Agent of God

God, you said, brought us together.

But I remember differently. You encouraged me to meet you by implying a deal I could not pass up. I trusted you and flew 2400 miles to see a home that I was already in love with. And you knew that and you threw God in the mix to help seal the deal. Perhaps it was God who jumped in and upped the price you implied I could INCREASE my offer by $125K? No, I'm pretty sure that was you.

God, it seems brought you and the seller of the home together too. You both had brushes with cancer - his wife - your son. Your son recovered. His wife died. So much info to tell someone just there to look at a home. You made sure the seller heard how God brought you and I together too. Was it really ok to have me meet him? Was it really ok to insist you represent us both? God must have been talking to you because all I could hear was my loss = your gain. You even told me how you would spend your commission once I bought the home. With tears, you said, "I'll take my husband and son to visit my adopted daughter in Peru." You really took that sponsor a child thing seriously, huh? My son turned to you and said, "the tears are a nice touch."

You sang "my God is an awesome God" while we road across the lake in the seller's boat. This just after to offered to get him a scotch to drink and to sit on his lap. Once back at the house, you grabbed my hand, and my son's (openly agnostic) and the seller's and made us all pray with you. You thanked God and it was just after that you let me know that the seller would never accept the amount you'd first suggested and that I needed to offer $125K more. Once I made it clear that was not going to happen, you broke out your cigarettes and began to smoke in the car. Your car, your rules, but first thing that morning you'd asked us if it bothered us if you smoked. We said yes, it would bother us.

My son asked you a question about smoking and cancer, "How can you smoke when you almost lost a son to cancer? Don't you know the chances of you getting cancer from smoking is high?" Ok, he is full of advice and went on and on about the percentages and age related facts. Annoying, but he was correct.

Do you recall what you said next? Oh, I'm sure God heard you as well as we did. You said to my 18 year old son, "Well, you are gay. You are going to fuck a guy and die of aids."

Anonymous

Words can say a lot about a person.  

you have been leaving coments on my msn page stay of it i dont no how you got into my site and i no i didnt add you so i.ll be reporting you to the computer company aswell as the intenational police for fraud.this is not a joke so dont fcken treat it like it is!

You are right. It is not funny. 

You are afraid. You are hurting.

If I had left comments for you, they would have been positive.

If I had left comments for you, they would not have been anonymous.

IP

Yes, I've read your blogs.

I'll bet you track your visitors, so for the record, that's my address. Yeah, I've been away a long time and I should stay away, but now and then I hear the sirens and can't help but rubberneck. Go on, look back, I can wait. I'm not going anywhere.

I know, I am not your target audience, so who is?

Let's see, your blog is about you, but aren't they all about ourselves, really? And you post photos and art about you, and you include your image in almost everything you create. The word "narcissist" comes to mind. So either your target audience is YOU or people who can't get enough of you.

In simple terms: if someone HAS had enough of you - then that person is no longer in your audience - targeted or otherwise.

Crossing the hatch line

My sister and I used to insist there was a line down the center of the backseat of our parent's car. There was my side. There was her side. We called it "hatching" the car. It allowed us to disagree without either of us being wrong. As long as she stayed on her side of the "hatch" I was cool with whatever. But crossing the "hatch line" meant full on battle.

I admit, there were times I let my shoulder slip just past the imaginary line, hoping she would blow up and get yelled at. I am certain she did the same. We both craved being able to be the smug one. It never lasted. We simply could not allow the other to get away with hatch violations because it was never really about the line.

Our parents wanted us to get along. We were sisters. We should have been nicer to each other. We should have shared. We fought our battle over butt space, but we the real conflict was over emotional territory. We were both certain the other was loved more, and fighting over that could not be mentioned. To be honest meant losing the illusion of control.

I would set her up, then rat her out. She would slap her own face then claim I hit her. We would say anything to make ourselves look good or the other look bad. I was older, thus expected to know better. I was older, thus assumed to be the one who started it. She was younger, so her emotional response, tears, were ok. I was told to stop crying because it was believed I was crying on purpose. Which of course caused me to believe she was crying on purpose and thus being falsely accused of something I was certain she was doing. Being falsely accused made me furious. Being furious led me to set her up again.

Of course this is me looking back. I had no idea at the time why I felt as I did, or why I did what I did. I was doing what I felt I needed to to hold my emotional place in our family. The lying, the manipulation - they never worked. I've learned through my life that honesty makes me happy. I also learned that nothing hurts me more than being accused of manipulation. I don't lie. I cry because I am sad. I say what I say because it's how I feel. I have no hidden agendas. They make no sense to me.

Ah History. You've become my little sister haven't you? Slapping your face and showing others the mark left. You've drawn a hatch line between us. And just like my sister and I, it's not about butt space.

I could fill this story with my feelings, but only one matters.
I don't trust you.

Tethered

If there is something I can do to help you, I do. I don't add up what that means to me. I don't figure my cut or how much I stand to loose . I believe, instead, that by helping you I'm helping myself. Good given = good received.

I imagine us on a raft, floating along together, each of us assisting the other. Happy and content in the knowledge that we are there to support each other. If something is better for you than for me - yours! If something is better for me than for you - mine! And all the rest we share.

But you aren't sharing. You fight to keep control of everything. By holding on so tightly, you are losing much more than you are keeping. Opportunities you can't imagine are moving past you as if you are a rock in river.

I imagine a time when you realize there is more in front of you than what you think you see. I imagine your respect - for me - for others. I imagine you giving without thinking of it as loss. I imagine not needing to untie the knot.

But I know I can't stay tethered to you as you are now.

Inner child

I remember you as childless, filled to the brim with yourself. Singular, no matter who was in your life, frozen in the you I knew then. Time stopped.

I found your son online when I was looking for you.

He is the lifetime that's past since I knew you. He has your eyes and your energy. I looked through the clues he chooses to share with the world and I could see a person filled to the brim with himself. Your child no longer a child. Childless. Singular. Moving at light speed. Inner child brought into reality, raised and nurtured, then released to fly or fall.

You are again childless, as am I. Our inner children now young adults living their own lives much as we lived ours. And each of us filled to the brim with all the time that's passed and all the people we've met along the way.

You lived through it

It made you who you are today.

You've shared bits of it as you've gone along. Kindred souls took in your words and understood it from their own perspectives, but only you know what you lived through.

Tears well up from that dark place where you locked up your memories. You talk to yourself. Pain revealed, love remembered, shared with personal ghosts you move a step further into your future.

Your life - a series of events that made you who you were, who you are, who you will be. And somewhere, our lives crossed. Good or bad we shared a bit of it together and it made me who I am today.

Thank you.

The present of the past

You've grown up. You're older. I'm older. And yet, I can still see you, inside. Something wonderful is happening. The world is getting smaller. I've missed you.
::::hugs::::

Just the way you are

I know you love me. You tell over and over, "I love you!" Abundant and plentiful as tap water, "I love you's" flow from your mouth. I don't know why you need to say it as often as you do. But you do. That's just the way you are.

I know you love your friends. You spend hour after hour, day after day online - connected through games and team speak. Their voices echoing yours as laughter spills from the office. I don't know why you choose online over the real world as often as you do. But you do. That's just the way you are.

Once upon a time, I was not sure "I love you" was enough.I found my heart pulled by another who also said "I love you" but who did not live online with his friends. I know it hurt you. I will never stop feeling bad for hurting you. I know you don't want to remember that time. But you do. That's just the way you are.

When I was "not sure" I found myself thin and fit. I had lost weight. I almost lost us. You said "choose me." And I did. And then I gained and gained. And in the past 10 years when I've tried to lose what I gained, you'd say say "I love you just the way you are." You say "You aren't supposed to be thin." You say "Eat, eat. You can't lose weight. You've always been big." That's just the way you are.

I felt so guilty over hurting you that I padded my body to keep anyone but you from finding me attractive. I think you are afraid if I lose weight, you'll lose me.

The way it wasn't

You loved him for who you thought he was.
You planned your wedding, named your children.

You photographed yourself as if you were looking into your future as his one and only, as if wanting it more than anything could make it real. You wished as if God was only granting one wish to one girl and that girl had to be you because you above all other girls deserved it. You deserved him. You were meant to be with him. Him. Him. Him.

If he was the person you thought he was, wouldn't he be with you now?
Wouldn't he be holding you at night and saying a million I love yous?

If he was the person you thought he was, wouldn't he have been with you then? Wouldn't he have met you in person, even once?

Maybe he really was that person.
Just not yours.

Starving

You are not starving for food.

Your hunger is for release from anxiety and depression. You feel if you eat everything you want you can fill that deep empty place inside then you can be satisfied long enough to forget your shortcomings. Pot and alcohol may relax your mind, but not your need to feed. What starts as a break from reality ends in you raiding the cupboards for anything there is a lot of. That's because you also have a fear of being without.

The larger you become the more the hunger grows. Another log on the anxiety fire. You workout and eat right during the day, but darkness outside and inside loosens your grip each night.

You need to find the strength to put out the fire or it will consume you - leaving you nothing but dust.

You

I don't really know you.
I know how beautifully you've written down your thoughts.

I don't really know you, but I call you a friend.
Your encouragement started me on this path - to write these "memories."

I don't really know you, but I love you.
Soul to soul, with no other reason than we are alive on this planet.

I don't really know you, but I am thankful for you.
Thank you for being there to find.

You know who you are.

At arm's length

I was in my fifties when we finally talked about my childhood.

Oh, I'd asked questions and you'd given me a glimpse or two into your life - but in my cousin's kitchen, we enlightened each other. The safe distance we'd put between us was not there that morning. I found myself pouring out memories and stories about my life as your child. I talked about wanting to take my life at 15. I talked about the man in the park when I was 7. I talked about locking you out of your house when I was 5. I talked about what it was like to be your baby and see you through the bars in my crib and know you would not be coming in to hold me.

I was in my fifties when I finally felt you loved me.

With the Kansas sunlight spilling across the table and all those clocks ticking around us, you said the words I'd needed to hear forever. "I am so sorry, Debbie. I was not there for you."

You believed then that it was a wife's duty to put her husband first and her children second. It was your intense love for my father that kept you at a distance from me. To the 20-something you, there was only so much love to go around. You had to be frugal. You learned to hold me at arm's length and I learned to take attention anywhere I could find it.

I was in my fifties when, finally, I stopped.

I love you mom.

Bursting the bubble

The day I told you what I was REALLY thinking ended our friendship.

I find myself playing back that phone conversation in my head with remorse. How much of what I said set you on the path that ultimately led to your death?

I said what I did because I saw you wallowing, thrashing against what was true. You wanted what you wanted. You felt nothing for the people around you other than what they could do for you. You wanted to be pitied, to be cared for, to be the focus of attention. You took it all to the point of creating your own version of reality where you could say what you wanted and everyone would just listen. Many actually played along. You were believable. I did not believe you but pretended I did. I could see beyond the words to what you were feeling.

I spent years letting you vent until you began to manifest your fantasies. People were getting hurt. You were a train bent on crashing head on to destroy the good in your life and people around you to make a point about what you could not have. To get your way. To be happy.

Friends tended to believe rather than question you. With only one side of the story - your side - I'm sure they found it easier to agree and give you their verbal support then move on to their own lives. Your life was a side story to them. What they so casually accepted as truth fueled your fantasies.

Your downward spiral was epic. Many of your friends saw the drinking. Many saw the control issues. That day, the day I told you what I was really thinking , I saw it all. I realized that your side of all the stories could not be true. They'd grown too elaborate. They fit together too well. You were no longer calling to get clarity, you were calling to gather an army. You were going to war against your ex boyfriend. A conspiracy of your own creation pushed you to take dramatic action. Your needs were not being met. You were being taken for granted. You had done so much for him, and he had lied to you. He had taken from you. You were going to bring him down for hurting you.

The day I told you the truth I spoke from my heart. I loved you and you needed help. You needed therapy. You needed to stop drinking. You needed to see the difference between your reality and actual reality. I heard "a huhs" and "mmm's" but you did not hear me. You were already spinning my words in a new direction. It was expected. I could take being your next disappointment as long as you stopped hurting others.

I did not stop being your friend on that day. As the truth came pouring out I felt so close to you. I felt like my words might wash over you and give you insight. I felt we could take steps together to get you help. I let you know, I would be spreading the truth so all your friends could help you too. That was too much. I know it now. But you said then you understood. And the calls began. I found them. All your friends and family spread out across the country. I called contacted each and we talked about you. First they said what you'd told them, then what they knew, then they listened as I filled in the gaps and made sense of the story. At the end of each conversation I knew more about you. I had another friend pulling for you to get well. Your midnight call list grew thin as more and more of your friends chose not to listen to your drunken rants.

If you had not stopped talking to me, maybe I could have helped make sense of it all for you.I'd brought it on. I wanted to scream "ME! I did this. I know you love me. Can you see that I am doing this because I love you?"

You did much of what you said you'd do. You pushed people from your life. You turned every event into another reason for you to act and think like you did. You let the love around you turn to mud no one wanted to wade through. Loving you was a trap - one got stuck - and once stuck you had a captive audience.

Maybe our friendship ended because you wanted to send me a message. Maybe by pushing me out of your life I would somehow feel what you were feeling. You may not have been in contact with me, but I was still in contact with all your friends. They saw me as the only connection to you that was solid. I was the only person not on your list of conspirators. I was the only person you were not spinning stories about. When you spoke to friends, it was as if I vanished from your mind.

You lost everything the month's after I'd talked to you. I know now it was really your own doing, but I'd turned up the speed so you'd hit bottom faster. You were taking care of your mother in San Diego when you first attempted suicide. You family should have called me. I would have come. I wish I'd come. They put you into a clinic and you talked your way out. That makes me smile as much as it makes me sad. You were so charismatic, so persuasive. It was one of the things we all loved about you.

You used to tell me your worst fear was to have nothing, to have no one.

When you life passed before your eyes did you finally see?

You had everything.

Russian

Everyone has something in common with everyone else.

Today I stood to one side while other more influential people did their meet and greet. I hovered near you, waiting my turn tell you how wonderful your performance was. That was the appropriate thing to say, the expected thing. But lately I've found come to realize the joy in finding common ground.

I grew up in Kansas. My father and grandmother were Jewish. As a child I was obsessed with show tunes. I sang constantly. I loved the Wizard of Oz. I thought I was Dorothy.

You laughed and said you thought you were Dorothy too.

The missing

You were born on my birthday so it's no wonder we are so alike.

Can a mother and son be twins? I could read you like no one else. And you me. It was both wondrous and annoying. We could see when the other was frustrated and when the world went dark. You always knew what to tell me to bring me back. I did my best to let you find your own way while letting you know I was always just a hand's reach away.

Tonight, I am much further than that.
But I think my concern is as much for myself as for you.

You are setting up your dorm room tonight. Beginning your own life. I know you can conquer your frustrations and find the light in the darkness. I know you will call or text or email if you need me. And I know I need to let go.

For weeks you've been saying "I am leaving..." and it felt like you wanted me to say I would miss you and that I did not know how I would live without you. I could not say those things. Yesterday I said " how can I miss you when you haven't left yet?

I miss you now.

Bubble of calm

You'd planned your life and the things around you so carefully. You were living where and how you'd always dreamed with a wonderful man who loved you and who provided for you. The house he bought was at the top of a hill and the world looked up to you.

Charmed. You were always charmed it was part of what everyone loved about you. Flaming red hair, blue eyes and more energy than the energizer bunny. I loved you to bits but to spend time with you in Portland was exhausting. On my last visit you told me go relax in the jacuzzi tub off the master bedroom. You did not tell me the toilet next to the bath was stopped up and overflowing with shit. Why were you still using it? Why didn't you just call a plumber to fix it? I took my bath and held my nose and my tongue. And when you came up with a glass of wine for me and talked on and on about how fabulous this bathtub was, I let my smile lie for me. I'm not good with lies. And I sensed you would not hear the truth. You were already trapped inside the life you were pretending to have. To you, there was no shit.

He'd left you by then. It was not official, but then how official does it have to be when you were never married. He was off skiing for the winter, driving an rented RV so he could just sleep in the parking lots. He'd invited you to go with him. I heard him. He meant it.

The food in your fridge was all past it's dates. Some of it by more than a year. Like Blanche in a Streetcar named Desire, you “always relied upon the kindness of strangers”. Literally and without a second thought. A call to go to dinner meant someone was buying you dinner. An invitation to go skiing in Park City meant airfare, room, food, alcohol, lift ticket, and likely a shiny new ski jumper.

You were living in a home owned by your boyfriend. A home you talked him into buying because you did not like his other home. This one had the blue and yellow kitchen you'd always knew you'd have. When you needed a car, he gave you money for a new one, and you bought a used Lexus instead. You had no money for repairs the car felt like the contents of your fridge. A part of your plan was to be rich. Looking rich was the first step.

He stopped by and you attacked him. Hitting him and throwing printouts at him. Accusing him of having an affair with a married minister. You had this planned, your counter attack. You'd been reading his emails and emailing back. In fact you'd already decided the affair was REAL and you'd told everyone. Including the woman's husband and congregation and your family, and all his friends. THIS was the reason he were leaving you after he'd promised to take care of you.
None of it was true, but you convinced many people it might be.

You began attacking yourself. Knocking yourself in the face and tossing yourself against the walls and furniture to inflict bruises. You yelled, "spousal abuse" over and over as he walked out the door.

You insisted you did not need to work, even through there was never any money in your wallet. For years I suggested you needed to plan for a life beyond him. You were sure he would always take care of you "he'd promised!" No, he didn't. He told me as much. He was a concerned about you as I was. But we were all co-dependents afraid if we suddenly stopped you would kill yourself.

And you did.
The process was not unlike your plan for your life.

One by one those that loved you confronted you. He was the first. The stock you'd talked him into selling that bought the house and the trip around the world and the lexus and his retirement - tanked. It was now worth next to nothing. He was no longer living in the house with you. He needed to sell his house. You insisted you should get half of the sale. He reminded you it was not your house and in fact he was loosing money on the sale. He was letting you live there until you could find another home. It was amazing that the house could be shown at all. And when it sold, you refused to leave. He and his friends had to come with a truck and haul your sprawled belongings to storage. You they hauled to another friend willing to take you in. You slept on the couch in their basement just as he had for all the months you'd been unwilling to leave his house. They were kind to you. They probably felt they could help.

Last night I became overwhelmed. Too much was going on around me I could not control and I kept breaking into tears. So I took a pill, two pills - just to relax and get my work done. But after a half hour the work was so unimportant. I moved to the living room and found myself sitting in the last place you sat in my home. It was just the softest corner and I thought "I could feel even better with a drink." Looking for white wine or vodka - I did think of you and the last time you were here. You took Valium then secretly drank every clear liquor in my house. I wanted to understand you, so I choose vodka sand sipped it watching TV. This was the feeling you were craving. The effect of the Valium and vodka had me feeling NOTHING - just a bubble of calm. No stress. No responsibilities. No reality.

I got myself back to bed but I don't remember it. Ben said he found me in bed fully dressed with my mouth wide open. The lights were on but I was out. I remember all the times I found you like that and the times you sleepwalked through my house looking for something you'd lost. I the end you'd lost everything.

You took a lot of Valium and wine before you walked into the swimming pool fully dressed in a bubble of calm nothingness.

If there is a heaven

Lately I've found myself missing friends and lovers I no longer have in my life.

I'm still here, in this house, in this town. I still do the same work I've been doing for more than 30 years. People I used to think of my best friends no longer live here or no longer live at all. I don't know what force pulled them or me out of each other's lives.

I find myself passing a house I spent evenings in and I remember the food and the wine and the conversation and the feeling of "then." And I miss it. I can feel it like it was last night and yet I know, I am not the same person I was then. I've grown old, older, and so have they and they too are not who they were. Maybe they are no longer a couple as I am no longer a couple with the husband I was married to then.

And all those times I stepped away from my life and into relationships that while considered to be wrong, moved me so much - taught me so much. The memories of being present with that connection, however brief, but intense. A drunken kiss. An admission of caring, of longing. Was it really me back then? And what of the feelings and memories of those I connected with? Am I a memory to them as they are to me? I don't want to go back, I just want to remember, with someone who was there with me.

Perhaps that's the real pain we feel. That we are each of us alone to ponder what was.

I miss you too. I miss all of you.

I wish there was a day when we could each list out all the people we'd love to reconnect with or meet for the first time - and like speed dating we'd move through them catching up or coming together but only for a limited time - and then at the end of the day if each checked each other's name on the card - you'd get more time to remember together. If there is a heaven - I hope that's what's waiting for me. The chance to go back and reconnect. The chance to say that how I felt was real and honest and I don't regret a thing, except how it ended.

How did they all end? I'd love to know what I don't know.

If I could start my life over, I would make sure each person who touched my heart knew.