A Heart's Gamble

Image from here.

Eyes smile at each other and touches linger. Flirtation plants its seed and desire waters it. Between would you like another drink and you're beautiful, we kiss. Boom boom double-boom, goes my heart, and in an instant smaller than a sigh, hope is born. 

Legs interlace, noses touch, hips kiss. Grr grr grrar, goes my body, and in between this is nice and yeah there, my armor falls to the floor. 

I am nervous, he touches my cheek and torsos piece into each other, a puzzle completed.

Vulnerable and hopeful, I rest on his chest and wait for his lips to find my forehead, his heart to find mine. 

But it doesn't. 

His body goes cold. I don't want to hurt you, I'm not ready for more than this, I don't want you to have expectations, his lips say instead. 

Boom. 

In a breath of space smaller than the sigh in which it was birthed, hope is killed. Desire vanishes, hearts hide.

I turn away and quickly touch my heart. Shh, little heart, it's okay. We'll be okay. We were too quick to trust. We know how this goes. Let's pack up and go now. 

I get up from the bed, and I feel a part of me stay there. That's the gamble; a part of us is always lost. Good bye, my sweet romantic girl. 

I pick up my armor from the floor and put it back on. It is heavier now.  I feel my edges sharpen, I am older. It will be harder to take off next time...

I Wonder About You

Are you better at sadness now? 

I am. Or at least I am used to it. I have not been as sad as you, for as long, but sadness is sadness, and it's deathly in all its sizes.


Do they, the new "she's"-- (I rather think there are many than one; one is too threatening still.) Do they understand? Are they better at it than I was? 

I didn't set the bar too high. But still, I hope they are not.


Are things like smiling and tomorrow still chores? 

I wanted so much to make you smile; I failed to understand you needed me to be the one person you did not have to smile for. Or talk about tomorrow with, for that matter.


Do you still ache for the mundane? 

Sameness, which was so excruciating to me, is precisely what I miss the most.


Do you fit in yet? 

I can't imagine you do. You are an outsider and you are arrogant-- rightfully so, you are too smart and too beautiful for normality. I was much better at seeming comfortable. But it's a pose, nonetheless. I think I have become more transparent and tired. A facade requires cement-like armor and energy.


Are you forgetting? 

I am. 

I would rather who I was be dead to both of us. 


And... Do you, too, wonder?

I hope not. And I hope not never.


*

A Leap

It takes me a year to get over a loss. Be it heartbreak, a death, the end of school, or a friend who moves away; the first year is always full of anniversaries. I keep a one-sentence-a-day-for-five-years journal, so every day I read what I was doing exactly one year prior. I do this deliberately, because I like to remember, relive, and re-feel. It's how I cherish what once was and let it go fully, without storing unnecessary sadness or pain.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the incredibly painful end to my last relationship. Yesterday meant I survived that first year after losing him and the following 365 days of remembering him.

But today was the 29th of February. Today did not exist last year. Today was new.

Take a leap, my phone reminded me at 9:00am today. Have I grown? Am I changed? Have I healed? Am I okay yet? 

I don't know. But I am here. My little heart is still beating fiercely, anxious to be filled with love again.

And on this day, after all those days of what was, there is nothing to remember.

It is almost midnight. Today provided a crack between this "year" and the next one. The one that is not full of anniversaries anymore. The one that might be full of possibilities. I am about to step into tomorrow.

No, not step. Leap.



Leap with me?

Forced Intimacy

He unloads the dishes.

She folds their clothes.

He brings her flowers.

She leaves chocolates on his pillow.

He brings her coffee.

She sends him texts throughout the day.

They sleep together.

They look good together.

They want the same things.

But...

He doesn't hold her hand underneath the table.

She is distracted when they watch TV together.

He plays with his phone while she talks.

She doesn't tell him that she's mad.

He doesn't tell her that he's sad.

She forgets to kiss him.

He doesn't mind sitting apart from her.

She is afraid of leaving him.

They can hear the sound of their forks hitting their plates.

They sleep together.

They look good together.

They want the same things...

When An Ex Reads Your Blog

People have asked me if, when I write, I take into consideration that my ex (ex's...) may be reading.

The answer is yes and no; how could I and how could I not?

Sometimes, as I am writing, I definitely hope that he might read it. I hope that he will know how I feel now, know that I still think about him, know that I am still sorry, know that even if we never see each other again, he meant a lot to me. Back when I was really hurting, I used this blog to purge my pain and I did hope to reach him. I hoped to somehow show him that I was human, since I knew I had turned into someone he couldn't love anymore. I ached for his forgiveness, and I was asking for it through every avenue I could think of. I had no interest in seeming strong, put together, over it, and better off without him. I was broken and I missed him desperately; it leaked right through my writing weather I wanted it to or not. I didn't have any guarantees that he'd read my blog, but I figured that if I could put it out into the universe, it might help me to heal anyway. 

At the same time, I had to set the thoughts of him reading it aside in order to hit publish. I have plenty of drafts of posts I wrote that I didn't have the courage to publish because the thought of him reading it mortified me. So, the ones I've published here I've done so by letting go of wondering weather he'd read it or not; I published them because I wanted them to exist regardless of his possible reactions. I needed to put them out here, where they could touch others, shift, and bounce back to me as a little bit of armor, a drop of medicine, a step closer to relief.

When I've written about older ex's, I have generally written under the assumption that they do not read my blog. I have been mostly wrong, as many have contacted me to tell me they do, in fact, read it. Still, I never took down any published posts because I believed they all had value. If I ever wrote a blog that downright offended someone or exposed them in a way they did not want to be exposed, and they let me know, I would take it down. It hasn't happened yet, because I believe they all know that our stories can serve others, and that I write here what has helped me to heal and become a stronger, more loving person.

I don't think he, or any of my ex's, wish to see me in pain, or get off on how much losing them has hurt me. I don't think any of them come here hunting for evidence that they scarred me in some way, or wanting to read about my inevitably biased perception of what we lived through so that they can then write me an angry email about how wrong I have it all.

So, why do they come here?

If I were to guess, I'd say it's for the same reason I still write about them, too; because no matter how much pain and disappointment we may have caused one another, we meant something to each other, and that's hard to find.

Love's Scars

I distinctly remember the realization I had after the first time I got my heart badly broken. Everyone said, It'll pass, You will heal, This won't kill you, It gets better with time. And my realization, which came upon me one day mid-recovery while crying so hard I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to see the tissue box, was that this was precisely the problem: Surviving something hurts like a bitch! If it had killed me, if I hadn't been able to heal, if time didn't do it's thing, then I wouldn't have had to go through the survival thing- the torturous learning experience, the painful growth stuff, and the what doesn't kill you makes you stronger routine. Survival is linked to the biting pain of loss, and it means carrying that pain with us and living with it, because no, it does not always kill us.

We were all happier before we lost that person we loved. Music, poetry, and films have reinforced this fact over and over again:

Raul Seixas, genius of Brazilian music, says in one of his songs, "Today I know/ that no one in this world is happy/ having loved once."

Pablo Neruda wrote, "Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

In the 1961 movie, Two Rode Together, Marshal Guthrie McCabe says, "You know, sometimes it takes a lot more courage to live than it does to die." (Perhaps an extreme example, but still- heartbreak can be extreme at times.)

And then, after it hurts enough to heal, we are left with a scar. The "break" in our hearts becomes a crease, the pain concealed neatly behind a stitch, and we move through life and, hopefully, let ourselves love again.

When I was going through that first "survival" process, I didn't know that it would be okay one day. I didn't know that today I would look back on it, think of him, see the scar, and feel grateful for the experience in its entirety. That deep, uncensored first love, followed by a loss that knocked the wind out of me, became the patchwork from which I constructed my survival mechanism. Because of it, I developed the mantra, "I have survived my past, and I give myself permission to let it go;" words I repeat to myself on almost a daily basis when I feel something from the past weighing me down.

My most recent scar has been throbbing a little lately, and I've had to attend to the residual grief. It's still painful. It still paralyzes me. I am still surviving it, and I am still letting it go. It doesn't get easier with time; surviving a loss. It mostly just becomes something I know I can do, and that gives me strength, but the work is still there: I still have to survive this.

The other realization I had after that first big loss was that the wounded knew something the unwounded did not. They knew the essence of the human experience: everything changes. "Nothing gold can stay," wrote Robert Frost. A sweet, tender love can turn bitter. The person who teaches us to live to our full potential can leave us one day. The one we want to protect with all of our might may be the one we end up hurting tremendously. There are no guarantees, or permanent states of loving- of living, for that matter- and what is true today may not be true forever.

In that sense, we best let people in. We do well to let them scar us. What we gain with love- the stories beneath the scars- that is life's fuel. Loss is not temporary, but suffering is. While what we have lost remains so, what we gain is also ours to keep. Part of us lives on in the hearts of others, and they live on in ours, even as our stories change.

I am grateful for all of love's scars. They are my treasured stories.

Let's go, I tell my heart today, let's go love again.

Birthdays Are Hard

It is almost my 26th birthday. I can count down the hours. I made plans, so that there would be plans as opposed to no plans. I have played up the yays and woo hoos, because I am good at doing what is expected of me. I am going to buy a dress tomorrow with my mom, since a birthday is a good reason to buy a new dress. I will pick up the phone, I will answer the text messages and emails and facebook wall posts. I will be grateful and polite and cheerful. Like I said, I'm good at doing what is expected of me.

But my birthday is really hard for me. It always has been. As you can see, it takes place in July, which means that throughout my entire childhood and adolescence, all my friends were away for the summer during my birthday. While everyone else got a cake at school and had their friends around on the weekend to celebrate, I spent my birthday with my family at whatever location we would spend our summers, which is only possible to appreciate when one no longer has a family- until that day I, like everyone I know, take their company and love completely for granted.

I tend to get really sensitive and emotional on the week of my birthday, and it sucks. I am already a sensitive and emotional person, often labeled as dramatic even, so it's like suddenly my sadness took a growth pill. Anything I've been storing, whether I'm aware of it or not, pours out of me and before I know it I'm crying on my yoga mat because my teacher said, "let's be grateful for what we have," and I don't feel like being grateful, I feel like being sad, dammit.

This birthday also has the disadvantage of being the closest to my last birthday, and suck by comparison. Last year, though I was hit with the same difficulties surrounding the time of my birthday, I was happy. I was producing Leading Ladies, a play I created from scratch and that I couldn't have been prouder of. I had two more plays coming up after it, so I didn't have to worry about what to do next. I was being creative and living the way I believed I was meant to live. I had just started dating a man I couldn't stop thinking about, and I was super ready to fall in love. I was going to yoga almost every day and feeling great about my body, mind, and spirit. It was a wonderful time in my life, and the birthday blues felt like a manageable learning experience, maybe even one I could have fun with.

But this year is not like last year. I haven't acted in a play in nine months. I haven't even auditioned. The man I was so ready to fall in love with last year; well, I did fall in love, but I ruined it, and he left me five months ago. Because I have been recovering from a surgery, I have not been able to work out, and I can only go to yoga once or twice a week, so I don't feel great about my body right now. I feel quite lost about what to do with my life, and not in that "I am bravely venturing into the unknown," kind of way, but much more like, "I don't know what the hell to do anymore."

There are good things too, and I am certainly able to see them. I am directing a play a friend of mine wrote and it is an amazing experience. I have found a theatre group that deeply nourishes my artist's soul and I look forward to seeing them the way a child looks forward to jumping in the ocean. My surgery was successful, and my body has been relearning how to function, which has been an important lesson for me in patience and compassion with myself.  I have worked in jobs that have taught me a lot about who I am, what I can do, and what I want, and I have met some incredible people along the way. There have been messages everywhere, and the post-break-up growth has been crucial to my understanding of myself.

There is a ton of sadness, though, and it is challenging to keep it from blinding me. I try to loot at a birthday as an opportunity to reflect and set intentions. I do not know what mine could be yet, but if I think of some by Saturday I'll post them. I am a fan, after all, of letting things shift, of watching heaviness and negativity do their thing and then leave so that something else can come in. Birthdays are hard for me, there's no way around that. I'm sitting with the difficulties, I'm acting out on them at times, and I am looking ahead. It's only the 26th time I've had to do this. Maybe by the 52nd I'll get the hang of it...

Until then, come have a beer with me on Saturday and tell me I don't have to smile for you.

This is every metaphor for every feeling. It is also my footprint, staged for this picture, at a beach in LA.

*Thoughts Simply Arise also has a facebook page now! Go like it!* 

There's No Place Like Home

The minute I step off the plane, there's a feeling of relief paired with unease. It is instantly familiar and it is also no longer a place that holds my daily life, my routine, my habits, and my adult life. It has been nearly eight years since I left my home in Brazil, and I have made New York into my new home. New York has the lifestyle I like to live by, it has my career, my friends, my yoga practice, my dreams, and my ambition.

Brazil has my roots. I can stay away for a year or just a few months, I can forget what it's like to be Brazilian, I can even stop thinking, writing, and overall communicating in Portuguese if I so wish. But as soon as I land, it sucks me in, grasping me by my feet and grounding me. This is where you began. I can change my life as many times as I want to and I can choose who I want to be, but I can not change where it all started. And it all started right here.

I had not intended to fly alone. It is not customary for me to come home more than once a year anymore. When I bought my ticket, this was a trip planned for two. It was a meet-my-whole-family-and-see-where-I-come-from ordeal. It was a get-away-from-New-York-winter-together thing. It was that much-awaited-first-extended-vacation-with-you event. It was a lot of things that involved someone else.

The relationship ended, though, as you may have gathered from previous posts. And so this trip so full of togetherness with someone I was no longer with loomed before me. Changing the ticket would have been a little expensive, but not impossible. Did I want to go on this trip alone now? It is home, after all. That means: mom, dad, all my family, my old room, my bed, a really good shower, mom, a pool, warm weather, amazing food, coffee, mom, nothing to think about, beach time, cheap and perfect manicures, a car, coconut water, and did I mention mom? But it also meant there was a possibility I would do nothing but think of him and what we'd be doing together if he were with me. That could be very depressing.

As the days went on though, New York started to become unbearable. The reminders were everywhere. I could feel his presence in the things we used to do together, and, perhaps more saddening, I could feel his absence. To top it off, the weather kind of sucked. One warm-spring-like day was followed by freezing temperatures, which set the whole city off into a spiral of disappointment. I was tired of wearing my gloves, hat, scarves, layers, and boots. I wanted to wear a dress and flip flops. I wanted- needed- to get away. I kept my ticket as it was.

Yesterday afternoon, I got in a cab to the airport. The cab driver asked me where I was going. "Home. To my mom." He smiled. The hours at the airports and in the airplanes were interminable. It was a long, draining trip. I sat next to a very nice old man for 9 hours, though, who was very chatty. Under normal circumstances, I would have hated that. But when I got off the plane, I realized I hadn't spent my whole plane ride sulking and moping, and I was grateful to have had that nice man distracting me with his stories.

I've been home for all of twelve hours now. I am jet-lagged, pmsing, tired, and full of thoughts. But I had an amazing cup of coffee today, and coconut water, and steak, and fruits. I took a long shower in my pink bathroom that, after living in new york spaces for years, feels like the largest, most luxurious bathroom ever. I can't believe I showered in this bathroom every day for most of my life and took it completely for granted. After my shower, when my bathroom was all foggy, I was reminded of how I used to write the names of the boys I had crushes on on my fogged mirror as a teenager. And how I curled up, so many times, on the pink tiled floor and cried. These memories warmed my heart. I have survived so many things. I can survive this.

Yes, I have thought of him. Of course I have. I've thought about how I'd show him my house, how I'd explain its rooms and their particular memories, how I'd let him see pictures of me in high-school when I was awkward and not-so-pretty, how I'd show him my neighborhood, how I'd introduce him to all the people who have been in my life since the beginning. I'm hit with pangs of regret and guilt and sadness which, though temporary, are very painful. I tell myself, It's okay. I can have these thoughts. I have to mourn what I've lost, and what I'll miss, in order to move past it.

It isn't easy, but I had to come here. I've lost touch with a lot of parts of myself- parts I like, parts I don't like, parts I repress, parts I celebrate- and I need to attend to myself, bit by bit. I don't want to ignore myself or my feelings anymore. I've learned that can have a very high cost, and I'm not willing to pay for it again.

A little while ago, I wandered into my mom's room and, mid-conversation about a totally unrelated topic, I burst into tears. My mom didn't ask any questions or give me any cheering talks. She hugged me, the way only a mother can, and I knew that this was why I had to come here. I needed to remember that there are people in my life who believe in the best of me and love me, for better or for worse, unconditionally. Whatever wrongs I have done, I am always worthy of forgiveness and love in their eyes, even if I think otherwise. This is a place where I am safe to be Larissa; good, bad, nice, mean, pretty, ugly, mature, childish, happy, sad, accomplished, failed, and everything-in-between Larissa.

This is a special place. This is my home.

My Vows

Some things I do, I can't apologize for enough. There isn't really an apology that surmises certain actions, that finds a way to explain the "why's" and "how's" of what came to be. For all the pain we can inflict upon each other as human beings, we still haven't found the words to make up for it. So, I can go on through life calling myself a monster, sure. And I'm sure I still will, at times. But with every mistake I make, I do learn. If I don't learn from it, I'm bound to make the same mistake again. This time, I simply can't afford to let that happen. So, I've taken what I've learned and made it into a vow. A vow for myself, for those I've wronged, and for those who are yet to come into my life and trust me with their hearts. This is a personal commitment, a list of intentions, and a promise that I have learned from what I've lost.

I vow to be responsible over my feelings, wants, and needs.

I vow to communicate what I want and need as I am wanting and needing it.

I vow to value another person's trust and faith in me, never taking it for granted or abusing it.

I vow to be honest, with myself above all, and with others, always.

I vow to love deeply and to the best of my ability, with courage and strength.

I vow to treat myself with care and love.

I vow to treat others with care and love, too.

I vow to find the blessings in every love story, daily.

I vow to give up assuming I know myself and what I'm capable of.

I vow to give up assuming I know others and what they're capable of, too.

I vow to listen to my heart, even when it says something I don't want to hear.

I vow to trust my instincts.

I vow to attend to my harmful thoughts before they turn into harmful actions.

I vow to be forgiving of my- and others'- humanity.

I vow to give all that I am able to give to those I promise to love.

I vow to be mindful of consequences.

I vow to be myself, always, and with no exceptions.


It is a tall order, but it is how I want to live, and I trust I can honor my vows.

The Very Rainy Day

The city was a toilet today. Rainy, windy, messy, miserable. Much like my insides. When my external environment matches my inner life, I consider it a blessing and a curse.

A curse because, if it's bad, it seems worse. A gloomy stormy day magnifies my own negative feelings. It's one thing to feel sad and then go for a walk on a nice day and feel the sunshine on my skin, and it's another to feel sad and then go for a walk and get pushed and shoved and drenched by a vicious storm.

But it's a blessing, too, because it prevents me from running away from my feelings and my reality, which is necessary at times. There was no way to pretend everything was okay today. Unable to numb my pain, I had to just sink into it, let it run its course, and learn from it.

I could have stayed inside all day, but I had a commitment, and I needed some air. So I went out in that rain and found solace in how it freed up my thoughts. Fuck it, I don't really want to be happy right now. I don't want to be okay, I don't want to be strong, I don't want to be entertaining, I don't want to be enlightened. I want to be a mess. I want to wallow in my sadness, like a big drama queen, and think it's the end of the world. My umbrella eventually broke- it was that windy. Defenseless, I was free to get rained on mercilessly. I looked up at the sky and let the rain wash over my face, disguise my tears, take with it my make-up, moisturizer, and, eventually- finally- my "I'm okay" mask. I let it take over me- punish me and heal me simultaneously. I'm not going to say it felt "great", but it did feel real. I felt alive for a little while, and I felt like my pain, for once, wasn't clogged inside me, but rather moving through me.

I learned that sometimes, you have to not be okay. You have to just be sad, feel weak, undo any "progress" you've made in your recovery process. You have to go back to square one, forget everything you know about how "everything happens for a reason" and "it wasn't meant to be" and "letting go". Be a teenager and feel certain that in all of time, for all of mankind, around the entire world, no one has ever known such pain. Be a child and feel enraged that something good was taken away from you- give up accountability and just feel how unfair life is. Stomp, scream, thrash, splash. Even if someone's looking, it's okay- they probably won't care.

I can't tell you how great the wave of relief is. Don't get me wrong- giving up control, especially of my feelings, isn't easy. It's actually easier to be in a "getting better" place. I love feeling free from suffering. I love smiling. I love keeping it together. I love handling things well. I love it when I feel like I'll survive this, I'll be okay, I'll get better, I'll forgive myself, I'll grow, etc. But it's just not always true. Sometimes, that's just not what's going on with me. Sometimes I'm defeated and suffering a lot, and there's just no way to ignore it. It doesn't feel good, and it's probably rather uninteresting to other people, but it's still real and must be honored.

I'd like to say something like, "after the storm, there's always a rainbow," but the truth is sometimes there isn't. And I may not be ready for a rainbow yet, or even sunshine. What I do know is that not every day is a rainy day, and even a storm as powerful as the one we had today must get tired. Even if a bright sunny day is far away, it will stop raining eventually. Sadness doesn't suddenly turn into happiness, but it doesn't last forever either.

For now, I'm here, and it's raining, and I'm not always okay. Respecting that this is where I'm at is painful, but, as I learned today, it's also a blessing in disguise.

So, let it rain.

Sucky Sunday

I'm not a fan of Sundays. I don't like their lazy, unproductive, end-of-the-weekend, general sadness. They always feel heavy to me, and like I'm supposed to be doing something- even if that something I'm supposed to be doing is relaxing from the week. So a rainy, gray Sunday is pretty sucky. And a rainy, gray Sunday when I'm super sad and missing someone and waiting is just fucking miserable.

Here's what I discovered makes sucky Sundays worse:

Waking up with a headache that's not even attached to a hang-over. Just one of those inexplicable headaches.

Realizing I didn't just dream it all up. This is actually my life.

Piled up dishes in the sink and a full dishwasher (can I have an UGH! please?).

Overflowing trash bin.

No more milk.

My least favorite food network shows on.

Nothing going on on facebook (shame on you).

Putting on gym clothes and taking them off- accepting that no, I am not going to the gym today.

Counting calories (just a bad idea any time, really. goes hand-in-hand with weighing myself).

Staying at home, staring at the rain.

Staring at my unshaven armpits (I know, that image is gonna stick with you for a while. heh).

Googling "I'm so fucking sad what do I do" (absolutely useless).

Looking at my pores in the magnifying mirror (a Nazi invented that thing, for sure).


And then there are some things that make a sucky Sunday a little (or a lot) better:

Putting clothes on (pj's invite moping).

Shaving my armpits (you're welcome).

Doing the dishes. Taking out the trash. Deciding that that's really enough house-keeping for one day.

Going for a walk, even if it's raining. Walking is so much better than not walking.

Calling a good friend (she knows who she is- thank you darling...).

Going into a bookstore. Books have healing powers. Especially really bad self-help ones.

Cooking. Eating is so much better than not eating.

A brownie (okay, I only ate half of it. baby steps, guys, baby steps).

Coffee (I know, I pay a lot of tribute to coffee, leave me alone).

Yoga (can't thank that one enough-- though it totally. kicked. my. ass. today.).

Reading all the "bad" magazines out there (I couldn't do the "this is how to land a man" ones, but I did all the "how to look your best" and "this celebrity is so interesting!" ones).

Dinner with my brother (my guardian angel).

A mango martini. Just one. To sooth the soul, you know.

Catching up on Glee (just so damn fun).

Blogging (heh).

Realizing I survived my sucky Sunday. There will be others, but I did okay today. And that's good enough for now.

Thanks for all the nice thoughts and kind words, everyone.

Ow

It's so hard to miss someone. There's just no way around it. It's this huge, suffocating, paralyzing pain.

The day tends to start with it. I wake up and for just a split moment, I forget why I am in so much pain. Why is my chest so tight? Why does my stomach hurt? Why is it so hard to open my eyes? Why are my feet so cold? Why do I feel so very, very small? And then I remember. The realization doesn't settle in, but rather crashes and crushes me. He's gone. Boom. Any desire to get out of bed evaporates. I want to stay there, sarcophagied in my mess of blankets, forever.

But then I have to pee. Wetting my bed, fortunately, is not yet an option. I do, however, wait until the last possible minute, until I'm about to burst. And then I get up. And it sucks. It's cold and I have to look at myself in the bathroom mirror on my way to the toilet and I look like garbage. My reflection hates me. I hate me. Even the tiles in the bathroom seem to hate me, making themselves extra cold for my feet.

Luckily, I also have a caffeine addiction, and so I know that now that I've gotten up I need to have coffee within the next thirty minutes unless I want to be greeted with a headache and extreme moodiness. At this point, I'd be crazy to add any more pain to my body. So I don't crawl back to my cocoon. I go to the kitchen.

I make my coffee, and as I start drinking it, I feel better, even if only because I managed to not go back to bed and stay there all day long. My phone, which is now a permanent extension of my hand, is dead silent. Call me. Please. Please please please. The chant is constant.

The day awaits me. Gym yoga rehearsal lunch with a friend book to read emails to send websites to check out call a friend write watch the food network go to the grocery store stop at barnes & nobles have a coffee laundry dishes wash hair dry hair comb hair paint nails call mom eat something go for a walk sit on the couch look at pores floss wander from the bedroom to the living room take out the trash go on facebook drink more coffee stare out into space organize socks look for any distraction anywhere all the time. I go through it- or some higher being inhabits my body and goes through it for me, I don't know. And yes, for some time, I am okay. There is some relief.

But then something will make me smile. And the muscles in my face will immediately register how strange that feels. You aren't happy. You're miserable. Don't you dare smile. The ache never left, there was no real relief. It's always there. I miss him.

It's hard and it hurts like hell. It is close to impossible to truly believe that it will get better, that it will pass, that it will shift, that I will grow from this experience. I hate every second of this.

The day ends and now I dread going back to bed. I know that sleeplessness and tears and guilt and a brain that can not stop thinking await me. Nighttime magnifies everything that's bad. I will lie down and a balloon will grow in my stomach, a big ball of hollowness.

I wait. I pace. I look for empty activities. My body will eventually tire. Or, I'll take an advil pm. And for a few hours, I will escape all of this. My mind will, anyway. My body seems to stay stuck and wake up in more pain, but my mind gets to go somewhere else.

And then it starts all over again.

It hurts. It hurts a lot.

When You're Hurting Beyond Measure...

Sleep during the day. Stay up all night.

Wear sunglasses in the subway. Blast your ipod until people move away from you.

Drink too much coffee. Don't eat. Eat something bad. Your body will forgive you.

Avoid mirrors.

Wear ugly sweatpants.

Forget to brush your hair.

Keep the curtains closed. Hate the sun. Hate everything that's beautiful.

Pray. Then curse at God. Then pray again. God will understand, She always does.

Spill milk and be too lazy to clean it up.

Stare into space and feel half dead.

Go to the gym and give up after four minutes on the treadmill. Let people wonder.

Check your phone every seven seconds. Check your email every eight seconds. Send test texts to your friends to make sure your phone is working.

Mute every other phone call. Nothing is really ever important.

Watch bad TV. Feel incapable of laughing.

Go outside not wearing enough clothes because feeling cold means you can still feel something.

Write letters and tear them up.

Bite your nails. Even if you never bite your nails.

Drink juice out of the carton. No one will know.

Go do what you have to do, even if you're numb.

Let the dishes pile up.

Don't fold the laundry. Wrinkled clothes work just as well.

Be dramatic. Your friends can put up with it.

Cry at the frozen peas in the grocery store. They can take it.

Hate yourself. Love yourself. Feel stupid. Feel awful. Feel like a piece of shit. Feel okay again.

Stay in the shower too long.

Go to bed. You can never go to bed too much.


Feel everything. This is part of survival. Shut off the brain and go on auto-pilot.


Remember, life goes on. Because it has to.

*

The Betrayal

All I could think of, as I sat on that train to Boston on a September evening, was what an idiot I was. What a horrible friend, what a terrible woman, what an ugly, unworthy, and selfish being I was. I had done something I knew would hurt one of my dearest friends, and now I was going to Boston to confess my dirty deed.

Jenna and I had been friends for many, many years. We shared a love for theatre and the arts. She was kind, sensitive, sweet, and incredibly generous. I held her dearly in my heart, and thought, frequently, that we would be friends forever. We did many plays in school together, and when we went away to colleges that were really far away from each other, we stayed in touch. She was one of the very few friends I had in my life whom I considered a soul sister.

But these were things I took for granted. Not realizing their rarity and weight, I threw them away. I was on that train to Boston to tell Jenna, to her face, that I had slept with her ex-boyfriend, a man she had loved for many years. It was a secret I couldn't keep from her. I didn't know how to continue being her friend after having done that to her. I knew, as I sat there on the train, that I was about to hurt my friend irreparably.

When I arrived to Boston, I wanted to sit down with her somewhere quiet and tell her right away. But she said she had a night class and she absolutely had to go. Even though I was feeling like death, I told her I'd wait for her. I sat on a chair outside the classroom while she was in class, staring at the wall; the weight of my confession sitting on my chest, getting heavier with every minute. When she got out of class, we went to her dorm. She showered, talked to some people, took care of some things around the house, while I waited on her bed. Now, in retrospect, I am able to realize that she already knew I was about to tell her something devastating, and she was stalling for time. Maybe she wanted to delay that painful moment and protect herself, or maybe she was stretching out the minutes before our friendship ended. I don't know.

Finally, she came into her room and closed the door. We sat on her floor. I couldn't look her in the eyes. The words I had carefully chosen in the hours I'd spent preparing my confession escaped me. Any prepared speech seemed perfectly ridiculous. Looking down at her wooden floor, I said, "I did something I don't know how to explain. It involves your ex-boyfriend." She asked me to look at her. Her eyes, which had always smiled at me, were cold. Then she said, "You had sex with him?" I nodded my head yes, once again looking away from her. "Then the word you're looking for is fucking. That's how you can explain it." I sat there, not knowing what to do, wishing I could evaporate and take my shame with me. There were things I could have said, there were explanations for my actions, there where complicated details that justified my behavior, in part. But there was no point. The essence, no matter what I said or how I phrased it, was that I had betrayed her.

Not once did she cry or yell at me. She looked at me at one point, though, after a long silence, and said quietly, "I knew you were selfish, egotistical, and self-centered, but I never thought you'd do something like this to me." Her pain was tangible. Again, I looked away. Her words would haunt me for a long, long time.

I slept on the floor of her living room that night, still feverish and ill, grateful that she hadn't kicked me out into the night on my own. In the morning, I went up to her room to say good-bye before I left back for New York. She didn't get up or walk me to the door. There was no hug, no hand-shake, no last look. That was it. I had proved myself unworthy of final good-bye gesture. I knew, as I walked to the train station, that I would never see her again.

I tried, several times, to write to her. I apologized and hoped to mend that broken bridge. But I knew that I had done something unforgivable. I had, in a few moments, lost years of a friendship, and I had no one but myself to blame. I felt I deserved to have lost her. I had done something I knew would hurt someone I loved, for my own selfish reasons. I had no business bugging her to forgive me and I knew it. I had to let her go now, and bear the burden of my guilt. I had brought this loss upon myself, and now I had to learn to live with it.

My chest still tenses up as I think of this story. Although many years have passed, and surely Jenna is living a peaceful life surrounded by people who are worthy of her friendship, I still have to work on forgiving myself. Mostly, I just miss her. The regrets, the embarrassment, and the "if only" thoughts are not as strong as the sad, heaving feeling of having lost someone I cared about. I still see things that I'd like to share with her and am saddened that I can't just pick up the phone and call her. I still miss her advice, her patience, and her smile.

This is one of my mistakes, the one by which I learned who I really am, what I'm capable of doing, and the consequences of my reckless actions. It is a part of me I am ashamed to own up to, but it is, nonetheless, part of what makes me who I am. I have to remember that there are parts of me I am proud of too, and it all makes up a whole- a person capable of both good, selfless actions and hurtful, selfish ones too.

It is easy to embrace our lightness. The challenge comes in accepting our darkness. It is a lesson I am still learning.