The Cave

“There will be pain for us all, but it will not be all pain, nor will this pain be the last. We and you too, you most of all, dear boy, will have to pass through the bitter water before we reach the sweet.”—Van Helsing, Dracula

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It’s dark in here. Really dark. Like “can’t see your hand in front of your face” dark.

The dark makes me afraid to move. Tripping is the least of my worries in this place. Stepping off some unseen ledge into….what?...seems the most likely outcome. An endless fall, probably. Straight into hell.

But it’s cool—chilly even. Maybe Dante was right and I’m in the waiting room for the 9th circle?

I decide that curling up in a ball on the ground is my safest option.

There are noises. Because I can’t see, there is no way to tell from where—or from what—they emanate. I hear water dripping…but it might just be my own tears.

I really should know THAT sound by now—but things are different here. I’m not sure yet what the difference is, except that the air pressure here seems lighter somehow. Less oppressive. Like I might be able to breathe again.

It feels like forever since I the last time I breathed. Easily, anyway.

It hits me that I’m alone here. And when I say “alone,” I mean utterly alone. There is nothing human in this place, except for me—and whether I still count as human is debatable at this point.

To be honest, I can’t remember exactly how I got here. Probably just being pecked to death by ducks…

Except I vaguely seem to remember the ducks turning into geese—and those are some mean motherfuckers. Trust me on this one—if they had opposable thumbs, they’d rip your heart out and eat it in front of you. You can see their hatred and contempt for you in their beady little eyes.

We let them live only because they are so beautiful...

That’s how they get close to you, of course.

They stand there looking so regal and so impossibly lovely, and maybe you don’t know how vicious they can be because this is the first time you’ve encountered them.

Or maybe you just forget, because you are desperately craving beauty in your so-called life, and that bird stands there, teasing you with thoughts of flight, as water droplets sparkle like stars on its feathers.

So you walk toward it, hands outstretched in wonder, and….

Wake up to find yourself here. Wounded. Bleeding. Alone.

But if I'm honest—and why NOT be honest at this point?—I’m grateful to be alone. Because nothing else can hurt me now.

Except me.

Which is the first comforting thought I’ve had in a long time.

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“I keep a record of the wreckage of my life.”—Halsey, Nightmare

Pain is a funny thing. Some forms of it will destroy you—others will give you pleasure. The difficulty is trying to figure out which is which—and remembering not to confuse them.

I might have had a little trouble keeping all that straight….

A more positive framing could be that, when it comes to self-inflicted pain, I’m an Olympic-level athlete.

Everyone has a talent, right? And I remember now that I ran toward those geese as if the Devil himself was chasing me. Did my feet ever even touch the ground?

For a moment, I WAS a bird...or thought I was.

The geese were well aware that was nonsense—and they were offended by my presumption. I was the only confused one.

But what happened BEFORE that? As soon as I ask myself this question, I hear the unmistakable sound of an old-fashioned movie projector revving up, and a light begins to flicker in the darkness. I can see now that I’m in a cave of some sort, and before I even have time to process this thought, scenes from my life begin to flicker across the rocky walls.

I see a fat little girl with long hair and buck teeth. Her father walked out when she was six. She’s smart…too smart for a girl in the 1970s. She’s desperate for friends, but they are hard to come by. One day she’s in—the next she’s out, and she never knows why either way. She dreams of horses and a daddy who loves her enough to stay…

Suddenly, I catch myself and shake my head to clear my thoughts. There can be only a handful of possible explanations for this bizarre scenario in which I find myself:

1. I’m dreaming.

2. I'm experiencing the mother of all Candid Camera stunts. Or...

3. I’m going crazy.

I bite my lip. Hard. The warm coppery taste of blood in my mouth tells me I’m not dreaming.

I see no projector or projectionist. No Alan Funt popping out from behind a rock formation to corral all this weirdness into some kind of comprehensible narrative.

That leaves only Curtain #3.

 Crazy it is.

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“I started out clean, but I’m jaded. Just phoning it in, just breaking the skin…”—Rob Thomas

Crazy is a family trait. My mother went crazy when she turned 35. The movie reel plays my memories of her standing in front of the bathroom mirror every day of that year, looking in despair at her face and body. She was on her third marriage by then, and it wasn’t going well. She was sure her life was over.

Should I add that she was beautiful? Wounded, frightened, and fragile—but beautiful.

I was 15, and I was NOT beautiful. And I was impatient with her. Her fixation on her looks and her weight annoyed me. Probably because I was chubby and the braces hadn’t yet completely cured my buck teeth. I knew she hated the fact that I was fat. That I refused to wear makeup. That my favorite clothes were sweatpants.

Mostly she hated the fact that I didn’t want to be like her.

Now that I have children, I understand this a bit better—but, given the current state of things, the last thing I want is for my children to be like me.

The irony of it is that I am much more like my mother than either of us would ever have predicted back then. Both of us desperate for love. Both of us with terrible taste in men. Both of us looking at our reflections and searching for…I don’t know. I suspect we both expected that mirror to show us a different woman, and it broke us when all we saw was our own weary faces.

Now that I think of it, maybe the real issue was that we had both been told all our lives that we were destined for great things—only to discover that we were nothing special. Just garden-variety, middle-aged, white women having a come-undone.

Let’s face it. In this culture, being ordinary is the worst sin of all.

But my madness is the late-blooming variety, I guess. I just turned 42. That seems such an odd number, doesn’t it? When I passed 35 without following in what I saw as my mother’s self-absorbed footsteps, I actually had the temerity to pat myself on the back. Back then, I still wanted to be better than my mother. Stronger. Independent. Self-confident.

But here I am in this cave. Did my mother ever wake up one day in a cave of her own and think “Why do I even bother?” And if she did, how did she get out alive?

Do I want to know the answer to that question? Right now, the answer is “No.” I am exhausted, and I crave rest more than I crave air or water.

But the reel plays on….

There have been signs all along, I guess. I don’t remember anyone talking about the practice of “cutting” when I was a kid, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve engaged in my own slightly more socially acceptable version of it. I chew my bottom lip until it’s in shreds. It’s not very attractive, but it has an advantage over cutting in that it never scars and the skin always grows back.

(On occasion, I get that “bee-stung lip” look that women pay good money to achieve. I guess you can count that as a side benefit, if you’re into such things.)

I do it for the same reason other people slice their skin with knives or razors: the pain is clean and sharp, and it distracts me from other hurts for which I have no remedy.

I confess that I am oddly proud of my little variation. I have created my own, renewable source of self-flagellation—and people who see only the most superficial part of me just think I need some Chapstick.

It’s easier for all of us that way.

They don’t really want to know that I’m inflicting physical pain on myself to keep the mental wolves at bay. And I prefer avoiding pesky questions for which I have no answers—or answers I don’t want to share, anyway.

(That makes me sound mysterious and possibly tragic, doesn’t it? But it’s just another lie I’ve told myself—that I have answers worth hiding.)

The pathetic truth is that I’m nothing special. I’m a completely unremarkable woman who is having a nervous breakdown. I’m failing at marriage for the second time, and every morning, my aging face stares back at me in the mirror. Other than my children’s tiny hands, I can’t remember the last time I was touched in love or desire.

Did I give up all the wrong things to build the life I have now? I’m sinking slowly in the morass of my own unfulfilled ambitions and wasted talents and thinking that death will be a welcome relief from so much recrimination and regret.

If I weren’t so exhausted, I would probably have the grace to be embarrassed by this self-indulgent recitation. The only way I could be a bigger cliché is if I were a man and left myself for a 20-year-old with big tits and a bright-red convertible.

As I contemplate this, it occurs to me that men get a much better deal in the mid-life crisis department. Here I am, crouched in this lightless cave trying to decide whether I should off myself—while my masculine doppelganger is out joy-riding up and down Pacific Coast Highway with a sweet young thing and undoubtedly popping Viagra like breath mints.

For a moment, I’m royally pissed at the gendered unfairness of this entirely made-up scenario—and then I laugh for the first time in forever. It’s a rusty sound—like I’m the Tin Man and it’s been too long since the last time my jaw got oiled.

Believe it or not, there was a time when I laughed a lot. Before the geese came along with their incessant honking and their sharp beaks and drove me into this cave. Which is purely in my head, of course.

But you already knew that.

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“The unexamined life is not worth living.”—Aristotle

In the flickering lights of my memories, I see my failures in grainy technicolor. Relationships. Careers. Motherhood. That familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach—the feeling of falling into a black hole in which no one can see or hear me—reappears.

And the reel plays on….

The images are more than grainy—I feel as if I’m watching through a dirty windowpane because they seem to move in and out of focus. I blink to clear my vision, and that’s when I finally notice the geese.

They are silent, nearly transparent, and they fly in and out of the frame at odd moments. It’s clear the “me” on the screen doesn’t know they’re present. In my still-dazed state of mind, it takes a while for my brain to start noticing their common points of entry and exit with respect to the “story” playing out on the wall.

But is it my story? I can’t say for certain. I recognize certain elements—people, places, events—but how can I be sure that the unfolding tales are truly mine?

We’ve already established that I’m crazy, after all…

I know our memories are not stored “whole” in some kind of mental filing cabinet. I know our brains deposit different aspects of a memory in different neural locations. When we try to remember something, the brain attempts to pull those “pieces” from their respective storage sites and reassemble them—not always (if ever) accurately. This is why, for example, siblings who experienced an event together often have such wildly different memories of it.

Change a single element of an event—or the person observing the event—and the narrative can be entirely different.

And yet…there is something that feels…right…in this recollection of my life. There’s some sense of both honesty and relief in watching the many ways in which I have failed myself and others. I register a slight, but perceptible, lifting of the sense of weariness I’ve felt for so long. It feels cathartic to recognize that I’ve been trying to pretend I’m more than just broken pieces held together by wires spun from duty and shame.

I begin to notice that the birds flit into the frame in moments where I vaguely remember feeling a sense of direction and purpose for my life—falling in love, taking a new job. I sense that the number of geese in any particular frame depends on the intensity of the emotion connected to the memory.

Motherhood brings a flock of them, crowding into the hospital rooms where I pushed reluctant, howling infants from their warm, cozy nest into a world where—even then—I knew I could never keep them safe.

The geese look on solemnly as the doctor hands me first my son and later my daughter. Their bright eyes fixate on my babies’ faces—is that wonder I see there? Both babies turn their heads toward the birds…listening for something that only they seem to be able to hear. Did the geese speak to them? Hiss at them to flee while there is still time? Or—please God—whisper that each had found a home in this world where they would be guaranteed love, if not safety?

The babies’ eyes close, as if on cue. The message—whatever it was—had been received.

Let the record show, your honor: When the geese turn toward me, their bright eyes grow cloudy—inscrutable. I am holding my children and cooing the way new mothers do—completely oblivious to their presence. Suddenly, a shudder moves through the gaggle. Almost in unison, they wheel and fly away.

No one in the room gives any sign or acknowledgment that the geese have been there.

The same is true of all the geese who appear at major decision points in my life. They are there, but I can’t see them in the moment.

Only now, when I have reached the end of some road I didn’t even know I was traveling, can I see that they surrounded me long before the cave. Only now can I see that they didn’t always seek to harm me.

What am I to make of this? Who are they?

And then the slaughter begins.

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“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” Albert Schweitzer

The reel begins whipsawing through all the most painful experiences of my life. As it does, relentless images of pain and horror fill the cave. It’s the geese, and they are dying. As I endure the pain of betrayal and loss, they gather unseen around my feet, their feathers drooping. Some of them grow ever thinner, until they simply keel over from lack of food or water.

Others have clearly been injured. Blood drips from their beaks, their wings, their feet—until I am standing in a river of gore, surrounded by feathered corpses.

The worst are the ones who are gasping for breath. I can see that they are being strangled—but not who is doing it. I desperately search the frame to find someone to stop the ongoing massacre, but there is only me—and I can’t help them because the me in the reel is insensible to their presence.

My heart feels as if it will burst out of my chest. I only realize I’m sobbing when I try to take a breath and it’s all I can do to suck air into my lungs.

The cries of terror and anguish are unlike any I’ve ever heard. Other geese begin flying into the frame, trying to save their kind—but it’s impossible. It’s almost as if the dying animals are chained to me. The flock flies helplessly in circles, watching their mates and children suffer, while the “me” on the screen is oblivious.

Now I understand why the geese hate me.

I don’t know how or why I am responsible for the murder of their kin, but it’s clear I am. I begin to keen over all this senseless, terrible death. The sounds of geese dying and my wailing bounce around the cave, creating a cacophony of noise in which the last shreds of my sanity feel like spider silk wrapped around palms bleeding from the nails I’ve dug into them. One more tug and I will disappear permanently into darkness. I WANT this. In this moment, I want nothing more than death and an end to the carnage that is attached to my life…

And at just that pivotal moment, the reel flickers out and—mercifully—goes dark.

Once again, I’m alone.

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“Suicide is painless. It brings on many changes…and I can take or leave it if I please.”—Michael Altman, M*A*S*H theme song

I have no idea how long I lie there, sobbing. Before I woke up in this cave, I was exhausted and hopeless. Now I am devastated as well. I have committed many wrongs in my life, but the images of the suffering geese have added innumerable previously unknown sins to my account.

This knowledge is too much for any mortal with a shred of empathy to bear—and I’ve always had more empathy than I needed…

I know now why I am here. The beautiful finality of death beckons. No more pain or suffering—for me OR the geese. All I have to do is step deeper into the cave and all the pain will end. I don’t know how it will end, but I know with certainty that it WILL end. The promise of rest floods through me like a cold mountain stream, and I suddenly feel invigorated. I stand up, trying to orient myself in the darkness so that I can journey farther into the cave.

And that’s when I feel it—the first peck. It’s tentative—probably because it’s dark. But it’s quickly followed by several more, and these hurt. I bend down, reach out my hands, and touch…feathers. So many feathers, attached to so many geese. I’m surrounded.

I should be terrified, but I’m not. This is not the way I wanted to go, but I sense the rightness of it. “An eye for an eye” is as old as time…and why shouldn’t I pay for my failures?

But that isn’t what happens. The geese are so tightly packed around me that when they move, I have no choice but to move with them. If I try to move in a different direction, or I stop keeping pace with them, they peck me until I fall in line.

I can’t see anything, but I can hear them “talking” to one another—soft honks and the clicking of their beaks—as they maneuver me around in the darkness. I can sense their determination. If I refuse to do what they want, they WILL peck me to death.

Mere moments ago, I was prepared to accept that fate—but something about their resolve is chilling. They are more than determined—they are relentless…but for what purpose?

The dark begins to get less…dark…as we walk, and I start to be able to distinguish shadows. I see so many small heads around my knees that I can’t begin to count them all.

And then I see light—real light—at the mouth of the cave.

The geese are set on ushering me out of the cave. I DON’T WANT THIS. I want to turn around, walk further into the darkness, and never leave.

But the geese have other ideas.

I hear my blood pounding in my ears, and I try to struggle a bit, but it’s no use. I’m being moved without my consent and that movement is inexorable. I am not going to be allowed to choose to die. A part of me screams out at this denial of my autonomy.

But a voice inside my head reminds me that I have never really been in control of my life. Ever. So why should I expect anything to change now?

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“Carry on, my wayward son, there'll be peace when you are done. Lay your weary head to rest. Don't you cry no more.”—Kerry Livgren

We finally exit the cave—this army of geese and me. They walk out away from me and then turn around to face me. There are hundreds—maybe thousands—of them. And they are all looking at me with angry eyes. They honk and honk until I have to put my hands over my ears to keep from breaking down.

As soon as I do—miraculously—the din stops.

I stare at them in confusion. They are waiting for something. But what?

There is one gander that is clearly the “general” of this avian army. He waddles up within about 5 feet of me and stares into my eyes…and that’s when I hear another voice in my head. It has a weird accent and its diction is oddly formal. To be honest, it doesn’t sound human.

“Do you know why you are here?”

I shake my head because I cannot trust that my voice won’t squeak.

“You have been brought here to see that your ordinary life is precious. To accept it and make peace with it, to the extent you can.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“By learning to understand what you saw.”

I’m beginning to see why my children throw temper tantrums. The inability to understand something the party in authority is trying to communicate to you is maddeningly frustrating…

“I get some of it,” I tell him. “But my brain isn’t working all that well these days.”

"I have noticed,” he fires back. (I guess I’m not the only one frustrated in this exchange.) “What DO you understand?”

“That your friends there,” I point to his multitude of companions, “and their lives are somehow tied to my emotional state. But I don’t know HOW or WHY.”

Do geese sigh? Because I believe he just did. But I am used to this. Disappointing people is the story of my life…

As soon as I think this, I see his eyes soften, and the voice inside my head grows kinder.

“The dying geese you saw on the walls of the cave are hopes and dreams you held on to for too long. Instead of setting them free when they did not come true, you took them captive—and killed them in the process. You have been carrying around the rotting bodies of my children for many years. Their weight and the stench of death have proven too much for you. This is the root of your madness.”

I wonder briefly what the rest of the geese are thinking during this exchange. They stand as still as statues, their unblinking eyes trained on me.

The gander continues…“We are here to protect and inspire you. But we cannot do that if you insist on holding on to ideas and desires that no longer serve you. You kill us in the process—and you have murdered far too many of us already.”

My heart is aching. Because I see the flashbacks of the dying geese in my mind, and I know the truth of what he is saying. Tears drip slowly down my cheeks. I don’t even bother to wipe them away.

So many of my hopes and dreams have made me deeply unhappy. Were they all really mine to begin with? Or did I just take them on out of duty, tradition, or guilt? I have sometimes felt that I’m Exhibit A for the warning “Be careful what you ask for—you might get it.”

I have looked to men, jobs, family, friends, etc., for validation, and though I usually find it there for a time, it never lasts. There is a hole inside of me that seems unfillable, and I’ve gotten badly off-track looking for some well to quench a thirst I don’t even understand.

As if he can read my mind, the gander’s voice echoes inside my head again….

“You have forgotten who you are. We are here to remind you. Despite what you think, you DO have the option to walk back into the cave. But many of us have died to prevent that. If you turn around, our sacrifices will have been in vain.”

“THAT’S NOT FAIR!!!!!” I scream. “I didn’t even know you existed! How could I have protected you when I didn’t even know you were there?!”

“Oh, but you did,” he says. “You have always known we were there. You simply chose to forget rather than give up the things that hurt you. The pain you felt was a function of your own unwillingness to admit you were wrong or had made a mistake and let go.”

This feels uncomfortably accurate.

I rack my brain, thinking of all the times that I held on when, deep down, I knew what I was dreaming of or hoping for was out of reach. When I convinced myself that he would change if I just loved him enough. When I told myself that I would be valued if they could only see how smart and dedicated I was. When I changed the way I behaved to keep other people comfortable and be accepted…

I’m sobbing again now.

“Why YOU? Why would you do this for me even though I’ve killed your mates and your children? What possible reason could you have to want to save me from myself?”

If a goose can snort in disgust, this one does.

“Child, have you not realized that you play a unique role in the universe? Every person does. You think only of yourself and your own pain. But if you choose to end your life before its time, the very fabric of space and time is altered. That changes the future for all of us—and rarely for the better.”

“Your sorrows are heavy for you…,” he continues, “but they are infinitesimally small in the big scheme of things. We are here to remind you of that—as well as to inspire you to dream again. Dreams are the fuel of the cosmos. When you hold on to dead dreams, they only drain your life of meaning and purpose.”

“As for the question of why us…is the answer not obvious? You have always been drawn to beauty and you dream of flight—but getting you to listen required fierceness. You are…” he pauses for emphasis, “hardheaded.”

I would swear he is laughing at me.

Now I’m annoyed. It’s bad enough to be told that the problems that have been driving you crazy are not that big a deal in cosmic terms and that you are a problem case. Having that message delivered by a 14 lb. feathered oracle who bites and poops everywhere feels like adding insult to injury.

But I get it. You attract the messenger you need.

Sigh. 

“Now it’s time to choose,” he says. “You can choose to die and we will not stop you. You have free will, as you always have. Or you can choose to live, knowing that you will face more sorrow and pain until you die at your appointed time. But you will make a difference to the future. I’m not allowed to tell you what that difference is, but I can tell you that it is substantial, and only you can make it.”

My head is spinning. A goose is actually talking to me. I’m tired and sad and this feathered asshole is trying to guilt me into living. Every fiber of my being cries out against the injustice of this forced choice. But I keep thinking of the dying geese and my stomach churns. How many more will I kill if I choose to live?

“Fewer now than before,” the gander says in response to the question I’ve asked only in my mind. I cock my head and raise my eyebrows…

“You are older now,” he responds without my having to say a word. “We rarely save the ones who decide to die in their youth. They cannot understand their place in the fabric of existence because they are not always equipped to see or hear us. Age makes that more possible—though it is not guaranteed. Thus…” he flaps his wings briefly and turns his head from side to side to indicate the enormous size of his bird battalion.

The voice fades from my mind, and I am left looking into the eyes of a pissed-off gander and about a thousand of his equally pissed-off buddies.

I close my eyes and whisper a wordless prayer to whatever might be out there overseeing all of this. I just wanted to rest, and it appears that rest is not what I am destined to have. I want to weep over this knowledge.

But I recognize the importance of what has happened—the sacrifice that the geese have made to protect me from myself. That seems worth honoring—at least for now.

In a quavering voice, I ask “What happens if I choose to live just for today? Can I change my mind later?”

There is no verbal response. The gander stares at me for a long moment, then silently dips his head in assent.

At this, the entire flock begins honking loudly and flapping their wings. The noise and motion make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But it’s only an involuntary reflex—my fear of them has melted away.

The gander’s call drowns out the rest. On what is clearly his command, the flock wheels as one and rises into the air. I blink and…

They’re gone. As if they have never been there.

I blink again—and now I’m alone on a path in the woods near my house. I have no idea how I got here. I begin to shiver because the sun is going down and it’s getting chilly.

I’m tired—exhausted, really. But this tiredness feels different than what I felt before I woke up in the cave. It feels like the tiredness you earn from a good day’s work. The hard edges of hopelessness and despair have somehow been planed off this tiredness, and I instinctively know that, tonight, I will finally sleep. For the first time in forever, I will not stare at the ceiling in the dark, with tears dampening my pillowcase, or wake up breathless and tormented by nightmares.

I also know that I will spend the rest of whatever’s left of my life trying to figure out what I’ve just experienced. Did I dream it? Hit my head on a tree limb or a rock and hallucinate it? Or did I really dive headlong into madness, only to be dragged back to the land of the living by a flock of ghostly geese?

It’s all so absurd that some part of my brain says it must be true. Even my wildest nightmares have never been like this.

More important, though: What does it all mean? What do I do with the knowledge that my predicament has been a result of holding on to old hopes or ancient dreams that are long past their “Sell By” date? If that’s true, how do I know when to let go? What—if anything—did I learn today to take into tomorrow?

At this moment, I honestly can’t say.

This much I do know…I was not given any Great Truths™ that will miraculously “fix” my life. This isn’t some play in which deus ex machina drops in to right the wrongs, end the tale, and send the audience home happy.

Regardless of where I’ve been or how I got there, I know I looked in the abyss and saw reality—or at least glimmers of it—in a way I haven’t been able to do for a very long time. I saw both joy and pain—and faced the truth that I will never be able to predict which way the scales will balance. Choosing to live means accepting this, without any guarantee that joy will ever be mine again.

I won’t pretend that’s an easy choice. Today, I made the decision to keep going, but I can’t promise for tomorrow. I understand all too well how one can reach the point where the pain is too much to bear. Knowing I still have control over the disposition of my life is a safety valve I refuse to relinquish.

But I feel a small spark of hope rising in my chest.

Maybe that’s enough for now.

As I slowly make my way out of the woods, I hear noises above me. I look up to see a flock of geese, heading south for the winter. In the last light of sunset, I wave and turn towards home.

The Happy Medium?

I never would have done it if my hairapist hadn’t put the idea into my head. Amy* is not the “woo-woo” type. She’s smart, funny, well-informed, and sensible. (She’s also a liberal, but that may be neither here nor there.)

She was cutting my hair and telling me all about how she and a friend had recently gone to visit a psychic. I was a little surprised—given our many years of conversations, it didn’t really seem like something that was in her line, but it sounded entertaining. Plus she had scissors in my hair and I wanted her to pay attention.

So I listened and asked a lot of questions.

What she told me was, quite frankly, astonishing. The woman they had gone to see, Mona*, was, in Amy’s words, “just a normal person.” There were no flowing, gauzy robes, dark rooms, or crystal balls. There were no trances or weird voices. There was just this attractive young (ish) woman who invited you into her living room, sat down in a chair with a legal pad and a pen and just….talked…with you. And, presumably, whatever spirits decided to show up on a given day.

That’s when the weirdness started.

Amy’s friend lost her young husband in an accident several years ago, and she wanted to see if she could connect with him. That’s her story to tell, so I won’t go into the details. But I will say this—Amy clearly believed that Mona was the real deal, and by the time I left the salon, I knew I was going to make an appointment.

I don’t know what they did in the “olden days,” but the modern psychic (or “mystic,” as this one likes to call herself) has a snazzy website and calendaring software so you can make and pay for your appointment online. She also offers phone and Skype appointments.

Mona wasn’t cheap—but she wasn’t outrageous either. I appreciate the efforts of women entrepreneurs and want to see them compensated for their work—and if psychic ability is real (more on that later), it’s work just like any other intellectual/emotional labor. So I took my birthday money and plunked down $150 for an hour-long consultation. I figured the same rules applied to this as to gambling: Never spend more than you can afford to lose. If she was a fake, I would be chagrined, but not destitute. And if she was the real deal, the session would seem cheap at half the price.

********************************************************************************

I wanted to “talk” to my grandmother. She died 6 years ago, while I was out of town. At the time, she was in hospice, but she had actually been doing well—improving even—and I saw nothing that indicated her death was imminent. I had left her with another relative whom I did not completely trust, but my options for elder care at the time were limited and the trip was an important one.

I didn’t trust the relative because she was ditzy and she had some decidedly…eccentric…ideas about health care. In later years, this woman became a Trump supporter, which gives you some indication of her intelligence level and the state of her moral compass. But she’s also one of those people who believe that if you engage in all sorts of weird practices (e.g., drinking ionized water, fire walking) and never let negative thoughts in your head, you can live forever.

I can’t even imagine a fate worse than living forever. But I digress….

My grandmother was a brittle diabetic—meaning that her blood glucose levels (BGLs) were very difficult to control. It didn’t help that she had been diagnosed in her 70s with complete pancreatic failure, aka “Type 1” diabetes. (Usually, Type 1 diabetics develop the condition in childhood.) She had lived her entire life pretty much the way she wanted until the Big D came along and began dictating what she could and couldn’t do—and when.

She hated everything about being diabetic—but particularly the part that required her to eat breakfast every morning.

I’ve never seen anyone with such a pathological resentment of a meal. My grandmother took having to eat breakfast as an egregious affront to her dignity. She had never been hungry in the early morning, and the requirement to eat breakfast every day just to keep herself alive did not sit well with her. At. All.

But her BGL tended to plunge in the early hours of the morning—leaving her at risk of falling into a diabetic coma and never waking up. For a healthy person, the average BGL is between 80-100. My grandmother’s would routinely be between 40-50 at 5:30 a.m.

I felt an immense amount of relief when I finally found an acceptable workaround to the hated petite dejeuner. Even at that ungodly hour, my grandmother could manage to drink a cup of heavily sugared tea and eat a few vanilla wafers. So I got up every morning—365 days a year—at 5:00 a.m., made the tea, tested her BGL, and made sure she consumed the sugar necessary to keep her alive.

(Now before you get all judgy about the workaround, please remember that I was dealing with a fully mentally competent, autonomous woman. I know all that sugar kept her BGLs in constant flux. BUT. It also kept her alive for 15 more years than I would have had her otherwise. So I’m okay with that part. If you aren’t—well—your opinion of me is not my business.)

Frankly, I was gobsmacked when I got the word that my grandmother had died. I spent the back half of my trip making funeral and travel arrangements, and that didn’t leave me much time to think too deeply about what had happened.

But during one of our many phone calls those first few days, my relative made a comment to me that soon wormed its way into my head and my heart and I have never been able to dislodge it. The comment was something along the lines of “I looked in on her that morning, and she looked so happy and peaceful. She was smiling like she was having a beautiful dream.”

At first, I was grateful, because I thought that meant my grandmother had died peacefully in her sleep. Having watched my grandfather (her husband of almost 60 years) die a brutally slow death of strokes and dementia, that seemed like a true blessing.

But it didn’t take long before I started to ask myself: Did she get her tea and cookies that morning?

I know I should have asked Ditsy Relative, but the implication behind the question was so dark and terrible that I couldn’t bring myself to raise the subject. My grandmother had been in hospice, after all.

But I couldn’t let it go. It had worried me ever since. Did my relative—for whatever reason—fail to bring the tea and cookies? Did she LET my grandmother die?

I hoped the medium would be able to help me find out.

***********************************************************

If you aren’t a fan of Madeleine L’Engle’s writings, or the book A Wrinkle in Time, you may not get the title of this piece. In that story, the “Happy Medium” spends her time largely looking at things in her crystal ball that are pleasant and/or amuse her. Looking at sad things wears her out, and she avoids it whenever she can.

Mona took a similar tack. She advertised that she was there to pass along information that was for your “best and highest” good. In other words, she wasn’t going to tell you when you were going to die or anything traumatic like that.

So I wasn’t sure whether I could find a way to get the information I wanted. Asking if someone killed your grandmother is pretty much the definition of traumatic information.

When I arrived at her suburban home, Mona and her little Pekingese dog greeted me at the door. She was warm, with a wide smile and an easy laugh. Both her demeanor and the friendly dog put me instantly at ease.

I would guess she’s in her 30s. She said both her grandmother and her mom had “the gift” of being able to communicate with spirits but had chosen not to. (My guess is that they were Christians, and were afraid of the biblical prohibition against consorting with “witches”—but I didn’t ask.) I told her that I had a question about the way in which my grandmother “passed,” and asked her if it would be okay if I asked it? She encouraged me to do so. She also encouraged me to tape the session—which I did.

Our session was just the way Amy described it. We sat in her living room, and Mona started right in. I was stunned almost immediately by the fact that she was pulling up names and facts about my grandmother and great-grandmother. She mentioned things that most of the people in my family don’t know. She “translated” comments and questions from my grandmother and great-grandmother. Many of the things she said sounded like things they would actually say.

Mona also talked about my dog, who had recently died. My grandmother said that he hadn’t really accepted that he was dead yet, so he had retained the spirit form of a dog in the place where everyone supposedly congregates after they die. (Almost everyone there is pure energy—no bodies, my grandmother “said.”) He was still near me all the time, she said—watching over me.

I so want to believe that. Sometimes I still think I see him out of the corner of my eye…

Finally, it was time to ask my grandmother question that has been eating at me for over six years. I said “How did you die?” The immediate answer was “Why do you want to know that?”

Vintage grandma.

I explained that I had a lot of guilt about not being there when she died, and I just needed to know for my own peace of mind. My grandmother talked about how she thought she was having a wonderful dream, in which her sons (who both died within minutes after their births) had come to “walk her over.” She ended her story by saying, “Everything happened as it was supposed to happen. I am where I’m supposed to be.”

This was pretty much what I had expected to happen—whether the mystic was genuine or not. But to my great surprise, Mona looked at me and said “Well, she just side-stepped right over that one, didn’t she?! Do you want to press her?”

I nodded. I thought for a few seconds, and then I asked: “Did you get your tea that morning?” There was a long pause, and then my grandmother responded “I did not. Now can you let that go and get on with your life?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I still don’t.

But at that point, I believed. I believed that this young woman was channeling my grandmother and other members of my family. I believed that she had answered my question, and that my Ditzy Relative was, at least in some way, responsible for my grandmother’s death.

It was only when I asked about my grandfather that I got suspicious of whether I was being conned. The mystic told me that she could see him, but that she couldn’t hear him. She said he kept tapping his head—did that mean anything to me? (I didn’t think to ask until I started writing this how he could be tapping a “head” he supposedly didn’t have…)

I asked the question that anyone who knew my grandfather would ask first: “What color is his hair?” (The correct answer is “red.” ) I asked it several times, but she ignored it. Finally, I realized that she was trying to get me to talk about the fact that he had a stroke. It was so pointed that my hackles went up in spite of myself.

Mona also said she was getting messages for me from relatives of my grandfather—women with whom I had never really had any contact. My suspicions intensified.

The seed of doubt—which was always present—had been planted and watered.

As we were wrapping up, the Pekingese—who had been sitting quietly in my lap for an hour—got up and began barking frantically. Neither of us could calm him down. Over his frenetic barks, she said “He senses your dog here.”

He barked me out the door.

**********************************************************

The first thing I did when I got home was to google my name and city. Among the first entries was my grandmother’s obituary—which I had written. In it were almost all the names, family relationships, and facts that the mystic had brought up. Googling my grandfather’s obituary brought up the fact that he had died of a stroke, and the remaining names that the mystic had mentioned. My dog’s photo was available on my public-facing Facebook page.

One of the only things the medium said that she could not have known from a thorough Google search was what my Ditzy Relative said, and my grandmother seemed to confirm: “She was smiling like she was having a beautiful dream.”

I will never know for sure if I was conned. I think I probably was. But the medium’s answering of my question about the tea was unexpected. I can’t figure why she would answer that way if she was conning me. Unlike every other part of our session, it was not an answer designed to give me any comfort.

But I pray that the dream was as beautiful as she said. That is what I will hold on to until I get a chance to ask my grandmother myself.

And I will keep looking out the corner of my eye for my sweet boy. I always said he loved me more than any human ever did—apparently even enough to remain in spiritual limbo. That’s one more thing that Mona couldn’t have known.

In the end, I am left with only this:

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”—Aldous Huxley

*********************************************************************************

*Names have been changed to protect both the innocent and the potentially guilty.

The Price of Admission

The pain is excruciating. The slightest movement sends white-hot needles burrowing into all the nerves in my lower back.

But the anger? The anger is louder and even more insistent than the pain.

I’m lying in the bed—the victim of a misguided attempt to pick a piece of laundry up off the floor—and I’m looking up at my spouse. He has that look I recognize and find intensely annoying—a mixture of exasperation and patient weariness.

“I have a tee time at 12:30,” he says. “I won’t be finished by then.”

I have asked him to pick up our daughter from school—something that is usually my job, and one I thoroughly enjoy. But I’m in agony, and there is ZERO chance of my being able to drag myself downstairs, fold myself into the car, and drive the 9/10ths of a mile to get her.

But he has a tee time.

“Can’t she catch a ride home with a friend?”

This question makes the pain—and the anger—even worse. She is on the outs with her best friend right now (long story), and being reminded of this does nothing positive for my back OR my mood.

“No,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Fine,” he sighs. He’s not going to make this easy for me. “I’ll just go play the first nine holes, and then I'll pick her up.”

I can barely bring myself to spit out the words “Thank you.”

In my mind, I add “…for nothing, you asshole.”

*********************************************
Things you should know: My husband adores me--and (despite what's come before, or might come after) the feeling is entirely mutual. He’s a good bit older than I am, and often clueless about how things that sound perfectly reasonable to him don’t always sound that way to me.

He’s as structured as I am free-spirited. His entire life is captured in an Excel spreadsheet that he updates daily, while I am constantly forgetting both the mundane and the important. He is never late, and I’m what you might call “time-challenged.”

We are the stereotypical “opposites attract,” Yin/Yang couple. On many days, our differences are what make us good together.

Today is not one of those days.

He just retired after 45 years in the ministry. He was a very successful pastor—greatly beloved by his parishioners and the wider community he served. And one of the reasons he was so successful was that he knew how to draw boundaries and keep himself physically, emotionally, and mentally protected from the stresses of having so many people depend on him in just about any form of joy or sorrow you can imagine.

When it comes to setting boundaries, I'm once again his antithesis. I’m the one who drops everything to take care of everyone.

You need something? I put off writing on my blog, or skip choir practice. I forego walking the poor dog, or going out with friends to make it happen.

He doesn’t do that. He is jealous with his time—guards it like a precious jewel.

This makes me both jealous and livid.

Why does he get to say “No”? Or “Sorry, that doesn’t work for me”?

More to the point: Why can’t I?

****************************************************

My inner negativity coach, Gladys Kravitz, wants to stir up trouble:

“You work your ASS off, and he wants to kvetch about having to pick Lulu up from school ONCE?!?!?  What is his fucking problem?!?!?!?”

Gladys is a nag and a busybody who loves nothing more than instigating turmoil. But I have to confess I have a soft spot for her. She is morally superior to everyone, and—let’s be honest here—I aspire to her level of moral superiority.

But my instinct to stand up for my own kicks in immediately: “He doesn’t mean….”

Gladys cuts in without hesitation: “You are flat on your back, in AGONIZING PAIN, and he’s going to quibble about picking Lulu up from school so that he can play GOLF?!?!”

On one level, I know she’s right. My teeth start to clench, and the pain in my back flares.

And then this tiny voice I’ve never heard before suddenly poses a question:

“What if you did what HE does?”

My first thought is that having two voices in my head is probably not a good thing...

But that kind of question demands an answer. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” I shout back to the little voice.

I do not wish to be reasonable at the moment, so I’m pissed that she has managed to make herself heard over Gladys Kravitz’s much-more-sensible response to this situation.

“Well,” she says. “Maybe what you really need is to set some boundaries for yourself. Like…maybe…tell the family that the time you set aside for writing is time you are simply NOT AVAILABLE to them. Period.”

I am pissed all over again that I haven’t thought of this before. But I’m not ready to make nice to a voice I don’t even know.

“And just how am I supposed to do THAT?”

“Just…tell them. The same way he told you he had a tee time.”

Gladys seizes on this piece of advice—largely because she thinks it will cause trouble with the spouse.

“You know, that’s not a bad idea! Tell him to stuff his golf clubs up his ass—you’re going to do your own thing from now on!”

And, suddenly, I remember that look of weary patience on his face. I think of all the years when people assumed they had a right to his time—no matter when, no matter what—because he wore a dog collar.

For the first time, I wonder if being a minister is kind of like being a woman? And what would happen if women did what he learned to do? What if we learned to protect time for ourselves?

“That ain’t NEVER going to happen,” Gladys says. I can almost see her rolling her eyes.

The tiny voice says “Why not try it? What’s the downside?”

The answer comes so fast I don’t have time to edit the truth of it before my brain opens up to admit the thought:

“I’ll have to recognize that I’m 54 years old and I could have been doing that my whole life. I’ll have to face the fact that there are so many things I could have done, and so many people I could have been—and I fucked it all up.”

If a voice can shrug, this one does:

“And if you don’t start today, you’ll be one day closer to 55, and that will be another opportunity lost. You don’t get to re-do the past, but your future is up to you.”

I hate this kind of happy-clappy-positive-self-talk bullshit.

********************************
The spouse picks the girl child up from school—and then goes back to the golf course to finish the other nine holes. He’s tickled pink with himself for thinking up this clever solution to his “problem.” The spreadsheet for today's golf scores will be complete.

I sign up for a very expensive online writing course that will have assignments and deadlines.

Gladys Kravitz hoots and hollers over this, of course. “A fool and her money are soon parted!” she says. She will have a field day when I fail.

But my back feels a lot better.

Contradictions

“I would not open windows into men's souls.”
     —Queen Elizabeth I

I do not trust what I cannot see—
But I go to church most Sundays,
     and wordless prayers swirl endlessly through my mind—
     like waterspouts on the sea.

I believe in facts and data—
But how do you quantify Bach’s Chaconne?
Or derive pleasure from knowing the science of gooseflesh?

And what do you say when
     you know that the atoms in your body
     don’t change every 7 years—
But you feel the tug to belief,
     so that you can shed your checkered past(s)
     like snakeskins in springtime?

I wish I knew the answers.

And I wish I could—just for once—believe it all.

***********************************************

“Get out of your head,” my priest once said to me—
“You need to stop thinking so much about God
     and just try to….feel…the Mystery.”

If I had only listened…..

But I saw visions of Pentecostals and pagans—
And shuddered at the thought of losing control.

****************************************************

Meanwhile, I eat the bread and drink the wine.

And—sometimes (but only sometimes)—
     when the Host or the wine hits my tongue,
The hair stands up on the back of my neck for no good reason,
     and, for a moment,
My body tingles so hard it hurts.

How to explain this frisson of hard-edged joy to my rational self?

I have no answers.
***************************************

I am caught between logic and longing for transcendence—
One foot on either side of the chasm between them.

“CHOOSE!” my black-and-white brain barks.

But it suddenly decides to recall that the Via Media is a “thing.”
(Thank you, Gloriana…)

And I realize that I can straddle the crevasse,
     and keep walking toward….Whatever…is calling to me.
Even if I have an unsteady gait,
     or bowed legs.

*******************************************

The Virgin Queen kept her throne
     by counting the cost of installing divine windows,
     and wisely declaring the effort a lost cause.

Instead of portholes and skylights, we got:

Lex orandi, lex credendi.

And so it was…and is.

*********************************************

I’ve lost count of those who wanted to force open the windows into my soul.
(They knew nothing of Gloriana, and would have despised her if they had…)

I had feared they would jimmy the latches and find….........
Nothing at all.

Or maybe just a sputtering candle and a pile of peanut shells and empty wine bottles....

But I escaped the men with crowbars to arrive at this time and this place,
     and to unearth at least one answer:

There is a lot in my soul to be examined,
But only I can open the windows
     that will allow you to view
     the walking contradiction that is
Me.

Writing into Light

So....as you can see, I haven't written anything here in over a year. I was honestly ready to shut down the site to save myself the money (and it's not as if anyone is reading what I'm writing here...)

But then my BFF sent me an email about an online writing course being hosted by lifestyle guru Martha Beck.

"Let's do it together!", she said.

"For our birthdays!", she said.

And--just like that--I plunked down $875 to join over 800 other people in this course. Why? Because I'm stuck and spinning and lost. And how will this course help me? The sheer cost of it almost ensures I will complete it--and there is BFF to hold me to account. Not to mention the 15 people in my small writing group....

For the first time in ages, I am excited about writing. I feel the stirrings of something that I thought was long gone--and it feels like this might be more than just a mirage in the desert.

Photo by Samantha Scholl on Unsplash

Depression

My depression is an old "friend," and it comes to visit me in one of two ways. It presents as either the stairway to hell....

Or as a colorless road through the desert....

The former is terrifying. The latter is exhausting.

Judica Domine

Psalm 35: 1-10

Fight those who fight me, O Lord; attack those who are attacking me.

Syrian man cries while holding the body of his son, killed by the Syrian Army, near Dar El Shifa hospital in Aleppo, Syria. Photo: Manu Brabo, Associated Press

Take up shield and armor and rise up to help me.

A Syrian child is rescued from a dinghy in Greece. Photo: Associated Press

Draw the sword and bar the way against those who pursue me; say to my soul, "I am your salvation."

Sunduz, a 34-year-old Kurd from Iraq, fled Mosul with her husband and their two young children. Pregnant and in a state of shock after the boat crossing, she nearly fainted when she stepped onto the beach in Lesbos, Greece. Photo: Marie Dorigny/EU 2015

Let those who seek after my life be shamed and humbled; let those who plot my ruin fall back and be dismayed.

Three-year-old Alan Kurdi, a Syrian refugee, drowned when his family tried to reach Greece. His 5-year-old brother Galib and mother Rehana also died in the attempt. Photo: Nilufer Demir, Dogan News Agency

Let them be like chaff before the wind, and let the angel of the Lord drive them away.

Let their way be dark and slippery, and let the angel of the Lord pursue them.

For they have secretly spread a net for me without a cause; without a cause they have dug a pit to take me alive.

A Syrian refugee child cries at the Al Zaatri refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq, near the border with Syria. Photo: Muhammad Hamed, Reuters

Let ruin come upon them unawares; let them be caught in the net they hid; let them fall into the pit they dug.

Then I will be joyful in the Lord; I will glory in his victory.

My very bones will say, "Lord, who is like you? You deliver the poor from those who are too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them."

Syrian refugees are greeted by Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on their arrival at the Toronto Pearson International Airport.  Photo: M.Blinch , Reuters

The fast that I choose...

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

— Isaiah 58:6-8

Today marks the beginning of Lent for most of the world's Christians. If that's not your tradition, Lent is 40-day period before Easter that many Christians choose to fast--abstaining from certain foods or activities, and engaging in self-examination in commemoration of Jesus' fasting in the wilderness.

I've always loved Lent. I know many people see it as an antiquated religious practice designed to make you feel bad about yourself, or as a good excuse to give up chocolate and shed the post-Christmas pounds. But the older I get, the more I have come to appreciate the human need for a period of fasting and self-reflection.

The desert is a harsh and unforgiving place if you do not know how to live in it. People who spend much time there know that one must have respect for the wilderness, and that failing to prepare yourself is the surest way to end up as food for animals that are better adapted to their environment than you are. You can't fight the heat or the blinding sun--you can only learn to work with and around those things.

And you must learn to navigate your way through the hostile landscape, or you run the risk of walking aimlessly in circles until you fall from exhaustion.

But we sometimes forget that there is great beauty in the desert as well. There are stars you can't see in other places because the light pollution clouds your vision.

And there are flowers that only bloom in the desert, and for a limited amount of time...

There is more than one kind of desert, of course--and being forced into one can destroy everything you thought you knew. I have walked through several in my life--when a relationship came to an end through death or a break-up, or when my children were facing crises. And now I'm facing another one.

Like so many, I am exhausted from the debacle of the 2016 presidential election. I careen between being enraged, despairing, and terrified on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis. I've been furiously Facebooking, tweeting, calling legislators, going to meetings, and spending long hours on the phone ranting to friends who are as shell-shocked and broken-hearted as I am.

I'm a woman of a certain age, and I've spent the last 30 years of my life fighting for a more fair and just world. Now I am watching what so many of us worked to create burn down around me. It has been particularly painful to see people I thought I knew pouring gasoline on the flames of prejudice and hatred.

Many of them proudly claim the title of "Christian," although I can't find their brand of Christianity in the life or teachings of Jesus. And the Hebrew scriptures are replete with admonitions to welcome the stranger and care for the poor. Now when I hear people talking about "Judeo-Christian values," I worry that I may start screaming and never stop...

So I'm heading into the Lenten wilderness to figure out how I can survive in the desert that my nation has become. I need to learn to protect myself from the poison of fear and anger that threaten to turn me into the mirror image of those people screaming "Build that wall!"

The Lenten desert is the place to get quiet and listen for a while. I'm going to read the works of people who have resisted in the past and see what they can tell me about fighting injustice and oppression while retaining one's humanity:

(To see all the photos in this carousel, just click on the one on the far right....)

And I am going to ponder on how I can be most effective at 'loosing the bonds of injustice, undoing the thongs of the yoke, helping the oppressed get free, and breaking every yoke'--including "yokes" that have benefited me unfairly because of the color of my skin, my education, and the economic circumstances of my family.

The chapter from Isaiah that opened this post concludes with this:

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

— Isaiah 58:9-12

During this Lenten season, I will choose to fast from hatred and anger, while I continue to stand for the oppressed. I will be praying to the Ground of Being to help me be a "repairer of the breach" and a "restorer of streets to live in."

I will also pray for the wisdom to survive the desert, and I will look at the stars and the flowers and remember that even the desert will bloom and shine at some point--and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent that.

I intend to be there when it does.

Blindsided

I find that it's the love affairs that blindside you that affect you most.—Grandmère Mimi

I was not prepared for the love of my life.

Was not prepared for the electricity of connection, the depth of feeling, the blaze of passion---or for the grinding anguish, the sense of utter futility, and the wish for death that would occur when I met him.

I was blindsided.

************************************************

I was married, with two young children. My marriage was unhappy—not in any kind of dramatic way, but in the joyless way that so many marriages seem to be. A mismatch of personalities and needs—me, the extrovert with a high need for attention and touch…him, the introvert with a high need for solitude and a distrust of any kind of passion or intimacy.

When I was eight months pregnant with our daughter, I can remember saying to my husband, “I don’t want this marriage to feel like a prison sentence.”

He just looked at me and blinked.

************************************************

There were many conversations like that over the years. Pleas for affection, for intimacy, for love. I even had a name for our discussions: “Nobody’s Semi-Annual Plea for Love.”

Nothing changed.

I asked him to go to counseling, and he agreed. But he walked out after two sessions, saying “I don’t like feeling worse when I come out than I did when I went in.” I suspect this was because our counselor had gently suggested that he might, in some way, be contributing to the unhappiness of our relationship…but I could be wrong about that.

So, after years of pleading for his love, I gave up and stopped asking. It was too humiliating to beg, and then be denied. Easier just to bury myself in the kids and their activities, and my work.

I told myself that I could live with things the way they were. Despite his inability or unwillingness to give me the love I craved, I perceived my husband to be a good man—faithful, a good provider, and an excellent father who seemed to have no trouble giving our children the affection he couldn’t bring himself to give me. He didn’t beat me or waste his paycheck on alcohol or drugs.

True, he treated me more like a household manager—and not a very competent one at that—than a cherished partner, but we had a cordial relationship, and there were moments of happiness and grace.

There are women all over the world who would give everything to have what I had—a stable, nonviolent, monogamous partner with a good income and a desire to be a part of his children’s lives.

But, in the end, it wasn’t enough.

***************************

In so many ways, we in the West are spoiled. Our material standards of living are high enough that we have the luxury to demand a rich emotional standard of living as well. We want love and passion in our lives, as well as stability and commitment.

The institution of marriage in the Western world has suffered as a result. “Till death do us part” began to give way when women stopped dying in childbirth, and marriage was no longer a 10-20 year commitment (with her dead and him remarried, often several times), but a 60-year one.

It also began to give way when women went to work—when we could earn enough money to take care of ourselves and our children, without depending on a man to bring home the bacon.

And “Till death do us part” began to give way when women discovered they had choices. Real choices. The choice to walk away from abusive or neglectful relationships. The choice to live in peace, rather than fear or misery.

The choice to embrace love and joy, rather than merely duty and resignation.

***************************

That was my life for so many years. Duty and resignation, mixed with hopelessness. Waking up every morning and knowing it would be the same as every other day. Knowing that the only people in my life who would touch me in a pleasurable way—emotionally or physically—were my children. The future nothing more than a grey and endless road unfurled through the emotional desert of my life.

I thought the loneliness and the hopelessness was my cross to bear. I am a person of faith, and I knew all about the call of Jesus Christ. “Take up your cross and follow me.” I knew how to do this—or I thought I did.

Because, at some level, I recognized that doing so was the only way I could honor my commitment to my spouse, I discarded my ability to feel—buried my heart in a rocky grave, picked up the cross of my marriage, and started walking.

***************************

I worked for myself, out of an office in our basement, and my clients were largely gay men. I limited my personal relationships—both in real life and online—to women. No temptations there.

I schooled my eyes and my heart to be faithful, and I was very, very successful for many years. I fooled everyone, I think—except for my best friend, who was the only person to whom I dared confess just how isolated and lonely I felt.

Most of all, I fooled myself into believing that my limited life would suffice.

And then, on July 25, 2004, I walked into the Episcopal Church in our new neighborhood. Although I didn’t realize it until much later, everything I ever believed—about myself, about love, about faithfulness and commitment…about God—was about to change forever.

***************************

For a lot of reasons having to do with my experience of church as a child, I had a policy of attending only churches with female rectors. I’m sure that it’s a spiritual failing on my part, but being able to see a woman on the altar every Sunday is what brought me back into church after my 10-year sojourn into the agnostic wilderness and kept me there.

We sometimes have to work with what we’ve got.

I had checked out the parish online before we moved to the new city. They billed themselves as being “fully loyal to The Episcopal Church,” which I took to mean that they would be at least nominally welcoming to gays and lesbians (the other, nonnegotiable, requirement of mine).

The rector looked good on paper—she was a leading light in the state’s anti-death penalty movement, and the church had a commitment to ministering to the deaf. It looked like a good place for me to be.

But the first Sunday I walked in the place, who should get up to give the sermon but this tall, very attractive…man. Turned out the rector was on a trip to do HIV/AIDS work in Africa for the month, and the new deacon was running the place while she was away.

“Damn!” I thought to myself, “just my luck.”

But the moment he opened his mouth, I was forced to admit—grudgingly—that he was an excellent preacher. And then he talked about how he had been a Southern Baptist minister for 25 years before deciding to swim the Thames and become an Anglican priest. He wasn’t even ordained yet—three decades of experience in the ministry and he was having to go through the same bureaucratic rigmarole that a wet-behind-the-ears novice had to endure.

I had to admire that. It bespoke a level of humility and commitment I wasn’t used to seeing in a male religious leader. He turned out to be a liberal too. And, like me, he was a poetry fan—he quoted Emily Dickinson in his sermons!

My interest was piqued, in spite of myself.

After the service, I introduced myself to him, and said “We have very similar backgrounds. We should get together and swap stories sometime.” Wanting, I’m sure, to seem welcoming to the newcomer, he enthusiastically agreed.

***************************

When I finally walked into his office on October 4, 2004, I didn’t occur to me that I was doing anything dangerous. He was 55 years old—14 years older than I—and a candidate for the priesthood. A holy person. Possibly even a father figure. But certainly not someone it would have occurred to me to fantasize about. After all, as I’ve noted, I had an almost instinctual negative reaction to male religious leaders---I was certainly not someone with a priest fetish.

So I wasn’t prepared for what was about to happen.

Even though I had felt the attraction to him from that first Sunday, I could not have predicted that, in the short period of time we spent talking, something momentous would occur—that some gear in my heart that had long been stuck would move effortlessly into motion, and a door I thought had been locked forever would begin to swing slowly—inexorably—open.

On that day, we talked about growing up as Southern fundamentalists, our move to the Episcopal church, our families, and a host of other things I can’t remember. Nothing special—just the things that two people talk about when they are getting to know one another.

I remember that we laughed a lot.

And I remember that I went home afterwards, called my best friend and said “I’m in trouble.”

***************************

It is a terrible thing to fall in love with a priest.

If you are foolish enough to admit it to anyone, you will be told that you are only attracted to the collar. That you are falling in love with the role, not the man. That a relationship between a priest and a parishioner is inherently exploitative and bad—not to mention against the rules of the diocese. There are barriers everywhere to clergy-lay relationships.

When you are married to someone else, the barriers are—rightly—insurmountable.

If I had been analyzing my attraction to him—had recognized it for what it was—I would never have put myself in the line of fire by going to his office that day. But I didn’t. Because he was older and a priest, I wasn’t on my guard—and it all happened so fast that by the time I realized that I was in over my head, I was utterly powerless to put a stop to it.

I was blindsided.

***************************

My attraction to him was so intense that it frightened me—and it was based on so many things that were only tangentially related to his vocation. I felt that we shared a deep longing for relationship with God—but we also had a shared love of poetry and music, a very similar sense of humor, and a passion for justice.

It was probably no small thing that he was also the happiest person I had ever known. He radiated joy. To one so starved for that feeling, discovering him felt like finding an oasis in the middle of the desert.

But there was something more, even, than these understandable points of connection. Something elemental and deep as the ocean. Something primordial and unimaginably powerful. Something that knit itself into my heart and soul, interweaving the purest joy I’ve ever known with the most abject misery I’ve ever experienced. Something for which I could find no explanation or logical reason.

There was something about him that called me. That’s the only way I can explain it.

I yearned for him. I couldn’t even tell you what I was yearning for. Of course I was physically attracted to him, but it wasn’t just that. If I had the words to describe it, I would use them—but, even all this time later, I simply don’t. The best I can offer is to say that I felt alive when I was with him. Felt, period.

Against my will—against all my schooling of my heart and my emotions—he made me feel again.

And that feeling was agonizing, because I recognized it. I recognized in my feelings for David the feelings I had felt for the great love of my life—Phillip, my first husband, who had come out of the closet in the third year of our marriage.

I recognized the feeling of “soul mate” and “true love” because I had felt them before—or thought I had—with Phillip. We had been friends since high school, and when we started dating toward the end of college, our relationship had this sense of inevitability about it almost from the moment it started. I believed, to the core of my being, that we were soul mates.

Looking back on it now, I see that we were soul mates—and still are in some ways. We are still close friends, and we joke about ending up together in the nursing home, racing our wheelchairs down the hallway.

But when Phillip came out, my faith in love—in my own ability to discern it—was shattered. Then I could only see betrayal and feel agonizing pain and rage. As our marriage crumbled and died, I bitterly renounced my belief in the idea of soul mates.

When I married again, I looked for a companion who would be faithful to me and a good father. I wanted to be cherished, but I did not look for passion or true love or a soul mate, because my belief in those things had proven to be nothing but a chimera, leading me into heartbreak and misery.

As it threatened to do again, when I began to hear its siren call that beautiful autumn afternoon. Only this time, there was so much more at stake. I had young children, and I felt responsible for ensuring that they grew up in a loving, stable home with two parents—no matter how isolated I felt from their father.

***************************

At that point, David was anticipating his ordination to the priesthood, which took place later that month. He was recovering from a miserable 30-year marriage and a long stint as a minister in a denomination where he was increasingly isolated by his liberal theology and his nonjudgmental nature. His vocation was a lifelong one, but he was new to the priesthood…and his calling was written all over him. He was finally happy—blissfully so—and deserved every moment of his hard-won joy. I was painfully aware that nothing could torpedo his new life faster than an entanglement with a married parishioner.

But I could not ignore the growing sense that he and I were connected in some indescribable way. Every time we were in the same room, you could almost hear the hum of electricity between us. No matter how hard I tried, I could not keep my eyes off of him—and I often looked up to find those gray eyes smiling straight at me.

I can remember the day my best friend came to visit and joined me at church. She said to me afterward, “I would be amazed if no one has picked up on the attraction between you!”

She also observed: “Part of what I feel just reflecting on all of this is sadness—because you two seem made for each other. It's just so rare to find someone with whom you connect on so many different levels.”

That didn’t help matters at all.

***************************

Over time, bitter questions gnawed incessantly at me—had I, who had completely given up on the concepts of “soul mates” and “true love,” discovered them again? Had I built my life on the foundation of a huge mistake…the mistake of having given up on real love as a fiction found only in dime-store novels?

And was I the butt of some kind of cosmic joke—losing the first great love of my life, only to fall in love with the one other man I could never, ever have?

***************************

David knew nothing about my feelings for him, of course. He clearly found me attractive, and he loved to tease. But his admiration for me was always expressed in appropriate ways, and our interactions were always completely within the bounds of propriety. Despite my friend’s observation about his attraction to me, he was an honorable man who wouldn’t have dreamed of violating any boundaries.

And, despite my questionable judgment in falling for him to begin with, I wasn’t stupid. I knew that any hint of improper behavior on my part could conceivably put him in grave danger—regardless of the fact that the only thing he had done to encourage my feelings for him was to be himself.

So I tried to kill my feelings for him. The first year, I attended services and Sunday School (which he led), but I avoided all the fun, extracurricular stuff. I thought that my “crush” (for that is what I labeled it at first) would die out if I just kept my involvement to a minimum.

I suppose what I should have done was to leave and go to a different parish—but I could not bring myself to do that. I could not give up what seemed, at first, to be the harmless pleasure of making him laugh, or the funny e-mails we traded about parish responsibilities, or the flash of electricity I got when he put the wafer in my hands every Sunday.

I also feared the inevitable questions—from people in the parish and from my spouse (who was not a regular churchgoer). Why would I leave a parish I clearly loved? What excuse could I possibly give that would make sense to people?

So I stayed, thinking the feelings would die soon enough. But as the year wore away, I had to admit to myself that my strategy wasn’t working. The yearning only grew more intense.

I remember with absolute clarity the date and the moment I knew that my “crush” was more than that—that I was in love with him. I cried on my way home from church for the futility of so much feeling.

***************************

The second year, I decided to try a different tack. I went to *everything* at church. David had a sweetly goofy streak, and was prone to making the occasional cringe-worthy statement. I figured that if I just spent enough time around him, he would say something that would annoy or embarrass me and put the kibosh on my feelings for him.

Bad move. The more I was around him, the more I wanted to be around him.

At home, things were beginning to spiral out of control. For years, I had been fighting dysthymia, which is a fancy name for mild depression. I had been in therapy off-and-on since I was in grad school, but it had never occurred to me that I was clinically depressed and needed to be evaluated. I was able to get out of bed, take care of my children, work—how could I be depressed?

I guess I thought that “real” depression incapacitated you. I didn’t understand that my view of life as completely devoid of color—and my feeling of unending weariness at the thought of my future—were signs of depression.

But in the winter of 2005, I lost my ability to concentrate on my work. For an editor, this is disastrous. I missed the first deadline in my 10-year career as a freelancer. I was petrified at what this meant—so I finally went to see my internist, who put me on antidepressants.

I had great hopes that they would “fix” me—but they didn’t help. I plodded through the spring and summer—always aware of the black cloud of depression that threatened to engulf me.

My best friend and my husband both thought I was improving as a result of the drugs, but I suspect it was wishful thinking on their parts. I never felt any better. Never felt any lifting of the clouds filling my mind and my heart. Continued dragging my cross through the days and nights of my life.

And then, the Monday after Thanksgiving, something happened—a little thing that would be the pebble that started an avalanche. A little thing that would affect all the people I loved most in the world.

I went to give my husband a hug—and he literally pulled away from me.

***************************

This wasn’t really unusual, I suppose. He had never been one to initiate affection or respond to my own attempts in any enthusiastic way.

And he was always leery of physical contact where anyone might see us. Never mind that it was 5:30 in the morning and everyone else in the house was asleep…

But there was some history here, as well—history captured in a photo taken at my wedding to Phillip. He and I had been instructed by the photographer to face one another and get close together. He may have instructed us to kiss, though I don’t remember.

But in the photo, Phillip is pulling away from me.

For years, every time I looked at that photo, I got a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. Felt that hot flush of rejection, followed by a stabbing feeling of pain and loss.

So when my husband pulled away from me that fateful morning, all I could visualize was that photo. And when I did—with years of rejection on the one hand, and my deep longing for someone else on the other—I actually heard something break in my heart. I heard a sound like glass shattering, and, for a moment, I saw an image of my life in a million, sharp-edged, bleeding pieces on the floor.

***************************

I called a therapist that same day.

When I walked into her office, my first words were “Divorce is not an option. I need you to help me learn to be happy with the life that I have.”

She tried. I will give her credit for that.

But by Christmas 2005, I was slowly spiraling into madness. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. I lost 20 lbs. without even trying—probably the only woman in America who lost weight over the holidays.

In a few months I dropped from a size 10 to a size 4, and the size 4s began to hang on me. My breasts turned into empty bags of skin.

My husband never said a word.

I started running (which probably didn’t help the weight loss). David was a marathoner, and he had mentioned to me once that a combination of running and antidepressants were the things that had vaulted him out of a crippling depression. I figured it was worth a try.

Running hurt. But the pain I felt when I was running was good—a clean and holy pain that helped me cope, at least for a little while, with the crushing weight in my chest and the growing sense of desperation I felt.

And I prayed. I got up every morning at 4:45, so that I would have time to pray before I went running. I prayed anguished prayers in which I begged God to take away the feelings that threatened to overwhelm me.

But God seemed to have taken an extended vacation. My prayers felt as if they were coming back marked “Return to Sender.”

My therapist pushed me to talk to my husband—to tell him how I was feeling. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it—and I knew the reason why, even if I couldn’t admit it to her. I could barely admit it to myself. I didn’t believe that things could get better, because, deep down, I knew I didn’t want them to. I had reached the point where I didn’t care anymore.

The rejected hug—such a little thing when considered against 13 years of marriage and two beautiful children!—had been the last straw.

To make matters worse, I had never been very physically attracted to my husband. As the years wore on, and he denied me the affection I craved, what attraction there was disappeared. For many years before I fell in love with the priest, I had had to have several drinks before I could be intimate with him.

Now, our infrequent lovemaking sessions were torture. There was so little connection between us that he had no idea that I cried every time we had sex for the last 8 months of our marriage. In the dark, he couldn’t see my tears—and, as I said, I had schooled myself well.

I could sob without making a sound.

***************************

Something broke in me the first week of April 2006. I could see no possible way out of a marriage which felt like a dead and rotting corpse on my back—and I knew by now that nothing was going to change…both because past was prologue and because I no longer had the desire or the energy to try any more.

My despair and grief over my hopeless love for David, coupled with my sense of being violated in the intimacy of my marriage, finally overwhelmed me.

I remember feeling utterly exhausted and hopeless.

And then, I developed this strange and terrible compulsion. There was a beautiful stretch of wooded road close to my house, which I had to drive multiple times a day. I began driving up and down it, looking for a tree big enough to crash my car into.

At first it was kind of an idle fancy. I’d wonder how big was big enough? How fast would I have to go? Should I take off my seatbelt? Could I make it look like an accident?

Then I began to get frustrated. There weren’t that many big trees on that stretch of road. Mostly young ones that didn’t look strong enough to handle the impact of my 1996 Mercury Grand Marquis.

The idea began to obsess me. I didn’t want to hurt my children—and even in my anguish I knew that suicide would be the most devastating thing I could do to them—but I was just so very, very tired. I just wanted to be Gone. I had been so grateful in the beginning for learning to feel again. But now I wanted it to stop—I wanted to rest from so much feeling.

And finally, as the cacophony in my head grew louder and more insistent, I heard The Voice.

I was driving down the road, trying once again to choose a tree that would do the job, and I nearly had an accident just from hearing it. The Voice was quite loud, and it was adamant. It was a woman’s voice, and it was like no other voice I’ve ever heard. Here is exactly what It said:

“STOP! You do not have to do this. You do not have to live this life! There are other options.”

That was all.

It was enough.

I decided, in the words of the prophet Ezekiel, to “turn and live.

***************************

Two weeks later, on Maundy Thursday, I went to the rector of my church and told her as much of the story as I felt I could tell. I needed to know if I should stop taking communion as penance for what I was about to do. Diane said “Absolutely not!”

The she asked me point-blank “Is there someone else? Either physical or emotional?”

I was prepared for this question. I had thought long and hard about what the Truth in this situation was. The Truth was that my marriage had been an emotional and intimate wasteland for years. My inability to live in it any longer was understandable to most compassionate people without dragging an unwitting third party into the mess.

So I could not bring myself to confess about my feelings for David—in part because I was afraid he would be in trouble, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. He had no idea that I was in love with him, that I was struggling with suicidal thoughts, or that there was anything wrong with my marriage at all.

And, to be honest, I didn’t want to tell her, in part, because there was still some very small part of me that hoped beyond hope that I could have a relationship with him sometime in the future. I was afraid if I confessed, she would tell him and that would be the end of that. I am not proud of this, but it is the truth.

So when she asked me her question, what I said was “No—but there is the dream of someone else. The dream of something else—some other kind of life.”

It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was the truth, insofar as I felt I could tell it.

***************************

That night, I went to the Maundy Thursday service and—for the first time ever—had my feet washed. I had long had a deeply negative reaction to the idea of it. I had no problem with the idea of washing the feet of others, but the idea of having someone wash mine was, quite simply, more than I could bear. I’m still not sure why, except that there was something so incredibly intimate about it. I had never been able to bring myself to do it before.

I had confessed my reservations about Maundy Thursday to David, and he had gently encouraged me to take the risk. So I let him wash my feet, because I loved and trusted him. And because I needed…something. I wasn’t sure what, but I was propelled to go up to the front of the church even though I was trembling and dragged my feet all the way. It was almost as if there was a hand in the small of my back, pushing me in the direction I needed to go.

And when David knelt in front of me and took my feet in his hands, I felt the Holy Spirit rush through them. Felt peace, and strength, and—yes—love flow effortlessly into my body through those long, gentle fingers.

I went back to my seat and wept. And this time—in this place where the lights were on and there was nowhere to hide—I took no pains to conceal the fact that I was weeping.

***************************

Things moved fast after that.

I broke the news to my husband on the night of the Easter Vigil. At first, he responded in a way that I hadn’t expected. He admitted that he, too, was unhappy and he seemed to echo my desire for both of us to find a resurrection in a different, separate life.

That didn’t last long, however. Once we had “cleared the air,” he became convinced that was all that was necessary to mend our relationship. At that point, he started trying to shower me with the affection for which I had pleaded for years.

As you can probably imagine, that had the opposite effect of the one he intended.

I didn’t want kisses and hugs now, because I couldn’t bear for him to touch me. And I was furious that he would only give me what I had begged for when I had one foot out the door. It felt manipulative and false.

It didn’t help that he admitted he had deliberately withheld affection from me for all those years. Why, you ask? Because he was angry with me. I spent too much time on the computer. I wasn’t organized. I didn’t do things with the house or the children like he wanted them.

In essence, he was angry at me for…being me.

I was flabbergasted. I knew that the computer had been an issue. I had turned to online relationships with other mothers to find the companionship and mental stimulation that my day-to-day life did not provide. My husband had complained off and on about how much time I spent online---but, as an off-the scale extrovert who was buried in her basement and rarely saw other adult human beings, I felt as if my online friendships were a lifeline.

And, in tandem with my faith commitments, it was those friendships that had convinced me I had no other choice than to stay in my marriage. I spent years interacting with well-informed people who said, over and over, that children from low-conflict, unhappy marriages did not benefit from divorce in any way. That parents in those marriages had a duty to suck it up and stay together for the sake of the kids.

The irony was overwhelming. He was angry about, and jealous of, the very thing that had kept me in the marriage for so long.

It was also ironic that the very things that had attracted him to me in the first place---my spontaneous nature, my allergy to structure---had become a source of contention.

But even though he was unhappy with me, he had never said, “Paige, I won’t be affectionate until I’m no longer angry with you—and here’s what it’s going to take to get me there.” He had walked out of counseling. He had listened to my pleas for affection in stony silence. He had held a grudge, and given me no way to make amends.

His admission that he had knowingly refused to give me something I had literally begged for and cried over was the last nail in the coffin of our marriage. In my eyes, it was an admission of deliberate cruelty. His confession literally sucked the breath right out of me for a moment.

I will never forget the look on his face when he said it—it was the confessional look of a little boy who has been naughty, but who is now confident that Mama will forgive him and give him a cookie for telling the truth.

Did I mention that that I am not a cook? And that I don’t bake cookies?

***************************

That confession freed me. It made me realize that I had been playing the role of Sisyphus for some Olympian god who would never be satisfied with my efforts. It gave me the courage to begin the process of leaving.

It took my husband a while to catch on, and when I didn’t respond to his belated attempts at connection, he got angry. When I tried to explain that the lack of intimacy in our marriage had killed it, he screamed at me “Well, you never said you would DIVORCE me if things didn’t change!!!!”

The man has several advanced degrees, is a Phi Beta Kappa, and won multiple scholarships to college and graduate school. He is one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. And he stood there and said to me that if I had only threatened him with divorce earlier, things might have been different…

Now it was my turn to look at him and blink.

***************************

I came to suspect that the hurt and anger he felt toward me had less to do with me as a person and more to do with what I came to think of as “the picture on the desk.” He was not happy—he admitted as much—but he was content in his unhappiness. He could present his vivacious wife and his two beautiful children and his lovely McMansion to the world, and everyone would nod their heads and say “That Bob is such a nice guy! Doesn’t he have a nice family?!”

The picture of us on his desk told the world that he was a successful husband and father, in addition to being a success in his profession. By leaving, I was saying, for all the world to hear, that he wasn’t a great husband. That the picture the world had of him was a false one.

To make things worse, I was not leaving him because I was involved with another man.

(That I desperately wanted to be involved with another man was not really germane—or at least that’s what I told myself—given that the man in question knew nothing of either my feelings or the state of things on my home-front. Again, my thought was “Why should I drag an unwitting third party into this mess?”)

My having an affair would have been humiliating enough, but at least my husband could have blamed someone else, and branded me a whore in the bargain. At least that would have gotten him some sympathy.

But for me to leave for no apparent “reason” left room for conjectures of the wildest kind—and most of those conjectures were not about me. I know this because I heard some of them from friends and neighbors—and I put them to rest as best I could. But I suspect that he worried about what people thought—and whom they were blaming for our breakup.

It can’t have been comfortable to consider that maybe I wasn’t going to get all of the blame after all.

***************************
To be honest, I am surprised by how little blame I did get. To my amazement, very few people seemed surprised. In fact, only those who didn’t know us all that well seemed shocked. All my years of worrying over how I would be perceived if I did the unthinkable and left had turned out to be wasted time. My family, my friends, my community of faith, and my work colleagues all rallied around me—giving me support through the hardest of the transitions and beyond.

I left most of the “stuff” and the house that had always felt like a prison to me, and I moved into an apartment that I loved. I started working more, since I was now going to be solely responsible for my own living. Life as a freelance writer offers no guarantee of financial stability, but I found that contracts seemed to come when I needed them most.

I did my best to maintain some stability for my children, who seemed to settle into the new arrangement of half a week with mom and half a week with dad with a rapidity that stunned me. There were a few tummy aches and nightmares, but “few” was the operative word.

My very shy daughter blossomed in her kindergarten class, making friends and going to her first sleepovers (something I didn’t do until I was in 3rd grade!). My son continued to excel at school and at his chosen sport, karate. They went through periodic bouts of sadness over the divorce, but, in general, they were happy, well-adjusted kids.

As the months wore on, I gained some much-needed weight and lost my haunted, horror-show look. I learned to laugh again. The clouds that had filled my mind and my heart lifted, and my life—once a grey and endless road—morphed into a path of adventure, excitement, and hope. And the grey was transformed—mercifully, magically—into glorious Technicolor.

***************************

And what of David?

I need to be very clear about the fact that I did not leave my husband for David.

No matter how much I felt for him, I knew that the chance of my ever having a relationship with David was slim to none. He had never given me any indication that he knew about my feelings or that he was open to a relationship with me. To have based my decision to leave Bob on nothing more than a wish or a pie-in-the-sky hope would have been madness.

By the time I heard The Voice and decided to leave, I was half-crazy—but I wasn’t insane. Not yet, anyway.

I left because it was a choice between leaving or dying—literally. The Voice had convinced me that divorce was not the worst sin I could commit. Ultimately, I left because I decided that my children needed a mother who was sane and alive.

True, I carried that secret hope of being able to be with David in my heart, but I knew better than to count it as a real possibility. There were so many roadblocks in the way, and I had sworn to myself that I would not put him, or his vocation, in danger.

There was certainly no possibility of a relationship with him while I was still married—and divorce takes a long time in North Carolina. Over and beyond the fact that he was a priest (no small thing, that!), in this state, you have to be physically separated for one year before you can even file for divorce—and North Carolina also has some pretty draconian laws about extramarital relations. If you are married, having a sexual relationship with anyone other than your spouse is a crime (even if you are separated).

I wasn’t having sex with him—which would have been hard to do since I had never even been alone with him! (All our interactions had been at church, with open office doors and plenty of other people around.) But I could certainly see my husband deciding that David was the source of all of our problems and deciding to destroy David’s career to salve his wounded pride and hurt me in the bargain.

I also knew there could be no hope of a relationship with David as long as we were both in the same parish. Diocesan rules required the bishop’s permission for a priest to date a member of the congregation—and I was far from sanguine that the bishop would give that permission. I would be twice-divorced with young children—hardly the most “suitable” potential date for this priest in whom the bishop had taken a personal interest.

One solution that suggested itself to me was to leave my home parish. That would clear the way for me to date David—assuming he was interested. The thought of leaving my parish was painful—but if there was the slightest glimmer of hope of a relationship with David, I would have moved my membership to Moscow or Beijing without a second thought. The “pull” to him was that strong.

I was pretty sure, however, that I could simply move to one of the downtown churches (both of which had better music and prettier sanctuaries than mine—even if they weren’t so liberal). I was fortunate that I had friends in those parishes—I would be starting over (in more ways than one), but I wouldn’t be alone if I did.

I knew, however, that—if I were to realize my heart’s desire—it would probably cause a great scandal. There would be the inevitable speculation that David had somehow been involved in the break-up of my marriage. Knowing this, I could not predict whether he would be willing to take a chance on me. I could only pray.

So I loved, and longed, and waited—waited for the day that I would be free to do something as simple as invite him to meet me at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. Waited for the day when being seen in public with me would not be a death knell to his career.

Waited for the day when I could find out if he felt the same sense of connection to me that I did to him.

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For the year after I left my marriage, I worked with David on several parish education projects. I created a newsletter for the church’s Faith & Science Dialogue program—an initiative he had helped to start and to which he was passionately committed.

He attended my Education for Ministry class on occasion, offering his knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and church history whenever I asked him to. And always, he teased me, made me laugh, praised my gifts with an extravagance I knew they didn’t merit. He made me feel valued and special.

Every time I was with him, my feelings grew stronger.

My “limbo year,” as I began to think of it, was almost up when David was offered a job as rector in the parish that served his alma mater in the western part of the state. He told me that he was being considered because he wanted to use me as a reference.

I thought my heart would break in two.

I shook my fist at God—I knew I had sinned by leaving my marriage, but David had proven to be a conduit of God’s love and grace for me. The joy he brought into my life—simply by existing—made me believe that God might decide to forgive my failings and allow me to rediscover love. Having him snatched away, just at the point where I might actually be able to openly explore the connection I sensed between us, seemed like yet another cruel cosmic joke.

But even then, I couldn’t bring myself to give up hope. By this time, I had been in love with the man for nearly three years. My inner voice whispered to me that the new job might present an opportunity—he would be 2.5 hours away…but he would be in a different community, where no one knew me.

I prayed and waited.

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And the days came when it was safe. Safe to tell him how I felt about him. Safe to be seen in public with him. Safe to love him out loud.

I had not dreamed the connection. Had not imagined the soul-deep bond between us. He felt it too, though he had been much slower to acknowledge it to himself…for obvious (and entirely appropriate) reasons.

He loved me back. Loved me with an openness and an intensity that I had dreamed about, but had never believed I would actually experience. Loved me for me—warts and all.

And in that unexpected, electric, passionate love, I found my best self. Found wholeness and happiness. Found grace and mercy.

Found God.

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Remember what I said about how terrible it is to fall in love with a priest? How people assume that you are drawn only to the collar? My therapist was sure this was what had happened to me. She used to tell me that I had idealized David, and that it would be very different if I ever had to be around him day after day.

I know in most cases she would have been correct. But in this one instance, she could not have been more mistaken.

I know all his bad habits now. I know that he leaves the toilet seat up a lot (though not always), and that, despite the fact his desk at church is always immaculate, he is an absolute slob in many ways. You could probably grout a bathroom with the gooey toothpaste he leaves all over the sink. We won’t even discuss the state of his kitchen, or the fact that he leaves his compost bucket on the kitchen counter…

But knowing his idiosyncrasies has not changed my love for him at all. Because being with David has also shown me that all the things that made me so powerfully attracted to him from the beginning were not fantasies or idealizations. Although what I am about to say about him may imply that I think otherwise, I know he is not perfect—and one of his more attractive characteristics is that he will be the first to tell you so!

But what is he? Brilliant, but humble. Unfailingly kind, thoughtful, and selfless. A man of honor and integrity who takes responsibility for his decisions and his mistakes. A leader who leads by being a servant. A strong man who isn’t afraid to weep when he is moved or to ask forgiveness when he is in the wrong.

An honest man, who willingly shares his weaknesses so that others might feel empowered to face their own. A funny man who pokes fun at himself, rather than others. A loving man who knows the importance of connection, and who understands that you have to make yourself vulnerable to pain and loss in order to know joy and love in their full measure.

He is funny, dear, and beautiful—inside and out—and he has shown me what it means to live a Christ-like life.

God knew exactly what She was doing when She called David to the priesthood.

I know who he really is now, and I love him even more than I did when the idea of being with him was an impossible fantasy. I am constantly amazed by the depth of my feelings for him—how I reach a point where I think I cannot possibly love him any more than I already do…and find that I was wrong.

Maybe that is a benefit of discovering love in middle age. We look for the good in each other because we both know our time together is limited—a consequence of distance, family obligations, careers, and the simple fact that we are older and there is a significant gap in our ages. We have each known long years of pain and sorrow in our relationships—so we know we have to seize each moment of this one and wring every last ounce of happiness out of it.

The geographic distance between us is difficult at times, but we have learned to make the most of our time together. The attention David pays to me and to our relationship, both when we are apart and when we are together, provides a counterweight to the difficulty of separation.

And it is difficult, because when I am away from him, it feels as if I left my heart behind in his keeping.

But I never doubt that he loves me, because he lives and breathes that love in ways both big and small. Brings me my tea every morning I am with him. Prays with me—the only man I’ve ever been with who did. Keeps me supplied with the lilies I love. Reads and writes me poetry and makes me laugh. Makes me feel beautiful, funny, and smart. Incarnates the Holy Spirit for me, in every word, glance, and act.

And when we are sleeping, he never, ever, lets go of me. In the depths of the night, he whispers to me that he loves me…tells me how much I mean to him before he swims back into sleep. He is not afraid to touch me, or hug me, or kiss me. He never pulls away from me.

I finally know what it feels like to be cherished. To embrace love and joy, rather than resignation. To give my whole heart, without holding anything back, and have it be accepted as if it were the most precious gift in the world. To get back everything I give—and more.

I still yearn for him. After all this time, I still crave his company. Still want only to be in the same place with him, breathing the air he breathes. Still feel my heart jump into my throat every time he walks into the room, or turns those grey eyes in my direction and grins at me. Still want him in ways I’ve never wanted anyone else.

I love him. I have loved him from the moment I first laid eyes on him. I will love him until I draw my last breath. There is, ultimately, no rhyme or reason to my love for him. It just is—deep as the ocean, powerful as gravity.

I was blindsided. Deo gratias.