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.