Justice

I just finished The Red Parts, by Maggie Nelson, which is a memoir that is mostly about her aunt’s death and the trial that occurs thirty years later. Nelson never knew her aunt, but her previous book, Jane, A Murder was on the same subject, albeit constructed as a documentary essay. There was a passage in the book about justice and how we as a society view it as something that we must wait for passively.

It’s always “rendered,” “served,” or “done.” It always swoops down from on high–from God, from the state–like a bolt of lightning, a flaming sword come to separate the righteous from the wicked in Earth’s final hour. It is not, apparently, something we can give to one other, something we can make happen, something we can create together down here in the muck” (Nelson 113).

The emphasis there is mine, because it is that line that began my own thought process regarding justice, equability, and fairness. “Fair is something you pay on a bus,” is what I’ve told my children since they were old enough to complain about it (and of course when it’s said aloud, the spelling of fair/fare doesn’t matter…) and I believe that to be true. It’s not possible for their to be absolute fairness–if there were, then the tenets of Utopia, 1984, Gulliver’s Travels, Anthem, and Brave New World would be plausible and although there are some interesting, even good ideas presented in those texts, there are also some very problematic concepts. (If I may as an aside point out that in Utopia, the only way a citizen can be banished from the country is to leave without permission or commit adultery. If the person who commits adultery does it again, he or she is immediately put to death…) That would be a tad severe, but would it be just? Who determines what is just or even moral? Are the platitudes of what we accept as a society fluid or static? Personally I believe that morality is fluid in many ways and dependent on time, place, culture, and what a society considers normative at the time, but because this is a blog post and not a dissertation, those ideas can stay where they are for now…

French Historian Michel Foucault said, “People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.”

Is that what justice is for? To point out to someone what they did and what what they did did? Foucault and I agree that there is no glory in punishment, and I believe that there is a great disconnect between those words. “The problem may also lie in the word itself, as for millennia ‘justice’ has meant both ‘retribution’ and ‘equality,’ as if a gaping chasm did not separate the two” (Nelson 113).

Retribution–punishment, penalty, one’s just deserts; revenge, reprisal, requital, retaliation, vengeance, an eye for an eye (and a tooth for a tooth), tit for tat, lex talionis.

Equality–fairness, parity, equilibrium, agreement, congruence, impartiality, equal opportunities, symmetry.

When they stand in definition, it is easy to see the gaping chasm that Nelson references. And to go back to the first quote, why is it that we must wait for justice to be served from above? Why can’t we as humans take the time to see what we did did and make amends on our own in whatever form seems the most helpful to the person who has been harmed? (Obviously, I am not talking about murder here, but rather the emotional harm that we do to one another…)

There are three steps to an apology:

1. “I’m sorry…”
2. “Please forgive me…”
3. “What can I do to make it up to you?”

The third step is the one that is usually left out, and is probably the most important. I don’t believe that it’s purpose is for retribution, but rather reparation, and repair. If individuals took it upon themselves to, on their own, without placing the responsibility on God or the State or some other authority to render it and as Nelson suggests, make it something we give to one another, create, make happen, and create together, wouldn’t that be better for everyone?

Or is it just semantics?

Maudlin

There was a black hole.

It didn’t matter how many people offered me support. It didn’t matter how often I heard their encouragement, or tried to see their perspective. It didn’t matter how much kindness was shown to me, because it was never enough. It couldn’t be filled.

“It will get better. You need time. You will come out on the other side of this. You will be stronger for it. You will survive. You will get through this. You will grow, and change, and above all flourish.”

I didn’t believe it.

The universe abhors a vacuum and will fill the emptiness with something else. Cher left my heart and my life and the universe filled the void for me. It filled that vacuum in ways I’ve never imagined.

I have endured.

I have survived so far, when I didn’t think it was possible. I’ve been picked up off of the floor and someone dried my tears. I’ve had my hand held tight as I walked through the darkness. I’ve been carried when I couldn’t move. I’ve been fed, and nurtured, and cared for.

I am very loved.

Every person in my life has been there for me. Friends I’ve known since I was four to friends I just met yesterday. Amazing people have given of themselves to help me along. They’ve been a shining light of guidance and have loved me unconditionally and with intent.

You are a blessing to me.

Thank you. Thank you friends and strangers and the strangers who have become my friends. Thank you for seeing something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. Thank you for your continued love. Thank you for the grace of your presence. Above all thank you Universe for filling the world with wondrous people.

I am forever grateful.

 

Hurtful Things

Hurtful Things: Leaning Against
Sei Shonagon’s Hateful Things

One has hopes and dreams that are thwarted by the decisions of someone else. If one is capable and strong, one can make them happen anyway. If one is heartbroken and stuck, the situation is very hurtful indeed.

One finds that the joint checking account has been shorted $300 for the month, making the budget quite tight, creating new worries.

Someone has fallen in love with another woman. Since this someone is already married, the situation is very complicated. It would seem that prevailing minds and morals would guide one to make decisions that are respectful and considerate to the injured party, but sadly this is not the case. Oh, how hurtful!

A lady sits alone in a sushi restaurant that she’s visited every week. She’s never ordered for herself so she sits and stares at the menu. “What are you in the mood for?” her wife would ask. “You pick,” would be her answer. So many years of eating sushi perfected the lady’s use of chopsticks—a very good piece of social capital. She sits there alone eating cucumber salad and sipping Pinot Gris while reading this week’s New Yorker, surrounded by couples.

I hate the sight of couples that are in love and holding hands or maybe having a kiss while saying, “I love you,” and “You’re so hot!” Don’t they realize that someone around them may have been left recently and doesn’t want to see their public displays of affection? I find it most distasteful.

To reconnect with an old childhood friend who lives 100 miles away. To have drinks with that friend and then keep from your wife the hundreds of text messages you exchange. To lie to your wife and have an affair, and then leave her after knowing the friend for six days—oh, how hurtful!

One goes to the doctor for an STD screening to have a lump discovered in her breast.

An admirer invites a lady to dinner and when she arrives, he is not what she thought he would be. She feels like running out of the restaurant.

The waiter comes to the table and asks if she is coming. “No,” she replied, “She left me,” and he looks back awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he offers. “Me too,” is the standard reply. One can almost feel the thickness in the air each time the story is told and one finds it hurtful to the extreme.

One has been foolish enough to think that dating again might be a healthy distraction from
her pain—it isn’t.

A radiologist comes into the room to deliver the news, “We found two masses in your breast,” she says. Suddenly the world begins to close in and there is no air to breathe or light to see. A core needle biopsy and surgery consult is ordered and you wonder how you will face such a thing without your wife.

One takes her lover on the sailboat she owns with her wife—disgusting and hurtful behavior!

A woman makes love to another woman’s wife as if she is entitled to do so.
Such a person is hurtful, and so, indeed, is anyone, who does the same.

Equally hurtful is knowing your wife is socializing with her new girlfriend with your mutual friends and laughing and holding her hand—kissing her. She comes to stay with your wife every weekend—her bath towel hanging next to your wife’s—her toothbrush sits on the sink—her clothes hang next to the ones of yours that your wife took with her when she left.

Very hurtful is finding out your wife is taking the new girlfriend to Mexico to meet your in-laws.

Indeed one’s attachment to a woman depends largely on the elegance of her leave taking. When she jumps from your life on day of the Winter Solstice cloaked in a shroud of lies and deceit, and chooses to be with someone else, someone she barely knows, when Christmas is ruined for everyone because of the dark sadness that lingers over the family home, when she replaces you in her heart and in her bed without any regard to your feelings—one really begins to hate her.

100

I marked the calendar for 100 Days and wondered where I would be and how I would feel 100 days after my life was destroyed. “I didn’t destroy your life,” she frequently tells me, “you just want to see it that way.” I don’t want to see it that way, because I didn’t want my life to be destroyed, but yet it is in more ways than one.

I didn’t imagine 101 days ago that I would be sitting here on the second day of Spring Term filling out a “Confidential Divorce Questionnaire” instead of working or writing or planning a trip for us or even deciding what meals to make for the week. I didn’t know that I would wake up alone in our bed for the third month in a row and wonder how on earth this happened. I didn’t think that the return of the morning dove’s purrs in the morning would make me feel angst instead of the usual happiness it brought me–their coos a reminder that unlike them, we don’t mate for life.

“I didn’t destroy your life.”

My children lost a parent–someone that has been in their lives a long time–someone they trusted and loved and accepted and desperately wanted to please.

I lost my partner, my lover, my best friend, and my wife.

Our home will need to be sold. The girls and I will need to find somewhere else to live–I won’t be able to buy a new home because I’ve been going to school for the past five years and don’t have a full-time job. I don’t know how I’ll find somewhere to rent that will have enough room and allow dogs. I’ve owned a home since 1995, something that has always made me feel safe and secure–now I won’t and I don’t know when I ever will again.

“I didn’t destroy your life.”

I’m in my third term of graduate school. I have three left after this one. I have to take a full course load or I will lose my financial aid. If I lose my financial aid, I won’t be able to go to school anymore and I will need to drop out of my program–something I worked so hard to achieve–four years of busting my ass to do well, positioning myself to be accepted into the only full-residency MFA in Creative Writing program in the entire state–a program that only took six students–less than 20% of the applicants. I count on the extra loan money to buy things for myself and the girls–things like clothes, shoes, personal care items, Christmas presents, car insurance, gas, haircuts, and the occasional luxury like a pedicure. If I lose my financial aid, I lose that money the makes our lives a bit more comfortable.

All of the decisions that I’ve made, that we’ve made, have been based on the premise that I could count on certain things–like financial security and space and time to finish my degree. All of that is now gone and I’m supposed to “figure something else out.” This month I will need to “figure something else out” for how to buy groceries, since our house account is short $300. “That amount covers the bills and some food too. I hardly think it’s unfair.” Putting food on the table was not something I thought I was going to worry about 101 days ago.

“i didn’t destroy your life, you just want to see it that way.”

I’m parenting my children alone for the first time in seven years. I have a 2500 square foot house that I’m taking care of myself–dealing with broken water heaters, oven repairs, bathroom sinks that need replacing and clogged gutters. We have two dogs, one of whom is completely crazy and causes me never-ending stress. I go about my life the best way that I can, trying to maintain some kind of normalcy for our family under conditions of utter heart break draped in the fog of abandonment and despair. The first 50 days or so I just walked around in a fugue state, breaking down and sobbing at a moments notice, unable to go into Safeway or Costco without a full-blown panic attack–the sight of avocados on sale made me think, “I should buy some for Cher,” and then the realization that even grocery shopping has changed. My family was minus one person–a very important person–someone I loved to take care of. Her chair sits empty at the dinner table. Sitting down for family dinners was something that was important to me and the one thing I managed to hold on to despite everyone’s busy schedules, but now the dynamic changed and family dinners are a reminder that we’re not a family anymore.

Two lumps were found in my breast. I needed a mammogram and a biopsy and now surgery. I don’t have the person who has been by my side for the past seven years as my love and support. I have my family and friends, but not my wife. I will need to fill out a new advanced directive, naming someone else to make decisions for me if I’m not able–my wife no longer cares for me like that. Seven years is a long time to depend on someone and suddenly have it ripped away.

“Your entire life is not destroyed and when you start to realize that other things might fall into place…to say your life is destroyed is going a bit overboard.”

It echos in my head–I see it on the screen of my iPhone. It doesn’t feel overboard. It doesn’t feel like I’m making more of this than it is. I’ve barely arrived at a place where my heart doesn’t wretch with pain when I think of her making a life with someone else these past 100 days. I don’t even know where she lives or what she does on the weekends. I don’t know who she spends time with or what she has for dinner or the thoughts she has at night when she goes to bed. I only know that she wants to dissolve our marriage of seven years to be with another woman who obviously makes her happier than I did. And I’m paying the price for her freedom and wanderlust and desire to have a different life than the one we built together.

Because the life we built together is destroyed.

Three

Today is the Spring Equinox; it follows the Winter Solstice by three months–one season. One season in the many of our “infinitely short and messy” lives.

Three. Seven. Forty.

In the bible, these are numbers of completion.

My PQ Monthly column is out today. Please read and comment.

 

 

Apokalypsis

It was the day of the Winter Solstice and the supposed Mayan Apocalypse. That morning, my wife kissed me goodbye–she was off to meet her friend Suzanne, whom she reconnected with from childhood. “Have fun,” I told her. “Thanks,” she replied, “I’ll see you later, I love you.”

I wish I would have known that was the last moment of normalcy in our marriage.

The Winter Solstice is an astrological event and the longest night of the year. It’s recognized and celebrated for survival, role reversals and to venerate life-death-rebirth deities. After that long stretch of darkness, the next day marks when the light begins to return, just a little at a time, leading us to spring and rebirth and renewal. In many ways, it’s an ending, a death. An apocalypse.

Apocalypse comes from the Greek, apokalypsis and means, “the unveiling of unseen realities, both in heaven as it is now and on earth as it will be in the future.” The word is associated with the Book of Revelations, a cosmic event revealed through a series of symbols and visions that some believe denote the end of the world.

The truth is that we experience apocalypses many times in our lives–seasons begin and end, parts of us die and are reborn. We transform and hopefully grow stronger and more beautiful each time. We’ve all been pruned to the ground and then the spring arrives and newly formed buds appear. We lose jobs, we lose loved ones, we lose homes and our health and relationships. There is no escaping the apocalypses, but they don’t have to indicate only endings, death, and destruction–there’s another part as well. “The unveiling of unseen realities, both in heaven as it is now and on earth as it will be in the future.”

The unveiling of unseen realities.

Is it better to see truth in the light of day rather than to hide in the darkness? Those who have eyes will see, and the rest of us are in denial; the veils drape over the truth that we don’t want to know, or can’t face and hide us from the realities that exist. The apocalypse unveils those realities because in order to grow, we must have light.

The unveiling hurts. We see what we didn’t know was there–the unseen realities of ourselves, of others, and of our situations. What we see usually shocks us, shakes us, and breaks us down to the point of utter despair and destruction often pushing us to the very brink of death–so close that we can feel its arms reach out for us. Death flirts with us, gently kissing our necks and luring us towards its will. It would be a welcome relief from our anguish and we want to go there–we long to be taken in Death’s arms, swaddled in its dark robes and lulled off to a place where our pain doesn’t exist and we aren’t forced to regard the unseen realities that have been veiled.

Most of us aren’t that lucky; we don’t drift away with Death and instead are obliged to find a way to gather up the broken pieces of our hearts, our lives, and our souls and sit with the uncertainty of what is to come–the “Negative Capability” in the vicissitudes of life.

My apocalypse, my unveiling of unseen realities, came on the Winter Solstice when Cher kissed me goodbye and I went about the business of our lives: going to Costco, planning Christmas Dinner, shopping for stocking stuffers, and wrapping gifts to put under our tree. I didn’t know that Suzanne, this person my wife barely knew, and had reacquainted with just five days before, was the unseen reality that would be unveiled. I didn’t know that evening, as I sat in our living room with a glass of Cabernet wondering when she would be home, would be the last night of my life as I knew it.

I didn’t know, until blanketed in a quilt of lies, Cher walked into our bedroom the next morning and said, “I have something to tell you…”

The Winter Solstice reminds us that we managed to live through the darkness and will soon awaken to light, and the realities in heaven as it is now, and on earth as it will be in the future.

Cruelty

The depths of cruelty knows no bounds.

adjective

1. a cruel person: brutal, inhumane, heartless, uncaring, callous, unkind, ruthless, pitiless, cold-hearted, remorseless.
ANTONYM: compassionate.

2. a cruel blow: harsh, severe, bitter, harrowing, heartbreaking, heart-rending, painful, agonizing, traumatic.

Take a breath, and step away.

I’ve been chronicling my life here for eight years. I don’t look back at posts very often, but today I did. I read that very first post (it’s in the archives,) and was amazed at where I was, where I went, and where I am now. It would seem, that I’ve come back around full circle. Eight years ago I was mourning my marriage to my husband, caught up in a dysfunctional relationship with someone I couldn’t trust, and figuring out what the hell I was going to do with my life.

I moved no where except to the beginning.

Now I’m mourning my marriage to my wife, caught up in a dysfunctional relationship with someone I can’t trust and figuring out what the hell I am going to do with my life. This time, however, wasn’t my choice. I didn’t destroy our life together, on the contrary, I wanted to do everything I could to help save it. I wanted to make it better than it was, and keep moving forward to a future together that we could both be happy in. I didn’t have the choice this time. I didn’t choose this. I didn’t choose not to trust, not to believe, not to understand; I had no ulterior motives or exit strategies. I didn’t put someone else in the middle of my seven-year marriage.

But sometimes we don’t get to choose. Sometimes we don’t have power over our own lives, sometimes that power belongs to someone from long ago who sweeps in and steals it away. Someone who thinks only of herself and not the destruction of her thoughts, words and deeds. Someone untrustworthy and unkind with no apparent ethics, morals or values; someone who would destroy a family and think nothing of her own responsibility in it, only the immediate pleasure and gratification of getting what she wanted.

I’ve known her before. I’ve been her before. I’ve played all three parts in this situation and I know, that it never turns out the way one thinks it will. What starts in chaos ends in chaos; what is born out of destruction and built on the carcass of murdered love and shattered dreams draped with lies, deceit and heartache will never grow into something beautiful. The lies continue between all three players and the one who thinks she’s hears the truth is naive. The one who thinks she speaks the truth can’t, because there is no honesty where deception lives. There is only darkness disguised as light.

So here I am. Afraid of what’s around every corner, sitting with uncertainty, loneliness, pain and questions of what will we do? why? how could this have happened? where will we go? Starting over, but I can’t breath and don’t know how to step in that direction because the one who led my life for so long is now leading hers with someone else. And all of the, “I’ll always love you no matter whats” just linger in the misty grey purgatory where I dwell, and are just as meaningless as I feel.

There are no directions and no beacons of light. Just nothingness in every part of my broken heart.

End, then begin.

Now that I’m fully engulfed in my MFA program, I tend to think about things in relation to writing–words, structure, form, punctuation, beginnings, middles, and ends.

Any piece of writing is structured with a beginning, middle and end, (moderate exceptions apply.) To create anything begins with an idea. With those ideas, we bring with them, everything inside of us–the lens in which we view the world, our past, our feelings, our prejudices, and our fears.

Idea.

Sometimes that idea starts with a beginning, sometimes an end, but no matter in what order we imagine it or even write it, the end result is linear. We begin, we have a middle, and we end.

A sentence begins with a word and ends with a symbol of punctuation. A sentence must first end before the next sentence can begin. A paragraph begins with an arrangement of sentences; the last sentence ends before the next paragraph begins and new chapter can’t begin until the last one has closed.

Life is like a piece of writing; it mirrors it in many ways because writing is the expression of life; it’s the articulation of ideas, thoughts and emotions in a way that can’t come from simple speech.

Life is like a piece of writing; it has a beginning, middle, and end–but unlike a piece of writing, we never know when one chapter ends and the other begins and we also don’t know when we’ve come to the end until we do. Sometimes we think we can figure out the plot, the prose, the structure and the form–sometimes we know what’s going to happen and sometimes we do not, but one thing is certain–we can’t skip steps–we can’t flip to the end to see how everything turns out. The book of life has no certainties, no guarantees of happy endings, and can change in a moments notice.

I am trying to put a period at the end of a sentence, and somehow I need to figure out how to do that before I can form the next sentence of the next paragraph of the next chapter. But first I need to find that period

Writing Prompt: It was the day after the Winter Solstice and the Mayan Apocalypse . . .

It was the day after the Winter Solstice and Mayan Apocalypse. Although the girl thought she was in the clear, it turned out December 21, 2012 was the end of the world. She sensed an Angel of Death approaching, swooping in without warning and without grace, hovering above the girl. The girl looked around and watched the walls start to come tumbling down around her, falling away like they were made of nothing but broken promises and empty words. Then the floor began to shake; the foundation was too weak and fragile. It had eroded over time and the Angel of Death helped its devastation along, quietly enjoying the girl’s terror. The base could no longer hold what was left of the girl’s protected world, and as it crumbled below her, she felt herself falling into a sea of sorrow; the shock of it took her breath away, like jumping from a cliff in a glacier fed pool. She couldn’t breath; she called out for help but none was there; there was no loving hand to pull her up or guide her out; The Angel of Death made sure of that; she had already destroyed everything that mattered to the girl.

As the girl’s head rose to the surface of the icy cold flood of despair she could no longer see; she was blindsided with lies and deceit, removing her far from anything honest or trustworthy. The angel smiled as she floated above; her blonde hair and crystal eyes contrasting with the black wings that spread so wide and far, blocking any remaining light.  Suddenly it became even darker, because The Angel of Death was not finished: she plunged down and ripped the girl’s heart from her chest and held it in her hands. She laughed as she assaulted the girl’s heart so hard that it would be damaged forever. The Angel of Death then returned the girl’s heart, but it was broken and the pain was unbearable.

It was then the girl’s love, her life, her dreams, her security, her future, and every good feeling inside of her was sucked out and aborted into nothingness. Flushed from her body so quickly, so efficiently and so cruelly, that she was certain she was dying. But dying would be too kind, for this was an apocalypse, and with an apocalypse comes not a quick and painless death—it comes with torture and blood and despair that last forever.