This morning,the Facebook status that made me laugh was, “Dana Bamberger Lanagan is going to KILL me when she wakes up.” It was a joke, and I wish I could remember what it was about. I did say that there would be sushi penance later, but it could have been anything from rearranging the furniture to something I posted on Facebook. I’ll never know, and that’s ok. It was great for a laugh.
It’s interesting how much she makes me laugh every day even though she’s not here, thanks to the Memories section. It’s like little morsels of remembrance, especially since I moved here almost a year to the day. In fact, I think tomorrow is my “anniversary.” It’s had its ups and downs, but for the most part, very positive. I am not glad that it took me such a long time to find a job, but I am glad that I had the time to make every appointment, both psychiatry and psychology, and that I had a chance to recover from most of the grief I felt from the divorce and continue my journey into wholeness. It didn’t take all at once, and still creeps up every day, but it is not the fustercluck it was when I first got here.
The best I was hoping for was a kitchen job, and the fact that my CEO took a chance on me is something I will never forget. They’d combed my blog and my Facebook page and they wanted me ANYWAY. In fact, that was one of the things that drew the company to me, that I was capable of crafting words and coming up with good ideas.
I am also learning SQL in leaps and bounds. I started a Virtual Machine with Ubuntu installed so I could learn to use a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL Python) stack, and install my own local version of WordPress, because that’s the backbone of our web site. I also use PHPMyAdmin to add databases and manage them, which makes my life a whole lot easier for those of you in the audience that actually knows what that means to me. I don’t have a static IP, so I run everything on localhost, which works out nicely because I don’t want to work on a production machine. I have done that before, and it is like walking on a tightrope across Niagra falls without a net or a balance bar.
And then afterwards, I come home and get some rest for the next day, so I’m fresh. Last night, I watched Star Trek: Into Darkness, and I thought it was awesome, although you should have seen my face when Mickey (Doctor Who) and Sherlock appeared onscreen. Also worth it for the Leonard Nimoy cameo.
Plus, Zachary Quinto. Seriously.
I really thought Kirk had had it and we were about to get a new captain, but I should have known. Chris Pine is too much of a box office draw for them to get rid of him that quickly.
Tomorrow is dinner at Scales’ house, and SO EXCITED. I would give up a little extra sleep for that. I cannot underestimate how good I feel when I am with her, because it is a solid move toward getting away from the past and making room for whatever the future holds. I am still not ready for anything more than friendship with anyone, and so this is not a pick up chicksth sort of situation. But it *is* the best thing that has happened in a long time in terms of my self-worth. Having that person who is my go-to e-mail and phone call and visiting person is amazing in and of itself. It gives me confidence one day at a time that I am worthy of more than the depression I feel at everything that has gone on for the past several weeks (years?).
I miss Argo and Dana more than words can say, in that order only because of the alphabet, because it’s hard to say which one has meant more to me over the course of the divorce and aftermath. Of course Dana wins at being a spectacular wife, but once that relationship broke down, it was Argo who helped pick me up, even though we’d spent a majority of the time fighting and we reached out to each other despite it. It’s how I know that our connection transcended the bullshit we levied toward each other in the moment and she was willing to get in the weeds with me, something I won’t forget even as I let go.
There are so many things that I won’t let go. I can let go of future contact, but I will not give up my memories, especially the amazing ones. I have a lot to be grateful for, more than I can say grace over, and those are the things I will take with me…. just like Dana and the way she makes me laugh instead of cry on a daily basis.
I don’t want to focus on unpleasantness, because the way to wholeness for me is not processing all of the negative feelings I have toward both of them, but the amazing laughter and intimacy we shared, which Harville Hendrix rightly called “into me see.” Intimacy with a friend is different than intimacy with a wife, but they both meant the world to me, and not something worthy of putting away. I just don’t want to feel sad anymore. I want to feel all the joy they brought into my life as I move forward, because it is fuel.
When I think of bad memories, it puts me on the floor. When I think of good memories, I imbue myself with a sense of peace. Things will never be the same, but perhaps that is for the best. If I cannot get either of them to see who I really am, there is no point in trying.
I should have moved on with Argo long ago, but it took me until now to really be able to process it…. what it would mean to me to lose her. It’s enormous. Simply enormous. In a way, it hurts more than losing Dana, because of the two relationships, at the time I thought mine with Argo was the healthier of the two, fights and all, because we are both so justice-oriented that I thought we were well-matched in terms of our mutual fuckedupedness. And in the end, it blew us apart rather than bringing us closer together. Even if we never met on the ground, I would have loved to be that person she could count on, because sometimes letters carry just as much weight as hugs and an arm around your shoulder when you’re depressed.
Not meeting on the ground is its own baggage, but there’s no way it would have happened without an enormous amount of work that I’m not sure she wanted to do. I proved myself to be a right jackass, and that’s the image that stuck, when in the beginning, I was the one with great insights and I will never forget the day I lost that weight in her heart.
But perhaps I never did, given that when I reached out honestly, she’d come back around. I just didn’t realize how much it was hurting me to do so, because inevitably we’d go back to fighting and it would just rip me apart all over again.
I finally had enough, and enough to call it good and start to bless and release the relationship into the ether. However, I did not want to go out with anger, so I sent her a letter saying all the things I’d learned from her over the years, and how much she meant to me.
And if that is all there ever is, I appreciate the fact that we were once friends who could open up to each other, even though it was painful and real. You don’t get that with many people, and perhaps our opening up to each other was what caused the rift in the first place, because we could only handle “into-me-see” up and to a point.
It’s ok. I understand.
Stories That Are All True 