Nadine in the Sun

No, I don’t want to make up

I want nothing from you, or me in this

Except quiet

No more of your mouth

No more of your trippy trips

I like this much better

You lying bitch.

No, I don’t want to have coffee

To sit across a tiny table

In a tiny shop

Ironing out differences

Building bridges

I prefer distance

Between me and

Lying bitches.

Tomorrow I just may see you

We’ll hug, say hi and howareya

Smile, nod and look away

Hug and kisses

But deep down we know

We’re both

Lying bitches

“Forgive her,” said The Voice.

But I don’t want to forgive her.

The Voice grew quiet but wasn’t gone. Its silence waited for me to ask myself why.

The Brat folded her arms across her chest and glowered, “I just don’t WANT to.”

Silence. Waiting.

The Teen, leaning against a wall looked at her fingernails and said, “She’s scared.”

Of what?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m not scared? Maybe I’m lazy. Anger is easier. Anger does the work for me and I don’t have to do anything. It sets the boundaries, it enforces them, it empowers me and keeps me from getting weak, from giving in and from being stupid again with the same person. I can count on anger. I can lean on anger. The problem is, anger leans back. Anger has a price. Anger demands payment and gets it, at will.

Sigh.

“Forgive her.”

I could do that. For two weeks, the need to focus on my husband’s well-being forced me to tell The Rageaholic that I just don’t have time for her right now, even while the Betrayal was in motion and its claws finding my soft spots, making me wince. Necessity and love said, “NO. This is not the time for that. Snap out of it!” and I would (and yes, "Snap out of it!" was said in Cher's Moonstruck voice).

The Sage would remind me, “There are 200 people who are loving you both right now, why would you focus on the 5 that don’t?”. Necessity created a small space for me to have a sane thought and the ability to pull my focus from what usually consumes me to what was better. Because of these things, I have been able to keep from falling into the Resentment Hole I usually would be 20 miles deep in by now.

“Forgive her.”

It’s possible. The resistance is proof of that. Resistance doesn’t happen without something to push against. The possibility of forgiving her is what I am resisting.

I push past the Brat, past the Teen, past the Rageaholic. There is a big white wall for me to write on. I write the word “Lazy” because it feels right. I want the “easy” way out and forgiveness calls for me to work. Forgiveness makes me open, it undoes my anger like a ribbon coming off of a gift. I open up and release my former friend to be who she is, and who she is, is someone whom I cannot trust. No hard feelings. It’s like hiring someone who you find out later just doesn’t have the required skill set for the position, not that friendship is a position…or is it? I guess it kind of is, for both parties.

No hard feelings. Forgiveness, release. No anger. I’m defenseless.

But I’m not.

There is love. There are words. There is me, setting boundaries…not ultimatums. Ultimatums are things I put on someone else, boundaries are for me. Without anger to do the work, I am left with doing it on my own. Forgive, and yet still stay a safe distance.

“She’s scared.”

Hush Teen, what do you know?

“I know a lot”.

Scared? Scared. Oh. Wow. I AM scared. Forgiveness makes me soft and supple. It opens me again. And should she sense this, she could come back and say or do something and it will feel like old times, and I will throw open the doors wide and say come on back in!!! The Girl will whisper “NO…” and I might smile anyway and ignore The Girl and invite my former friend back in. Why? When I know and I HEAR The Girl warning me because she knows danger too well and she is always the one that whispers the warnings when I am running into it. But I don’t listen because…I’m lazy. I may let a false sense of security of smiles and hugs and nice words spin me a story that isn’t true and I might pretend like I don’t know I’m being lied to. It’s just easier. Because I am lazy.

Forgiveness is possible. I am not being eaten alive by Resentment. I do not have the Resentment Beast to feed. I could forgive and let it go. I could stay open. And be free. Truly free.

The Sage says “With freedom comes responsibility.”

Yes. And responsibility always means work. Action. Awareness. Commitment.

Time to do my own work and not abdicate my power to anger or frivolity. To love first myself so I can clearly see what is best for me, and stand by it. And to love her as a fellow human, a fellow flawed human just like me. There is no judgement, our character defects just happen to be incompatible with each other.

She has not asked for forgiveness. It is a gift I am giving myself. She possibly could in the future, and I would give her a bit of the gift I already have. “Here you go, you can have a slice of this beautiful, blue, cloud-like, heavenly Forgiveness Cake. I baked it myself, for myself but I will share a slice with you. Not all of it. Just a bit. Because it was not made for you, it was made for me, but I don’t mind sharing, since you asked.”.

And then I move along. I don’t linger. I don’t say too many things, hug longer or closer than is warranted, or invite or accept an invite to spend more time together somewhere, sometime. I do the work of staying in my lane, of being kind yet being who I need to be for myself. No anger, no overzealous peacemaker to take the reigns and relieve me of my duty to me.

“Forgive her?”

Yes. I am ready for the job of forgiveness and personal responsibility. I am ready to be a grown up here, in this space that was created by betrayal, a space in which a dark whisper desperately tried to grow into a bright red shout. And now this space is where forgiveness was born and a woman stared into the mirror and looked into the eyes of her Brat, Girl, Teen, Sage and Rageaholic and heard all they had to say, and received the lessons they had to teach. And The Voice became the Wall, and the Wall became a door and I became more of the woman I am supposed to be, taller in my own skin and left that room behind into a new place with new possibilities.

I forgive her, and I forgive me, and I am up for the job.

-NW

Looking at my new liquid blush from NYX I was suddenly but briefly overcome with a longing to put on a full face of make up. I miss my morning routine. And then my inner Church Lady woke up and said "TSK TSK, how shallow you are, wanting make up when your husband is struggling to get better, what kind of person are you?". OUCH.

But wait a minute Church Lady. That's a good question, what kind of person am I to think such a thing at such a time?

8 days ago my husband tested positive for Covid-19. It's been a roller-coaster ride ever since. The first thing we did when we got home was get him set up in his new home, the bedroom, and me in mine, the living room. We had been through this before when I had it. I filled the spritzer bottles with a 70/30 mixture of 99% alcohol and water for us to use on all surfaces we, especially him, touch. I pulled clothes and bed fixings for myself out and into the other part of our 2 bedroom apt. (Our extra bedroom is occupied by my son who moved back home at the beginning of the outbreak last year). And we waited.

We didn't have to wait long. Average flu symptoms turned within a day or two into low oxygen levels, lack of taste and smell, dehydration, rapid pulse etc etc. Life had begun to revolve around Covid. What is it doing, is it serious, what can we do about it? Monitoring, meals, medicine. Monitoring, meals, medicine. Oh and cleaning. Cleaning and sanitizing. Work, errands as necessary and back to monitoring, meals and medicine, all while constantly staving off fear and doom and worst case scenarios from strangling me alive. The last trip to the ER finally seemed to help. I'm cautiously optimistic. And that's the woman who suddenly saw her make up this morning and thought "I miss that".

Yesterday, my husband joked around for the first time in a week. Him asking "What's for dinner?" was a victory. The medicine from that ER visit seems to be giving him an advantage, at long last. God knows we've thrown everything we have at home at this virus; vitamins, herbs, homemade teas, medicine, hourly breathing and physical regimens and of course lots and lots of talking to our Higher Power. Covid just gave us the middle finger and said "I DO WHAT I WANT!!". To finally gain even an inch of ground is a huge victory. We both feel like we can breathe just a little. For my husband, that's literal.

I'm reminded there is almost always a thought behind the thought when my inner shitty committee drops one of their thought bombs. "What kind of person thinks that at a time like this?" indeed. All right Church Lady in my brain. Here's your answer.

I wasn't really missing make up, I was missing fighting with my husband for counter space in the mornings now that we share a bathroom again. I was missing dinners together, hugs and evening Netflix and chill time. I was missing things I didn't even know I took for granted a mere 9 days ago.

That's the woman who stood there at her bathroom counter thinking "I miss my make up" with her sick (but getting better) husband in the other room just waking up. A woman, with hope prying open the window just a wee bit and making room for a thought that wasn't Covid related, allowing herself the slight luxury of wanting normalcy again now that it seems within reach, now that it looks like her loved one is most likely headed for the finish line with this horrible asshole virus. The makeup was just symbolic.

Last night, my hubby called me into the bedroom because he needed to tell me something. With tears in his eyes he said he doesn't know what he would've done without me. That I am amazing and that he's sorry he didn't listen about vaccination before when I tried to get him to consider the possibility that he could actually get sick like other people, regardless of his inner conviction that he was somehow immune to it. That he loves me very much and doesn't tell me enough.

THAT'S the voice that matters. Not the inner Church Lady that perks up when she thinks she can nail me on some moral failing and definitely not the voices of anyone in our lives who judged, criticized or sneered at us from the cheap seats during this time, because there were some that did.

Nope, the voice that matters is his and mine to him, letting him know I too came to a deeper understanding of all he means to me this last week as well. The other voices that matter are our friends and family who pulled with us to get to the other side. Who showered us with love, encouragement, wisdom, useful information and support. And that Inner Voice that doesn't come from my twisted brain but from Something Deeper. The One that Guides and has our best at heart. That loves us in all our humanness.

I am cautiously hopeful today. I know, from watching this virus work, we can't turn our back on it. We can't let up yet. But we both feel we are gaining an advantage at long last. We understand it could turn but right now, we are headed in the right direction. We can afford to laugh a little, joke a little, think a few frivolous thoughts. I may even put on a little lipstick today. Something hot, red, and sinful. Something a Church Lady could really appreciate.

Not all haunted houses sit at the end of a dark street in two story silence wrapped in old vines, crying peeling paint. Some are boring little single family homes in the middle of suburbia, filled with more darkness than one can imagine. Some are at the end of lonely driveways, behind another home, hidden from view like an insane relative no one talks about.

That was my house. That was where I watched darkness fall with a sheen of sweat over my entire body begging for exhaustion to give me the relief of sleep. This was where my blood was spilled, my bruises blossomed and my cries were left unheard. This is where my pain became my constant companion and fear my best friend.

People who have not lived in fear for days and years on end do not understand the connection one makes to it, the partnership that is forged, the contract that is made. Fear promises to watch the night for the witches and the demons, to listen for the change in a voice or a look and warns the young ones to hide. Fear has bionic hearing and eyes that see beneath what is presented, for the trap. Fear sniffs the air and understands the signs of a storm long before it erupts over the body in a flurry of belt buckles and other instruments. Fear becomes the protector, the parent and the friend, but it never stops feeling like torture and doom all the same.

I am grown now. Much of my childhood horror has been exorcised. I no longer see shapes of darkness flit just out of eyesight or hear my name being called by no one at all. I fall asleep peacefully beside my kind and beautiful husband with my cat at my head. My home is a sanctuary and not a prison. My mind is clear and my heart is calm.

The journey from the house at the end of the driveway to the rest of the world took decades. I opened the front door, unlocked the squeaking telltale wooden gate in the wooden wall, walked past the towering yuccas insuring no one got in and no one got out. I walked down the long driveway past the other yard and the other home with its deafening silence and secrets. I made it to the other gate and found I had the key. I unlocked it, swung it open and passed through to the rest of the world. I walked off that property onto the street, that strange silent street where others were rarely seen. I stepped into the rest of my life but it was a journey that almost cost me my life and my soul…but only almost. And almost doesn’t mean a thing with the prize so high. It was either win or lose and I won.

I won.

From the very first time, I fell in love with the euphoria of running away. That chains are off, feet are moving, heart is pounding breaking out into the cool night air was like a hit of some new drug. What’s not to love about that? The problem was,  I was bringing just as much trouble with me than I was leaving behind. It took years for me to get tired enough to do something different.

In 2002, I picked up the phone and said to the woman on the other end “I’m DONE!!” and then I waited. They showed up and explained to him I was leaving and he needed to let me do what I need to do. They stood between myself and his violence and escorted me out the door with my ½ packed bag into an unknown future, but that was ok. Within a couple of hours I was picking up a newcomer chip from a woman that whispered in my ear, “The war is over” and I nearly crumpled in tears. I had finally run TO something not just away from something. That something was NA.

I have since realized why it did no good to outrun the last “him” or “them” that had become part of my prison because I always brought the source of my problems with me; myself and mu addict mind that could only make decisions driven by compulsion and obsession. A mind that cared more about changing feelings than changing the problem. As long as that was who was driving the getaway car, my destination would remain the same, unmanageability and degradation.

This program, created by addicts for addicts, showed me why I can leave in the middle of a million nights, hitchhike hundreds of miles and take a million drugs but I cannot outrun myself or addiction. My impulses, defects, selfishness, obsessions, compulsions, short-comings and deficiencies are hard-wired into who I am and there is no escape. NA gave me a better offer than mere escape, it offered me freedom. Escape was about what’s “out there, freedom is about what’s in here ♥. I needed more than a change of address, a different boyfriend or a different chemical. I needed a new me. Luckily NA is in the business of creating new people.

I’m a messy human. I used to be messier. I’d go from the frying pan into the fire, jump back into the same pan and back into the same fire. I’d look for rescue thinking it was the answer only to have to find the fire exit. I was unequipped to live a real life, handle real responsibilities or even sane enough to want them. I was easy pickings for the predator and the sick rescuer whose price tags were always eventually more than I wanted to pay. I kept trying to fix the problems with the same brain that made them and then cried about my poor misunderstood life. A vicious cycle of self-destruction and pain, driven by the madness inside that only cared about “one more”. Escape cannot fix such mess. What I needed what a personality change.

I now know escape is but an event but freedom is a process. Through the 12 steps I discovered I could finally admit I’m an addict and open the door to the fresh air of truth and peace. I could lay down the burdens of denial, justification and rationalization. I could turn around and face the wreckage and defects I had tried to outrun and instead DO something about them. As I changed, so did my surroundings and the people in them. My life slowly became something I wanted to live and less something I wanted to avoid. And choices, beautiful choices bloomed like flowers in a field waiting to be picked. GOOD choices, new choices each with endless possibilities. The monster has gone to sleep.

Maybe you are reading this and you are tired. Maybe you are tired of the “one more” and the “this time it will be different” hustle that is dragging your poor exhausted soul over the rocks. (Is that why they call them “drugs”, because they drag our asses over every painful thing imaginable?) Or you might be someone with some clean time but addiction craziness has morphed into some other display of insanity and self-destruction that has left you just as exhausted as the day you came in. That’s ok, we get clean, not perfect. Take off your running shoes and meet me at the meeting tonight. I’ll save you a seat, give you a hug and whisper in your ear “the war is over” and we can get on with the business of recovery and the gift of true freedom.

SPOILER ALERT: May have info about the  2020 version of the “The Invisible Man”, you don’t want to know yet.

Elizabeth Moss stars in a new version of the Invisible Man where she plays a woman caught, but somewhat escaping, the clutches of an abusive and controlling man. As for how good the movie is, it was a “Meh, I’m not mad at it” on  a scale of “made me angry it was so bad” to “Whoa, I need to tell all my social media peeps to watch this movie!!!” . In spite of it being a bit on the lukewarm side of “ok”, it did inspire me to delve into some mind soup on the topic of life after domestic violence.

There is a scene where Elizabeth’s character is asked what her ex did to her. She runs through a laundry list of abuse and control, beginning at the “not so serious kinds” and ending at a place that leaves no doubt that things got bad, real bad. It was here that my mind departed from the intended storyline and went rogue. 

As Cecelia “Cee” Kass (played by Elizabeth Moss) talked about her painful and shameful experiences and how they went from bad to worse, I found myself wanting to crawl through the screen, sit down at the table with her and and ask her questions like “What was the first red flag you saw in him but explained away?”. “Did you pretend those red flags were accessories and not warnings?”. “Have you asked yourself why you continued with your abuser down that ever worsening wormhole of abuse and control?”. “What are you going to learn from this so you can never have to go through this again?” and lastly “Was your ex part of a bigger pattern?”. 

I have dated “The Invisible Man”. 

He began as a smile. A beautiful smile that took me in and twirled me around in delight. It was a smile that lit up his eyes at the sight of me, that made my heart do the slip n slide in my chest and my breath catch. It began with flutters and blushes and an underlying sense of not quite deserving all of this adoration. It ended with me wondering that the hell happened.

In between the pink blush of infatuation to the blood red of split lips and red rimmed eyes a whole lot of other color happened. The blues, greens and purples of bruises. The whites of teeth bared at me in rage. The yellows of jealousy. The black of dark nights wondering how I got to where I was and why I couldn’t make it better. These colors revealed The Invisible Man to me like the white paint Cee threw on her Invisible Man in the movie.

I left my abuser after 11 yrs. What I didn’t walk away from, I lost. The most painful losses of all were my children. I did eventually regain custody but it was hard and I failed at more than what I will go into here. But all of that loss, was my beginning. I learned that though wings are beautiful, they must tear through bone and skin to emerge and the process is painful. Wings have to push their way past long held beliefs like grass pushes through concrete. Beliefs like I couldn’t make it in life on my own, that I didn’t deserve real love, that abuse means he cares and that without a relationship I am not whole.

In the movie, Cee eventually claws her way out of death defying situations to freedom. She does so by her wits fueled by anger and revenge. She’s a movie victim. So what about the real women? What do we do? I’ll tell you what I did. I found out that there was not only an Invisible Man “out there” ready to pounce that I hadn’t seen, but that there are also TWO Invisible Women living within me.

The first Invisible Woman was the one who whispered all my can’ts and shouldn’ts to me. The one that was complicit in taking me hostage, using that abusive relationship to do so. It was the voice that told me I couldn’t escape, survive or deserve anything better. It was the one that convinced me there was no way out and then shamed me for staying. 

Once I was gone, my biggest fear was that woman. I sensed she was dangerous, cunning and was out to kill me and would succeed if I didn’t do something so I did something. I did a few somethings. It took a good chunk of time but I grew. I uncovered patterns and choices and beliefs I had that made men like the one I had escaped, invisible to my naked eye until it was too late. In the process I discovered the 2nd Invisible Woman. The Wonder Woman within.

My Wonder Woman appeared at the first movie I took myself to. She stood up and cheered at my new courage and independence. She encouraged me to grew in a career and beamed with pride as I was able to pay all of my bills ON MY OWN. She stood beside me in court as I fought for my children and won. She helped me find my voice and  taught me that every good relationship has easy access to exits for everyone involved. I call her my Wonder Woman because I wonder how I didn’t know she was there all along. Wonder Woman was ME.

2020′s Invisible Man wasn’t bad. It just seemed rather 1980s to me in it’s complete lack of acknowledgement of what really makes up the dance of domestic violence and what really makes up a true escape. Until I learned how to spot the Invisible Men in the world and came face to face with my own Invisible Women I was doomed to keep dating the same man, even though his name and face changed. 

For real women survivors of domestic violence we know it takes more than anger and a wet dream of revenge to insure our own safety not only from “him” but from the woman inside that is doomed to re-date the same man over and over without a personal renaissance and metamorphosis. I’m not saying anger isn’t a great springboard if it is used to get out of the inertia of hopelessness and into action on our own behalf. It’s a great start, but we don’t stop there, we women who have faced our own downfalls and who have committed to wrestle every valuable lesson we can from them. We know it takes learning that the dreaded loneliness turns into blessed solitude if we let it. We learn that crippling insecurity and inadequacies turn into independence and self-esteem if we let it. We learn that “you complete me” is movie magic but that the real magic is becoming a whole person on our own. We learn that as we change from the flower we were into the flower we were always meant to be, the bees that buzz around for our sweet nectar, change. We don’t have to avoid the Invisible Man, he just stops coming around. We no longer qualify for the job.

I’m grateful for my ex Invisible Man. He was my first “psycho vaccination”. I have needed a couple of booster shots along the way but one thing I know and appreciate; some mistakes are just not fun enough to repeat and thankfully, I no longer have to. I have graduated to making different mistakes today and learning brand new lessons. 

I'm Wonder Woman and my super power is that Invisible Men can’t hide from me anymore.