Aunt Jackie

I sat in my darkened cave (because I love living in a cave..it's a thing) on a nice summer day thinking about life, the universe, and everything.  I sat watching a stupid medical drama on Netlflix and pouring myself into the stories and the characters, as I do every summer vacation.  This particular drama had a man with a supposedly inoperable spinal tumor.  As he lay on the table waiting to be operated on, he says that he survived a war, that he survived the death of his family, the death of his wife and child and if he loses the ability to walk (TO WALK) he will survive the loss of his legs.  Yesterday, I had a visit with my endocrinologist (I like to think of it as a visit and not an appointment at this point, since the man did get me through cancer...).  Yesterday, it was like I never had cancer.  I walked into my doctor's office, was seen almost immediately, I spoke to the nurse about being a teacher.  We talked about the MTELs and what a horrible thing it must be to declare a major and not be able to pass the test to actually do what you want to do in life.  I sat in a room with walls coated in album covers, and said hi to a very nice Jack Russell Terrier, the same one who sat on my lap while I received the news 7 years ago, that I had papillary thyroid cancer.

I still remember the day.  I spent the night before with my best friend, buffalo wings, and pepperoni pizza.  We joked that we would be laughing the next day when it turned out I was fine.  Well, the next day, it turned out, I was not fine.  We met up at a local ice rink after my appointment, and my friend found me just pounding the ice.  I was a figure skater for years, but I swear that day I have never been more thankful for something to beat the hell out of just for sport.  We sat as I cried and tried to process the word.  Cancer.  It was like a flashing sign in my head.  Every 2 minutes it would pop up and remind me, "Oh, hey!  You're body is trying to kill itself slowly!"

I remember the process I went through to handle it.  I remember sitting here and saying, "I'm fine!" to anyone who cared enough to ask if I was okay.  I remember being so scared when I read horror stories of other people who had papillary thyroid cancer.  I was so scared and most of all, I was angry.  The thing I sit here thinking now is how angry I've been for my entire life.  It feels like one person should not have to go through as much as I've had to go through...

When I had cancer, I did not handle it well.  On the surface, I did, but very few people every saw me in the wee morning hours, crying myself to sleep on my parents couch while drinking a whole bottle of wine alone.  One such night, I remember vividly.

My dad came down the stairs of my childhood home, and I was drunk and sobbing on the couch (every dad's worst nightmare, but especially mine).  He asked me what was wrong and I could only unevenly say that it was the fact that I was diseased.  I now understand my words better than I do now.  I have always felt diseased.  I have always felt like a burden on the people I love.  This was just the first physical interpretation of this burden.  My dad continued on to tell me that I should take a page from his Aunt Jackie who died of Multiple Sclerosis (even writing this I almost wrote MS but I feel like it minimized what it is...and Multiple Sclerosis is HUGE).  My dad continued to tell me about Aunt Jackie, who never cried once.

I thought about this for years afterwards.  As I cried on the various couches I have owned, in the various apartments I have lived, crying into whatever friend would still have me.  Crying and thinking that, there is no way in hell that Aunt Jackie didn't cry.  She didn't cry to the public, the same as me.  She kept a brave face, the same as me.  She smiled and kept being a wonderful human, the same as me.  She fought, the same as me.  I did everything Aunt Jackie did.  Aunt Jackie couldn't win her fight, but I could win mine.  So I kept Aunt Jackie in the back of my mind while I continue to fight.  I didn't know her, but I feel like she would be proud of the person I am today, despite my hardships.

When I was younger, I was one of those people who would just superficially ask, "How are you?"  This is what my life has taught me.  When someone asks how you are, 90% of the time they do not give a damn how you're doing.  They have been trained in the art of the artificial American politeness.  We do not care what is going on with you, we DEFINITELY do not care if you are somehow in emotional pain.  We just want an excuse to talk about how we are...here's what's happening with us!  When you have gone through as much as my life has tossed at me, you start to realize that the best part of your day is the moment when you get to be there for another human.  I have sat and held the hand of people who have been struggling.  I have checked in on people in my life and gone out of my way to make sure they know they have someone there at all times.  What I was taught by having cancer and being sexually assaulted is an immense sense of empathy.  I am willing to put myself in the shoes of another and to feel their suffering and hold their heads as they cry, because I was never strong enough to ask someone to do that for me.  I have always been stoic, the consummate survivor.  I have never asked for someone to hold my hand, and part of that is a misplaced sense of pride in being "strong".

The Soccer Ball

I made a soccer ball.  There was a student who was distraught because he let his friend down.  He had promised to spend every recess with this friend and on that day, he chose to spend time with someone else.  I sat there watching this child cry because he felt that he had let his friend down and he felt so guilty.  I understood.  I have spent a lifetime letting people down or feeling like I have.  In that moment, there was an easy fix.  I told him, if he could get himself calmed down that I would help him make a special soccer ball for his best friend. 

Later that week, this child and I sat with a soccer ball and brand new permanent markers.  I asked him,

“How do you want to decorate his birthday soccer ball?”  He replied…

            “How about a rainbow?”

So we sat, this child and I, coloring small patches of every vibrant color we could get our grubby little fingers on.  We sat and made a soccer ball for the birthday of his best friend.  It was one of the best moments I had this year.  It was a pure moment.  There was no major emotions felt, there was no anger inside me at that moment, no frustration, no elation, no glee.  It was a pure moment without major emotion.  A moment of calm before the many storms.

I am the kind of person who feels everything deeply.  I feel extreme pain, extreme sadness, extreme delight, extreme wonder.  I am incapable of feeling anything lightly.  However, this moment, however brief, was a moment of pure ease.  This is not something that I am used to in any way shape or form.  There are very few moments when I am at ease.  Ease is not something that I can do. 

Since a very young age, really as long as I can remember, I have been high strung.  This may come from the fact that I was sexually assaulted as a child.  It is a poison that has been flowing through my veins as long as I can remember.  I have had moments of extreme love, extreme hate…moments of extreme bliss and extreme sorrow.  However, I have rarely known moments of calm.  Calm is not something my life provides.

When I was in high school, I met a boy.  I loved this boy and stayed with him until the summer after our Freshman year in college.  I loved this boy so strongly that I stayed with him.  I stayed with him despite the fact that he left me stranded in a snowy parking lot alone with two tow truck guys at 1 am and drove away after his car was freed, leaving me to fend for myself (a huge thank you to those two young men who dragged my car out of the snow for free and told me that I was better off without a guy like that.)  I stayed with him despite the fact that he brought another girl to his prom and as a result I didn’t go to mine because I knew he wouldn’t like it.  I entered college and I spent the first year waiting around studying in a library for him to get out of classes.  He didn’t like when I drank, so I didn’t drink.  He didn’t like when I made friends with the guy in my Latin American Studies class, so I tried not to be friends with him.  He didn’t like a lot of things, so I tried to form who I was to please him.  I felt that, if someone was willing to love me, that I should find a way to make it worthwhile for them. 

This is just one example in dozens, if not hundreds of moments that I see in my past where I have changed or adjusted myself, or my opinions, or my words to make sure that people love me.  The reason?  Because it hurts too much to think that I live in a world where people don’t.  Some might say that this is me being fake or manipulative.  You may be right.  I really don’t know at this point.  All I know, is that it’s the only way I know how to survive.  It’s the only way I know how to live.  I know the real me.  She is the one who curls up in bed on a Sunday afternoon, cracks open a beer and tries to find a distraction from herself because to look inwards and see all the cracks is just far too much for her to bear.  She’s the one who sits at a bar, surrounded by friends and yet she never stops feeling completely exhausted and isolated.  It takes everything for me to seem normal and functional but I keep doing it because it literally is all I’m good at. 

I once thought teaching was all I was good at.  I was wrong.   Surviving is what I’m really good at, since I’ve been doing it for so long.  I am capable of making it through anything but the worrisome question that has started wandering through my head as of late, “Why?”  Why do I want to survive when I’m just going through the general motions?  Why do I want to fight to be here when I don’t even like where here is.  There are things worth fighting for, mind you.  I understand that.  I have friends, I have family, I have falling asleep to thunderstorms, and watching your kids make it to high school and watching them graduate and watching them reach their goals or raise kids of their own.  And I’m happy, but I’m happy to an extreme that makes me sad.  I am so capable of being happy for the people around me that it serves as a reminder of just how empty my own life feels.  I am not sure that I am even capable of the kind of love and happiness others are. 

Which is why, I made a soccer ball.  For a brief moment, I witnessed a child’s unadulterated sadness, and I was able to turn it into a moment of calm for him.  For a brief moment, I was able to give another child a brief moment of extreme delight at the sight of his rainbow Happy birthday soccer ball.  I was able to bask in the glory of an untainted moment.  A moment not centered on my own tortured past or depressed present or unclear future.   I was able to give those children something that was never given to me.  A moment of pure childlike wonder that they will be able to look back on with a smile not tainted with poison.    

Nightmare Brain

One of the well known facts about me: I love scary movies.  Anyone who has any knowledge of me as a human being knows this preference to be true.  I love that horror can fit into so many different molds.  It can be supernatural (little ghost girls standing on a stairwell), it can be a psychopath hiding in plain site as a functioning member of society (Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, the list goes on and on), it can be an evil doll coming to life (usually fashioned after an odd combination of the two).  Due to my own love of horror, passed down from my father, my sister and I developed what the two of us have coined, “nightmare brain”.  Now, this love of horror has always led me to watch the things that scare me the most. The idea that someone I know and love, is willing to target me or my family in some terrifying vendetta that will end with a death of someone I love (like in Friday the 13th when EVERYONE around Jamie Lee Curtis dies). The horror movie where a seemingly well-meaning ghost turns out to have demonic tendencies and wants to set the world on fire (these ones scare me way less, because there is always that one friendly tortured soul who does his/her best to defend the person who needs to be saved, like in House on Haunted Hill, or Hocus Pocus). Then there are the dolls. My not so secret shame is that dolls scare me so much it's actually pathetic. It all started with Chucky and it just burgeoned from there. I was around 12 years old and I was flipping through the cable channels and I saw the term "Horror" and my immediate response was to see how scary it could be. Clearly, at the ripe, mature age of 12,nothing could scare me anymore. Well, watching a small ginger-haired doll chase after 2 children in a toy manufacturing plant and watching a man get doll eyes (DOLL EYES) stamped into his skull as his last earthly moment damaged me a little more than I thought. From then on, anything from china dolls, to ventriloquist dummies, to marionettes scare me endlessly. I'm not one to run screaming from a shop (I did live in Prague for a 2 month period, and they are known for their marionettes) but basically as long as they are not trying to murder me I'm okay. Still every once in a while, something randomly appears in my daily life to reference some creepy doll and it always shakes me to the core of my being.

Now, there was a vacation that I was lucky enough to house sit for a family in a nice isolated area where I could breath freely and take stock of my life.  It was meant to be a wonderful time away to reflect on my own personal growth.  By Day 2, I was completely and utterly relaxed and the dogs I was sitting were happy and the cat had only thrown up on the rug once (yay!) and the only casualty was a sickly hamster (who was unfortunate to be found propped up against the food bowl; rigor mortis had clearly set it).  Then it happened.  I was watching a crime serial, albeit an odd one, but out of nowhere in it’s coincidental oddity, this episode had a weird little scavenger hunt that led the sweet puzzle-loving nerdy forensic scientist, whose boyfriend had been murdered and clearly set this up as a romantic night for two (and oh, how romantic to be hunting down possible serial killers with a series of blindly dangerous clues!) to a wonderful little speakeasy where a simple key wound up a doll (a DOLL THAT LOOKED LIKE A VENTRILOQUIST DUMMY) with a knife (A FREAKIN’ KNIFE!) who used to do magic tricks (WHAT?  MAGIC?  IS NOTHING SACRED) but now is so old he just stabs a table blindly and wildly until he unwinds.  

For anyone who knows my face, there was a look of blind and bewildered horror on my face at this point.  Especially at the point where it stops stabbing the table with wild fervor (SERIOUSLY.  STABS.  WILDLY!) and she puts her hands on the table (UNDER A KNIFE!  UNDER THE KNIFE OF A MALFUNCTIONING TURN-KEY DOLL THAT STABS WILDLY!) to find the secret clue.  The clue was something like, “The cow jumped over the moon…” (just kidding, it said, “I love you to the moon and back…” Demonic turn-key magician doll or not, my hopeless romanticism cannot be stopped!).  While I sat there in absolute horror, nightmare brain just beginning to coil it’s snake-like existence around the entirety of my soul, the dogs began to bark.  I mean, the dogs literally bark at their own shadows and I also know that they feed off of each other, so one starts barking and they’re like a bunchh of furry, giant, drooling sheep and ALL start following suit.  This was different.  It’s my second day, in a house that I don’t know exceedingly well, with nightmare brain beginning to cripple my own everyday view of the world.  Now, the hills that comforted and relaxed me are a wild landscape. The zombie apocalypse is impending. This house was built on an elephant graveyard which causes a catastrophic ghost-stampede that will kill me! A poltergeist will magically appear and I'll slip coming out of the hot tub, and they'll find my body 2 weeks later half eaten by the dogs I was watching). Someone will come over to borrow a cup of sugar and one thing will lead to another and they'll find my head in the mailbox. (Yes, these are actual thoughts that have crossed through my head tonight after the ventriloquist magician and the dogs going ballistic).

So with nightmare brain in full-alert mode and with a sense of impending doom and murder looming in the near distance, I find myself reflecting on a random quote from one of my favorite horror movie series (yes, I mean Scream of course). In Scream 3, which finds a young McDreamy as a detective in Las Angeles, specifically Hollywood, investigating the systematic annihilation of an entire movie cast. When he finally meets Sydney Prescott, who has clearly become a hermit in the middle of nowhere due to her constant murderous surroundings, she asks him what his favorite scary movie is (classic!). In truly creepy, Scream-style fashion, he leans down dramatically (and suspiciously!) to say, "My life..." Her response was under her breath, "Mine too..." as he slowly exits the room. I find this suddenly relevant because it reminded me of something that was said earlier this weekend. I made a joke about my life experience, despite my few years on this earth, and their response was to remind me that I have, in fact, been through a lot. I agree with them, my life has had a very odd number of moments where I have struggled with difficult obstacles, and instead of being the girl who runs up the stairs instead of running out the front door, I have put on my armor and I have destroyed each and every one of those obstacles. I have more than risen to the occasion. For the first time in my life, I no longer fear my nightmare brain. Maybe it will inspire me to use it for good and try my hand at some non-fiction horror (with all the terrifying things that happen in this head, it would not be a terrible idea..). However, sitting in this quiet house, listening to the dogs snore gently, in a darkened house, in the middle of nowhere, I know that regardless of what happens, there is no way in hell anyone is going to find my head in a mailbox. I know that I will always be the girl in the final credits, who may be limping, and covered in blood and missing her shoes, but I will be victorious...always.

Look at that old tomcat...

Today, I saw an old feral tomcat.  We named him Toby.  We already have 2 cats in the house, one of which is brand new and we've finally found out that he's healthy and will be staying with my parents (much to the chagrin of my own incredibly grouchy cat).  Toby has been coming around for years now.  Mainly to grab a quick bite to eat from my darling family and partially because even when he's soaking wet we will still give his head a little scrub.  He's a very sweet little guy, and it's become almost a family tradition to make sure he's fed and as happy as possible.  We've all spoken before about what we can do for him, and the ideas of him being brought into the house, of finding him a place to go, bringing him to the ASPCA a town over.  All of which have been shot down because my family, in all of their understanding glory, sees him for him.  Yes, he is, for all intents and purposes, homeless.  However, he is feral now.  Just by getting to know him, we know that he would not be content to be constrained to four walls.  He would feel trapped within a house instead of having the world at his little gray paws.

Today, on this rainy day, 2 days after Christmas, I went out in the morning and found Toby making his lanky way towards me with his damp, puffy face meowing with recognition.  I immediately grabbed the bag of food and laid some out for him, pushing the food that was left in the rain to the soggy ground.  He jumped right up, and trilling while he ate took a few scrubs on the head while he was stuffing his face.  I walked him over to this cute little box my mum had put together to try to give him a place to stay on just such a day.  He, however, had other plans.  I gave him a second helping of food, gave him a final scrub, and he swaggered away towards the wooded area near the back.  I have no idea where he plans to go, but I came to a very interesting realization...

I understand Toby.  I understand how nice it is to have a warm cozy place to call our own.  However, there is something to be said for absolute freedom.  I get questioned frequently about my own life plans and goals and such.  ("When are you going to get a boyfriend?"...."Don't you want to try to buy a house?"...."Why would you still want to live with roommates?").

I moved to western Mass for a guy.  He was going to UMass Amherst and it was either continue a long distance thing between Cambridge and Amherst or take a leap of faith and just go for it.  Being the crazy, impulsive person I am, I decided to jump right in.  We lived together for roughly a year and a half before our lives completely imploded and I was on my own.  I had a great career, I had some good friends and so I made the decision to stay in the area.  I was never one to give up if I thought a situation was salvageable.

So here I was, completely on my own for the very first time.  Before this, I had either still been living with my family or I has been living with a boyfriend.  Now, although I had roommates, I was completely alone.  This was unprecedented and exciting but it was also, terrifying.  For years, I had always had a choice of whether I wanted to be alone.  Now that choice was gone.  I was alone.

This all happened at the end of January 2012.  Now, four years later, as I watch Toby saunter away with a full belly and a freshly scrubbed head, I see myself in him.  There is something about not answering to anyone that is truly delightful.  When I make plans with friends, they have to check with their boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands/wives/children/parents.  I answer to no one.  I don't have to check with anyone other than myself.  Others who work late, they think about all the people they are not able to see as much of.  I think about the fact that no one is going to care if I leave work at 4:45 or if I leave at 6.  When I come home, exhausted and tired and grouchy, I can sit on my couch in silence and instead of worrying about anything else, I can watch whatever my heart desires.  I eat my dinner in bed sometimes, purely out of laziness.

Not to say I sometimes don't think about giving up some of those freedoms.  Just a quick fleeting moment of thought that is immediately dismissed as I think, "Yea, but, I get to just worry about myself!"  Is it selfish?  Hell yes!  However, for the first time in my life, I'm more worried about myself than anyone else.  The rest of the people in my life are okay, and most of them are more than just okay.  The people I love are happy.  Now, I can worry about just living my life SOLELY for myself and working towards being the woman I've always wanted to be.  So thank you, Toby.  For reminding me that sometimes, it's okay to not worry about someone's feelings (I'm sure he really loves the little shelter you built him mom!) but sometimes you just have to (HAVE TO) do you.  And sometimes, it's so beyond worth it...

   

Lovely

[To preface this story, it was written years ago in a moment of pure romantic ridiculousness, but I liked the ending so I kept it and posted it anyways]

No one expects to meet their soulmate at fourteen.  Actually, all fourteen-year-old girls expect and want to meet them but in my case, there was no way that I was ready.  I can still remember the first time I really saw him.  It’s been twelve years since that moment but I still remember it like it was yesterday.  It was August of 2001, and I was entering my Freshman year of high school.  My mom had promised me a shiny silver trumpet when I made first trumped in the marching band.  Before I even left 8th grade, the music director had given me that distinction.  On this sunny, gorgeous summer day, I had my beautiful new horn and as we all made our way to the field to start marching drills, I saw him walking with a good friend of mine.  We had performed together in a musical when I was in 7th grade and I had met him a few times through mutual friends.  Unfortunately, I was brutally shy when I was younger and most people thought I was snobby and stuck up because of my silence.  This was not the easiest pill to swallow, since I had always been a spirited kid, albeit one of those spirits happened to be a huge attitude problem coupled with sarcasm and a fiery temper.  Where was an important change in 8th grade when I got my braces taken off.  I felt like a brand new girl and my smile was fantastic for the first time in my life.  So now, in 9th grade, when he saw me and smiles I was finally able to smile back with confidence.  

I remember the way the sunshine was glowing and how his eyes crinkled when he smiled.  I remember his smile and how it seemed to brighten up my day.  We started dating shortly after that and he became my “First High School Boyfriend”.  We dated for 2 months or so until I went to a 12 hour punk show with a group of friends, supervised selflessly by my newly 21 year old cousin (on her birthday, no less).  He was not allowed to go and so I went on my own.  That’s when I met Taylor.  Over the next week, we broke up and sure, I felt really bad but at the same time, I knew it was the right thing for me to do.  I was also the luckiest girl in the world, because he decided to continue being my friend.  We went through years of being friends while we both went through good times and bad.  Eleven years later, I was invited to a surprise party for his father after three years of not seeing each other.  When I walked in, it was like the clouds clearing after a long storm.  I remember catching his eye and making an immediate beeline.  He pulled me into his requisite bear-hug and my feet came straight off the floor (literally).  I saw his entire family, who through the years had become like a part of my family.  I was introduced to his girlfriend and they seemed happy so I was happy for my friend.  That was the day I realized how much I missed this family.  This rag-tag bunch of misfits had become nearer and dearer to me than some of my actual blood relatives.  That was the same night that he told me that I was his back-up and opened up a long suppressed emotional can of worms.  

To explain myself in an unflinchingly honest way, I have to say that I am a hopeless romantic trapped in the body of a cynic.  I’m realistic and introspective enough to know my own self quite well.  Previously, I had thought that meant that I had constant doubt and trust issued, it turns out that several years later I've realized that I’m just very lucky and know myself incredibly well.  As I write, I realize more and more that although there is no fixing my past, no bandage big enough for my former wounds, at the end of the day I am happy.  Not because I suspect that I’ve found the love of my life, but because after years of self-doubt and confusion, I love myself.  I had contemplated the idea of loving myself before but apparently it took knowing that someone could love me, unconditionally, for over a decade to realize that over the years I have become a warrior.  I love that about myself.  I have transformed like a phoenix in the flame into a battle ready, loyal, honest, un-apologetically bold, independent, beautiful tropical fish.

With this beautiful realization came one that I had never expected to have.  For the first time in my life, I could see my future.  I could see his smiling face at the end of the aisle.  Our normally self-satisfying smiles, beaming not only for our own radiant joyousness but for the other’s too.  I could see my sister and his, beside each other, watching my ascension to a step I never thought I’d take.  To a leap of faith I had been brushing off and laughing off as a joke for a decade with the reasoning, “Who would want to marry this much crazy?”   For the first time in my life, I could feel my father carrying my arm and see the eyes of everyone I’ve ever loved watching me float towards a lie I had always dreamed of.  Mutually assured and never-ending unconditional love and affection.  It was the fairy tale I had been cynically poking fun of for years.  Despite its not being some sort of Disney fairy tale where we could spend a Saturday afternoon in its entirety at the comic book store we both practically grew up in.  I could imagine myself sitting in our future home with his head in my lap while I run my fingers through his hair.  I could see myself having a bad day and yearning to be at home and then getting there and feelings the tension release by just being near him.  I could see every birthday, anniversary and national holiday.  I could see myself as the mother of two nameless, faceless kids who could be anything or anyone as long as they were ours.  I could see us dancing on our wedding night in the moonlight somewhere.  Drunk, but knowing that it was just the beginning.  This would be the best night of our lives, but so would tomorrow night and the night after that.  Dancing while smelling the sweet summer air and listening to the crickets chirp while he sings quietly to me.  

The best part of the daydreams about my future was the “if” that I was all too well aware of.  I was, long ago, resigned to the idea that I would become that scary town witch in the dilapidated “haunted” house that the kids in the area dare each other to tap the porch that’s falling down in the front.  The sweetness or this if was its brilliant possibility.  They say you can’t be fully loved until you love yourself but I was finally led to love myself when I saw myself through his eyes.  I was finally and un-apologetically me.

Betrayals

Betrayal is a complicated thing, especially for someone who is loyal to a fault.  I am the kind of person who will give up everything to make sure the people I love are taken care of.  So when I end up betrayed, it’s especially jarring.  Add on to that my own intense neurotic self-doubt and its a catastrophic situation.  

It is also a word that has gotten a bad reputation for being overly dramatic.  I disagree, because really, being betrayed happens all the time.  I believe that people are intrinsically good but that we are selfish beings who are sometimes consumed by the pleasures of life in general.  I am just as guilty as the next person because I believe that life is too short to worry about every little consequence to every little action.  This turns out to be because of my basic personality.  My mother put it best when she said I am incapable of slow, calculated movement and instead I leap into the great unknown.  I’ve been doing it since I was a child, and no bumps or bruises could stop me from taking that leap of faith when I thought I could fly.  Did I ever actually fly?  No, but that moment of pure joy when you first jump and you think, “It’s finally here, I’m finally doing it!” is enough to make me continue ignoring the unending fear that follows when you realize you are plummeting towards an immoveable and solid object.  You know the consequences will be dire and hurt like hell, but that one moment of pure bliss is enough for me to continue to ignore all of my best instincts that try to protect myself.  

Another point, is the fact that I will always try to find the best in people.  I have known some absolutely awful people, and I still try to explain to people that they really are good.  I make excuses, because they’ve struggled or because I think they have great potential.  No matter how many times they betray that trust, I believe in goodness and to be skeptical of human nature to the point that I believe everyone is entirely self-centered would be far too much for me to handle.  It would hurt me so deeply that I believe my soul would fall to pieces before long and I would become a bitter and angry person with no redeemable qualities.  I’m also a historian to the core, which I believe means I look at the world through a slightly different lense than most people.  I believe in looking at all sides of the story and trying to find the middle ground.  

So this is my conundrum: I refuse to acknowledge that some people are selfish to their core and will always betray you, and I have trouble when they do betray me to see that maybe it was not my fault.  I immediately examine every interaction I have ever had with this person and try to figure out what I could have done differently to make sure someone else doesn’t betray me again.  

Last summer, I was in love with a boy from my past.  We had dated before and through a crazy random happenstance he declared his love for me in his car one drunken night after a birthday celebration for his mother.  It was one of the greatest nights of my life so far.  We continued the party out with some friends and his sister and we held hands and kissed and his hand found my knee under the table and stayed there, like a silent indicator that he wasn’t going anywhere and he was physically here for me.  It was this amazing feeling to have this boy who I held so dear to my heart confirming that he was in love with me.  We dated for a month or so, but we lived around 2 hours away from each other.  I knew that was going to be a complicated situation to be in and would take a certain amount of additional dedication.  That additional amount of dedication, alas, was nowhere to be seen.  For various reasons (none of which were valid excuses, sans maybe one of them) he would call on nights when we had plans and ditch me.  “Sorry, I got stuck in traffic and now I’m home and tired,” he told me once as I sat there shaking my head that I had spent the entire day waiting to hear from him so we could hang out.  “Oh, I forgot I had to do laundry.  Maybe another time this week?” he had asked as I incredulously scoffed at the gall it must have taken to actually ditch me to do laundry for goodness’ sake.  Then there was the final straw, when I finally decided that it was okay that I was feeling incredibly frustrated and irritated by the whole situation.  I was going to be leaving in a few hours to see him and he called.  As soon as I saw his name I knew exactly what he was going to say and I was entirely right.  “Someone called out of work so I’m going to have to stay until 8pm.  We can reschedule though.”  I called him back that night when he got out of work and explained that you can’t just make plans and break plans.  That’s not how it works when you’re in a relationship.  My work schedule is very demanding and I was still putting him on the top of my priority list, and I felt like I was at the bottom of his.  I should have known that this would be the case when we discussed the zombie apocalypse and I was told I had just made the short list of people he would go to save in case of this particularly fictional emergency.  He had said, “It’s about survival!  I need these other people first because they would be able to help me rebuild a sustainable environment for a civilization!”  Apparently my degree in history and abilities as a young educator was not impressive enough for him, he needed the guys who had training in the military, or the ones who could fix transistor radios.  This should have been my immediate red flag, but being the kind of person who sees the best in people, I thought to myself, “Well that’s very pragmatic.  Pragmatism is a good thing!”  On the phone that night, in my car under the lights lining the small city that I now called home, he decided to break up with me.  I was devastated by the idea that this person who had looked me in the eye and said the words that had been sought after my entire life (“I love you, Al”) was actually leaving me when he had made these grand statements that he just assumed we would always get married and be together.  As I processed, and in some ways overly so, this information, I began to really think about it.  Had he really loved me, or had he said it because he had just always wanted to best me.  When we were fourteen, I had broken up with him and broken his heart.  Maybe this was payback for me being a heartless teenage girl.  As terrible as this betrayal was, I actually hope this is not the case.  I hope that he is not as unforgiving and hurtful to punish me for something I did when I was a fourteen year old teenage girl who didn’t know any better.  At twenty-seven, a person should know better.  

However, betrayal doesn't have to be a traditional romantic heartbreak.  I met my best friend when I was in 7th grade.  I can’t remember the exact context, but she was walking down the hallways of my junior high school singing at the top of her lungs, for fun.  In an uncharacteristic moment of bravery, I began singing with her and we became friends for the next decade.  Her unapologetic nature, boldness, and wit were something to be envied by someone like me.  I have always been book smart but common sense has always come up short.  She was the kind of person who would write next to favorite color, things like dark white and fire engine blue.  When my birthday arrived out freshman year, she couldn't find a birthday balloon, so instead she got a balloon that said “It’s a Girl” and implanted words in permanent marker so the balloon read, “It’s [Your Birthday] Girl!” She was a force of nature and one to be reckoned with.  Our friendship continued as she went to college across the country and I continued on in my own college career while fulfilling the grand tradition of becoming an adult.  When we were 24, her boyfriend and her had moved back to the area and she found herself engaged.  She asked me to be a bridesmaid and I told her I would absolutely be delights (and I meant it).  She was one of the great loves of my life.  She was my best friend and she had found the person she was meant to be with and I could not have been happier for her.  A few years later, we found ourselves celebrating her pending nuptials in true Bachelorette Party fashion, and so drinks were plenty and moods were high.  Cards were handed out to everyone with challenges and it was a competition to see who could make a bigger ass of themselves during this celebration.  My first card said, “Get someone to buy you a drink.”  Feeling the boldness that comes with a few drinks, I immediately walked up to a guy and asked politely, “Hey, would you like to buy me a drink?”  He immediately replied, “Yes!” and went to a side of the horseshoe shaped bar to get me a whisky on the rocks.  The last thing I remember is fulfilling my second card (writing my name on a man’s chest in eyeliner and then posing for a picture to prove that yes, indeed, it had happened), as I slowly imbibed the drink from the random stranger.  The next thing I remember was waking up in a heap of blankets on the floor of my hotel room.  According to the various accounts, I have pieced together parts of that night.  I very suddenly became completely obliterated, as my friends tell it.  They decided that I could not continue (as did the people supervising our pub crawl, with good reason).  I was apparently belligerent, rude and nightmarish.  They got me into a cab with my sister, who had come to pick me up, and I threw up in the cab.  When we got to the hotel room we were staying in, my sister had to get a wheelchair to get me upstairs to our room.  I spent the rest of the day, curled in a ball and thinking through every scenario possible for the previous night and then I realized the only reasonable explanation for what had happened.  I suspected that the random stranger I had asked for a drink had put something in my drink.  Unfortunately, by the time I realized this, it was too late for a blood test and for anyone to figure out if it was true, but its the only thing that made sense.  We went to the rehearsal dinner and I apologized and tried to make amends for my terrible behavior.  I was lectured.  I was threatened.  I was yelled at.  I was shamed.  When I shared my suspicions with one of our other friends, I was informed how little it mattered that I was possibly drugged because the only thing that mattered was the perception of everyone else who was there.  I was a drunk who couldn't handle her shit.  I didn't realize how damaging this situation was for me, psychologically, until quite a bit later.  This idea that it was my fault, that I made the mistake, that I just got drunk, has been built into our culture and in itself, my friends believing it instead of believing that something slightly more sinister was at play, was a betrayal.  I am one to always acknowledge my faults, and this time, I know it was not normal.  This caused a tense period in our friendship, but we eventually moved past everything and tried to salvage what was left.  Eventually, she simply stopped returning my phone calls, and sent me a message saying that she had been hurt by my behavior in the past and that she had needed time to think.  Still today, I have not heard from her, we have never figured out what it was that I have done or what I could have possibly done to deserve months of silent treatment as adults.  This was a new kind of betrayal to me, the kind that goes back in time and takes away the beauty of the friendship you once possessed.  So even when I feel nostalgic and look back on my younger days, I feel this immense sadness because somehow, our relationship imploded.  It may seem to an outsider that using the word betrayal is very dramatic in this case but I use it very purposely because it was a betrayal for her to not have faith in her friend.  It was a betrayal to just give up and not let me defend myself.  To be perfectly honest, I think it was a cowards way out.

There are other situations where you may feel silly for feeling betrayed because its someone who is new to your life.  This is the situation I found myself in with a certain gentleman.  Let’s just put it this way, I met this man at a local watering hole and we hit it off.  Although I am not looking for anything serious, the possibility that I could find something serious is something that I find enticing.  I found out about a month after meeting him that he has a girlfriend.  The reason this was so distressing is because a mutual friend of ours mentioned his girlfriend, saw the shell-shocked look on my face and he stated inquisitively, “You didn't know?”  The reason why that is the worst part of the story is because there was a moment when my very good friend, thought that I was capable of being a home-wrecker.  This, although a minor betrayal, was a brutal one.  For just one second, I had become a thing I could not stand without even the knowledge to protect myself from it.  He had used me, and he had not even had the human decency to tell me that he had used me.  

The worst betrayals are from people you trust who do something unforgivable.  When I was a baby, I had two cousins who were years older than me.  They lived in a very abusive situation with a mother who was a terrible disaster.  I don’t really know the particulars but I know that I don’t want to know.  One day, my cousin led me into a small room that connected the large bedroom that was my parents’ with the very creepy attic with the horsehair plaster crumbling from the walls.  I was around the age of 4 or 5, and she proceeded to molest me.  I won’t go into details, but just know it was the work of a damaged young girl who had also been molested and didn't think about what she was doing.  I suppressed it for a very long time and then when I did finally confront this memory I was so angry.  I was so confused and apoplectic that I could never just be a normal kid.  I felt like the queen in Hamlet, constantly screaming, “Out, Damn Spot!” but knowing that it would never come out.  It would never go away.  The worst part of this betrayal came when I was 23 and finally lost it enough that I had to tell my parents what had happened to me.  I had been carrying this burden for years on my own because I was determined to not hurt my mother with this.  When I told them, I asked her if she could inform my grandmother because I could not take the difficulties of saying it one more time. It was the most brutal moment of my life, watching my mother’s face as I informed her that the one goal she had in life, to raise her kids free from these kinds of sorrows, she had failed to accomplish. 

 As with all the rest of my stories, this is not about the sadness or anger behind being betrayed.  This is about more than that.  

Being betrayed by someone means you have three choices.  You can either choose the path of anger and rage and be the victim.  You can choose the path of the survivor and discuss forgiveness and how grudges are toxic to people.  I chose life.  I hate to be labeled a victim or a survivor, of which, I am neither.  I am a liver.  I am a phoenix.  Betray me and I will rise from the ashes bigger and brighter and more beautiful than before.  I will take this moment in time as just that, a moment.  I might meet someone who fits into one of these scenarios, but these situations will never repeat themselves.  History never repeats itself that way.  There are always different factors that create this moment in time that can never be repeated and never be revived.  As much as I would like to relive that moment when that boy told me he loved me and called me by my childhood nickname, I will never get that exact moment back.  Why?  Because people are not interchangeable and there will never be a moment when he will look at me like he did that night.  I will never again curl up with him and watch a movie, or celebrate holidays and Sunday dinners with his entire family.  I will never be able to relive those moments of the Bachelorette party and choose a better path.  I will never be able to go back and save myself the pain of being a child who was sexually abused.  I can look back and regret the fact that I dated this person or that person.  I can look back and regret that I went into that small room, or that I took a drink from a stranger who was not in my direct line of sight when buying that drink.  I can regret every decision I’ve ever made if you ask me to.  The point is I will not.  My life is unpredictable, dramatic and for all intents and purposes, my life is pretty remarkable.  At the end of the day, you can’t regret the people you have chosen to trust who have betrayed you.  Look to the people who, through these betrayals, have always had your back and supported you.  While telling my parents was a heart wrenching moment in time, it was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.  Although I felt broken hearted for a while after the boy I loved left me, it led me to be a stronger person and to realize how much I was worth.  I don’t deserve to be someone’s somewhat, I should be someone’s everything.  While losing my friend was a terrible series of events, I have learned that sometimes people go through things that are beyond your control and if they don’t want to be there anymore, then focus on the people who do want to be there.  Some of us are lucky and benefit from decades on this Earth.  Some of us may have a much shorter time.  So I choose life.  Instead of focusing on anger and frustration and betrayal I will focus on all the ways that my life is a beautiful cacophony of random events.  Live large, that way when you are reduced to a small pile of bones, you can at least have the pleasure of knowing that those bones gave it their all.  

Jumper

I'm a jumper.  While other people wait their turn, patiently biding their time, I leap with both feet.  I know that my feet will occasionally hit the ground painfully and I'll need to climb myself out of that rabbit hole, but I just can't seem to help myself.  When I choose to do anything, I prefer to do it full force, like a hurricane.  This is not always the best idea but I have an insatiable need to give things my all.  This has always been especially problematic in the area of my romantic inclinations.  No matter how bad they appeared on the outside, or to outsiders, I was all in.  I could not stop myself from giving everything I had to these situations.  This led to a lot of frustration and heartbreak.  This does not, however, mean that I have spent a lot of time in love.  There has always been the possibility for love but the boys I dated from my second high school boyfriend to my last college boyfriend were always lacking.  I had dated every variation of personality since high school: the boy with an unnaturally colored mohawk, a bassist in a garage band, a drummer, a frat boy with a genuinely good heart (albeit very poor judgement), a socially awkward engineer and the various other boys who have wandered into my life through the years.  I threw my hat into the ring with wild abandon with each of these young men, and each time results were catastrophic.  While I loved each one of these boys with all of my heart at the time, none of them were able to rise to the difficult challenge of loving me like I loved them.   At the same time, I knew in the back of my mind that each of these relationships was not the right one for me.  I ended each one, and as was the fashion for young women at the time, mourned the loss of my relationships with the same interminable zest that I lived the rest of my life with.  I wallowed, I wept, I wandered around in a heartbroken daze like a zombie who hadn't yet been to see the wizard to restore her heart to her chest.  

Now, after college, I reconnected with an old friend from high school.  This coincided with the year of my discontent when I found out I had cancer.  On September 17th, 2009 I was officially diagnosed with pappillary thyroid cancer.  Dreading the moment that I had to tell my family is the ultimate understatement.  I waited for my family to assemble at home base like the Avengers waiting to be debriefed after a long mission and bought myself a pair of boots (affectionately nicknames my "cancer-boots").  My plan to beat cancer was the same as my plan for all challenges: like a bull charging a matador except this time I would gore the shit out of the matador and not be slowly tortured to death by that ridiculously dressed senor.  So I strongly, although reluctantly, walked into my parents kitchen and asked them and my sister to gather in the kitchen and sit.  My Dad announced that he was already cooking the "Alli Doesn't Have Cancer" victory dinner.  As everyone sat down you could see the intense concern in my mothers face and a vague confusion on my sister's (who had been at college and only come home to do laundry).  The following is a representation of telling my family and also an example of why I, 
a) love them so much
b) love our inappropriate family dynamics 
c) find strength at the route of our ridiculous natures

"Alright, so I have an announcement. "

Blank worried stares and an unending silence.

"So."  I uttered this in several seconds to draw out the moment that I wasn't the cancer ridden sick daughter.  "I have cancer..."

As I said this I heard a huge SLAM as my mom's hand hit the kitchen table and she uttered the sentences that would become my never-ending motto to surviving this diseased state.  As she slammed her hand on our kitchen table she practically shouted: 

"Oh thank God!  I thought you were pregnant!" 

There was a long (or pregnant, if you will pardon the pun) pause while we all processed these words in a whirlwind of confusion.  

"Mom, what the fuck?" my sister replied first, emphasizing each syllable with an astonished comprehension dawning on her face.  

"Your eldest daughter just told you she has cancer," she finished flabbergasted.

"Cancer is treatable, pregnancy is not," were the words my mother had chosen to defend her outburst.

At this, I burst out laughing and I laughed until tears poured down my face.  This brutally honest statement gave me courage and that was the moment that I knew it would be alright.  My mother was where I got my tenacity and I would need that to conquer this demon.  Unfortunately, being a force of nature also sometimes means saying, "I'm fine," even when you're not.  It became a never-ending statement.  Then there was my old high school friend, who was serving overseas.  Online, truth is a lot easier to face than in person for me, so we stated talking about everything.  How we were feeling, admitting for possibly the first time that we were both struggling and going through a really tough time.  Eventually I told him that I had cancer and he became my emotional confidant.  We started dating while he was in Iraq and eventually he came home.  He was going back to school roughly 2 hours from where I was living and we made the decision to move in together.  I moved halfway across the state to follow my heart (again, attacking everything with an excess gumption).  In the end I tried but our relationship imploded and then like a large scale nuclear reaction exploded for several months in one of the most bitter and atrocious break-ups I have ever experienced.  

Now, over a year later, I find myself at a cliff.  The constant advice I get is to be patient and keep myself calm and see what happens.  However, this is really an intrinsic part of my personality.  if I hadn't jumped feet first into my career two years ago, where would I be today? Last year when my school's administration renewed my contract only if I taught middle school (my former worst nightmare) would I have become the best teacher possible if I hadn't jumped right into it? 

Along with learning to love myself completely, I have to love what makes me who I am.  Part of that is approaching each challenge like a spider monkey attacking a threat to her little monkey babies.  A part of that is also faith based.  I have a sense of conviction that although these leaps of faith don't always end well as I claw myself up out of the hole that I've dug, that I will end up where I need to be because of them.  So in my life's current mercurial state, I find myself leaning towards the boldness that I had always favored.  After all, no one really gets anywhere without having a little bit of moxie.  As Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, "Well behaved women rarely make history," and this lady is most assuredly not a well-behaved, well-mannered lady.  Not while that bull in my head is still goring the shit out of that matador.