Merry Christmas all..its been awhile eh?

Its been the hardest Christmas I hope I'll ever endure. For a year and a half nick and I have walked side by side, loving eachother, exploring the world, talking, laughing and being best friends and lovers. But life is cruel and the fates crueler..that they would make two people, who love eachother so much so incompatible for the long term. We decided 4 days before Christmas that the time had come to admit...that though we love eachother feircely....its that very love that now must make us part, before life becomes to painful and we learn to resent eachother. We are fundamentally different in ways that cannot be overcome anytime in the immediate future....those incompatibilities drive eachother insane and cause intense unhappiness. So with many tears...much heartache we decided to part ways....and as I watch him leave this house and move towards a different tomorrow without me I could not imagine anything that could hurt more.

After the decision was made my heart cried a thousand times to take it back...but he's set that this is right and what we must do. There's an ache that walks with me through every day...it dulls with time, I can see this already but it will take many moons before it goes away. I must learn to be me again...alone in a world that scares me beyond belief. Its time to grow to be less scared alone. Its a call to change and grow and learn and I will..in time.

My family, my friends - they have been amazing. The friends who saw themselves relatively neglected as I lay quietly in the bonds of my relationship have picked up where we left off, embracing me and loving me and holding me and kicking me in the ass when necessary. I truly am blessed.

And Nick...in time we will be friends...we are in name now but the close proximity is bittersweet at the moment and for a time we must stay apart...keep lines drawn and learn to live our lives alone again. I miss him in every moment..perhaps I always will. Tis cruel to have to wonder if you've made the biggest mistake of your life. But if it is meant to be I can only believe that some day we will find eachother again. And if not then we will have spared ourselves the pain of a potentially broken marriage some day.

He walks through this house still, final arrangements for moving not yet done. His presence is bittersweet. I know he must leave - for with him here my soul will always be captive to what I once had and cannot have any longer. I wish he didn't have to go, I wish he could stay and be my roomate and we could walk on as friends without missing a beat. Such is not reality.

I feel like a failure. O said it last night...he caught what no one else has....he knows my soul too well. Another relationship I couldn't make work...I know it takes the effort of two and this is not my failure but an acceptance of facts and emotions..I know this logically. Someone tell my heart.

2001-11-24 - 7:07 a.m.

"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways", Yossarian continued "There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?"

Joseph Heller, Catch22

I've yet to turn as cynical as all that...but this quote has been stirring in my mind since I left Maine yesterday and headed back to the safety and security of my life here. In a way, driving the 4 hours back to Massachusetts I felt like I was running away...its not fair to impose that on myself..after all there's nothing I can do, there's nothing anyone can do...there are certain things children and grandchildren should never have to see, never have to go through. I'd give my life, I'd sell my soul to some dark creature, if only I could stop what is happening to my grandparents, but I can't...I can't change it. I'd give most anything to take the pain from my mom, to erase her memories of all this. I wish for one trip there where I didn't have to hear them all cry. I hate the powers of the universe sometimes for all this.... I can't understand where there's some higher purpose to this suffering. I won't.

Thanksgiving day was amazingly peaceful at first. It almost seemed like old times as grampy showed me his rock collection again so we could pick out a stone for my necklace. I passed over the tourmaline and selected a gorgeous piece of malecite and I watched my grandfather's hands shake as he finished the polishing and faceted the new gem into the necklace. It was the benign sign of old age, it didn't hurt like the rest did. We sat together as a family and ate and laughed. For a brief moment in time everything seemed like it had in all of my memories. My heart was quiet and happy...and life seemed at peace. Mom smiled, god did that feel so good to see.

We went to my uncle's for the evening. Ron was recently back from a working tour of the Dominican Republic. He'd been on the same scheduled flight, on an American Airlines Airbus...2 days before that tragic crash. I hugged him tighter than ever and we talked. He told me of his visiting my old ties there...Paston Juan Luc of the Good Sumaritan Hospital. The hospital has grown and flourished since I was there working nearly 6 years ago now. But tragedy is the overtone to everything today...30 of the hospital's dedicated staff went down on that plane. 30 dead and the people of La Romana have once again been left with a hospital with barely the staff to meet their needs. Its hard to understand - why those people? I'm having trouble reconciling events with any notion of a loving and purposeful supreme being. I hate that I question my faith so wholeheartedly these days...after all I was taught growing up that there's a purpose in everything...good and bad alike and that God will never give us more than we can bear. I just can't quite come to believe those things these days.

So my grandparents went home quite early...I gave them about a 20 minute lead and then decided it was time I went to make sure everything was ok. It had been a long exhausting day and I knew the potential for trouble was there. I dreaded driving in that driveway, and my worst fears were met as I stepped out of the car. You could hear him yelling from outside....he didn't miss a beat as I let myself in the door. He was in her face...over her as she sat on the couch pinned, helpless and crying as he battered her emotionally. And once again the idea that my grandfather is now an abuser had to become all too concrete.

The man I knew was always a gentle man. The man I knew was my inspiration and reason for living in so many hard times. The man I knew as Grampy is long dead. Its horrible to say that...it feels horrible....but somewhere in that there's a little peace of mind. I can't accept this new sick man as my grampy. I can't un-dignify his life long legacy by believing this is the same man. The person in his body now is an illness. May none of you reading this every have to hold your mother as she cries and feels wretched over saying - I wish he'd just lay down and die in peace. Its not fair, no element of this is in any way justified and fair. He was so amazing and he always will be to me....but why do these new memories have to intertwine. Why does my mother have to face this every day. What did my grandmother do to deserve this abuse. What did grampy do to deserve such an illness, such agony and suffering every day of his life.

Obsessive compulsive disorder + dimensia + god knows what else and here we are. I hate myself for the tought that life would be better if he just died. Its not a selfish thought - it would spare so much suffering, for him, for the family....but something inside me says its wrong. So much of me thinks it could find a cure, something to help....but I'm rendered powerless by their location 4 hours north and a stubborn family. And I realized this weekend the victem in this I forget. My uncle Ron...always the beloved son in my memories. Today he's been battered and bruised in different ways than the rest of us. This terrible fighting stems from events that happened before I lived....from days gone by when a tired housewife (grammy) worked extra hours in a shoe shop so that they could retire some day. When grampy raised Ron as his own and never reminded anyone of the fact that he'd married my grandmother and agreed to raise someone else's child. I never knew any of this until 4 years ago. Now almost daily I hear how Ron is not his son...how I'm the only granddaughter, how Ron is a rotton unthankful person and how my grandmother is a whore. There are things that a child and grandchild should never hear and see...these are them. May you never see your parent cry as you committ them to a psych ward, may you never see a parent hit and abuse the other, may you never watch as a parent tries to stab themselves to death...may you never see the things my mother and I have seen my grandparents go through.

Friday morning was worse than ever....they went at it with avengance and I needed to slip out and breathe in the air for a moment. Mother was playing referee, she's done it a million times over now...it wasn't fair to leave her for that moment but I was selfish. So I lit a cigarette in teh driveway and listened to the screaming of the same old story from inside the house. Words don't touch him now...this just consumes him. But then the one thing I hadn't witnessed yet...I heard the smack of his hand on her flesh....something inside me broke. I lept into that house and I screamed at the top of my lungs...I got up in his face and I told him to hit me...I said a million things I never could have imagined saying to him.....My heart shattered in that moment. He's convinced her she's utterly worthless...she's bad and she's brought this all on herself. She worked 28 years at that shoe shop, extra hours so that some day they could have a retirement together, and this is how she is repaid. She never once stepped out on him after they were married, but he can never believe that.

Things will never be the same after this weekend, I've had to realize that he truly is dead to me....though I'll still go there. I'm trying to get mom into therapy, she needs help with all this...its more than a child should ever have to go through. I have to make peace with the idea that I cannot stop this. If we take them apart its a death sentance and they'll both be miserable without eachother....if we leave them together its a death sentance and they'll be miserable with eachother. How do you win?

Its not fair...how can a god justify such suffering...such usless pain for two people that have done nothing but the best they could for all their lives. I'll never understand. I hate it every day. I'll always love that man fiercely - but this is not the man I knew.

I think I'm done now...

2001-10-31 - 11:43 a.m.

How do you hold your head up high when the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

How do you smile and say everything is alright when 5 years of hurt is laying heavily on your heart.

What good is there in reminding others of what you're going through - you only remind them of your pain and get pity. Pity is not what you need, nor is the inevitable feeling of bringing someone else down in the muck and the mire of your depression.

How do you go on when everything that once seemed right and wonderful and beautiful and loving becomes an act of violence and agression and terrible terrible memories haunt you.

Why 5 years later does it still hurt as bad as the day it happened.

Why can I smell the stagnant air and the bodies and hear my own tears from the 2 hour bus ride in tattered clothes with a broken soul.

Why must I remember every detail, the blade of the knife, the harsh ropes, the fabric in my mouth, how it all tasted, sounded and felt.

Why does it consume me...why do I want to take millions of showers when I know it will never wash the dirt off my soul?

Why won't it just fade away.

Every song, every feeling of fall holds it and every year it haunts. I can pretend its not there all I want but in the dark chilling hours of the night I know its there.

And he doesn't feel this, he doesn't know this pain, this suffering, what he caused in my life, what mistakes he pushed me towards, what hours of agony he caused.

There's a burnt pile of cd's under a rock in a hidden place behind Gordon College, there are letters and memories and thoughts that I tried to burn and let go..but they're still there unscathed in my mind.

Must I really be alone tonight?

2001-10-25 - 3:45 p.m.

Well lets see,

I'm now a highly overpaid technical support worker. I should be happy right?

No.

I'm not a tech support flunky (no offense intended to those that do tech support).

I'm a highly trained coder, project manager and fucking amazing team member but fuck all that...sit me in a cube and make me do tech support bullshit all day...someday I'll quit right?

no.

underpaid for what I'm supposed to be - overpaid for what they make me do. Unchallenged and unhappy I sell my soul everyday for a paycheck.

I missed a better road somewhere.

2001-10-04 - 11:22 p.m.

What do you do when the world turns upside down? Where do you go and where do you hide when it just gets to be more than you can bear? Is there a god in which you find solace, is there something that can restore your faith in what is good and right and true in this world when it seems there is nothing left that you once believed?

For the last 3 hours I've laid 100% awake, exhausted but unable to sleep. The world runs through my head. When I close my eyes the trade towers collapse in a burning inferno. When I squeeze them tighter to make the thoughts and visions leave I hear the cries of orphaned children and see the starving bloated stomachs of young afghanistani children. And when I open my eyes the big bad world is still there with its layoffs and economic turmoil, with its senseless robbing of the old - taking away their dignity and their very person. And somehow I need to make sense of it all, somewhere, somehow in this senseless mixed up world I have to find some reason some logic to it. But I can't.

I've been all over the place lately...frankly I'm not suprised if people don't know what to make of me these days...not even I do. It doesn't make sense...everything I grew up knowing seems null and void in this day and at this hour. Its not to say all is bad or hopeless. Nick is an overwhelming joy in my life when I just relax and let him be, my family and friends never cease to amaze me with their love....whatever force that is out there has truly been good to me.

Since the terrorist attacks I've been plagued by lack of sleep....its not for fear that the next attack will be my house or even that my comfortable means of living at the moment will be destroyed in the end...its for the feeling that we don't do enough...that I don't do enough.

Hundreds of thousands of innocents will die in this next year. They will starve to death, they will die of medical conditions I wouldn't even worry over here. They will die to rescue others, they will die for reasons that never should have existed. If that's not disturbing enough to think about - its more disturbing about how rarely we really do think about it. Listen to Johnny Cash sometime - figure out why he wears black and really think about it.

And at 7:30 tomorrow I'll crawl out of bed, groan at the sunshine coming in through my window and hop in the shower...all to start another day of designing and implementing another web hosting platform. Wow - now doesn't that seem insignificant. I had to laugh when the company announced after the attacks that they were giving out free webhosting to victems (both corporate and family) of the attacks. Great - I'm sure they were all thinking about loss web revenue as soon as they ran down 100 or so stories to saftey leaving friends and coworkers to die. Its just a small reminder of how insignificant this all is. And I have the opportunity to rise at this company (should it survive). I would have jumped at that chance 6 months ago...more money, more prestige, more success. At what cost? To work all night and never see Nick? To further neglect my friends? To keep me far away from a grandfather who needs me so badly? Money, prestige and power don't seem important anymore. I've proven I can be successful but I never needed to prove it to anyone but myself. So why am I still trying to prove it?

You know where I want to go right now - right into the heart of everything we hate right now as a country. I want to go to Afghanistan and I want to hold and feed as many men, women and children as I can. I want to heal hearts not sit here and watch us bomb innocents. The government can oust the taliban and they can take lives. I just want to heal a few and feel like I've made a difference.

Awhile back Nick and I had a long talk in the car one day about how you can choose to bitch and cry about the world and its atrocities all you want - but if you take no action then you ought to realize that you are a contributor to those atrocities. So in my own inactivity and passivity I have condoned the very things I dispise about this world. Where does one start? Its a big world and I cannot fix everything and everyone, for god's sake some days I can't even make myself work right.

And my mind wanders to wondering how many children could be fed if I sold my computer. How much medicine could children have if I gave up my car or my piano and gave the money to them. Its the only way I have to fight terrorism - give love. I will not hate people, I will not kill or condemn for all these things are the very reason what happened on September 11, 2001 happened.

You don't have to respect what those men did on those planes - hijacking them and killing innocents. I'd never ask anyone to do that. But in some odd way we ought to see that at least these men believed in something and were willing to work for it. Its more than most of us will do in a lifetime. They're not heros - but they didn't have it all wrong either. The US has done this to other countries time and time again, it doesn't make it less of a tragedy or even more understandable, it just makes it that much clearer that its time for it to stop.

I'm only one person - I can't throw every starfish on the beach back into the water...but I pray to whatever forces govern our lives that I remember through my years to throw as many back as I can for it will make a difference to that one.

Do you remember how you felt on September 11th? Did you open a few more doors for your neighbors? Talk to strangers more? Smile and knowing and loving smile at others? Did your heart soften and did you act a bit more generous toward your fellow man? Those actions are a tribute to those that have died - don't let it fade just because time goes by.

We'll never make sense of this world and we'll likely never figure out how to make peace either...somewhere in all of this I'll find my way to reconcile and to move on but my life will never be the same, and that's how it should be. To those that love me, just understand I need this time to grieve in my own way for lives and ideals that are gone now. I feel like I'm standing at a crossway and I can't decide which path to take....no one can show me though, I have to find my way this time alone.

2001-08-13 - 9:46 p.m.

I've danced in fields of wild flowers

and soured above the silver clouds

I've dreamed unihibited in the sunshine of life

but now it is time for the rain again

It sneaks in on deceptive silver clouds

but it slowly turns dark

the bright sunshine yields to a darker side

and the wildflowers hide among the grass

The silver clouds turn black with time

and heavily burdened with rain

and the water flows

and the soul retreats

afraid and huddled amongst the storm

the storm that rages powerful against the will

against hope

the thunder is loud the lightening strikes close

from time to time the rain lessens

as if a ray of light might break through the gloom

but the rain returns in torrents

It drowns the wild flowers

The memories of the sunshine fade

the soul paces in its silent prison

restlessness, fear, doubt

and the storm rages on.

Someday the sunshine will come again

the wildflowers will grow

and these things shall be brigter

they will be more beatiful

and the soul will dance again

wilder and more passionate because of the rain it has known.

2001-06-18 - 11:44 a.m.

I'm tired...emotionally.

Work has me down - too much corporate bullshit and office politics.

Life has me down - the continuing degredation of American society, the overwhelming ignorance and complacency.

Quivas is feeling the same things and we're both searching for some method by which to break away from it all and search for a new life that can be more fulfilling than this. Anyone have any good ideas? E-mail me.

I've got to put in my 8 hours of face time in the office now. Boring - nothing to do since our group has slowed down and that two-faced cow of a boss I have took over all my work. So I sit here and write and play games and bang my head against the wall. Sometimes I wipe the frost off my toes that collects there due to the fact that someone decided the air conditioning should be set on artic.

People are falling short of expectations, expectations are falling short of happiness. There has to be something else. This isn't depression this is discontentment brought on by awareness. Those that said ignorance is bliss were right because in my new state of political and social awareness (and self awareness) I'm going crazy.

Is it really so bad to think about selling everything and moving to some hut in some other corner of the world?