends. His wife does not know.

"It is difficult, when you feel for someone that way," I said to him.

"I don't feel," he said, clearly repulsed by my choice of words. "I ache."

He is desperately sad. The life around him is well-ordered and neat. He has a wife who loves him and grandchildren. And every day is hell for him.

"Two years ago," he told me. "The sadness became terrible. I was at a conference, away from home, and I...took steps. You understand what I mean?"

"You tried to end your life?"

"Yes."

"I understand," I said.

"They were discrete about it. I was in the hospital for a week, but nobody at my work knew. They still don't know."

It horrified me to hear this. I hoped that the pain would fade for me. God, I hope it does.

"If she still means so much to you," I said. "Tell her. Go to her. Tell her."

"I ruined her life," he said. "She never moved on. She lives alone. She is sad."

I became angry with him.

"Fuck that," I told him. "And fuck you. If she means so much to you, then act. Go to her. Tell her how you feel. If you are to her what Sjors is to me, then she continues to love you. She continues to ache for you."

"She hates me."

"Maybe. But that doesn't mean she doesn't love you. She hates you for denying the truth. For being a coward. I hope you do feel bad for what you did to her - but only if it stimulates you into action. I believe that a profound connection with another soul is the most sacred of experiences. The only think you can do now is offer honesty. I look at you and I see Sjors in 25 years. Don't bemoan your lost love. If she is still there, then fight for her."

"My situation is complicated," he protested. "I can't take an action without hurting someone."

"You must live a life of integrity," I said. "That is all I know. And right now, you're living a lie."

Ik kijk jullie allemaal

Y'all need something better to do.
Go catch terrorists or something.

You've fucked up plenty here already.

Sunday ride

It took me most of the day to get myself outside. I put my cycling clothes on when I got out of bed, but then I made coffee, checked my messages, talked to Eve, drafted messages to my lawyers and prospective clients, ate lunch, and called my sisters. It is so easy to get dragged into the things we must do. But then I forget to do the things that keep me alive.

It was getting late by the time I put air in my tires, checked the brakes and shifters, and mounted.

The weather has turned. It was cold today and the icy wind bit through my fleece. But I rode nicely and hard. As the sun set, I stopped by the Potomac and watched.

Consequences

I am so angry and sad about what you did to me. There is no way to adequately describe the consequences I have suffered for your cowardly acts.

I am most sad when I think about the loss of everything that could have been and the future that should have happened. I am most sad when I remember what you were for me.

I am most angry when I think about the way that you lied, because you were afraid of the consequences, and because you couldn't acknowledge that I was trustworthy.

I was not the person you should have distrusted.

The other shoe

So this is as bad as it gets. A sit-down meeting with the coiffed lady from HR (who is in way over her head and trying to pretend that this is the equivalent of "he grabbed my boob and I'm really upset about it"), the president of the Company, and a Division Chief.
First: they are sorry it took them so long to get back to me. No kidding, right? I was kicked to the curb by the Navy on the 2nd of July. This is the end of October. Nobody at the company has even bothered to respond to an e-mail message since August 31. So a mere four months. Four months when I couldn't do my work, support my programs, or build my portfolio.
Next: I'm a "valued" researcher with "considerable talents" so all I have to do to get let back in is: sign a Written Warning agreeing that I exercised poor judgment and agreeing to certain overreaching and bizarre conditions, including that I do not have contact with anyone in the Dutch Navy, or work in Africa. 

If I do not sign this by Monday, November 4, my employment will be immediately terminated.

I cannot agree to this for the following reasons. First and foremost, I cannot agree to a lie. This would compromise my integrity. I have always acted with excellent judgment and careful consideration of all facts. I am certainly not ashamed of any of my actions and would repeat them, should the circumstances be the same. Next, I am unable to sign anything that forbids me from contacting people in the Dutch military or Government. I have half-a-dozen close personal friends in the Dutch Navy and Marine Corps (one of whom is staying at my home tomorrow night). Additionally, I continue to collaborate with the Dutch navy personnel. I just submitted a paper for publication with a Dutch Marine Corps Major as a co-author. This condition seems wildly over-reaching. If my company did not want me to contact my Dutch friends for any company project, this would be fine. But it is bizarre that they should insist I surrender my friendships as a condition for my employment.
Finally, I am a subject-matter-expert on African affairs. It is nonsensical, bizarre and wrong that I should be forbidden from working in my field of expertise. Not only am I extremely good at my job in this realm, but I care tremendously about my work.

So Monday is my last day of work. I am so disappointed in my company for doing this. What a cowardly and wrong move.

I tell you this, my watchers, because I want you to know that I continue to retain my integrity. I also want you to know that your illegal and bad actions are affecting a real person. I am not an abstract concept. I am an intelligent, honest, hopeful person who was trying very hard to improve programs in Africa. I was doing incredible things when you decided to harm me. I wish to continue my work. You were looking only to limit your liability and to cover your asses for your illegal privacy invasion. Do you have any understanding that you are not on the side of righteousness? There is no ethical or moral justification for your behavior. You should be ashamed.

Also, I want you to know that you have just given me another reason to come kick your asses. If you were hoping I would go quietly into the dark night, you were painfully mistaken.

Dreaming

Yesterday, I was a dog, a dragon, a troll, and a pirate king. The boys wore me out because all three identities involve hauling and chasing and doing battle. I can't help myself: whenever I hear Dean laugh, it makes me laugh too. Child laughter is such a joyous sound. 

I stayed up late last night fretting about these contracts I need to put into place, and thinking about leaving Utah. At 0630, Dad knocked on the door and we went for a bicycle ride in the dark. He has made a morning run every morning for 30 years, but now his knees suffer too much. I made a swiggy for him and mom, and then he drove me to SLC International airport and walked me to the Security line. I'm glad that I came to see him after his father's death.

I had such a strange dream last night and I haven't been able to shake it. Sjors was there. I felt him and saw him. I've dreamed about him before: I remember running in the desert, leaving my shoes behind and bleeding from torn soles, and finding him only to have him scream at me for coming. But this dream was different. I was trying so hard not to have him affect me; keeping my own counsel and not letting him see what I felt. I was surprised that, at some point, he reached out a hand to place it on my arm in an act of comfort and apology.

I am back at home tonight. Tired now. Praying for a dreamless sleep.

I am patient

Jullie hebben allemaal iets vreselijks gedaan.
Ik niet vergeten.
Ik niet zal vergeten.

Birthday

It was your birthday today. I couldn't stop thinking about you.

A moment with the family

I carved pumpkins with my nephews tonight. The youngest, Dean, worked with his shirt off because, at two-years-old, the goop will inevitably crust to his clothes. Much easier to sponge off bare skin. Loftin, the oldest at four-years-old, is so changed from the last time I saw him: when his two-year-old brother was a baby in my arms.

I feel attached to these boys, but there is a sense of reluctance on my part because I don't want to have my heart broken again when I say goodbye. I came out to see them and get to know them, but I feel that there have been too many sad endings in life. My family always breaks my heart.

This morning was a mad rush to get the business proposal in before the noon deadline. I barely scraped by - and we'll see if this results in any good news. I could use some good news. My mother took time off work to spend the day with me - and I spent half the day huddled on the couch with my father's laptop, trying to recreate documents from my crashed PC, and get the right requirements in. My mom says, "I want to come work with you when you get your business going" and I look at her unsteady frame and grey pallor and wonder again (as I always wonder) how to get her healthy enough to go for a walk around the block with me. I can't bring her to Cameroon just yet.

Afterwards, I sat beside my father and we talked to J in Canada on speakerphone. Our first priority was to determine whether Lee was actually sober and drug-free. J seemed to think so. But J and G wanted to oust Lee from the program because having a suicidal 24-year-old is a liability nobody wants. Of course, Lee can't get any mental-health-care assistance until she is able to stay sober and, if we pull her from this program and plunk her into a $700-per-day residential treatment society designed to address borderline personality disorder, we will be 6 months as $120,000 into a program that might just as easily not work and which may not actually keep her sober. There are no good options for Lee right now. But the program may evict her anyway.

We drove into Emmigration Canyon, where the Brigham Young "This is the Place" monument stands and where Hogle zoo is hosting its Halloween celebrations. We ate salads at Ruth's Diner and worried about Lee.

I do not suppose there will ever come a time when my heart is not broken.

Utah

I'd forgotten that Utah was a desert. I flew in over the dusty brown clay and sand, with salty water collecting on top, teeming with algae and insects.

I was excited to see my parents and my brother with his children. But, as always, there is a concern that returning to a place will inevitably lead to returning to a former self. I suppose there is little risk of this now. If there is any resemblance to that doe-eyed sweet thing I used to be, it is that I still wear the same bra size now. Just better bras and less admirable breasts.

I was here to receive the first message that my sister sent out from the 2-year rehab facility. She's been on no-comms for the past two months. Now, she's allowed to send a letter. It wasn't good. She sent a coded message that 1) Something bad was happening and she needed intervention, and 2) she intended to "leave" (read: escape the facility or kill herself) by November 5.

When you receive an alert of this nature, you are obligated to act. I didn't have sufficient information, however, and the facility is 957 miles North of here. So it isn't exactly a "get in the car and drive" solution - not when I've traveled here to visit family that I probably won't see again any time soon. My nephews are 2 and 4 years old and I haven't spent any amount of time around them. They are adorable.

The real trouble is: Lee is an addict. And she may pull the cord to stop the train even if the emergency may not be an actual "emergency". So, is she being tortured by these people? Brainwashed? Are they truly evil and controlling? Does the danger come from others or from herself? Or is she simply ready to check out so she can continue down the ugly useless dark path she was on with drug use and abuse? If we intervene and pull her out of the program, there is nowhere else for her to go. We might as well phone her dealer and ask him to meet her at the airport.

My parents are fatigued. They are in their 60s and tired and sick. They've been dealing with trauma for the past fifteen years. I want to do what I can to help solve this particular problem, but I also desperately want to walk away from it. What reasonable person would want this dumped in their lap?

I called the director of the program, J. He sounds like a kid. He's younger than me and trying so hard to be the "big man" of the situation. He passed me off to his colleague, G, a woman who seemed to be looking to me for solutions. Apparently, they became alarmed last night and took Lee to the hospital where she was checked in and received a psychological evaluation. Of course, they were concerned about the cost (I am concerned, as well. This has drained my parents dry for nearly two decades). They wanted to make sure that someone would pick up the tab.

This is all so fraught and terrible.

In the meantime, my computer's hard drive has crashed so thoroughly that my brother is finding it impossible to retrieve any data. I bought the computer last March, so it seems unreasonable that the thing should have suddenly failed.
My brother said, "This is the most corrupted hard-drive I've ever seen. Either it was a faulty drive that failed on its own or it was a really nasty virus. If it failed on its own, you would have seen some warning signs. Did it behave strangely or shut down unexpectedly? Was it slow in operating?"
"No. It was fine. There were no problems. I was simply working on it one moment. I turned and walked away for a minute and when I returned, it was down."
"Viruses aren't usually designed to completely destroy like this," he contemplated. "People generally want to steal your information, not decimate it."
And the part of me who is so tired of the bullshit; who wishes I had never met Sjors or the bastards he works for; who knows how to fight and grab a man by the testicles and dig in fingernails; she doesn't even care to stand up for this one.
They've already taken their pound of flesh. They've already destroyed so much that was worth saving. I want this to have been a random failure: a faulty hard drive. I don't want any more mystery or intrigue or bastardly behavior. Leave me the fuck alone and let me rebuild the things you've destroyed. Because if you rile me again, you reap the whirlwind. You haven't even begun to see "pissed".

The lie in Reims

It was March or April 2012 when I took a flight to Paris, found the Gare de l'est train station and traveled to Rheims. To this day, this is one of my most poignant and painful memories. I will never return to Reims. The thought of it makes me ill. When I was traveling with my Father through Southern France in July, I saw a brochure for the Cathedral in Reims (which looks like the Notre Dame Cathedral) and I became so nauseated.

At this point, Sjors was committed to his cause. He had left us five months previously to return to the bastards he worked for. But we had seen one another again in Naples when he returned for a de-brief with two fellow officers. And I had seen the look in his eyes and the passion when he secretly kissed me then.

Hope was the curse that bound me. It was the darkness that dragged me down. I loved him. He was my person and I was his. The future he had painted for us was still the scenery in my soul.

I had written to him every day on the shared account we had named after the licorice-flavored toothpaste I'd given him on his birthday: Marvis Amarelli. He did not see the messages until after we met in person. And he knew that, although he had tried to deny his feelings, I had not denied mine. I had waited for him.

After our meeting in Naples, he wrote to me, telling me to meet him in Reims. So, of course, I flew to him. He said he could meet me for one night. No - for two. I should stay and he would meet me.

I must have been so fragile then, still. Love had broken me. I look back on those dark days with such pity for the woman I was and know that she is gone. I am grateful that she died because she would have taken me with her if I had not let her drown. But I also hate Sjors for killing her. I carry this dead thing inside me now. A specimen pinned to a board.

I remember how he lied to me with nearly every part of him. And we both knew it was a lie.

He arrived late at the Reims train station. He couldn't decide whether to tease me like he used to, or love me, or reject me as forcefully as possible. I still don't know why he had asked me to come. It's possible he wasn't sure himself. Perhaps he simply wanted to see me because he missed me and, as he drove to visit me, he must have made up his mind, then: he would continue to be a company man. He would give me up a second time: deny himself the pleasure of having me in his life. He had invested so much in creating the lie - he should work to maintain it. He told himself that I would move on. This must have been the greatest lie of all.

While we waited to check into a hotel, he poured water on my head like he used to pour water on my head to tease me. But it was an awful mimic of what we used to share. Too much pain had passed between us, too much darkness in my soul, and I had not laughed for months.

We made love. It was awful, and the last time I would ever touch him like that. Only weeks before, in the hotel in Capo, he had been full of the passion he felt in seeing me again. Now, he was a robot. Unable to maintain an erection. Dull. He could lie with his mouth, but his body told me it was a lie.

We ate dinner next door. I choked down food because eating would give some semblance of normalcy - and I hadn't been able to eat all day.

He gave me the one lie he knew I couldn't fight. He didn't tell me about his company. He told me about his family. His family was a lie. It was the cover. At one time, he had railed against a friend for staying in a bad marriage. Now, he had realigned his paradigm so it could include this option.

"Anyone can make a relationship work with anyone else. There is no such thing as a soul mate. See that man over there," he said, pointing to a forty-something mustached fellow near the window. "If he was the last man on earth, you would find a way to make it work with him."

This was his compromise. This was the lie they had told him and he had learned to repeat to himself. Perhaps he had manufactured it on his own.

"That's where you and I are different," I said. "I would never do that. I know what it is to be with you - to be with the man I'm supposed to be with. I would rather be alone than make that compromise."

I loved him. I could not compromise. To this day, I find I am unable to compromise.

A place to think

I am moved in and able to think now. Spent the morning working on a proposal for work. Woot woot.

unpacking

The sun came out today and it was warm. But when I met Sarah and Christine for lunch, I wore black tights to cover the dozens of bruises I've earned in the past six days unpacking the shipment and setting up my apartment.

I can't decide which I hate more: fingers that are swollen like sausages every night, or a lower back that aches no matter what position I assume. Thank god I have an actual mattress now. I've made dozens of trips to the storage unit: a tiny cage in a building four blocks away. If something is really heavy, I do what any self-respecting Cameroonian woman would do: I carry it on my head.

Cashing in early on promises

"If you don't mind, I'd like to pick you up at the airport when you get back." 

"Really? It isn't a problem. I was planning to take the metro. I can take a cab."

"No. I'd like to do this. Will you e-mail me your flight information?"

"Sure."

It took an extra 45 minutes to get out of the airport because he didn't show up, didn't answer his phone or text messages, and I didn't want to be an asshole and leave if he was waiting for me. He wasn't waiting for me. Instead of going nicely home on the metro as I'd planned, I went home on the metro feeling punked and disappointed. 

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I have a fairly low opinion of men these days. I've noticed that they like to get credit for what they've promised before they actually deliver. This trait, I think, is a symptom of laziness or moral cowardice. As a person who tries to not promise what I cannot deliver, I find it repellent. Also, it is a nasty, damaging trait. It can inflict great harm.  

More than a year ago, I attended the high-school-graduation of my friend's daughter. JK is a sweet kid and she was excited to have her father fly to Italy to attend the graduation. Also, for nearly five years, he'd promised to buy her an Apple Laptop when she graduated. So it was a pretty nasty shock for JK when, weeks before the ceremony, he hadn't gotten a passport, a ticket, nor did he intend to buy the damned computer. Of course, he'd spent years feeling self-satisfied every time he saw her excitement or implied that she would have a nice computer. 

This pissed me off. She had never asked for the laptop - she would never have expected it on her own. But he had suggested and promised, and so the consequence of his neglect or stinginess was that she was destined for pain and disappointment.  I started a fund-raising effort among JK's relatives and friends, including JK's dad on the invitation. Together "we" bought her the damned laptop. 

When I was visiting Corinne last week, she suggested that the worst thing Sjors ever did was to mislead me about his marital status. He let me fall in love with him, knowing that he was married and telling me he was single. To my mind, this was only one of the terrible things he did. 

I should not have expected a life with him. When he told me he was married, it was over for me. I had lost him and I should have been allowed to grieve. But he told me about his plans for us. He talked about the children we would have. I would never have asked for those things on my own - I would never have allowed myself to hope. Not while he belonged to someone else. But he plead with me to stay and wait for him. To have faith. He raised expectations and hope for a future. He said we would be with me until we were 85. When he begged me to take the morning-after pill he said, "It isn't as though I don't want to have children with you. I do. Lots of them. We will have lots of kids. Just...not now."

It was the loss of that future with the man I loved that nearly killed me. Even now, I sometimes forget and the hope edges in and threatens to sink this boat. 

And now I know the truth about men. And the world is a darker and sadder place than it was when I didn't know. 

Compartments

I have spent these days playing with my 7-month-old niece, and doing what I can to help her mother. Corinne is a splendid soul who was so pleased to get out on bike rides, strolls through the farmer's market, and to paddle a canoe with me and look for gators. She is also unbelievably tired, and four months pregnant again (although unintentionally this time). She asked me, "how should I prioritize?"

The only way to build priorities is to start with your vision for the future. What is your long term objective? And then you sort out what will be needed to achieve this. When you have the different lines of effort in your life, you can rack and stack them and pick the top priorities. It is difficult to prioritize, however, when you cannot articulate your own vision or objectives.

Most people tend to start with the limitations before they even can construct a vision: "Well, I can't do THIS until THAT happens..." until you're so boxed in, you are forced to live day-to-day and deny yourself a vision.

Corinne told me that, years ago, she ceded the idea of her own career for the career of her husband and, now, it is difficult to know what her professional objectives could be. It must also be a bit painful.

I think we put the painful pieces into boxes and let these be the limitations on our vision. If Corinne states what she wants professionally, she must face the pain of the compromises and loses she has already sustained professionally. Similarly, I find that I cannot form a vision for what I want the future to look like from a romantic perspective. I can make career goals, fitness goals, friendship goals, and work hard to maintain the relationships with my family. But I cannot open this painful box for the future because it is full of so much sorrow. It becomes a blind spot. A thing I deliberately ignore.

Submission

I don't have a publication history in policy or international development, and the last time I published in a peer reviewed journal, it was in "Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics". But I feel proud of my work here. And I think it will be significant. I've submitted and it is such a relief.

On the plane ride to Orlando yesterday, I had a conversation with the man sitting next to me about the concepts of class, wealth and future time perspectives. At the lowest rung of society is the person whose vision of the future extends to only the next hour or day. Higher than that (but not much) are the people who live paycheck-to-paycheck. They do not see beyond the tactical "now". Give this person great wealth and it will be wasted - look at the lottery winners who bankrupt themselves.

My parents had a vision for the future that exceeded their literal social class. My mother, who has never completed a college degree herself, insisted that her children would reach that mark. I don't know if she had an understanding of what this would buy us, but she knew that it would open doors she couldn't dream of.

To my view, a sign of the highest social class is one which looks to build a legacy - who has a vision for the future and who lives to that vision. The man sitting next to me contended that wealth was required for legacy-building. But I disagree. Certainly it helps to have wealth, but ideas can last for generations.

You can be a Rockefeller, a Kennedy, a Smithsonian, or a Gates and your contribution and philanthropy will be linked to your wealth. But history is full of individuals whose ideas persisted beyond them. Some of the men and women with the greatest ideas were very poor, indeed.

I have ideas. Millions of them. I don't flatter myself that all of them are completely original - statistics would say that some other person at some other point in time would think the same thing. But some of my ideas matter.

So I will not be stopped by the tactical "now". The situation can seem quite bleak if this is what I focus on. I may not have a vision for my personal future - Sjors took that with him when he left - but I have a vision for what my ideas can accomplish. And this is how I will build my legacy.

Nothin'

"So, let me get this straight: the company is going to make an employment decision based on information handed over from a foreign intelligence organization, with unknown, possibly illegal provenance?" - Tim.

Turns out that the U.S. Military already did. And, yes. They probably will. Remarkable.

In the meantime: nothin'. Radio silence.