rainy day in New York City

Took the bus to NYC on Friday - and back again today. Really uncomfortable way to travel. The drive is advertised to take 4.5 hours - but actually took 7 each direction.  I sat next to someone who appeared to be in the first stages of plague. On the other side of the aisle was a man who self-soothed by singing show-tunes: quietly at first then with increasing volume as we waited in traffic in the dark. Relieved to finally get off the bus, I stretched my legs and called my friend - he was taking a taxi to meet me up on West 33rd Street, next to the garbage cans overflowing with trash and the hot dog stand. And then I noticed that the bus had left again, taking my bag with it. An interesting beginning to the weekend.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Marriage equality.  Its good timing - with NYC Pride day only 2 days later. There is a lot of relief and joy as barriers are removed for a group of people who have been disenfranchised for centuries.

I followed CJ to a Pride pre-party at a single-family home in Jersey on Saturday. Fashionable decor, nice spread, good wine. As a heterosexual female, I was definitely outnumbered. Not a single person took a gander at my breasts.

I'm a bit tuckered out after the weekend. Never got in a good workout. Never ate anything I normally eat. Still processing the experience. Another long  bus ride home. So glad to be here. Sleeping in my own bed.

the sky

"Emotions are spontaneous," said Paul, the meditation instructor. "They come from the limbic system. You have no control. But they're fleeting. They pass through, they leave. When they come, it's okay to acknowledge them. Recognize them, allow them to happen, investigate them with curiosity, and don't identify yourself as them. When you feel anger, know that you are not the anger. The emotion is a cloud. You are the sky."
It was such a lovely sentiment. And for my daily meditation log, I capture those experiences that are "pleasant" and I capture the "unpleasant" experiences. I investigate the physical sensations of these experiences, allow them to happen, and move on.

But I have spent years in the darkness. And today, even as I experience the pleasure of meeting with friends, riding my bicycle in the sunlight, eating sushi, laughing, listening to books, I experience the "pleasant" moments. I feel where they reside in my body: a loosening of my shoulders and a depth in my breathing. But throughout the day, there is also a sorrow, so deep inside me I cannot differentiate it from my moment-to-moment experience. I cannot step aside from it, examine it with curiosity. It is the darkness and the pain from something so deep it has become me, wrapped itself around my roots and grafted to my person. The loss. The sorrow. The knowledge of a person I will never see again. The body I will never touch. The love I will never again feel. The laughter I will never hear again. The children I will never have. It is not the cloud. It is not fleeting, this pain in my heart. It lives in me. After all these years, it is my heart. Sjors. You are my heart. You are a part of me. You are my pain. You are the sky.

"Depression happens when we look at the past, which is unchangeable," said Paul. "And anxiety is when we anticipate the future, which is unknowable. All we have is this moment. Being here now."

So what happens when the past is part of the present. As real to me as the dinner I just cooked, or the warm and tumbled clothes I pull from the dryer and fold?

I've committed to this meditation practice. Every day I spend 40 minutes listening to the instructions, following them, I connect with my body, my breathing. For the first time in years I try to live in the moment instead of run away or distract myself. And in these still and silent moments I find you here. With me. This body, which I have despised and made to forget you with dozens of men, still remembers what it was to be with you. These hands remember the rough tender skin on the back of your neck. These thighs remember your weight, the hardness of your torso, these lips remember your mouth. There isn't a piece of me that has forgotten you.

On Sunday I sat next to San on a lounge chair next to a pool in Connecticut. It was her sister-in-law's house and we wore her sister-in-law's bathing suits. The sun was hot and the air was heavy.
"I know I'm moving on," she said. "I know I've changed in the past six months since he died. I know I have to - if I want to get better. But I wish I hadn't. I want to go back."
Lost for words, I could only nod, and listen,
"I don't let myself believe he's gone," she said. "I can't explain it. I don't believe he's gone. I can't accept it. Maybe people think I'm crazy. But I don't believe he's gone."
"I understand," I told her. "Who says you have to accept it?"
"I have to," she said. "If I'm going to get better. But I don't want to get better."
Well, my friend. Who said that "getting better" was ever the goal? Its been four years since Sjors last loved me, and I've never gotten better. I've never believed he was gone.

Graduation at the War College

I took the train to Rhode Island on Thursday morning. I've intended this travel for some time but didn't buy a plane ticket. At the last moment I decided to take the rails. Its turned out to be a better way to travel. I get to see more of the world, there aren't the inconvenient crowds and security lines (as with the airport), its easier to adjust the tickets, and it pulls me into a lovely sense of remembrance since I often traveled through Europe on trains.

P was graduating from the War College - an amazing feat given the tremendous stress he was under at the beginning of his studies. He even received an award for his leadership. This was the first time I've seen him since Eve and I drove him and his battered family the 13 hours from Virginia to Rhode Island at the end of last summer. He was so proud and so happy.

As we sat together on Thursday night, we talked about what happened last summer - and the miracle that his sons (all of them) survived. I've tried to not think to hard about the stress of last summer because it sapped so much out of me and took my ability to work for months. I worried that, by thinking too much about it, it would continue to hinder my work. Now, as we discussed the devastation and the miraculous, the memories returned in a more gentle form: validation that I hadn't imagined the difficulty, and gratitude that the improbable, best-case scenario happened.

We Skyped Crystal and the boys at home in Cameroon. It was so good to see such happy little faces. Nearly a year has passed since we've seen the boys but they remembered us and shrieked in delight. I shrieked in delight, too. I wish they were here. I long to hold them. Crystal looks tired but so much happier than I ever knew her. When I visited her in the hospital every day last July and August, she was haggard and strained. She was 9 months pregnant and full of anxiety because her little boy was in mortal danger. My heart went out to her and she, in turn, hated me.  I became a lightning rod for all of her fears and anxieties. I represented the country that had done this to her, and I was a single, female friend of her husband. She needed me: needed the food I brought, the childcare I provided, the transportation to the doctors' office, the moral support sitting in the room with her, but she hated me for it. I've never been the recipient of such incredible vitriol and I'm sure she didn't understand it herself. So it was that she has called me in the months since and, in her broken English, told me she loves me and that I am her family. It's only my Pavlovian reaction that I flinch when she speaks to me.

 I spent hours in the kitchen with the Cameroonian women, cooking Chicken DG and frying plantains. I timed the first batch of plantains and, when I learned they needed 15-17 minutes to turn brown and soft, I set a timer (rather than continuously tending to them). Explaining this to his Gabonese friend later, P said, "Elizabeth cooked the plantains using the scientific method and, although you cannot believe it, they were cooked perfectly."

Until my culinary skills were on display, my friends believed I was not marriage-material. Now that I appear to have rudimentary skills in house-wifery, they've decided to find me a good Cameroonian husband. "You will stay with his mother first," they said. "She will teach you how to take care of him."

At the Naval base, I felt at home among the sailors and marines receiving their diplomas. I craved to be a part of this world again - not in an academic sense, but in an operational sense. Operations analysis is the only thing I've really had a natural talent for and I long to take it into places in the world where there are no solutions: to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Ukraine, and the Sudan. Is it arrogance that tells me I can see things no one else has spotted? No. I've experienced it too many times for it to be coincidence. I may not be a physics genius, but this is my ability.The men and women accepting their diplomas yesterday have dipped a toe in the analytical world I inhabit - and hope to bring skills back to their operational jobs. But they are as able to conduct analysis as I am able to conduct a war. I can support in ways they don't know to ask for. This is why I train, why I run harder than I like and lift heavier weights. Some day, there will be a need, and I will be physically and mentally ready.

It was good to be around Eve again. Yesterday we made a run into downtown Newport with bags of clothing and shoes to donate to the Salvation Army since P cannot bring everything back with him to Cameroon. There was no donation site, so we found a local church with a soup kitchen and made the donation there. Then we stopped for lunch at a downtown cafe where we drank coffees and ate caprese sandwiches and talked about the work we still want to do in Cameroon and the rest of Africa. I feel frustrated and disappointed we haven't been able to make the business work. But I also have the sense that it will happen in its own time and in its own way. After all, if we'd been busy with work in Africa, we wouldn't have been there when P and his family needed us.

Last night, P was exhausted. He tried to stay awake with us, to talk. I asked what he'd do first when he returns to Cameroon this weekend. He will take his eldest son to the village he comes from. He told us his father is the village Chief and that he is next-in-line to inherit this role. We looked at the area 80 miles East from Yaounde: a heavily forested area with men and women living by subsistence farming. We talked about development work. What will he do for his people when he becomes Chief? How would he conduct economic development? I began to give my ideas about NGOs and non-profit work, about the people in my life who would want to volunteer Then P asked us to start an NGO. "Who better to do this?" he said. It gives me pause.

I'm on the train again. This time headed to Connecticut. I changed my ticket yesterday after a call from San. Her father-in-law died on Thursday night. Could I come? Yes. I don't know why these things are so difficult right now. I choose to believe there is a reason.

NOTICE OF ALLOWANCE!!!

It's going through. The claims on my patent are allowed. I can't quite believe it. This is such a miraculous and happy thing.  I'm so so delighted.

Forgetfulness

I'm reading Kasuo Ishiguro's book, "The Buried Giant" (even during times of high stress and obligation, I can't not read. It's an addiction).

The book is set in medieval England/Wales - after the death of King Arthur. The story focuses on an aging couple, Axl and Beatrice, and the journey they take to visit their son in a distant village. The story has all the hallmarks of a fairy tale: with pixies, ogres, wicked monks, and an old knight from Arthur's time, Sir Gawain, whose task to slay a dragon has been procrastinated for decades.

The primary feature of the story is a "mist of forgetfulness", caused by the dragon's breath, which causes people in the land to lose their own histories. The love Axl and Beatrice bear for one another is real, but they have no specific memories of their time together. Longing for these memories, they look to kill the dragon.

There is a mercy in forgetfulness. When we forget the evil we've done to other people and the evil they've done to us, there is some measure of peace. But then there is the forgetting of love, as well. I still recoil at the memory of Sjors' face in that train station. There was no recollection of love in his expression. "I don't love you," he'd said. Had he truly forgotten how dear I was to him? Was such a thing possible? I felt the agnosia and it hurt more than anything MIVD could do to me afterwards.

Its a strange thing that I haven't forgotten him - when I've forgotten so much else. Sometimes, I suddenly remember the way his fingers were - long with blocky knuckles. I remember the intake of breath. I sometimes catch a scent in the wind and am reminded of his smell. I remember the way he looked at me so directly when he spoke, or laughed out loud so I could see all his teeth. It is precisely this keen remembering of him that prevents me from finding a different life with someone else. I haven't forgotten how dear he is to me and I know that, if I were to agree to settle in with another man, I would leave it all behind if Sjors came near. Time has mercifully obscured the acute sensation of betrayal and anger and sorrow when MIVD took my work from me. But the love I feel for Sjors has not flickered out.

I met up this evening with Shelly and with Eric for dinner, then Eric and I went to a movie. It was the first time I've seen Eric since we decided to stop dating. It was Eric's choice to stop - and not a bad one. He knew I still loved Sjors and didn't want to beg for me to love him. So he stayed distant, never really bonded with me - and I never bonded romantically with him although I thin he's a lovely man and I'm glad we're able to be friends.

It seems a stupid thing to continue loving Sjors at the cost of any small happiness I could have in this life when, in all likelihood, he's relegated me to some loathed part of his brain. Whatever I was to him - I am not that anymore. The man who loved me doesn't exist.

I think the problem is: I trusted his love for me even more than I trusted myself. I still have faith in him. I still have faith in his promises. I still have faith in his love for me. Even when the facts tell me my faith should have died long ago. Faith and hope are dangerous things. I think about Sjors' words in the video he made for me: "I know I can't have any expectation...but I can have hope."

Friday night date with two blue eyed girls

Yesterday was a brutal marathon of research and writing. Trying to get this business and grant proposal in place. Love the lawyer. He's putting together documents and registering businesses and applying for certifications in record time. He wrote a beautiful IP protection document for me to hand off to folks. Where has he been all my life?

Today, I woke, set the kitchen timer and cleaned for an hour...and then another hour. Went for a run. Cleaned some more. Finally got the apartment into some sort of order. Good thing, too, because I ended up bringing J's kids back for homemade pizza and cookie making. Also a Netflix double-feature: Boxtrolls and The Croods. 

This is the first babysitting gig I've had since my Cameroonian boys last summer. An interesting side-effect of being affiliated with the military: I'm a trusted agent and people invite me in to their families. I get it. I invite people in to mine, as well. 

Funny thing: I spent so much time with J in Gabon and Cameroon, and I get a kick out of what his daughters say about him. 

"Dad doesn't like it when things go to waste," says Rebecca with an exasperated sigh. "He doesn't like sugar, but he ate my leftover fruit loops today and drank the milk."

This made me belly-laugh. In 2013, when he came with Eve and me to Gabon, I remember thinking how like my father J was. That is SO MUCH the sort of thing my dad did when I was a kid. 

Took the dog for a walk after I took the kids back home. 7-year-old Holly came tearing out of the apartment in her bathrobe and followed me, talking all the time. Did I know they were the first kids to have scooters? Did I know she had brown hair when she was born? Did I know she knows how to pick up the dog's poop? She didn't think Rebecca would mind being left alone while she and I walked the dog: "because I read in her diary, and she says she wants to be alone." 

"My parents wanted to name me Holly," I said. "But it would sound funny with my last name."

"What's your last name?"

I told her. 

"What's  your last name now?"

"The same."

"So that means you're not married?"

"I'm not married."

"Did you ever want to change your last name?"

"Once."

"When?"

"I was in love with a man. I wanted his last name very badly."

"What was his last name?"

I told her.

"Did you want to have kids with him?"

"Very much."

"But you didn't."

"No."

"Why not?"

"He had a very secret life. His work was very secret. He would have to give it up if he wanted to be with me."

"What kind of work?"

"He was a spy."

"What do you do if you're a spy?"

"You pretend to be someone you aren't so you can get information."

"He couldn't do that if he wanted to be with you?"

"No."

"So he wanted to be a spy more than he wanted to be with you?"

"Yes."

"Maybe when he stops being a spy, he can be with you."

"I want that very much."

Back home. Rebecca's waiting outside the front door for us. 

"You were gone for hours," she says, more out out of hurt than reprimand. We left her behind. I've stayed awake for a couple extra hours, trying to make headway on the proposal. Still behind the power curve. 

Saw a photo of a friend on facebook kissing her boyfriend. He is a Dutch Submariner. Hurts. 

so inclined

Hello Sjors. You are on my mind tonight so I'll write to you as I might have done once on our shared account. At one time, I was so conscientious to keep things private. At first I did this to protect you. Then later, when it became clear that MIVD was fucking with me in a spectacular fashion, I was careful to never give them anything except my anger to chew on for fear they would twist my words and use them against me, or against you.

But now they've done what they can. Everything I wanted or cared about got stripped away. So, what do I have to lose?  I do have a secret terror of these assholes because they always frightened me, but I also have a few tricks up my sleeve if they decide to fuck with me again. And, after all, this is my fucking blog. I get to write whatever I want. 

It has been a very long time since I saw you last. I've gotten older. More crinkles around the eyes. Some sun damage. I don't have that hollow haunted look I wore for years. But there is sadness in my smile and it makes for a bad facebook picture. I bicycle and run and lift weights and that makes me strong. But I also eat ice cream at night and that makes me a bit soft. I'm still unbelievably hot (this, according to other Dutchmen who have voted). Even in my beat-up pajamas, working on my SBIR grant proposal late at night. 

I've learned Dutch. Not completely, but not bad either. I started because I wanted to be able to communicate with your sons. But they're older now and will be learning English. I'm sure they're good at it. I want to be equally good at Dutch. The assholes at MIVD took my career, the man I loved, the children I might have had. But they didn't take my intellect, my integrity or my native curiosity. They can fuck themselves. 

I never moved on. Not really. I've successfully chased away anyone who might try to give a damn about me (not deliberately, of course. I've given dating a good college try) but I'm a realist. I love you, and that sort of love apparently doesn't go away. Damn hard for anyone to compete with your ghost. 

Last week, I was part of an intervention. A friend of mine is in a bad marriage and I sat by as moral support in a group of his friends to encourage him to leave. I hope you have a group of friends like this. I hope you get the fuck out of your shitty situation. I hope you find me. 

 I can't shake the feeling I will somehow see you again. Maybe it will be in this lifetime. Maybe reincarnation really is the way things work out - and I might catch a glimpse of you in the next lifetime. You will be a grey mouse.