RELICS
Posted on June 3, 2020 Leave a Comment
“Relics are the objects of memories past, evidence of fragments remaining in the physical world. Vestiges of something sacred.”
–Deborah Garcia
Three weeks ago, the boys and I cleared out most of our origin home in Long Island. I moved so much stuff in 53 hours, my lower back fisted into spasms for days. It’s amazing how much stuff we have. Despite standing in visibly vacant rooms, there are pieces of of us, hidden in unseen spaces. In every closet, there are baskets and boxes flanking the top shelves containing objects of what we can no longer carry but cannot discard. Every cabinet has items I combed through and chose to leave behind in the previous visit. In addition, on this trip, we cleared out the garage. This included rear shelves filled with some of Dave’s power tools; a Milwaukee electric drill, a Makita radial saw, a Porter Cable reciprocal saw. Also sleeping on the sandy plywood floorboards were rusty cans of of paint thinner, mineral spirits, carburetor spray, and a can of DW-40, faded black fingerprints marking the sticky blue cylinder. Under a drop cloth, tucked in the far-right corner, was the red tricycle with fat tires we bought for three-year old Davin, from an Amish market on a family trip to Bucks County, PA. Davin’s love of trains when he was small, inspired our vacation plans around scenic train rides and museums in the Keystone State. The trike was an object encapsulating this happy still-life locked in a past lifetime. A time when we slept at a country inn and Davin collected the eggs from the residence chicken coup for our breakfast, and spent the afternoon gliding up the Delaware Canal on a mule barge.
Both Dylan and Davin individually recognized this house clearing must have been a difficult process for me. Perhaps they discussed it amongst themselves. It was not surprising that Dylan would express this level of sensitivity, but it felt refreshing to hear Davin bring it up. I said, “Well, somewhat. I’ve been doing this for twenty years. I’m not one to hang on to too many things, but it can become overwhelming to dispose of things from my past life, in large purges. So I have to binge and purge. I don’t force it. Over time, the items inform me when it’s time to let them go.”
In the beginning it can become overwhelming to think about anything more than putting tokens aside so you can direct all of your energy into holding onto yourself in the mourning. In the early days of pain and sorrow, the objects left behind feel like security blankets. I liked to spread them all around the house, in dark corners that were not as easily known to others; a shirt in each closet, a pair of shoes under a bench, the aftershave in the medicine cabinet. In some ways those objects provide a sense of safety in belonging, by validating he was real. They are relics of memories’ past, evidence of fragments remaining in the physical world. Vestiges of something sacred. By touching them, I’m touching a surviving trace of his soul. Because in my mind, he is still around, somewhere, a sense of him remains, a phantom memory of an extremity, dismembered.
On a Tuesday, at 6:30 A.M., he was scarfing down a bowl of Cheerio’s with the kids while I packed him a lunch bag. At 7:10 he was hugging us goodbye, putting his eight-year old on the school bus that pulled up to the curb at our front door before running up the street to catch his own bus. At 9 A.M., nothing. Sometimes I needed something physical to touch, or see to assuage my need to feel his spiritual presence. Like a bridge. As time lengthens the distance between us, I look back and realize I’ve crossed a few bridges. Not by plan, but by design.
THIS IS RESILIENCE
Posted on March 19, 2020 Leave a Comment
I’ve got this quarantine/social distancing thing down. During the course of half a century, from massive hurricane fall-outs during childhood, to family illness, death and, oh yes, having my life yanked on an unplanned course eighteen-and-a-half years ago, I have developed the ability to adapt to major life disruption.
Though my children are young adults now and I work from home, I feel positioned to respond to this current life interruption by placing it at arms’ length. I view every jarring life event as an opportunity as a shift in energy that invites personal, civic and economic growth in areas we have only dreamed of, or have not made the space in our lives to consider alternatives. So here is the space folks. The universe is calling. Regardless of the level of hygiene I can employ or how few fingerprints I can rub up against, I cannot control the existence of this pathogen nor its course. However, the circumstance is not hopeless, I can control how I choose to respond. I could not hope for my husband to rise from the ashes and walk through the door, but I could continue to rise, keeping the door open for new experiences. One moment at a time.
I choose to cherish the time I have with the people who I’m with. I choose to support my community with service and kindness by not pointing my lens on personal losses. Anger and blame are self-armoring emotions that are counterproductive to community health. I choose mindfulness in heart-centered spirituality, trusting in the unassailable ebb and flow of life forces, by not yoking myself to fear. I choose to embrace the present by accepting the necessary changes I am given.
Growing up on Fire Island, I learned to escape the undertow by moving parallel to the shore. Don’t fight the current, you can’t swim back to the shores of the past. You’re sure to drown. In this day, I’ll take a deep breath, swim out of the current that’s pulling me into the deep, and allow the surf to carry me home.
In difficult times, there can be no normal to grasp onto, the journey is dynamic. At each bend in the road, I am changed. I just am. This is resilience. When bad things happen, recognition of my individual experience is a huge component to recovery. Yet, resilience can be community-wide as well, as has been my continuous experience as a 9/11 widow. In all of the environmental and human-made disasters throughout time, people have endured inconceivable hardship. Trust that everything works by design. Keep your head from being too invested in the future, it not real-time. Today is yesterday’s future and tomorrow’s past. Just like that, it goes fast. Your alive!
How do I maintain a positive outlook in the face of tragedy with dignity? Limit TV and social media crisis aggrandizement, it’s easy to get sucked away. I choose to exercise, walk the dog, to feel the air and sun on my skin. In Vermont this is a big deal. It’s also fun to give a wave to the neighbors, I rarely see, who are out in the middle of the day doing the same. I calm my mind by practicing stillness through meditation for twenty minutes. I can recognize when I’m getting close to my stress limits, and if I slip up, my kids will recognize for me and call me out on it. Personal favorite stress-relievers; crafting, ancestry, cooking, playing, listening to music, dancing in the kitchen, reading and writing.
Today I baked a beautiful loaf of Irish bread. I’ll slice along the margins and swaddle four wedges in green wrap. One for my children, one for the young woman who walks my dog, and one each for my friends in need. Perhaps I’ll bake another, tomorrow.
© Deborah Garcia 2020
CHALLENGE: OCTOBER 3, 2001
Posted on March 8, 2020 Leave a Comment
October 3rd, 2001, begins with no fewer challenges than the three Wednesdays that precede it. After I shower, dress and sit at the Gateway on my roll-top desk, I type a letter to a few political figures; New York representatives Pete King, George Pataki, Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton and President George W. Bush. Out of a loss for knowing how to take action, and a need to advocate for the love of my life, in his absence, in three tidy paragraphs, I describe our story and express my concerns for how our family, and the hundreds of families in the surrounding communities will move through the tragedy of 9/11.
At 10 AM, I stuff a yellow, letter-sized envelope in my bag containing mine, Dave’s and the boys birth certificates, our marriage certificate, a full-page missing person’s photo, and Dave’s proof of employment at the World Trade Center. My father arrives to watch the boys, and my cousin Pam picks me up for the forty-five-minute drive into Manhattan’s West side. We are like Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in Thelma and Louise, Long Island-style, 5’2 blond thirty-somethings in designer shades, motoring up I-495 (aka the Long Island Expressway) toward the Ground Zero Family Assistance Center in her pearlized Cadillac ESV.
We make our way to the Westside Highway and 52nd street and park in the VIP lot behind a tall chain-link fence beside Pier 94. “This should only take about an hour,” I said. My sole purpose is to file for a Certificate of Death. However, one step through the NYPD-guarded doors changes my illusion into the reality that would forever re-pave the path in my life, as I step from Manhattan Island into Fantasy Island, for a six-hour tour.
We are immediately met by an American Red Cross volunteer who asks about my story. She escorts us down a long corridor, between two tall temporary walls covered in photographs of the missing. “This is the ‘Wall of Memory’ for survivors,” she says, to hang pictures and write sentiments with a complimentary Sharpee. I walk through a 500-foot tunnel of a thousand faces, with eyes looking at no one in particular, flanked by uncountable Teddy bears sent from the people of Oklahoma City. This nearly ends my day. I clutch my envelope tight to my chest. The well-meaning and nervous Red Cross volunteer, about my age (which was 37), explains; “This is going to be very difficult for you, to answer the questions for the death certificate filing, and you and your children will be needing a lifetime of counseling, so I suggest you see a counselor here, before you leave.” I am scared sick. I can barely move forward, still praying that I am soon to awaken from the coma that is creating this nightmare, and return to my forever.
We emerge from the tunnel into what appears as an indoor flea market, dotted by rows of booths with printed signs and uniformed barkers, filling a hollow building the size of two football fields. Consequently, the death certificate process takes all of about twenty minutes. It is a unique Certificate of Death, of an unactualized death. Immediate Cause of Death: “Physical Injuries, Body Not Found”. Relatively speaking, it was cake!
The volunteer then advises we file paperwork with the American Red Cross where she leads us past dozens of booths to the area. Here, there is a complimentary dining area, so Pam and I take a break and lunch on turkey wraps and pasta salad.
Next, we meet another Red Cross volunteer who warns us that the wait is so long, we should leave and return tomorrow! Like it’s a single subway stop to Freeport, Long Island. Pam presses on and we proceed anyway. The wait is ten minutes, however, the ninety-minutes of torture put upon me by the hyperverbal, confused volunteer we were given, took all the blood out of me. Perhaps she became overwhelmed by the discovery that she had known Dave from his college days. She lives in Rochester, what are the chances?
Then we are directed to the Salvation Army. Ten minutes there. Then onto registering with FEMA, who hands me a checklist of eighteen booth sites to visit. The Tzu-Chi order of Buddhist Monks pray upon me, placing a $1,000 check in my hands.
We continue on, to the Worker’s Compensation table, a moderately bleak stop considering Dave was a contracted IT employee. Then onto the FBI, which turns out to be the most important place to visit. Dave is placed on the “Official Missing Person’s” list filed in Washington, D.C. The feeling of crossing the fifty-yard line, woohoo, I’m running with folder in hand, in the right direction. Yes, this is a comic relief, that provides me with a sense that I will no longer remain in the dark pursuing my lover’s murder. I am part of the action! They send us current news on leads and capture of the terrorists, and the federal government can direct all appropriate benefits to me.
Pam and I then make a beeline for the door at 5:30, grabbing apples, bananas and water bottles on the way out. I am home by seven. After being with the kids all day, my Dad scoots, and I still have to get the boys dinner.
Needless to say, October 3rd, 2001 was a challenging day in which I journeyed through many tunnels. Because of Pam’s fear-based water-crossing ritual, we emerge from the final leg of the one-and-a-quarter mile journey under the East River via the Midtown Tunnel, holding our breath.
From the last morning I kissed my love goodbye on the second Tuesday of September, to the re-telling of our story on the many stages set before me today, I have journeyed through dark tunnels of unknown destiny. Moving through the dark, I feel the reality of my decree crack open under my feet, and this is where the light shines through. For eighteen years, I have fought against the black holes that threaten to suck me into despair and I tell myself that I will keep alive what he believed. By keeping it alive and warm inside during the years to come, we will be able to return to creating the life we dream. Perhaps we can even constitute the World we conceive.
© Deborah Garcia 2020
ENOUGH
Posted on January 1, 2020 Leave a Comment
I lay my fear to rest in 2019. Fear of the future. Fear of choice. Fear of my tongue. Fear of time. Fear of judgement. Fear of security. Fear of not doing enough, having enough, being enough. My hyper-vigilant companion of eighteen years, an aroused emotion that poured into the dark void that once contained the light of my world.
This years’ lessons have made heavy and light of my heart. I have learned that my heart needs to feel both to be whole. Goodbye to the year of another lost marriage, the dream of a future that I had woven around my fear of being unloved, unprotected, alone. This time, I am not defeated by your broken promise of protection from pain. In the years you provided me shelter from the forces I could not control, I have found my strength to continue onward of my own resolve.
Last year’s losses have created an opening for the big love I have for the boys and David. I feel us in a new light. My son has been healing from his emotional wreckage with my help in our Vermont home. I have discovered new relations and friendships and have made big strides in my writing life. I am feeling happy again.
The intensity of the emotions of sadness and anger is equal to the intensity of the bliss and gratitude I feel. Grief and joy are part of the same equation. An emotional calculation that makes up a life. We tend to think of anger and sadness as a negative, destructive force, but some kinds of painful emotions get me out of bed in the morning and fuel my determination to get through the day. Perhaps the dark emotions that fear conjures, is a way of embracing life again. Today, I no longer have to listen to the fear that cannot allow me to forget that I am not enough.
Every dawn brings the gift of renewal, another chance to make myself a little better than the day before. In times of hardship, love is all I have had to cling to, like a life preserver, through all of the hard times. I Love that I now have the free space to feel; for Dave, the boys, myself and all the wonderful people who choose to walk beside me. With fear gone, love has moved back into the house. I can feel its warmth, renewing my faith, making me feel strong again, and giving me courage to move forward. I may have lost relationships through my life, but I have found powerful reserves of love in those who remain in my life and my heart.
The memories of those departed and moments relinquished to time, encourage me to move onward. They are a part of my consciousness and will always remain in me. To quote Dr. Zhivago: “What are you? However far back you go in your memory, it is always in some external, active manifestation of yourself that you come across your identity—in the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. You in others, this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life—your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others… and later on, that is called your memory. This will be you—the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.”
I awaken to the empowerment of the dawns of 2020 with my hands pressed together over my heart, and embrace the daily luminance that informs me that I am here, I will endure, I am enough.
AUTUMNAL
Posted on October 14, 2019 Leave a Comment
Ancient rocks hold sacred space
In September’s river flow
Untold tempests have effaced
Crag edges nimbly erased
Form sculpted bowls that bestow
A still splash of life encased
Amid her curling vertigo.
Deep into the sodden quag
I trod the withering phlox
Despite the temperate lag
Scorpio sets back the clock
And the sacred law crows brag
Of Autumnal equinox
Under the birch canopy
Fronds quiver probable cause
My sorrow, he’s here with me
He’s October’s effigy
Gilded confetti applause
Proclaims that he thinks of me
Beauty fades, fall’s menopause.
In November’s deference
In surging eventide suite
Before snowy days commence
O’er the underbrush sweet cadence
Of chartreuse and bittersweet
Resplendent hues of senescence
Obscure the path beneath my feet.
© 2019 Deborah Garcia
FROM THIS DAY FORWARD
Posted on September 1, 2019 Leave a Comment
In the gathering, the sliding, (into protective sleeves), the organizing, the binding, I am knowing you, again. As the rings are thread through the die-cut hollows along the margins of each page, your story is bound with mine. The tools you gripped between thumb, index and middle fingers of your right hand deliberately moved in signature ellipses of D/d’s and B/b’s, the way a curl infused your I’s and T’s, a combination of perfectly aligned smooth curves and hard stops gliding on a slight right-ward tilt across sheets torn from school-ruled spiral notebooks and boxed note sets gifted from me to him. The lilt of your strokes roll in abiding motion over my tongue, as each leaf unfolds unto another through days, months, years, confused teens, dreamy twenties, ambitious thirties, dating, working, parenting.
Our story is, as it was. Inscribed as it was meant to be. A poetic verse that pulsates beyond the moment the steel rings snap shut. From this day forward I am experiencing you in new ways, in my own maturing.
Reading the accounts of our lives before us, of us, after us validates that this fairytale was mine and is mine to have and to hold from this day forward. From your words, pictures form and luxuriate in my head: You are alone in your parent’s basement, recording your ballads, writing me lyrics of flooding your darkness with my light, unlocking doors and unbarring gates to write I love you on a slate. We are walking along a path in a college campus, separate but together. You overstep your shyness to interrupt my audible soliloquy, “such a beautiful day”, and you say, “yes it is! Hello, my name is Dave.” You are an upstate boy, muscular and broad shouldered, warm sun-kissed tone, exotic brown-eyed… as I had imagined you, long before I knew you, before I knew myself, when I was an eight year old dreamer under the stars lying in the grass of my childhood home… mirroring your own image on the campus where we’ll meet nine years in the future. You are journeying through an urban jungle with the weight of your genetic encumbrance hanging from your amber eyes, just to see me with your touch. We are navigating city grids that are imprinted in your sightless mind, streets you have drifted along and dissipated from in dreams. We are playing house, you revel in little boy games with your sons while my smile bathes in a steaming pot of Bolognese. Rocky cliffs, foamy tides, descending frozen mountainsides. We are holding hands so I can guide you in your darkness where you can feel the curve’s edge, so you can see everything I see.
What atonement is this? Writing words like these, I am also living. An engraved stroke is enough to let me know I am not alone in the universe, even in sleep. The dream-ghosts of two worlds, walking their ghost towns, address each other. I’ve awakened to your muttered words, spoken dark-years away or light-years ahead, as if my own voice had spoken. We were two lovers of one generation. The past echoing through our bloodstreams is freighted with different meaning, different language, though in any chronicle of the world we share it could be written with new meaning.
Do you know I was dreaming? You follow me into my dreams, my past, the places that cannot be explained to anyone. I had entered your mother’s house and you were sunken into a living room recliner wearing a flannel shirt of cream and navy plaid and loose-fitting jeans. Your skin was a tad more aged than last I saw you, your hair mildly peppered with dry grey strands. You turned your gaze to me, staring into my eyes. No words. Your face was beautiful. Your soul naked in the brown agate irides I’ve held in the vault of my mind’s eye., like an oculus opening to an ancient firmament, narcotized in my unconscious mind. As though washing your body with the gentle stroke of a smooth warm cloth, I run my hands over your bumpy clavicle, around your scapulae (the two pieces pulverized into your graven urn), down your short upper arm, stopping a moment at your elbows, continuing along masculine forearms, the tips of my index fingers circle your wrists, tracing the bony impressions on the backs of your hands. You spread your fingers, raising your hand with just enough space for me to slide mine between yours. All the while, our eyes are locked. I straddle your legs and glide into your lap, gentle as a lamb to the milk of its dam, and fold into you. You embrace me tight. I feel the memory of your strength and say, “I’ve missed you dear.” And you say “I’ve missed you too.” The creased edges of your lips and eyes rise like the hands of the beloved offering a chalice of sacramental wine, and I see you. You see me. Hiro (your mother), sits beside us, cradling a bowl of steaming soba for her long-gone son. But your attention cannot be drawn to her offering. We are locked into each other.
“David, I’m so happy to be in your arms.”
“Mmm, I am too.
“I need you. Your boys need you so much, in immeasurable ways. Your absence has had a profound effect on their lives.” We are swathed in golden light.
“I want to hear about my boys.” I show him images which are suspended before us in a holographic-sort of display. “They are men. They look like strong young men,” he weeps. “What do they do?”
“Dylan is doing well. He just graduated from college and is learning so many things about relationship, the Earth, life.”
“And Davin?”
I weep, “Davin struggles. He struggles to learn, laugh, love. He is lost. Your absence has had a profound effect on his emotional growth, leaving a hole that the world relentlessly forceps open with blunt force. Blunt force, that is what the Medical Examiner declared as your manner of death. Blunt force.”
Your embrace strengthens. I feel your hand stroke my back, up, then down, then up again. Your lips brush my forehead, cheeks, and neck. Your warm breath drinks mine. A return to divine, I don’t ever want to leave. I feel my pain move through the physical veil that divides us, into the gape of your soul. “It’s been very difficult for me to bear alone.”
“I love them so very much,” you whisper.
“They need to see you.”
I hear Hiro’s quiet sobbing. She is content and moved to feel the love containing us. Buckwheat and soy atomize our essence.
You declare, “I Love you Dear. You are my Dear. I love you forever.”
Our son enters from the back porch and I awaken from the dream.
How we used to work side by side! And how I’ve worked since your leaving, trying to create according to our plan, that I’d bring, against the odds, our full power to every subject, raising our sons, respecting mother Earth, enhancing the world. I hold on steadfast because we were the New World couple (man and woman). David, our strength still resides in the things we used to talk about: How we respect one another, how we prioritize wants-vs-needs, how to get as much enjoyment in the short time we are here. This is what we wished for our sons, our treasures, you wrote.
Dave, I feel so full of work yet to be done. My prolonged remission has unbarred the gate of freedom from the diversions of my past and from this day forward, I can walk toward the life I see ahead with the love I feel for you and our boys, composed, knowing only you will hear all I say and cannot say.
The moon will wax and wane, the days will run together and flow into years. As rivers freeze and embers burn and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will define us, which do we claim, who will we touch, what will I know, what will we say to each other, on the other side of this starblind road to fate.
I wake early in the morning in a bed we had shared for two decades, where I had laid watching your tranquil, sacred sleep as if, simultaneously, for the first and last time. We have been apart so many nights and days, this September day is no longer unusual, your absence nearly as long as your presence.
It is the first of September, a beginning or an end. I walk along a broken sidewalk… a school bus motors around the corner on a clear September morning… veiled in your immortal light. Seasons change and I am trying to hold in one steady glance, all the parts of my life. I am moving into the equinox and there is so much here I still do not understand. If I could know in what language to address the spirits that claim a place above this celestial ceiling, entities that dwell in mute insistence, perhaps I could make sense of how my life continues entwined with mortal dust and rose thorns, my burdens may slowly shift beneath the falling leaves.
© 2019 Deborah Garcia
SOLEMNIZING: SEVEN / TWENTY-FIVE / TWO-THOUSAND-NINETEEN
Posted on July 25, 2019 Leave a Comment
Solemnizing thirty-two years
Married, not married
Marking eighteen years
apart, not apart
Denoting four years
Past, not past
Tagging fourteen years
Trothed, not trothed.
Signifying thirty-eight years
Together, not together
Intimating two years
Short, not short of
Living twenty years as
One, not one.
Evincing half my adulthood
Lived, not lived
Loved, not loved
Lucky, yet lucky.
[Anniversary Cards exchanged 7/25/2001]:
Dear, (Wife)
“On our anniversary, I’m remembering our first days together, and still wonder how I came to be so fortunate…
I can see you coming down the aisle in your wedding gown—the greatest expression of love anyone’s ever shown me…
And I have a vision of you today, more beautiful than ever, because I love you more than ever.
Thank you for sharing your life with me.
Happy Anniversary”
Love, Your Husband
Dear,
“You are my last thought before sleeping.
My first when I awake.
I love you, X fourteen.
Deborah X/O
© Deborah Garcia 2019
“TOGETHER”
Posted on May 12, 2019 Leave a Comment
My lover is a young boy again
Sitting in the center of a picnic bench
Leaning on the edge of a table
At a milestone,
Ready to leave his infancy.
Across the table
Invisibly, we sit together,
Together and each alone,
Waiting for him to envision us.
His sons,
His wife.
We unfurl our breath
To call him forth
But he cannot hear us
He is too young for us yet,
He only sees the lens
And the smooth face behind it,
The way young eyes do,
And he looks at the glass
Reflecting the light
Toward us,
And feels on his skin
The warm breath of sunlight.
He is cast for the world
Of his own design.
He is life about to create life,
He is a babe about to unfurl
Out of a particular tragedy
Into his own form of triumph.
He is himself
Yet
He is of our past
And of our future too,
He is the life of the dream
And the dream of the life.
He is crowned in his own perfect image,
looking and waiting
As we wait
For everything to come true.
© Deborah Garcia 2019
Owning My Story
Posted on April 18, 2019 Leave a Comment
It’s been fifteen years since that halcyon afternoon on the Caribbean Sea when we smiled and promised enduring love to one another. That we would grow together into the second century of our lives was never in doubt. Was it? In that moment it was a question of when, not if. The future might have seemed as airy as the curved folds of a dream, but it unquestionably contained us both. Together. I banked on it.
And yet it didn’t, even after all those years. A year after we swirled bisque in silence, I find myself stunned by it.
Relationship constructs don’t transpose into bubbled answer sheets. Emotional connection happens in an indefinable space between people. And despite decades of research and centuries of inscribed stories, it is a space that will never be fully understood by us. When confronted by family, friends and therapists with how and why did this relationship ever happen between you two?, I find it impossible to shade any other bubble than “all of the above”. There is no clear answer nor a single stream of confessions that winds through it. He was injured by his divorce and child alienation, I was still feeling the euphoria of a fulfilling twenty-year marriage with his brother, we shared the sudden traumatic loss of his brother and shattered dreams. I was in shock, numb, and emotionally see-sawed back from the arduous childhood roles of witness and victim of parental indignation, into caretaker.
Our innate need for connection is the strongest and most primal human condition in our core. It informs us to reach outside of ourselves to create greater communities that serve both our own emotional, physical and social needs as well as service to others, completing a circle of need-based benevolence. It is the nectar in the pistil of the orange blossom. This is how we grow and evolve as individuals, communities and a species. This is what makes the consequences of disconnection so profound and dangerous.
Sometimes we only think we’re connected. Love belongs with belonging. It’s not an accidental entanglement; it’s an intentional knot. What I am learning is that I allowed myself to be boundaryless and vulnerable. The deeper my intention for belonging, the more disentangled Rich became. Rich’s love for me was an illusion. I now believe his love was a misplaced longing for his brother, not me or the boys. He felt injured from his first marital. I appeared at the edge, in the injurious gallows of 9/11, losing my sense of security. We shared a common loss. An exquisitely timed fate. A perfect eclipse of Venus with a fiery edge. A warm glow in the twilight of our smoldering relationships. In the footprints of the crumbled towers, our communion was borne of pure presence. Because we had not yet discovered our true essence in inner peace, we embraced the illusory spell of longing and security, which served as an elixir to our personal and shared pain. Carnal surrender became the consolation for our tender hearts. But it wasn’t soul-mate love. Although fondness always felt like a driving intersection in the course of our journeys, it was a union of our physicality and proximity rather than spiritual. The vapor had to fade.
A wholehearted sense of love and belonging is a deep need for me. I am spiritually wired to love and be loved. When I found myself unable to function as I was meant to, both in widowhood and in my second marriage, I realized those needs weren’t being met. In my former marriage I was happy. In the sudden leaving, Dave took the dream of our future with him. Our love had become my own and the pain of containing it was raw when Richard entered the mourning space.
After fifteen years of severe marital challenges, Rich and I became suffocated under the pressures of our individual and shared lives. My love tank was empty. We fell apart, became numb and I ached. The absence of love and belonging was pinning me to the grief over the absence of my love with David and I was suffering.
To paraphrase Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, 2012; “a critical piece of owning our story and claiming our worthiness is cultivating a better understanding of love and belonging. Love is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within EACH of them. Love and belonging are a PRACTICE.”
The absence of apology, empathy, and resolution nor acknowledgment of what we were communicating in the relationship, lead to the building of a protective armor, deflecting defensiveness and self-advocacy while invalidating the the other’s value in the exchange. Self-righteous justifications for behavior without acknowledging your partner in the exchange renders the withholding of affection, damaging the roots from which love grows. This creates love injury. These injuries were dynamic with us because Richard was not a communicative partner. In the resonant silence, I gradually developed a permanent bruise.
I had approached the separation with impassioned fervor, striving to re-invent our relationship. Sadly, he did not respond, continuing his ghosting. His refusal to own his behavior and offer adjustments continues to this writing. I gifted him compassion, acceptance and gratitude for what he has brought to our conjoined lives and he has given me silent darkness in return. It feels like I had simply not been enough for him to put the effort into the relationship, for the ever-after. He refused to be vulnerable and go deep. The result is, I got crushed in the gravity at the surface. Empty excuses were his justification for ghosting me. He says he doesn’t speak because he can’t think of the right thing to say, “I’ll always be wrong”. This is what has been practiced. For as long as he continues this silent punishment, he may close his eyes into the night content to be removed from the stage, but for me, the relationship wound remains raw and open.
Now, with hindsight given by the distance placed between us, I see that Richard has a history of ghosting through the difficult spots in relationships with no understanding of how to rectify and grow. I am not his first relationship casualty.
I have to stay away from convincing myself that I feel disdain for him or that he deserves to feel bad so that I can feel better about holding him accountable. I don’t want to have to dislike someone in order to hold them accountable. I don’t want any of the hot and angry feelings that go along with it, and I don’t need any more relationship regret. What I want of the universe is to know, what is the lesson?
There is a difference between professing love and practicing love. When you betray someone or behave in an unkind way toward them, you are not practicing love. And, for me, I don’t just want someone who says they love; I want someone who practices loving me every day. Cultivating self-love and self-acceptance is not optional. These are priorities. This is what I am practicing now. Goodbye lady in the carnival glass.
But my heart feels wounded. It hurts like hell when you know that you need to let go of someone but you can’t, because you’re still waiting for the impossible to happen. But it’s been fourteen months since he drove down the maple tree-lined driveway (in the truck that I bought him), and I am learning that what I need to let go of is not the man, because he’s clearly gone, but the woman upholding the myth.
I cannot decide if the near two decades we spent together were an advantageous fortune or not. It is not false to think that my life, and that of my boys’, would have taken different trajectories. Maybe some for the better, others for the worse. I wouldn’t mind taking a magical Ghost of Christmas future tour for a glimpse of what our lives may have looked like had David remained and Richard had gone on with his life without us. Or, if I remained single after David.
From my eight-year old self when I mothered the baby sister that my mother’s delicate, confused mind could not, to extracting the first words from another sister’s smashed brain eighteen mos. in the wake of my own wreckage, I’ve spent most of my life with the urge to be everything to everyone, leaving myself vacant. I sold my daily worth for the currency of promises. David promised he’d never leave me, Richard promised to love and cherish me in good times and bad, and I promised my beautiful boys that in time, I’ll feel happy again. With Richard, I settled for a future banked on promises that our relationship would be valued above all else and I wanted to believe his vow — “When my debts are paid, when the child custody is done, when the kids are on their own, when I retire…”
My struggle for worthiness has always felt like a Grand Bazaar haggle. A cacophony of messages that replay “never good enough”. I am not ashamed to say that this year of separation has not been easy. I have been pulled into the undertow of tearful languishing, angry scolding and desperate sermonizing. I am human, I feel, I am neither proud nor ashamed. I am a journey woman seeking a way from survival to a creative life worth living. In just a few days our legal dissolution will be dropped into my mailbox by a stranger in patriotic uniform, and it will be tucked into a file marked “obsolete”.
With my remaining and future relationships, I no longer force things. What flows, flows. What crashes, crashes. In the half century through which I have loved and lost, perfected the bake and made mistakes (according to Bob Ross, there are only happy accidents), I have learned that I only have space and energy for things that are meant for me. I have finally arrived in a healing space and what is truly at the core of healing is self-love and compassion. I am worthy now. Not if. Not when.
© Deborah Garcia, 2019
Green Card
Posted on March 3, 2019 Leave a Comment
The grey, frigid February days that framed the preparation and mailing of divorce documents and a week of the flu, had shrouded me in despair. Yes, on the eleventh, I signed the final order and following two stressful hours of navigating DMV legalities, I finally drove to the post office and mailed the documents Certified Return Receipt. On the drive home, I felt an emotional fog lifting and this is when I decided it was time to take a temporary leave of this place, my usual response to face-off anxiety. When circumstances punctuate my fears into a paralyzing level of anxiety, my response is to get up and move my body from where I am ruminating, out into the fresh air, if only to walk the dog. A weekend out of town, even better, and a vacation with people I care about, rejuvenating. Staying home, while checking the mailbox daily for a green postcard, would be akin to waiting for paint to dry before hanging new pictures on the walls.
I had been leaning toward doubt that Richard would receive the baton to complete the final leg of the task, signing and carrying it to the courthouse. Honestly, I questioned whether he was even looking for it. My doubts were confirmed nine days later when, upon returning from a weekend in NY with my mother-in-law, the mailbox had not produced a postcard.
On the due date, which was clearly stated in mediation, I felt seized to initiate communication and push this labor into action. Old habits cease to expire. In the marital years, if I didn’t announce Friday date night plans, he ceded his attention to the TV. When the kids were young, he insisted that I provide him with daily reminders of their activities as though I were his royal secretary; “Why should I keep a calendar when you do?,” was a frequent statement. Even though I abhor text messaging, it is Richard’s only reliable mode of exchange. I typed that I had not received the Return Receipt post card, nor heard from him in any regard to the final order, and that it was due at the courthouse on this day. His response; “I didn’t get anything”.
“I’m sure delivery attempts were made and a note was left taped to your house or in your mailbox, by the mail carrier.”
“I was waiting for your copy to be sent to me.”
Of-course you were! WAITING for ME to do! And i did. If it’s due the twentieth and you don’t have it, what, if anything, are you thinking? Excuses.
“This does not excuse you for not following through nor disqualify responsibility”
“I didn’t do this on purpose.”
AGHHH. The self-protective reactions devoid of empathy, reflect similar reactions in me. It fits right in with his general ghosting modus; ignore it until it goes away. This is relational ruination.
“It’s hard not to believe that, on a subconscious level, ignoring the date is intentional.”
His response; “Nope, not true.”
Just like that, abrupt and unemotional. I had long given up on waiting for apology, empathy, and resolution in our conflicts. Acknowledgement of what I am attempting to communicate is lost to a frozen lake too dense for a heartbeat. His self-advocacy invalidates my value in our exchanges. I am not human. I am not worthy. I am unseen. I cannot un-feel the years of disrepaired disengagement while empathy-empty responses punctuate it.
“Feels so because your responses don’t include an apology, empathy or resolution.”
“I was just in panic mode to go get a copy, and see what I need to do next. Not wanting to offend you in any way. Sorry just darted off to post office.”
Richard’s final remark in SF Pro typeface; “I just don’t know what to say.”
The whirling force of the vortex that eddies our relational chasm entices me to leap into the torrid current. This is where I disengage.
