I needed to be free, I think.

The older I get, the more I’m inclined to shrug and . . . → Read More: delulu til it’s trulu]]> There was a span of nearly 20 years where, if you had broached the topic of spiritualism with me, I’d have checked out immediately. Not because my own personal belief system didn’t have room for it. But having been raised in a stifling and controlling religion, spirituality, my spirituality was a thing that was policed by others (as was my body, my sexuality, my speech). Emerging from half a lifetime of experience in an organization that sought to weigh women down with responsibility while simultaneously separating them from power, I took a hard pivot in the opposite direction and kept anything but science-driven fact at arm’s length. Clearly, I had healing to do. Trust had to be restored between me and anything I couldn’t see with my own eyes or touch with my own hands.

I needed to be free, I think.

The older I get, the more I’m inclined to shrug and say, “it’s possible!” to all kinds of hard-to-understand things. And I don’t mean virgin birth or angry old men in the sky whose existence centers around creating and then punishing. But in the sense that I don’t require proof of any kind to tell me that I am connected to you and you are connected to me by invisible forces that are not measurable. I don’t need science to tell me that the earth isn’t simply a collection of living things (trees, bears, bugs, moss), it is a living thing. It simply is, because the truth of it echos around inside of me.

Other truths simply are.

And where I used to find so much comfort (and paradoxically, anxiety) in absolutes, I now take a certain amount of joy in the unknown. It’s full of possibility! Where my faith used to be directed at a bearded figure in a robe, it’s now directed at the idea of things simply working out. So long as my heart is pointed in the right direction, so long as I exercise self-awareness and do the work of repair (I can be a bit fiery and impulsive, so mistakes are part of the territory, I’m afraid), I don’t have to know what happens next. It’s gonna be okay.

The idea of manifestation might have gotten a few eye rolls from me in the past. But the power of words has always been one of those truths that I just felt. It is a certainty lodged in there, anchored permanently somewhere in my ribcage. It’s why I write. My soul, I think, is made up of words, a vocabulary I’m still and always learning.

“What we say, we bring into being.”

I was reading a book by Lyanda Haupt recently and the truth of that statement made me feel… buoyed. She was talking about our relationship with nature, but it had other meanings for me at that moment.

There are only a handful of people who would get my honest, or even complete, answer to the question, “What do you want?” I wouldn’t trust that many people with seeing me in that way. But just yesterday, when I was battling internally over what kind of future I needed for myself, and whether it was even practical or doable (this is what makes me roll my eyes now. Doable. Ha! Nothing is doable until you do it, Hunter), I told a friend, “this is what I want.” I didn’t worry if it sounded selfish. Or silly. Or And I didn’t describe a tangible things. Though, immediately, in my mind’s eye I could clearly see those things. A room. The weight and dimension of my body. The light.

Did I speak it into being? Who knows. But now it doesn’t have to live inside my head, undefined and trapped. And that, in itself, is a sort of freedom.

I met the man I would go on to marry through a blind date set up. I’d been in Dallas a little over a year, and just had my heart broken by an older man who made me feel like I was made of starlight. But he didn’t want more children. I was young and thought marriage and family was the prize. So I cried on the floor of my apartment for a few days, entered into a very ill-advised situationship at work before accepting a writing assignment that would take me through Europe where I would enjoy even more ill-advised exploits and come home ready to be sensible again.

This part of the story isn’t about Chris, so much . . . → Read More: landmines, part one]]> This story is almost two decades in the making, and telling it feels necessary to moving forward. I cannot promise it will be nice, but it will all be true.

First, a bit of background.

I met the man I would go on to marry through a blind date set up. I’d been in Dallas a little over a year, and just had my heart broken by an older man who made me feel like I was made of starlight. But he didn’t want more children. I was young and thought marriage and family was the prize. So I cried on the floor of my apartment for a few days, entered into a very ill-advised situationship at work before accepting a writing assignment that would take me through Europe where I would enjoy even more ill-advised exploits and come home ready to be sensible again.

This part of the story isn’t about Chris, so much as the cast of characters around him. Dating him was like stepping into a minefield. I was incredibly naive.

The woman who set us up was the best friend of Chris’s cousin and his sister (you got that?). She read my blog and thought he and I would hit it off. We’ll call her…Sarah. Because that’s her fucking name and I’m abandoning the higher road for the one that frees me of this emotional nightmare. In fact, let’s just call everyone by their real names. I’m a grown ass woman comfortable with her dirty laundry. And I am tired.

Anyway, the three of them were a little trifecta of insular, petty maliciousness. You’ll see.

The Trifecta of Petty Maliciousness

Shortly after we started dating, Sarah and Amber (the aforementioned cousin) invited me to drinks. I was thrilled. It felt like an invitation to belonging. I was separated from my friend group by most of a continent, by this point. And their little group of friends had been together for well over 20 years and “in” was not a place I’d had much hope of achieving. So mid-week, I met them at a bar a few cities away and, again, so naive it’s a little embarrassing.

His cousin, whose own mother had passed tragically young, was considered part of the nuclear family. Birthdays, holidays, family vacations. That night, she wielded that closeness like a weapon and she swung wide. The two of them spent the evening telling me how awful the whole family was. His parents were controlling. They had crazy, obsessive-compulsive behaviors that made everyone uncomfortable. His sister Jessica was a mess, they said, recounting tales of black out drinking, cheating and a secret abortion. Chris had failed out of college, lying to his parents and taking their money for classes he would never even attend.

They were loyal to no one. And no one was safe.

I was not safe.

Boom! Landmine. I went home and cried in the shower. And I kept every single word of that conversation to myself for more than 15 years. But secrets are like stones and I’m done carrying heavy shit. Consider this an unburdening. An exorcism.

That I didn’t see it as the red flag that it was, that is on me. The older-and-wiser me would slam on the breaks. Younger me chose…differently.

Before she was my sister-in-law, Jessica was the mean girl at parties who’d get shitfaced and tell anyone who’d listen about how awful I was. How I thought I was too good for everyone. I was ruining everything. Look, I get it. I was really different. And the outsider. But if anything, I tried hard, too hard, to ingratiate myself. Rookie mistake. I changed the dynamic and she hated me for it. I remember walking in to the kitchen at a house party one night to hear her sobbing about how I was ruining my own wedding with my tastelessness. She cornered me, later, demanding to know why I didn’t intend to change my last name. After all, her grandfather had been the world’s best guy.

I’m rolling my eyes as I type this. I’d heard enough stories to realize that was a fairytale (and that alcoholism runs in bloodlines).

At her own wedding, some months before we were formally engaged, and despite the fact that I lived with her brother, I was seated at the coworker’s table. My significant other sat with the family. Sarah was tasked with shooing me out of wedding photos. I’m not even kidding. The experience was demoralizing. Because it had been designed to be. And when I asked that Sarah not be included in our engagement celebrations, well, that went over like a turd in a punchbowl. But I stood my ground. For once. Because while the rest of the snakes I was stuck with, Sarah wasn’t blood.

Landmine. Landmine. Landmine.

I spent the next few years being reminded that I was not welcome. For Christmas that first year we were married, Amber gave me a photo album covered in cat hair and labeled conspicuously with a bright white sticker that said, “Free gift. Not for individual sale.” Another Christmas it would be an expired Cinemark gift card.

And no one ever said anything. Not Chris, not his parents. I was expected to take the high road. And as committed to people-pleasing as I was, I did as I was expected.

And here’s where we’ll leave off for now. I’m so tired. The act of unburdening takes its own toll.