The lake

It was a day of trying to reconcile irreconcilable things.

This morning I put my road bike in the back of my rental car and drove north. Through a flat country with fields and blue sky and distant spires.

North is where I've felt prohibited. Yelled at. Why are you here? Why did you come? North is where I ceased to be me because somehow I'd been distorted by someone else's nightmare. North is where they were, nestled in a life with the man I longed to be with. North is pain.

But North is also where I met two little boys and played with them on a playset next to a bright lake. That memory is good and true and I will not be kept away from it because of remembered prohibitions from another incarnation.

So I came North.

The lake is 3 miles in circumference. I jogged, lame as I am with this still-painful ankle. And it was beautiful and peaceful. And I thought, I know why you came here. I understand this small piece of you. 

Then I took out my bicycle and rode across farmer's fields into the labyrinthine streets of the brick suburb where people live crammed side-by-side and on top of one another. And I became lost and scolded by the natives and claustrophobic, and unable to find my way out, and glad when I did get out. And then I understood you a little better. I knew that you felt trapped, too. I knew you felt you couldn't get out.

Tonight I talked to Lee. She's been avoiding my phone calls, although I didn't know it. The part of my brain that reminds me about the awful things that have happened in our family has switched off - breaker triggered by the bright patterns of flickering pain.

But she didn't switch off.

Brave. So brave. She met with him (although he didn't tell me that they met). Two meetings in fifteen years by my count. This was awful for her.

"We can't tell anyone," she told him, echo of the plea he made when she was 8-years old. I'll never do it again. Please just don't tell anyone. "It would kill mom and dad. It would kill Jane. I can't have anyone else suffer. I know it isn't fair to him. He should be able to tell people, too. So Now I'm part of this secrecy again. It's separated me from Jane. I can't talk to her."

I'm a believer in truth. But this truth has buried me, too. And I'm more isolated from Corinne than I've ever been, and wonder if I can find a way to come across this chasm. If I could not know. Not feel this truth, would I? Yes. No. I want it to not have happened. I want it to be un-done. But that's different than ignorance.

"This isn't the whole picture," I told Lee, praying that my words are truth. "There is always darkness in a painting. But it isn't the whole picture. We are more than our pain. We are also love.  We are profound and beautiful love and hope and joy. There is brightness, too."

Keys

I met the agent this morning at 0930 - she was waiting for me in the apartment I've agreed to rent, made a deposit and first month's rent (all on credit. Everything's on credit these days. I haven't received a paycheck since October and so make a plea to my future self to be merciful and pay my bills for me). It isn't the top floor, but I worry it won't be an easy climb for mom when she comes to visit. This evening as I made multiple trips up the stairs with big blue IKEA bags and bookcases, I remembered a time after knee surgery when stairs seemed to be some hellish torture device.

Now that I have the place, I'm eager to move in. Of course I don't have furniture. I gave it all away when I moved out of DC. So I'm trying to get a bed. Every bed store around here has massively high prices and their beds all look the same. I have no way to compare quality. So I bought a mattress and I'm hoping I can find a reasonable frame.

I rented a car and drove about 60 miles east to some furniture stores I found online. The first one was in the middle of "Furniture Alley" with multiple stores in the same neighborhood. I rushed into the first building I found so I could seek out the restroom. And I stopped dead. The enormous warehouse was filled with baby things. In order to get to the toilet I had to run the gauntlet through "baby-carriage" land, filled with pregnant women and their boyfriends/husbands, and soon-to-be-grandparents milling about.

By the time I got through I was shaking and my heart was slamming into my ribs. My face in the bathroom mirror was flushed hot red.
"This is stupid," I told myself aloud. "Aren't you over this? Just fucking get over this."
I hadn't eaten for hours so I parked myself in the store's cafe. I ordered a salmon sandwich, paid,  and drank a cappuccino while I waited for the sandwich at a table.
Clusters of pregnant women and their families were pressed around me. I kept my face to the window. But it wasn't tolerable. My stomach churned. I found I was holding my breath. I left before the sandwich arrived. Hungry, but glad to be outside again, with the bright blue sky.

Sleeping Tiger

My dream last night startled me.

Michael  is with me, helping me to find Sjors in a labyrinthine city. He's also saying something about electromagnetism: about how there is such a thing as a magnetic monopole but that it's terminated in the moment of its creation. I'm distracted and worried and he, frustrated with my inability to pay attention to what he's saying, leaves me. He's smiling, eager to return to San, and as he drives away on a motorcycle, head bare, sunglasses on, cutting across traffic, I call after him, "Wait! Please don't leave. I'm listening". 

But I'm alone, frightened and walking down a foreign street, unsure how to find Sjors. Then someone says to me, "Just breathe" and I look down and see that a lioness is walking beside me, giving me strength. As we walk, sometimes my fingers are in her fur, and sometimes I'm the lioness. 

Now I'm beside a vacant lot, overgrown, surrounded by a waist-level chain-link fence. There are wild animals inside the fence, barely caged and I see, most frightening, a giant tiger. This terrifies me, but I notice that its sleeping and I feel relieved but uneasy. I know that all I must do is get past the tiger before it wakes and notices me and I desperately don't want to be noticed. The area I'm walking through is also thick with brambles and they're scratching me and pulling at my clothes as I try to move quietly. I try not to make a sound. 

Dream

I had a really beautiful and peaceful dream last night. I don't know why this particular dream would surface in my subconscious, but it was an articulation of all of my deepest desires and wishes - and it left me with a feeling of calm that followed me throughout the day.

In my dream, my family was together - the whole clan, Of course we haven't been together for nearly two decades - so this feels unbelievable. But there was no apparent distress or discomfort in our association, and it felt that there was reconciliation between people in some improbable way. Then, deepest of joys, Sjors was in my dream, too. It was the only time his appearance in my dreams was not a fraught and distressing event. Unlike other dreams where he's shouted at and berated me, this time Sjors came to me with deep understanding and love. He told me he had read everything I'd written. He said he was so sorry for everything I've been through in these past years. He kissed me and we made love. It was so deeply calming and beautiful and I remembered what it was to make love to him - the sense of completeness and rightness and depth of feeling. It was an act so different than any commercial definition of "sex" I don't think it could ever be placed in the same category.

All day long I've held onto the loose threads of dream memory that, lingering, cling to my waking mind. I don't know why I was so fortunate to have such a lovely dream but I'm grateful for it.

Tonight, as I had dinner with JB I was struck by a realization. JB likes to emphasize how unfair everything has been for me. It was unfair that I lost my work in Africa, that my Command didn't stand up for me, that my then-boss had additional reasons for wanting me gone and didn't defend me, that my Company retaliated against me,..and so on. When he talks, I feel that it should tap into some deep source of personal rage or resentment, that I should feel bitter. But tonight I realized that I don't feel this way.

When I returned to DC in 2013, I did so with the intention of taking back what was lost. I wanted to take back my work in Africa, my reputation, my salary. I wanted to claim every ounce that had been stolen and to turn around and say, "you didn't affect me. You didn't matter at all". Of course, years later, I can't say that. The truth is: I'm finished professionally. I have no income, and no ability to work here because of the bang-up job that happened to my clearance. I'm massively in debt and my programs are dead.

But material and professional success were only some of the things I lost  in 2013. After what the MIVD (and my own leadership) did to me I also lost my ability to trust people. I lost my innocence, and my hope. I was constantly full of rage and bitterness.

The past 2.5 years have been tumultuous but these experiences, for all their pain and difficulty, slowly purged the anger and bitterness from me. Furthermore, I learned to trust people again and I have an abundance of beautiful relationships with people.

If it was god's intention to give me back what was taken 2.5 years ago, I'm glad he didn't waste time giving me money and professional adulation. I'm glad he gave me back my soul.