Day 326 - Forever A Girl
Who among us hasn't wished for a time machine to go back and talk to our younger selves? Or just to start over and do things differently? Likely the mere suggestion caused your own thoughts to immediately flit over those pieces of your story that seem to hold only memories of embarrassment, regret, shame. More than once, I have asked my therapist, "How do we accept all the parts of ourselves into a whole person?"
What I mean is,
how do we not constantly look back at ourselves
with those feelings of regret?
This is probably the crux of need from which I write. I keep hoping that in writing it down, getting it organized, I'll somehow, eventually, make sense of the disappointments, the challenges, the constant feeling of always arriving late to the party in the completely wrong attire.
Case in point.
Allow me to share a little of what led up to this emotional monologue.
This was in 2007 and I was serving in the Air Force, stationed in Korea. Terrorism by anthrax was still a threat and we were required to get vaccinations, which is how I met my former other. He was a handsome guy, and more than I prefer to admit, he reminded me of someone else I used to love. As I bared my arm to the end of the needle, we chatted about art and music and theater; I was intrigued by his creative interests and I savored his gray blue eyes as a future possibility. Meanwhile, the holidays were drawing near, and my a cappella group began preparing a few songs for the unit Christmas party, which to my surprise evolved into 25 linguists coming together to create an impressive concert, stunning even our military commanders.
Still nurturing the hope that I could move on from the past, I asked the handsome medic if he would volunteer his self-proclaimed creative skills to video record the performance, while also attending as my date. He said "yes," but unfortunately, he came through in the worst way. The night of the performance he showed up with the video camera and confessed that he had not remembered to charge the batteries. Thus the entire performance was unapologetically filmed from the very back of the room so the camera could be plugged into an outlet. This resulted in commemorating mostly the foreground chatter and clatter of guests at the dining tables with only the faintest strains of the concert on a stage too far away to even consistently pick up the full melody.
Seriously, I should have known then.
But I was weary of never settling. I was questioning my too high standards. And I pushed myself with the belief that there was no other way to escape my loneliness except to be willing to love a flawed person. Which is true. But I was committing that fatal error of not truly understanding Jesus' teaching of the second greatest commandment - that you can only love another flawed person...
...as you love your flawed self.
Anyway, I quieted my usual questions, lowered the customary red flags, and I moved forward into knowing this man-boy, hoping that I could still find the answer to the echoes of disappointment, and maybe even a reason for how the past brought me to this moment. The story played out pretty typically. A girl trying too hard to be available. A boy using that vulnerability according to his natural desires. A kiss. Nakedness.
Skin against skin, I dared to stop the moment and ask a laughably absurd question: "Does this mean that we're boyfriend and girlfriend?" That one question so disturbed the present illusion of physical wanting that we found our way back into our clothes for "the talk." His response? To look at me intensely and utter these words: "Don't ever cheat on me." I was astonished as we had absolutely no history indicating the probability of such harm, but I swore my allegiance.
I should have known then.
Over the next three weeks, we played the game of "boyfriend and girlfriend," with all of its privileges and luxuries, and of course complete disregard for the responsibilities. As stupid love does, it violates all the rules and ignores all the consequences in a naive faith that both people are genuine and true. For me, it had been seven years since I had dated anyone with the actual hope that I could find a reprieve to that long ago heartbreak. I wanted so badly to move on and he seemed as close as I could find to that urgent need. Plus, it was that snowy season of scarves muskly scented, rosy-cheeked snuggles, and holding mittened hands.
Leading up to the actual day of Christmas, I planned out a series of surprise gifts for him, fashioned after the 12 days of Christmas. I remember one wrapped gift I took to the clinic which I left with one of his colleagues as a surprise when he returned. The final gift was overtly symbolic, the book by Shel Silverstein, "The Missing Piece." He was embarrassed by the gift left publicly with his co-worker. And the book was barely glanced at before being relegated to some drawer of dust and forgetting.
I should have known then.
Over New Years, we decided to attend an orchestral concert in Seoul with another dating couple with whom we were friends. We planned a romantic dinner at the Dragon Hill Lodge and reserved a room for the night. I should have known when he untucked his mittened hand from mine on the bus ride up to Seoul. And I should have known before the hotel dinner when I returned to our group after a restroom visit to find our friends, but not him. He had gone ahead and seated himself without waiting for me. But the night was perfect, the music was beautiful, and I couldn't bear to destroy the illusion that I so badly wanted to believe in. That night, when we finally retired to our hotel room, alone, together, the final unraveling came and I could not hold the threads together any longer.
Each suite had a lovely picture window looking out over the sparkling city lights and we pulled the small couch around to take in the view of Seoul at night. I laid my head against the warmth of his sweater while we began to talk. It was then that he popped the question.
"Maybe we should just be friends?"
I might be a fool for love, but I'm not a fool for words. Time evaporated as I pulled back immediately to the other end of the couch and looked at him intently with dread, dismay, and building anger. Slowly, my exacting analysis of his proposal devolved into sobbing a mixture of rejection and rage, and I finally said all the things to him that I should have said to so many half-hearted lovers before. I think I may have even been choking out that tangled knot of anger and hurt and betrayal still unresolved from the wound left by N.
He was trapped by my emotion, forced to weather the storm, and I took full advantage of it; there was nowhere for him to go except to hear me out. He begged for us to just get some sleep and put off the inevitable until morning. When I finally relented my torrent, I lay there rigidly on the bed miles away from him, listening as he so casually welcomed the respite and peacefully fell asleep. As my head and sinuses began to clear, I moved quietly about the room, getting dressed, gathering my things. I found some pen and paper, tucked one last note of goodbye into his wallet, and took the bus back to Osan by myself in the cold darkness of a godforsaken hour. I was finished with hoping that the story would end any better than that and I refused to endure the awkward return in silence with him the next morning.
The weeks that followed were heavy with depression. It was then that Johann talked me into making this video in an attempt to find some sort of emotional catharsis. The bitter irony is that I didn't know yet that our story was far from over. And while I was agonizing about the struggles of finding and perpetually losing love, I had no idea of how low I would still stoop to salvage my fantasies of belonging, pregnant with turmoil and shame.
The story is dark and depressing.
The storm clouds billow and churn as
the lightning stings and the thunder groans.
But the story is not mine alone. And as I have uncautiously and indiscriminately poured out my words in writing, there have been a few who have named a sisterhood of such knowing that I am graced by a solidarity and companionship stranger than what I have lost. One particular friend persistently urges me to remember and care for this pained, chaotic, foolish girl that I was.
Kay,
I write today to thank you for your friendship, your unwavering support, and for sharing with me the many ways that our stories have proven to be inexplicably intertwined. I met you through David's kindness, when he befriended me in that quaint military chapel in San Angelo. And because of your son, you and I have stumbled into a kindred spirit of struggling with faith, sharing a love for languages and music, and treading those cold, calamitous waters of aloneness, of loving, losing, and discovering. You should know that I preserve these uncomfortable recollections of myself only because you repeatedly assure me that there is something of hidden value in these words of my younger self.
What else can I say?
These are for you for as long as they are a gift to the girl in you. Thank you for knowing the girl in me.
You have definitely won me over.
