Give Me A Chance To Catch My Breath
So I Can Lay My Ghosts To Rest

I was so busy missing my family yesterday that I fell behind on digesting stupid contact from L. But he was in full swing. The multimedia deluge – emails, text messages AND a phone call – were buried somewhere, filed in a corner of my brain labeled “deal with this tonight, asleep, in fucked up dreams”

So his words mixed with other things in sleep and came out in a wicked nightmare, one I’ve sort of had before but never like this.

The dream starts with me in the kitchen, flicking off the light. Now all the lights are off except the one in my bedroom, which I don’t turn off ever until my bedside lamp is on and I’m ready to get under the covers with a book.

Walking fast through the dining room. The door is open, I can see the welcome mat outside on the floor, the stairs leading to my mailbox. But I know I didn’t leave it open. I thought I just locked it. And then my breath is catching and my heart is racing and I know someone is in the house. in my bedroom, where the lights are on. I know it. I don’t see anyone so I pick up one of my boots and launch it into the closet.

There’s a terrible loud grunting sound and my clothes are moving and flailing and two men come flying out. I stand there and wish for the boot back, something in my hand, something between me and my t-shirt and them. Big.

One of them grabs me and shoves something (a knee?) into my back, hard, and throws me on the bed. I’m lying facedown and he’s talking, pushing into my back and pulling my shirt up. “we thought you were out of town,” he says. “this wouldn’t be happening if you were out of town.”

THE FIRST EMAIL FROM L TODAY: a forwarded article about elite flyers, frequent flyer status. THE SECOND: he heard from our realtor. She knows about us. Do I have to tell everyone our business? Who haven’t I told? The clerk at the grocery store?

Pushing pushing pushing on my back. The other one is in the living room making a lot of noise.

He tells me not to move, not to look at him, not to move, not to budge and to stay there hold still and then he’s in another room, making more noise.

And one of them in the bathroom, washing his hands and saying “who the fuck doesn’t have a towel in the bathroom. What the fuck?”

THE THIRD EMAIL: He thought of me today. Bath & Body Works is having a sale on that soap I always buy. He thought of me. He misses having that soap in the bathroom. Misses me.

And then I woke up but I was still dreaming. I was lying there, awake but not moving and clenching for at least an hour, cataloguing all the things they could take. Thinking as long as they didn’t take my computer or my passport i didn’t care. I need those tomorrow, next week. Take everything else out there. But it’s only a matter of time before they both come back in the bedroom because most of my stuff is in here. I’m in here.

And I’m awake but I hear them talking and my t-shirt is still pushed up but I don’t want to move or pull it down.

I got out of bed at 4:50 this morning and grabbed clothes off the top of my dresser, didn’t even look at my closet, and ran out to my car, drove to the gym to shower.

“you’re back,” said greg, the morning gym guy, when he handed me a towel. “you look fresh. Your eyes are bright. Santa must have been good to you.”

And my back hurts all day. My shoulders are stiff bones, clenched up and sore.

I’m trying to process today’s contact before bed. I’m ready, not scared, not going to see either one of them when I close my eyes.

Today’s email asked if I have plans for New Years: “Are you looking for a NYE partner?”

Says it makes him sad to hear other people talking about their plans, do I remember what we did last year? (Actually, I don’t. vague memories of trying to stay awake for midnight.) And that he has gifts for me. running shoes and some new clothes.

Another email, later: “Oh. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe you already have plans with P” (**that’s the mutual friend I had dinner with. The one he said “should have cleared it with him first”)

And it’s all so very clear. He’s always been threatened by P. On paper, P is perfect. He Dresses Up for work. He wears the man’s equivalent to high heels–dress shoes that click on the floor and announce his approach. He Knows What He Wants. His Fingernails are Clean. He goes to Networking Events. He’s older than me and he Takes Care of Women.

It’s the perfect illustration of how disconnected L's become with who I am, where I am. I DO have plans for New Year’s. I want to toast 2006, the year that I Won’t Settle Down. The year of me, having some fun, figuring this out.

Still A Whisper On My Lips
Feeling At My Fingertips
Pulling At My Skin

There’s the obvious love pain, the kind that comes when it’s lost, ripped, stripped, gone.

The kind that comes with a flash when you’re sitting on the couch on Christmas morning and it’s the first one in years that he isn’t sitting next to you in pajamas, opening the so-him shirt your mom picked out, the personalized license plate your dad ordered for him online, the funny magnet poetry your sister and her husband found in Santa Barbara.

When you pick up a box that still has a tag with his name on it from last year.

When he sends a text message saying ‘have a safe trip home for Christmas and remember I love you. always.’ And then another one: ‘I don’t want this. it’s all happening so fast. I screwed up a really good thing.’

But that’s nothing because it isn’t happening so fast, he doesn’t belong anymore, doesn’t fit in with a family that’s built on loyalty that doesn’t waver.

I discovered a new kind of love pain this morning on the airplane leaving Detroit, bound for Chicago. During the announcement of doors closing for an on-time departure a stream of tears slid off my chin, onto my wrist.

I love my family so much it hurts.

Vivid flashes of five days of Christmas in Detroit:

My mom in a role I’ve never had to see before: protective. Momma bear. Fierce. Five days of tender, around-the-clock active protection. Her letter to L last week once he pushed too far, said the end of this marriage is my fault, my decision, my ugly mistake. Her words to him included these:

ohmy....how little you knew this woman….you owe her the validation that you behaved egregiously and that this marriage is ending entirely because of you. That any ugliness that enters is entering on your footsteps. Do NOT accuse her of bringing ugly to this sad ending of a marriage. The celebration of that marriage is still a recent memory to me. You have made it ugly. You must own that. And that is what I need you to hear.

A walk downtown with my sister on Christmas eve. It was raining ice chips but we didn’t feel them. At the end of our route we circled the block ten times before going inside because we weren’t finished talking. Later that night we had a moment from across the room where we had to get up and go to each other; link arms and squeeze.

One of those me-and-dad times that we will both file away. Driving to the airport early this morning wasn’t a chore for him. It was fun. It was special. One of those conversations where I could point at a fish and say ‘look, dad, I think it’s a mermaid’ and he’d smile and say ‘yep, I think you’re right. That’s definitely a mermaid.’

My mom’s friend telling me she heard about that mint water I like to buy at whole foods, she’s dying to try it. Feeling proud to be my mom’s daughter, thrilled that she talks to her friends about me.

Kevin letting me call him my brother, laughing at the way I say wolf, letting me squeeze in on the couch between him and my sister late at night with the TV on

Dad opening the martini glass I bought him and putting it in the freezer right away to chill it for a Christmas cocktail.

Wrapping presents late at night with my sister unleashing her quiet golden wisdom and making me wish we could sit up and talk like that every night before bed.

Those flashes are lumps in my throat today. It isn’t fair that I have this family, this tribe. It helps explain his text message about how hard the holidays are this year, and my feeling that the real hard part was this morning, saying good bye to a family that loves me the same strong way all the time, every time.