The darkest hour is just before dawn
On Wednesday I returned from four days in Charleston with N to 24 hours of full disclosure that brought an end to the lying and deceit that has darkened my days. A banal email that remains a question mark sent without knowing what underpinned the simple words of introduction. People I love are hurt and angry as they should be. S said he is in shock and feels betrayed on every level and that now the city’s devastation truly reflects his inner being. V writes me questioning forethought on my part and whether there ever was a friendship to betray. I fall back on my lame apologetic sword because I have nothing good to offer up by way of apology nor do I have the promise that I can undo, make it all right, or hold back from it in any meaningful way.
The surreal quality of life that began with returning home, then leaving home, then returning home again all tangled up with losing love, finding love attached to a huge human price tag, confronting your demons, unleashing your demons, and having others demonize you has left me unmoored. My friends say I am holding up well, but then they call at odd hours and hear me sobbing so hard I cannot speak to them on the phone.
Today I heard in N’s email that the plan is to limit my exposure to W. On Wednesday, S waited for me at the Can when I returned from the airport and on my desk was the ripped in half birthday card he wrote me and a ripped photograph of W. Do people really feel the need to use a 6 year old boy to exact their pound of flesh? Does everyone believe that my love for W should be shut down because I am evil enough to have fallen in love with his father?
I am not trying to justify my ways to the world and I won’t fall back on merely feet of clay apologies. I did not operate with forethought as V suggests. I tried to enter the next phase of a long marriage and failed to make the next step. I tried to nip feelings for a friend, N – who I had long felt a strong link to – in the midst of a natural catastrophe and a birth unfolding and instead those feelings overcame rational sense of propriety, of right and wrong, of restraint – at every critical juncture of assessment and attempts to unwind and segment, those feelings exploded off the page forming their own assessment of how things should be, could be, instead of how they had been, are, were. Grace under pressure, perhaps not, but I don’t live inside a work of fiction.
I want a new year. I want those I have hurt to find solace. I want W in my life. I want N to flourish as a fully realized man wherever he decides to belong. I want my mother in a safe place. I want to wake up in New Orleans and know that she has a fighting chance to rebound. I want full disclosure – full feeling – full living instead of trying to invent a life of parts, trying to hide the sparkle in my eyes because of what it suggests, of muting my passion for those and that which sing to me, most of all I want to feel like I am living the best life I can under these extremely volatile times.
December 17th, 2005 at 6:50 am
I think you do live inside a work of fiction and it’s a poorly written southern gothic romance where the heroine is clueless to the destruction she has wrought on those around her even as she’s dumbfounded that she is demonized by those she has hurt and by even those innocent bystanders who are bearing witness to the tawdry affair unfold. So now everyone wonders at the subtext, at what’s not yet written a sick plot to steal W by stealing N? A waiting game now for a year or so to let things cool down, then get together in the next chapter? Personally I am amazed that you are allowed access to either W or N at all or that V would take N back. “Does everyone believe that my love for W should be shut down because I am evil enough to have fallen in love with his father?” Of course we do. You write this with the ironic tone of one who is in love and believes that love allows you to act any way you want to, other people be damned. It’s not that you are evil enough to have fallen in love with his father, it’s that you are evil enough to have acted on it. The fact that V just had a baby just makes it that much sicker. Go back and review all of your entries about S and how selfish he has been. Who in the end is the selfish one? Who has sought to demonize whom in this blog? Let’s hope S has found some unfamiliar ass to comfort himself with.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
It would be interesting to know details
November 5th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
The details flow pretty much candidly throughout, don’t they?
August 4th, 2011 at 2:09 pm
But you’re a lesbian. How could you fall in love with the father?
August 4th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
I love this comment. I’m not this or that. My sexuality like many women you will meet in your life is defined as fluid rather than as straight or gay. It always has been. I have fallen for the person not the gender. My sympathies go to those who are defined by gay or lesbian as from birth on they have been dealt the most difficult path. I read a good article recently about how easy it is for a woman over 50 to switch teams – and I agree with that statement – I wouldn’t have considered a life with a woman before, my mind was 99% on men. But after a certain age companionship means more about what you have in common rather than simple chemical attraction – and what I share in common with my partner is a desire to raise a child, a desire to travel, and a clean home. I can tell you with almost utmost certainty that finding a male companion at 50 to journey down this same life path with would have been next to impossible and so I’m lucky that I found the right partner for me.