Tag Archives: memoir

An ending

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Today I gathered all of my tea cups, tea tins, tea filters and other miscellanea that make an office space a home, and packed up my office cube. I will no longer switch on the overhead light every morning first thing when I get in for the day. I switch on the overhead lamp, start up the computer, and immediately take the tea bag out of my tea cup because the walk to the lobby and elevator ride is plenty of time for the green tea to complete the brewing cycle. I will miss the Zen and Now green tea from the coffee shop four doors down from our office. Though I won’t miss that they consistently use water that is far too hot for green tea, but I still supported them because I liked starting my day in that ramshackle, yet friendly shop with the door handle that does not work well and requires you to bump the door open with your hip as you push down on the door handle.

I will no longer have morning chit-chats with our secretary who is also my dear friend. Every morning I would say to her, “Good morning, chica!” For my last day today she bought me my Zen and Now green tea, and left me a beautiful fuchsia vase of flowers on my desk.

My colleague and I will no longer go to the pizza dive for lunch where we typically clean them out of all the remaining slices of buffalo chicken pizza they have on hand. I will no longer confuse my colleague with my mangled silly Spanglish utterances such as my famous “Como que what?!” He has since started using my Spanglish with his family on occasion. There could be worse legacies.

My colleague and I made a trip out to my car with my stuff, and when I opened the trunk of my car I realized that I still had tea cups and other assorted stuff from the last time I switched jobs. I looked at the old stuff, and realized that boxes of stuff from a departed job are hard for me to contend with. These boxes are big ol’ Boxes of Goodbye for me. I came home, looked around, and realized that I have such boxes squirreled away all over the place: other boxes from past departed jobs, boxes from ex-boyfriends and ex-partners – all of which are unopened and discarded on the road of constant change in life.

I have to trust that this ending is a right and good decision. This ending brings a new beginning, a beginning that I sought out and earned, and now that I have it in my hands it takes my breath away and scares me a little.

This is what I want. I want this beginning. 

Eyes wide open, heart wide open, I move forward to a new beginning. But this time, today’s Box of Goodbye is tomorrow’s Box of Beginning.

To the one who has no idea

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It’s 2 am, and I am wide awake. The start of this vacation has not been as restful and peaceful as I had hoped. Unfortunately, I think I know why. I like you, and you have no idea.

Not sure how much longer I can hear about your eharmony questions, or your questions about what to wear on your next date. Yes, part of me loves that you ask me, but another part of me does not like the fact that there is even a need for the conversation. Though it was amusing to get an anxious text from you with a picture of a couple of sets of your shoes asking for help. Even more amusing is that I was the inspiration behind this statement in your eharmony profile, “If you say that a food is the worst thing you’ve ever eaten, I will want to try it.” I think it’s crazy and funny that you put such a thing in your profile. And, yes, I maintain the particular diner on Broadway that I pointed out to you is among the worst. Or course, now you want to eat there. Why do I want to go there with you?

Nearly everyday you and I communicate with each other. Do you realize that when you seriously start dating someone our relationship cannot continue on the level that it is? I find it hard to believe that whomever you date would find it acceptable for you to have such a close friendship with me. You can call it fellowship, or whatever you want to label our relationship, but, mark my words, this will end as soon as you start seriously dating someone.

And with that, I cherish the early morning breakfasts with you at the diner. You are the only one for whom I would wake up early for a 7:30 a.m. breakfast on the weekend. I rather like that we practically have the place to ourselves at that early hour. I never like when life gets in the way, and we have to skip a weekend. Remember, these breakfasts with me will end when you find the one because she will expect that you will be dining with her, instead of me, and rightly so.

You spent Father’s day with me, always a hard day. Thank you for that.

I like that when I told you I have DID you said to me, “I only know what Hollywood has shown … or is it like Hollywood?” The sweet sincerity of the question made me laugh when you asked.

You’ve seen me as another alter, and you didn’t freak out or run away. In fact, you seemed to process it as not a big deal. Most importantly, you’ve remained my friend.

I like that we can laugh about my DID. While hiking you posed the possibility of going off the trails. I think you said this in jest, though it is hard to know with you. I put the kibosh on that idea, and said I had never done that. You turned to me, and with a sparkle in your eye, you said, “YOU can never say that.” I laughed right out loud. I never dreamt that there would be a day that I would laugh about my DID.

We don’t have a lot in common. In fact, we have quite a few differences. I like Kripalu as much as you like Vegas. You admittedly rarely read for pleasure, and you say you are not a “word person.”

But, I like who you are … the dramatic, kind, funny, loud person that you are through and through.

Though you cannot know how I feel about you. I do not want to face the prospect of not having you as a friend. Your friendship means too much to me. And so, I will continue to try to look unaffected when you talk about your latest date. I will glance at your hands, and try not to think about touching them. There’s a reason we have those awkward moments when it looks like I want to hug you, but don’t.

My response

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I’ve had something profound happen that I, unfortunately, cannot write about in any depth or specificity yet as there is still a great deal of fear attached to what has occurred. I’ve been experiencing abject fear since last week with this particular person, and it has come to a head.

By the grace of the universe, I am able to extricate myself from having this person in my life. Or at least I will be able to do so in short order.

I’ve spent the better part of the last few days dreading tomorrow when I will finally see this person since our last interaction. I’ve alternated between realistic and calm brain, and fearfully active brain. I’ve hiked, gone for walks, talked with friends in person and on the phone, and still the fear would not leave my being. I even resorted to watching a bad movie last night for distraction to no avail. The movie, You, Me and Dupree did not serve as a distraction for me, but that could be because I am a movie snob.

I woke up this morning with that fear that just envelopes me like a big heavy blanket thrown over me that I cannot get out from underneath.

And just so you know the bizarre way my mind works, here’s how I finally found some peace with this …

To distract myself I started reading the Kripalu catalog of upcoming workshops, and I found a workshop by Noah Levine scheduled for the upcoming fall season. His workshop is related to overcoming addiction using the Buddhist path as an overlay to the Twelve Step approach. I immediately looked up a YouTube video of a talk on Buddhism he gave at USC to see what he’s all about.

The following quotes from the talk, I believe, are the reason I came across this today:

“My goal is to meet every unpleasant experience in my life with love, with compassion, with kindness.”

“Compassion is responding to pain with kindness and love rather than aversion and hatred.”

I found myself listening to the entirety of his hour long talk, and I looked up others as well. Before I knew it a couple of hours had passed, but I noticed that I finally started to feel at peace for the first time in days. I finally started to feel like I could handle this difficult situation, or at least I finally feel hopeful that I can handle it.

I then headed out to the bookstore to purchase his new book, Refuge Recovery. Alas, though the bookstore indicated it was in stock I could not find it, and I was not in the mood to ask if it was shelved elsewhere. I then happened across Sharon Salzberg’s book, Loving Kindness, and I believe everything in this quest happened as it was supposed to happen because I opened up that book to find an exercise on contending with a difficult person. This was exactly what I needed.

I needed to read that compassion was tantamount to this challenge. The exercise advised to contemplate a good thing about this person (and in this particular case, that is not hard to do), and direct loving-kindness phrases towards them such as, “May you be free from danger, may you be happy,” Though, as the book advised, I replaced “you” with “we” because articulating the “you” was a stretch for me at this point. The author calls the compassion we send “metta.” It was surprising to find that I was able to do this. I thought of a couple of vulnerabilities that likely bring her suffering, and I was able to feel compassion for her.

I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve no background in meditation or Buddhism. Let me be clear: I know nothing, absolutely nothing aside what I’ve gleaned from today’s journey. All I have is a great desire for peace with this person.

There is still some fear left in me, but I believe in peaceful interactions with all my heart, and that is all I want. All I can control is my response, and my reaction to whatever happens tomorrow. I am asking the universe for all the strength we can conjure for the best response.