Category: Uncategorized

Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day.
— W. Earl Hall

This little bit of Spring in my kitchen came courtesy of Trader Joe’s – they had bundles of about-to-bloom daffodils near the register for $1.49.  I love the yellow against the blue vase!

Happy Almost Spring!

[You] are the . . . women who are tied to my heart by a cord which can never be broken and which really pulls me continually.  My love for you rests on a past which no future can reverse, and offensive as the words seem to have been to you, I must repeat, that I can feel no bitterness towards you, however you may act towards me.  If you remain to me what you have ever been, my life will be all the happier, and I will try not to be unworthy of your love so far as faithfulness to my own conscience can make me worthy of it . . . . Interpret my whole letter so as to make it accord with this plain statement — I love [you] with unchanged and unchangeable affection, and while I retain your friendship, I retain the best that life has given me.
— excerpted from a letter by Marian Evans (aka George Eliot) in Friend to Friend, by Lois Wise

In college, I met two women who became my very best friends.  They had grown up together and came to my small east coast college the year after me; they were roommates.  I met them through music: LH had auditioned to be in the a cappella group I was in, and one night shortly thereafter, she and LB were sitting outside their dorm smoking.  I went over to LH and said quietly, “Be in your room tomorrow night around 7.”  Our group had a tradition of “singing in” the new members – knocking on their doors and singing our theme song to welcome them to our group.  I had been out of my room the night they came for me the year before, and I always regretted it, so I didn’t want LH to miss out.

She and I became friends because most of the others in our group were too staid for our tastes – lovely girls, and fun in their own ways, but the two of us were decidedly different.  LB was too.  After a rocky beginning (LB says she didn’t like me right away because she was scared of me – I get that a lot, which I think is weird), we were pretty soon inseparable.  We laughed all the time – we had the same crazy sense of humor, we said things everyone else thought but wouldn’t say, we judged EVeryone from our little misfit tower, we could finish each others’ sentences and knew what each other were thinking with just a look; we even had our own language.  And we drank.  Lord, how we drank.  And smoked cigarettes.  And talked about boys, constantly.  Occasionally, as groups of three are wont to do, two would get angry at one, or two would fight and the third would have to take a side or try desperately to stay neutral.  The fights never lasted long – you need your friends, man.  Above all else, though, we were fiercely loyal to each other.

I wish I had the words to tell you what these two women were to me.  I wish I could explain all the crazy antics we got up to and have you get it – the karaoke nights,the road trips to their homes in Westchester, the gyroscope, the gazebo, GIG, Lobster Luau, Phi Delta Sexy.  I wish you could have seen us back then: the three of us against the world, living our lives balls-out, making mistakes, learning about life and love and heartbreak all together.  We were really something.

It would take too long to get into details, but suffice it to say, we are not the same kind of friends now that we were back then, and even for several years after college.  There’s a lot to blame for that – geography, jobs, life changes – but much of it is my fault, though I didn’t know it when it was happening.  In the years between college and losing my hearing, I was really a very unhappy person.  I took that unhappiness out in a variety of ways, none of them very healthy, and the people closest to me took the brunt of  it – ask Aimee.  What I thought at the time was me telling LH honestly what I thought about the decision she had made several years earlier to drop out of school was really me, drunk in the Sheraton parking lot in the middle of the night, judging her and yelling at her (in front of LB) for making decisions that I thought were wrong for her, without once considering where she was coming from.  And that, I learned later, was the beginning of the end.  I didn’t know it then because I apologized in a hungover haze the next morning, she accepted, we laughed over breakfast, and she and LB headed back to NY and I went back to Richmond.  When I look back at my life, that night is my single biggest regret.

It wasn’t until after I lost my hearing and LB promised and promised to come down and never did and never called that I discovered what I had really done.  I wrote her a long letter lamenting the state of our friendship and telling her how let down I was that she wasn’t there when I needed her.  In return I got a letter that broke my heart and opened my eyes.  LB said she was sorry for not coming down and not calling (“I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.”) but that my letter made her realize she needed to be honest with me, too.  She told me that ever since the scene with LH in the parking lot (which was probably two years earlier), she hadn’t thought of me the same way.  She told me that on the way home that day, LH was not herself, was clearly still so upset over the night before.  LB said she knew that I judged her for not finishing school, either (she dropped out after her junior year), and that what I had  done to LH made her wonder when I would turn on her, too.  There was more, but the gist was that I had done serious damage to my friendships with them and LB didn’t know how to get past it.

Call me naive, but I’d had no idea that either of them felt that way.  We’d talked on the phone plenty since then, and even visited, and things had seemed fine.  I was devastated to hear how badly I’d hurt them.  I cried for a long time after finishing LB’s letter.  I took the letter with me to my next counseling appointment and read it to my counselor and cried some more.  I just could not stand that these women who I adored, these amazing, beautiful women, had been so hurt by something I’d done.  Thinking about it even now makes my heart ache.

I wrote to LH.  I told her all of this – that LB had told me how hurt they both were, that I’d had no idea, and that above all, I was sorry beyond words for what I’d done.  I told her that, though it was no excuse, I was angry at the world back then, and that I took it out in all the wrong ways.  I said, “The person I am now can see what the person I was then couldn’t: that you were struggling with your own demons, too, and I was wildly out of line to assume that I knew what was best for you.”  I asked her to forgive me, even though I knew I didn’t deserve it.  She called me as soon as she got the letter.

Things were great after that.  The two of them road-tripped down for my cochlear implant surgery in August 2003 and brought me a bag full of silly stuff from the dollar store and one of those gigantic greeting cards.  On the inside of the card, LH had written the crazy narrative of their trip, and on the outside of the envelope, LB had illustrated the story for me.  To this day, it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever received.

I don’t think I saw either of them after that until my third year of law school almost 4 years later.  In between, we’d kept in touch by email and MySpace (before we discovered Facebook).  Mostly it was LB and me; LH kind of went off the grid for a bit. I made plans to visit LB in Connecticut where she was now living and working, and when I got there, LH was there as a surprise to me!  We had so much fun that weekend; if you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought we’d never been apart.

I don’t want to go into explicit detail about the rest, really, and I don’t know that it’s necessary.  I should tell you though, that at least twice since I moved down to DC, I’ve innocently commented on something LB posted on MySpace or Facebook and gotten responses along the lines of “I guess I never was good enough for you.”  The first time it happened, I got mad and emailed her, asking what in the world she was talking about, explaining that I hadn’t intended to hurt her feelings, and saying that I didn’t think I’d done anything to make her feel she wasn’t good enough, at least not in a very long time, like years.  She responded, “You’re right.  My problem, not yours.”  Later it came out that she was going through a rough time personally, which she had opted not to share with me, and was very unhappy generally.  The second time it happened, about a year and a half later, I cried, telling David I didn’t know how many more ways I could apologize, or how else to show her that I’m a different person now. I hate that I ever did anything that made her feel less than, but I can’t change the past, and I don’t know how long I’m supposed to be punished for that.  I didn’t tell her she hurt my feelings; I let it go because I didn’t want another email like she’d sent before.  Now, I always hesitate to comment on anything she posts on Facebook, and when I do, I re-read it before I post it, trying to see any way that she might take it the wrong way, trying to avoid a repeat of the other incidents.  I hate that.

LH up and moved to Texas a while ago.  We are in touch through Facebook, but that’s it.  Her leaving school when she did – after her and LB’s sophomore year – meant LB and I were always closer, since we had a year together when it was just us.  I think she’s always been a little sad about that, and our relationship is really mostly superficial.

I’ve heard it said that some friendships have an expiration date.  Maybe that’s true, and maybe these friendships have run their course, but that makes me terribly sad.  I don’t know much of anything that’s going on in their lives, except what they post online.  They’ve both got other best friends now – they aren’t even each others best friend anymore – and we’re scattered across the country.  Losing them – and that’s really how I look at it, although it only just occurred to me that that’s what’s really happened – is heartbreaking for me.  I never had a sister; the two of them (and Aimee, of course) were the closest I ever came. I don’t even have the words to adequately explain how the change in our relationship makes me feel; I can only tell you that I’ve written nearly this entire post with tears running down my face.  I miss them more than I can say.

Selfishly, one of the hardest things for me is wondering if we’d have ended up this far apart even if that night had never happened.  I don’t know, but I can’t help but think things would be different.  And knowing that I’m mostly to blame for my estrangement from the two women I felt connected to on a level I’ve never felt before is a hard thing to take.  I can’t fix it.  I tried my best and it only put a band-aid on it.  I can’t unring the bell, and I will forever be sorry.

I read the book the opening quote comes from about a year after I lost my hearing, probably right around the time I sent LB that letter.  It’s perfect, and perfectly heartbreaking:

[You] are the . . . women who are tied to my heart by a cord which can never be broken and which really pulls me continually.  My love for you rests on a past which no future can reverse, and offensive as the words seem to have been to you, I must repeat, that I can feel no bitterness towards you, however you may act towards me.  If you remain to me what you have ever been, my life will be all the happier, and I will try not to be unworthy of your love so far as faithfulness to my own conscience can make me worthy of it . . . . Interpret my whole letter so as to make it accord with this plain statement — I love [you] with unchanged and unchangeable affection, and while I retain your friendship, I retain the best that life has given me.

My life is better and funnier and happier for having had them in it.  My love for them rests on our past; I love them still, whatever their feelings towards me; and whatever happens in the future, I will love them always.

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.
— Hannah Arendt

Ok, here’s my new plan: I’m going to make some blog promises here, and then attempt to keep them.  It’s working for my exercise program (I have my Nike+ set for a 5k coaching program, and it tells me to walk/run particular distances on particular days, and so far (two weeks) I haven’t missed any), so we’ll see how it goes.

I am working on the following posts (at least in my head, if not on paper):

1. the one I asked about a couple weeks ago that is half-written but makes me cry

2. the one where I make the entirely unsurprising, but nevertheless frustrating and kind of embarrassing, confession that I have serious issues with food

3. the one where I tell you all about how curling is awesome

4. the one that will probably be password protected (same password as last time, if you remember that one; if not, email me) because not everyone needs to know just how crazy I am

Oh, and this week’s Three Things Thursday, of course.

I am not, however, making any promises about when these posts will be published, but I really am going to try to make a concerted effort to write more regularly.  So there.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love chocolate, and communists.
— Leslie Moak Murry

I’ve been up since 5:30 this morning, which is almost 2 full hours earlier than normal, so I am exhausted.  I didn’t want to forget this, though, so here’s my sleepy list for this week:

1. the first Cadbury Creme Egg of the season – three points and worth every one

2. Nike+ iPod: somehow, it’s got me motivated to work out (I’ve got it set to the 5k coaching program, so it tells me how many miles to do on a given work out day.  I did 4 miles yesterday; it was hard because I’m terribly out of shape, but I didn’t quit.  I’m only running a small amount; the rest is very brisk walking.)

3. meeting Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (she spoke at our conference today, and I got to meet her and have my picture taken with her)

I wondered if there were someone just like me on another planet, if they had dry cleaners up there, and the symbol and myth of Jesus Christ.  I wanted to find out what she did when her heart grew so heavy not even lying smack on the ground relieved the terrible ache.
— from Book of Ruth, by Jane Hamilton

So it’s no secret around here that I have a wee, small, barely noticeable – ha – hearing problem.  The story of how it started is here.   But I first wrote that five years after the fact, and it really only tells the story of the day I woke up and couldn’t hear and then takes a hopeful turn at the end.  What most people don’t know is that April 29, 2002, was actually not the worst day of my life, though I certainly thought so at the time.  That day came about 10 months later – February 24, 2003.  That’s what this part of the story is about.  Lucky for me, I was a more diligent journaler back then, so what you’re about to read is the most accurate story I can give you, because it was written about two weeks after the saddest day of my life.

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Well, I couldn’t have imagined what would happen in the month that’s passed since I last wrote.  On February 24, I woke up at 7am and couldn’t hear . . . it was like all the other times, it just felt like pressure in my head and like if I could just yawn big enough it would go away.  I wasn’t all that worried; each of the other “episodes” (maybe 5 or 6 since July [2002]) went away over the course of the day, so I went back to sleep.  What could I do?  I was so tired, and the doctor’s office wasn’t open yet.

Looking back now, I think I should have known better — it always got worse when I slept — and just gotten up.  As it happened, when I woke up again at 9:30, it was much worse than any other time before.  Nathaniel met me at the doctor’s office at 10:15, and by the time I had my hearing test and got in to see the doctor at 11:15, I knew this was not going to turn out like all the other times.

I’ve had two hearing tests since then, each with only marginal improvement, barely enough to cover the margin of error on the test itself.  Basically, without my hearing aid [which I had but hadn’t worn up until then because it didn’t give me enough benefit to make it worth it in the first 10 months] (which serves me better than it ever did before), I can only hear very loud or very high-pitched noises.  Maybe that’s not really accurate . . . I can hear the coffee grinder and the toilet flushing and the water running, but I can also hear the keyboard clacking as I type and the snapping of fingers and the [tone of the] push buttons on the cordless phone.  What I can’t hear is the TV or music, or people’s voices unless they are right next to me, and even then, that’s a struggle.

I didn’t realize how good I had it the last 10 months . . . I kept lamenting my fate, and now I would give anything to get back to what I could hear on the 23rd.  At least then I could sing along to the radio and watch TV without my hearing aid and hear voices.

I’ve talked about this so many times over the past two weeks that I don’t even want to write it again here, but this is where it should be, so I will.  I mostly feel like I’m drowning, dying, like my heart is physically breaking.  I can’t sleep, I cry all the time, and think about killing myself.  In the daylight, I can see that’s crazy and I know I would never do it, but it sometimes seems preferable to a life without sound.  There are many moments of complete self-pity, which are sometimes followed in short order by moments of clarity in which I know for sure that I will get through this.

There is a deep and terrible ache in my soul when I think about what I have lost and how my life is not going to turn out the way I thought it would.  I feel as though I am being punished for something, not because I really believe in karma, but because there is no other explanation.  I am angry that I spent the last 10 months crawling out of the darkest hole I could imagine, and just when I was at the point when I could see the light and just when I was beginning to know and believe that life could still be good, I got swallowed back up.

I feel like I can’t admit the amount of pain I am in because it is an unfair burden to place on my family and friends.  It hurts them to see me in a pain they can’t take away, so I would rather shield them from that.  They all say that’s unnecessary, but I can see that I could wear down their patience and understanding without meaning to, and then I’d be left with nothing, with no one.

My biggest fear is that I will now never get anyone to fall in love with me, so I might never get the things I dreamed of: a family and a home.*  I feel like I am damaged goods in more ways than one, and I don’t know how to present myself to the world.  I can’t imagine getting to know anyone new — most of my old “friends” can’t even be bothered to deal with the deaf girl anymore, so why should anyone new be any different?

I am conflicted in so many ways:  I want help, but I don’t want to ask for it; I want people to acknowledge this change, but I don’t want people to treat me any differently; I want my family around me, but when they’re here, I push them away; I want my friends to be with me, but I want to be alone; I want to die, but I so want my life back.  I am so close to the edge of crazy, I can feel it calling to me.  I could be an alcoholic if I hadn’t been a Psych major.  What I wouldn’t give to check myself into a hospital for a week and just let go . . . but no, that’s not the way it’s done in my family.  We’re much too strong for that; we don’t need hospitalization or medication, even when you want to drive your car off the nearest cliff (of which, luckily, there aren’t too many around here).

I pray every night for guidance and patience and strength that I might find my way through this.  If I am honest, I also pray to get even just a little bit better, which I know is selfish, but I can’t help it.  I don’t know who I’m praying to, and, of course, I never used to pray at all, but I’m not sure what else to do.  It seems like it can’t hurt, and maybe it’s the only way to find an answer.  I don’t want to be sad or angry all the time; I wish I didn’t have to go through this process all over again.  I want to skip straight to the part where I accept that this is what’s happened to me and now I just have to “straighten up and fly right” and get on with the rest of my life.  But I don’t know what that looks like, and I sure as hell don’t know any shortcuts to get there.

I want to be happy again, I want to weave my parachute out of everything broken, as they say, I want to be ok and not want to hide under the covers afraid of the world.  I feel like so much has been taken from me, and I don’t really feel safe in the world anymore, and I am not the same person I was last month, let alone last March before all this happened.  And that makes me angry.  I was a good person, and I was changing and becoming who I wanted to be and I liked that person and I was happy.  Now I feel like I don’t know anything for sure anymore, and that’s not fair.

I only have 3 friends now, and my family; my world has shrunk smaller than I would have ever imagined, and people that I thought truly cared about me have decided they don’t or can’t and I’ve had to let them go.  The last 10-and-a-half months have been the worst of my life, and the last two weeks have managed to be even worse.  I know it doesn’t help to stew in it, and I try to get up each day and just live it, but it is not easy.  I want to be happy, I want to even believe that I can be happy again.  I try to hold on to what is true for me, but right now it’s not so clear to me what those things are.

I pray, I truly do, for guidance; I know I need help to find my way because I honestly do feel lost.  My mind doesn’t feel connected to the rest of me.  I walk around in a shell of myself, like my soul is missing.  I need to be put back together . . . I just hope I can find all the pieces.

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Even this doesn’t tell the whole story.  That day, February 24th, after my doctor’s appointment, I was inconsolable.  I don’t know if even Nate or Aimee know this, but when I got home from the doctor’s office, I laid on the floor of my room and sobbed for at least an hour.  I cried big, hard tears, and rocked from side to side, because there was so much pain inside me I couldn’t stay still.  I cried so loudly and for so long that I thought my neighbors would call someone, and part of me wanted them to.  I wanted someone – a fireman, an EMT, a police officer – to walk into my apartment and find me wracked with sobs and in such pain that they would immediately take me somewhere where I couldn’t hurt myself and where I could just cry for days without having to worry about scaring anyone with the intensity of my sadness.  No one came.

I don’t remember the aftermath of that – when Aimee came home, or when my parents came back down, or what happened in the two weeks between living those hours of that day and writing about them.  I just remember lying on my bedroom floor and wishing I was dead so I wouldn’t have to hurt anymore.

But I didn’t die, obviously; heartache doesn’t kill you.  It doesn’t make you stronger, either, in my opinion; it just nearly kills you.

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* This night, down on the waterfront with David, I looked up at him and, with complete wonder in my voice, knowing I was in love for good, I said, “I’m going to get everything I want.”  I only just realized the parallel when I typed that line from my journal.  Life is a funny – wonderful, glorious, mysterious – thing.

P.S. This is the first of the 25 posts that will complete #2 on my 101 in 1001 list – this is suggestion #7 (Examine your paperwork) in 100 Ideas for Your Blog