Catharsis-Farts

Let me get this off my chest in as eloquent a way as possible.

I was sitting on a concrete bench, and there were ants, not a lot of ants, but a few, crawling around on my fingers, and I remember being able to see the moon. It must have been one of those afternoons when you can see the moon before the sun goes down. It’s never a full moon, rather, it’s a moon in transit, close to the beginning of its cycle, thus closer to the earth (or something like that). I remember looking just past his ear as I tried to explain myself and seeing the half moon in the light of day.

I had done a bad thing, he told me. We recently spent the weekend together at our future home out west with our future church, and I had rudely rushed him out Sunday morning while he was being admired by one of the members of the church. I can barely even remember the moment.

The first time we met the members, in December, we had instantly fallen in love with them, and they had fallen in love with us. He told me that he believed he would not have been hired without my charming personality. I remembered him as generally happy and usually admired wherever he went, but he always felt a little awkward and nervous in interview situations. That was where I came in. I was the warmer, the joker, the one to find common ground. I was not, however, much of a lady about it. Ever. Oh how I hated and loved that about myself.

Now it was March, and the preacher and his wife were leaving, waving to us, and calling back that they would go ahead and get a table at the restaurant, but we were surrounded. A shy gentleman had been speaking with us for longer than anyone was comfortable. He wasn’t a bad guy, just one of those guys that keeps nervously talking until whoever is listening cuts him off to leave...to escape. My love was too nice to walk away, so I cut in to remind him that people were waiting for us.

Seems like a normal thing to do, except that I, apparently, am abrasive. The way some had described me to myself at that point in my very early twenties, my voice and words must've gone over like a rusty bucket of soggy diapers.

He told me that he was so embarrassed by that particular interaction that he was listing it as reason for ending our engagement.

We had been together for almost four years, three years when he proposed. We were performing a David Ive’s sketch for the current group of young Christians with whom he was working. It was in Sunday school. Asking me to marry him was in the script, written years before we would ever even read it, but actually having a ring was not. And he had a ring.

Then suddenly, there we were, almost a year later, sitting outside of the laundry room, in the shadow of impending doom. I, shifting my gaze from the ants on my hands to the early moon, was half listening to him explain how inappropriate my behavior had been over the past weekend. He had driven to Dallas from Abilene to tell me all of this. My dad and I had run into him at my place when we got back from dish shopping, for the wedding registry, for my wedding registry.

When I think back to that weekend and turn it around the folds of my gray matter, I remember having brunch at the home of a young married couple from the church. They were quiet and reserved but very intelligent. We talked about politics (within the church) as well as lifestyle, since we were planning a big move west and were looking forward to slower, warmer living. It was dull conversation, if I’m honest, too polite.

Somehow we ended up talking about film, and that conversation made its way to the topic of curse words and sex (or "biblical fornication") in film. He and I were all too familiar with this conversation. We’d had it with each other a million times, and a million times we had been in agreement. Movies were our thing. We went to see so many movies and rented or purchased enough VHS tapes of our favorite films to satisfy the nerdiest of obsessions. We had crossed the bridge from VHS to DVDs together. We saw the rise and fall of Circuit City, and we shopped at the liquidation sales. We basked in our haven of electronics and entertainment like the excellent Americans we were.

This couple was not a fan. They liked movies, but they preferred the ones that didn’t barrage them with unpleasant violence, sex, and language. This was not uncommon among church goers. Entire campaigns to show the world we stood behind our word included pledging, as a Christian, to walk out of movies where the Lord’s name was taken in vain, and I fancied myself one of them for a moment.

Unfortunately, the creative madwoman in my head wouldn’t let me avoid seeing the films that received the highest accolades which were always the films rife with sin. I was a snob and a junkie. We were, together. So I argued as I believed, that if art is to be a reflection of life, it must reflect all of life, even the parts we don’t like.

She (I don’t remember her name, but she was a nurse or something because she was wearing scrubs...or she was just a person that liked wearing scrubs...which is worse, not that being a nurse is bad...just...scrubs) argued that she did not want to fill her mind with such images. I said I couldn’t imagine denying myself knowing how the world works, and what life without church would look like. This was an important moment along the timeline of my relationship with my first love.

And he was my first love. With him, for the first time in my life, I realized that love was easy. That falling in love was something that couldn’t be stopped or controlled, and that the amount of love I had to give was greater than I had ever imagined. I loved him so much it hurt, every single day.

Relationships, on the other hand, were tricky. They required immaculate communication and compatibility. He and I were very young, and he had, I would learn, a few expectations about marriage that I would have never expected. Namely, he had never seen his parents argue, and we argued all the time.

When asked his opinion of “unpleasantness” in film, he surprised me with an about-face and agreed with our new “friends.” It would do us all some good to protect ourselves from having to hear and see, to consume, such violence, such harsh realities. 

Looking back on it, this was the moment I should have known for sure. There were many times before when I should have known something was wrong. He talked about different women, "amazing" women in his life, and I should have seen the lust behind those words, but THIS moment should have thrown me a lot further than it did at the time. 

He, whom I had known so well, was not himself...any more. At least, he was not the man I loved, my heart, my best friend, every night with our feet up laughing about farts and debating the validity of the Best Picture win for Titanic, eating buckets of fries from McDonald's (literally, they sold buckets for a short moment), and laughing our equally unique and ridiculous laughs. He was not himself.

He had not been himself for a long time. I just didn't see it.

I fought him, tumbling into the hole that I didn't even see coming. We wrestled, and I raged. He just wanted it to be easier, and I guess I always knew it wouldn't be...for me. 

A year later, I was in Europe, an overfilled and heavy backpack strapped to my back. It started as motivation, my first effort to build the best revenge: a better life, but revenge is usually misguided, and the most painful breaks are often born of circumstance. We were both victims. 

I don't want to be a victim any more.

I remember a tiny piece of the pain that day every once in a while, when I look up at the sky before the sun has finished setting, and I see the moon. I used to hold onto it like a talisman, a metal of honor for taking it in the face. 

But I had to let it go. I had to stop fighting...without losing my pluck. This is tough to say, but I used to tell people, "I'd rather die than have my heart broken like that again." I'm glad I haven't yet... died, that is.

I was thinking about trying to tie the ants in here at the end, talk about how I don't mind them any more, and how they can't hurt me...but ants are gross...and I will dance on their graves. I will delight in their demise. Is what I'm saying.

Thank you for listening, and pardon me if it seems like I'm abusing our friendship.

Mush

I wrote this blog this past April after attending the wedding of two of my favorite people in Austin, TX.  I never posted it because it seemed too silly and sentimental. Right now, I could go for a little silly... and sentimental.

I recently attended a wedding. I haven't been too up on weddings in a while. I honestly think the last wedding I attended was a friend's from high school, and I didn't even actually attend the wedding. I made it just in time for the reception, and that was the best part...because there was free wine and frozen daiquiris.

I grew up in the church, a church that taught me that my ultimate goal was to find a husband and have children...and raise them in the church. How would I mark the beginning of this, my real life? With a wedding, of course!

There would be a ceremony, beginning with the bride walking slowly on a plastic white "carpet," announced by some pop song. The rooms (sanctuaries) were usually white walled with beige or sea-foam carpeting. This part of the wedding, the ceremony, would last no less than forty-five minutes, almost, if not as long as, the length of a church service.

The bride and groom would light a candle together, or pour sand into a jar (ridiculous. RIDICULOUS) to represent their unity. Then, they would kiss, and it would be time for cake.

Cake was as much as one could expect from the grand reception celebrations. There was also punch and sometimes cookies. The "party" would take place in the fellowship hall, filled with long tables and folding metal chairs, lit by the glare of magnificent florescent lighting.

The bride and groom would cut the cake, throw the bouquet and...the garter belt (but not really a garter belt) to the single men and women, and then they would run out the doors to their limousine, and disappear into the exciting new world of doin it...together.

And it was sacred*, and it was beautiful*, and clean* and pure*, because anything more would be...SIN.

I don't want to shine the WORST light on this. I know many wonderful people who did the best they could with such ceremonies and have had a grand time of marriage. The important part, I'm sure, is the marriage, not the wedding.

The wedding I attended last week in Austin, TX, that joined my close friends, NAY, bestest friends Carol Alexander and Matthew Falkenberg, was all of those things*, as well as one of the most beautiful sins I have ever committed.

I know. That's a really big statement to make. Like, that's huge and sentimental and shit. But I don't know how else to describe it.

We ate and drank and...indulged...and swam, and danced, and sang, and drank more (and indulged), and danced and sang more than I may have ever done.

It was pure and beautiful and even sacred, but not because it was religious. It wasn't.

I think somewhere along the line, we may have forgotten who...what....God is. God is Love. And that is huge. It's bigger than religion..s.

Matthew and Carol were married by our wonderful friend Devin, who recently married his precious husband, McKenzie in our nation's capital so that they could be transferred together when the Marines sent him to Japan. So that he could be with his family, with the man he loved.

And I cried.

I've been thinking a lot about love and about family, extending those definitions to the people in my life that I've used to redefine my tree. I lost hold of my concept of what it meant to belong when my ideals were challenged way back (you may know the story). I eventually found that loving the others in my life could fill the void left by the rift in my belief system. I took love away from the romantic notion and found it in everything.

But I forgot that the romantic notion was also real, and I've been rolling my eyes a lot over the years.

When my heart was broken for the first time, I wailed to my mother that The Bible (which states: Love never fails) was wrong. She always says she did a bad job of raising me (which isn't a nice thing to say to a daughter, MOM), but my mother hit the nail on the head that day when she answered, "that verse isn't talking about people, and it's not talking about marriage, it's talking about God."

It's hard for me to think about, "God" without thinking about "Love." I try to remind myself that it's not okay to equate God with the people who say they represent...IT (close your mouth, parents). The verse is talking about love. And I know, I'm waxing spiritual like I fancy myself some sort of prophet. I don't. I've believed in that all encompassing God-love for a while now, but I haven't necessarily believed in that romantic love.

I do now. Again. A little. At least. Finally. Because it's the same damn thing, or it should be.

I found love after knowing Matthew and Carol for less than a year. I chose them as my family, and Devin and McKenzie too. Since then we have grown together and apart. We have moved closer and further away, and last week, we met up again, with others in our circles, and we ate and drank and danced and sang. We celebrated love and commitment, and we laughed together as we acknowledged the inevitable hard times.

I know I'm too sentimental. I know it. I wish I could be funnier right now. But I can't. I'm a damn love-sick fool, and I don't care who knows it.

It may seem easier to follow a predetermined path for your life, to try your damnedest to make all the pieces fit so that you can float by with as much ease as possible. But there comes a time when you have to grow up.

"When I was child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I grew up, I put childish ways behind me." (I made this one my own...meaning, I took out the gender specifics) (gender is a structure, not a real thing. Kill your idols).

There is no guidebook for your life, and there is no way to plan for your future, even with a 401K and a savings account with a great interest rate (if that even exists!). There is only you...and the people you love, but it can take a while to see them, to find them.

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (that's just straight up NIV, kids)

My friends, the people that I love, have taught me to love in every way that one can, and through those lessons, they have inadvertently helped me to continue my hope in the greater love, the omnipresent love, the love we forget about that calls us to put away the self and serve the other. There is no greater task. There is no job that trumps our responsibility to love each other. 

Matthew and Carol, if you're reading this, you are part of the team that taught me that love still exists (even the sexy kind!), and holy cow, what a feat. You guys are like...not just a piece of the pie...but the whole pie. And I wish you the absolute best. I hope, when it's hard, when part of the pie seems to be missing, that you remember the rest of the pie still waiting to be eaten. I also hope this metaphor makes sense. 

Now, I say with confidence, to anyone listening, it's true, "Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away." 

And nothing else matters.