April 10, 2011

"She felt like a kid again."

I went with Leonard to Sunday supper at his family's house.  They do this every week.  They all get together at his grandparents house at around noon and just hang out, eat, and catch up with each other.  They're a pretty close family.

I've met Leonard's mom before...kind of.  She used to call me every weekend to see if he was with Andy and me...to check up on him and make sure he was staying out of trouble...she was nice enough.  But the situation changed since the last time I saw her, and I'd never met any of his other family...so I have to admit, I was a little worried over how they might react to me. 

It turns out that I had nothing to be nervous about at all.  Everybody was so nice.  It wasn't a minute after I walked through the door that I got bombarded with hugs and 'glad to finally meet you' from all directions.  There were A LOT of people...Leonard has a big extended family...and I was the new guy. I'm not always good with new people, but they made me feel right at home.  It was AMAZING! 

Leonard, his mom and I went outside to shuck corn for corn on the cob, first thing.  Then we peeled and cut up apples for pies.  The kitchen was a blizzard of activity...at different points, I think every person in the house was in the kitchen doing their part to get the food ready and to talk and laugh and tell stories.  I loved hearing all the different voices contributing to funny stories, it was like getting to be on the inside, remembering someone else's past right along with them as though it was my own.  Eventually, everyone got shuffled out of the kitchen, the various tasks done, besides the stirring and the timing of things in the oven...which Leonard's mom and grandma took care of.  

Leonard took me outside and we sat in the porch swing enjoying the beautiful weather and watching his nephews play catch.  Soon enough, we got called down off the porch to play tag with them, and off we went, running around the yard chasing down the kids till we all got called to eat. 

 Everybody took various positions on the back porch...Leonard and I sat on the steps, leaning against the porch rails...and we ate and I got to know this imperfect and beautiful family that helped to shape this man that I love so much.  And they were kindly interested in me...not bombarding me with questions, but asking, here and there, intermixed with the rest of the conversations, a little about me.  

And slowly, after everyone finished eating, plates were taken into the kitchen, and I wandered in too, finding Leonard's grandma filling the sink with hot, soapy water...no dishwasher for her, it just wasn't her way.  I asked if I could help her and she smiled and said if I washed, she'd dry.  

I told her that I liked washing dishes, and she laughed a little.  It's true though, I told her.  When I was a kid, my family would go to my grandma's house and all the women would gather in the kitchen and it was like a privilege to get to help.  At holidays, when the relatives came in, all the girls would bicker over who got to wash dishes.  To this day, it's one of my secret quirks that I love to wash dishes...especially when someone else dries and puts them away.  She laughed again and said she might have to keep me.

I told her that a lot of things that happened today reminded me of the good parts of my childhood...there were a lot of bad parts, but there were good things too...and today made me feel like a happy little girl again.  All these memories flashed in my head and, as I washed dishes, I told her more about myself and the good pieces of growing up.  She could hardly believe that I lived the first twelve years of my life in a house with no running water and an outhouse...that's how she grew up...but there was several years difference between us...and when she asked why that was, I did the best I could to answer her...but, I told her, the outhouse never really bothered me, except in the winter...I grew up in Ohio...and it gets COLD there...and there's no heat in an outhouse.  She laughed and said she remembered that part too and she told me a little about herself, where she had grown up, and how she had met Leonard's grandpa.

It's one of my favorite things, listening to older people tell stories.  I think it might be a little odd for someone in my generation, but I do.  I love to hear someone narrate their own slice of history, to know what obscure details they remember, and to watch their faces...the eyes go off into the distance, a small smile creeps into the corners of their mouths as they remember the good times...and if I'm really lucky, they forget for a minute that I'm even there and it seems like they are reliving that happy memory again as they say it out loud...  And I was lucky today, when Leonard's grandma started telling me about how she met Leonard's granddad and all these sweet details that led to them getting married and spending their whole lives together...I got to watch her live those moments again.

Leonard and I left the way we came: in a barrage of hugs and 'glad to meet you' with a few 'see you next weeks' thrown in there.  It's been a long time since I got to be a part of something like today...when I was a kid at my grandma's, yes...but it's been a long time since she passed and she was the person that held everyone together.  Since then, my family consists of mom and my sisters and brother and their families...and even then, I don't get to see them very much.  But today was a really happy day, getting to feel like a part of a family again.

When we got to Leonard's house, we laid on the couch and watched old movies till it was time for bed.  I love old movies, for the same reason as old people's stories, I guess...because I get to see history...what people's lives were like.  I don't know why I'm so fascinated with other lives, but I am.

It seems to me that every choice we make must spin out in a million different unanticipated directions and that we have no idea what might have happened had we just done one thing differently.  Maybe that's why I like to know personal history so much...it's like a fact finding mission...taking results and getting averages on what the outcome of a certain action was...if you do this, then this will happen...if you don't do this, then that will happen.  And maybe then I'll know how to make better choices...because I know how it turned out in other people's stories.

I don't know...it's past my bedtime...no more philosophizing tonight.  I'm going to put on my pj's and crawl into bed and have the arms of someone who I love very much around me...maybe one day, somewhere in the distant future, I'll tell Leonard's and my story to some other girl who's trying to make her own good decisions.  It will be the best story ever.

April 4, 2011 at 4:15 PM

"She wondered if he remembered."

I just got home from talking to Leonard.  I don't know what I expected to happen exactly...but I never would have thought in a million years that it would have went like it did.  All of these words kept flying out of my mouth and I was thinking the whole time What are you doing? What are you saying?  Then it was all over and I came home...and I feel like a completely different person...better and lighter somehow. 

When I called Leonard, I asked him to meet me at Wautaga Dam.  It's still cold up there, so I knew we would have some privacy.  I have a hard enough time saying what I really think.  With a bunch of people around, there's no way I could have done it.

Just like always, he came through for me...he pulled in barely a minute after I did.  The parking lot was empty and I got out of my car and went and sat with him in his truck.  I know it must have been chilly there on the mountain, but I was so nervous I didn't really feel it.  I was shaking so bad from nerves, though, that when I climbed in the seat and shut the door, Leonard jacked up the heat.

He asked me if I was OK.  "No."  ...it was all I could do to reply.

"Did something happen?"  I nodded.  He said OK and then he waited for me to start.  I almost didn't.  I was so scared...shaken up by the dream, and afraid of what his reaction might be.  But, as crazy as it seems, I was more afraid of what would happen if I didn't tell him about it.

Finally I spoke up.  I told him about the dream, about how real it was, and about how I couldn't keep it to myself.  I half expected him to pick on me about getting so worked up over a stupid dream, but he didn't.  He just sat there listening to me...

After I told him all that, I asked him if he remembered, years ago, when Andy and I still lived at the old house.  Did he remember?  He nodded.  I was shaking so hard that the whole truck was starting to rock...

And did he remember being at the house a specific Sunday morning when, while Andy was sleeping off one of his binge nights, I was standing in the kitchen drinking tea and he snuck up on me, took the cup, set it on the counter and, in one movement, pushed me against the kitchen wall and kissed me...did he remember that?  He smiled slightly in the corners of his mouth and nodded.

And did he remember, a few months later when he was about to go back out of town to work, asking me to go with him and that I said I couldn't...I couldn't be that person...it wasn't right...it wasn't moral...it wasn't fair to Andy...Did he remember what he said to me then?

"I said if you ever changed your mind to call me, no matter where I was, and I would come get you."

And I asked "Did you mean it?  Do you still mean it?  Because I changed my mind.  It's taken me a long time...maybe too long...but I finally see it.  I don't want to live my life and you not be a part of it.  I don't feel that way about anyone else.  As much as I've tried, I don't.  I've fought so hard to feel that for Andy, to be a good wife to him, but I just don't feel it and I can't fight anymore.  So did you mean it?  Do you still?  Because I've changed my mind and I want to go with you."

He didn't answer me right away.  For what seemed like a long while, he just looked at me.  And I thought I'd made a mistake telling him all of it.  That things were different now...that it was the past...that he didn't feel that way anymore...

Then, without looking away from me, he took my hand from my lap and wrapped it with his.

"Have I ever lied to you?"  I shook my head no...it's always been one of my favorite things about him...that he's always told me the truth, even when it was something I didn't want to hear.

"Don't you remember what else I said to you that day?  I told you: I will always feel this way.  I will always come back for you.  I've never once lied to you.  I meant it then.  I still do.  I loved you...and I've loved you for a long time.  Quietly...secretly...I kept it to myself because I knew you were trying to do right by Andy...but I couldn't help loving you.  I feel the same today as I did then and I will always feel this way.  I will never not love you."

And that was all I could stand, I guess, because I started to cry...hard and uncontrollably.  Leonard held my hand until I had calmed down enough to talk again.

"What do we do now?" I asked.  And we talked it over till we figured it out.

April 3, 2011

"She kept seeing his face."

Leonard was here when I got home tonight.  Him and that girl he's been dating got into a fight.  Again.

He was sitting on the couch watching Andy play some dumb video game.  When I walked past them, he held up a handful of Roxies and some other pills...I don't know what they were...and asked if he could do them here.

In the past, I've always told him that he was welcome at the house, but not his pills.  In all the years I've known him, he's never tested me on the issue before.  As a matter of fact, he quit for a long time...he only started again when he and that dumb cow got together.

Normally, I'd have done something different...at the very least, I'd have stood my ground and told him not in my house.  But I had the worst day and I wasn't thinking and I just blurted out "Do what you want.  I don't care what you do."

I just wasn't in the mood for it.  I went in and sat down at the computer and payed bills while Andy played his game and Leonard did his druggie thing.  But the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.  I kept going back and forth trying to decide whether to say something or not.  I didn't want to start a fight with Andy, I was already in a bad mood.  I couldn't decide.

So I sat there, trying to pay bills, but not getting any of them done because something was just yelling at me to speak up.  And that went on til Leonard was ready to go.

I don't know what made me do it...just that nagging feeling, I guess.  But when he peeked his head around the corner to say bye, I got up and hugged him as hard as I could.  I told him not to ever even think about asking to do that crap in my house again.  We care about what happens to him.  I said: "I don't want to see you waste your life.  You're worth much too much for that."

He looked at me for a minute with the oddest expression on his face.  Then he leaned back in, hugged me hard and kissed me on the cheek, said 'see you next time' and headed out.

Since he left, I keep thinking about the strange expression he had on his face.  I can't concentrate on anything else.  I just keep seeing that look on his face when I said he was worth too much to waste his life.  It's like it's been seared into my mind...

Rewriting History

"She chose to rewrite history."

First, a short introduction:

In my real life, the anniversary of the death of someone I loved very much is coming up soon.  I have struggled with his suicide for a long time.  And somehow I have managed to get through it.  I have moved on as much as a person possibly can.

I heard about fake journaling a while ago and was recently scrolling through Pinterest and saw a link to THIS website, and it put it in my mind again.

  I feel like I have to do this.  I think about how things could have been from time to time. ..not obsessively like I used to, but I do think about it. 

April is fake journaling month (according to that website) and I am going to participate in it.  ...in my own way...I don't know if I'm doing the fake journaling thing right, but I'll be doing it right for me...  I'm not sure that I can keep up with it on a daily basis (I'll try, but no guarantees) , but I will be doing at least 30 posts in this vein.  After that, who knows what will happen with this site...we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

The story I will be telling is the perfect version of my life.  It's not meant to be uber realistic or to be a pathway back down the road of obsession.  But somewhere out there in the grand scheme of things, we all deserve our happy ending.  That's the story I want to tell.

"She chose to rewrite history."

From this point forward, I'll be writing as though it was three years ago.  All the things that have happened in my life in that time frame did not occur.  I'll be keeping an art journal to go along with all the posts, and sharing that as well.  If you know me from my other blog (which you can find HERE), you will hopefully see a difference between that art and what I share here...as well as a difference in writing style and my personality...if I get it right anyway...  And if you don't know me from Sweet Red Clover, go check me out...

I hope this will be an interesting read at least, or that you'll like looking at the pretty pictures...but if not, that's ok.  It's not for you, really.  It's for me and my purposes.  

If fake journaling is something your interested in, I hope you'll try it in your own way.  I'd love to see your work, so please feel free to leave a link in the comments if you're already fake journaling, or if you'd like to start out doing it along with me.  I'm flying by the seat of my pants here, but I really wouldn't mind having somebody on the same flight as me.