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.