I’d never been hit before. But then I’d never fallen in love with someone else’s husband before either. I sat there and took it. The screaming, the swearing, the cold hard sting as her hand connected with the left side of my face. After all I deserved to have to sit and take it. I had no leg to stand on. I had done it.
I learned that it’s not always about forgiving the other person. It’s letting go and forgiving yourself. It’s feeling comfortable in your own skin again – even if it was the same skin that took part in things you’d like to forget.
And in this moment, we are also sitting on the stone bench for the last time as brother and sister. I continue to get texts that his granddaughter struggles to be born. We sit adjacent to two fifty foot tall willows. We are trying to say good bye:
It's easy to forget. It's easy to succumb to self-doubt, to the nagging voices in your mind. It is easy to fall to the comparison trap. To forget that you are beautiful in your individuality; incredible as you are. You are needed, wanted and loved.
I didn’t cry when I hugged her. I didn’t cry until I did. Then I still cried non tears. I silently shook. I shook so violently, I shook both of us. I think I shook the damn car. I shook the world around me with pounds of sorrow and silent screams. The harder I cried the dry cry, the harder I held on to her . I was afraid to let go. Afraid of the things I might be letting go of.
All eyes were on me. My heartbeat rang through my ears and yet still I could hear the whispers. The walk to our seats felt like eternity. A part of me was scared. It wasn’t the whispers, looks, or even the snarky remarks that brought the rest of the students back to their lively chatter that worried me. It was the look in their eyes. Worse, it was the look in the teacher’s eyes that I wouldn’t forget.
But when you slide into this hotel room bed, a clandestine act that once incited great passion, and begin making what used to be called love with your husband, or something you thought was love, you sense the gig is up. Though nothing was actually said, you know deep down inside that the love you’re desperate to retrieve, is nowhere to be found.
Fat faggot was what they called me from eighth through twelfth grades. It had been just plain faggot before then. And sissy and sweet thang and Oreo and mutt and sometimes halfbreed and once or twice even cracker. But it was fat faggot that stayed.
Exhale deeply and wonder if this is the only time when you are truly relaxed, when no one needs you, when you are all alone. Resolve to be better about meditating in the mornings.
This recovery that has been ripping up your life is now sewing it back together. It made all those cracks and rips and cuts—so that the light could find a way in. Soon you find that it is yourself who is doing the outing. You find that while you tried to hide being in a hospital for three months with excuses like a “work trip” or “school thing”, that you are grateful, so grateful, that people saw through you. Your secrets have been told. It is no longer horrifying. It is setting you free. You are not an eating disorder, but you are not ashamed of living through one. And you finally feel like saying it.
I wake early and get up to use the bathroom. The toilet paper is colored by an angry streak of red. I stare at my feet resting on the cracked tiled floor. I put my head into my hands and cry.
If life is normally a fat layer cake, I've been living thin in the uppermost layer. The layers labeled with things like writing, work, cleaning, and exercise have collapsed under the weight of that thin upper layer called day-to-day survival.
