“How?” I asked.
“We don’t take the time to identify who we want to be, what we want to be like, or how we want people to think of us. For example, you can say, ‘I’m a great person.’ But you’d be surprised at how many people can’t start listing off the reasons why. So, some of my clients realize they want to volunteer, become philanthropic, help the poor, or just help their buddies or their own families more. The point is, they have to start somewhere.”
“Anything you want to add that I haven’t asked you?” I offered as my signature last question.
“With philosophy, you can get dark easily, or you can go the positive route,” he said. “It just depends on what you want to believe in any given moment.”
Shortly after that meeting, I would start to write stories about social good and nonprofits for Forbes and Huffington Post. Unpaid, hundreds of hours unpaid. I found a part-time paying job to pay the bills while I did that, knowing I wanted to commit to it. It was what made me happy—the world needed more headlines that didn’t scare the shit out of everyone, that focused on the fact that the world was not all bad and horrifying. If I wasn’t getting paid for it, it wasn’t a means to an end, so it counted as something that just made me happy.
* * *
When things ended with Grace, which they did a few months later, the most important decision I made was one that was long overdue.
It was one that, I believe, was the final piece of the puzzle: I had to be alone.
No dating.
No flirting.
No sex.
Because there was still one person I needed to learn to trust, someone I had left out all along: myself.
I started making gratitude lists, shifting the focus to everything I was grateful for, even if on some days that thing was “water,” because even that was something that many people didn’t even have. I started holding doors open for people and smiling at them instead of rushing past them and keeping my head down, or sighing with frustration if they were “slowing me down” on the sidewalk. I started visiting the old lady down the hall to keep her company, because she had all of her marbles but couldn’t see or walk, and had nobody else to talk to.
If I missed the train, I thought, “Guess I wasn’t supposed to be on that train,” and made peace with it being part of a bigger plan, even something as microscopic as that. In that time, aside from spending time with friends—friends that I could keep around for a while, now, instead of cutting them off (or turning them off)—I had to figure out who I was going to be as an adult.
I had to find a way to give myself everything I had always tried to grab from another person and glob on, like clay that my skin couldn’t absorb. The old ideas I had about the world and the people in it started to meet these new ideas about who I wanted to be and how I wanted to be in it, and I needed to give all of that time. Because sometimes that is the only thing that will make things easier—time, and the ability to stay put when you want to impulsively run to something else, or someone else, to fill that time, with its long stretches and wistful sighs. Fortunately, during that time, Ava and Dr. J were like a tag team, drilling home the same points, with Dr. J sometimes cushioning Ava’s more direct blows.
Ironically, I learned that the best way to move through what was uncomfortable and scary was simply by staying still; not running, not reacting, not shouting. Sooner than later, I’d find myself on the other side. I had to give the world the benefit of the doubt.
“Picking your battles is part of fight or flight,” Dr. J said. “It’s choosing a middle ground where you don’t have to do either. You just chill.”
Slowly, finger by finger, we were able to pry the invisible little girl’s fingers off of me, until finally, she felt secure enough to let me go, joining the other kids and letting me head off to work.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By seeing the best in me,
She empowered me
By believing in me,
She transformed me
She grew old
And floated away
But her love remains standing
Eternally by my side.
—Giorge Leedy, Uninhibited from Lust to Love
I met Lee in the fall of 2013 after he pitched me one of his clients for a story. Lee is a good guy, with good values, one who put on a “front” during our first encounter at an Italian restaurant on Fifty-Fourth Street and Madison Avenue.
When I arrived, I saw him sitting in the corner, wearing a purple-checkered shirt under a blue blazer, brown hair tucked behind his ears, long on the sides but not all around. He was tall, about six feet, and had a slim build—not lanky, just tall and thin. He reminded me of a hybrid between Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper.
We started talking—I ordered the lobster, him, the Osso Bucco—and I quickly called him out on his bullshit generalizations about the power struggles between men and women and whatever other nonsense he went on about.
“I’m also writing a book about how we’re always looking for happiness outside of ourselves,” he said.
“I think Eckhart Tolle already wrote that book,” I quipped, motioning for the waiter to refill Lee’s water glass, which had been empty for a few minutes.
We parted ways with a weird hug, and as I walked back toward the office, leftover lobster in tow, I thought, well, never gonna see him again.
But he texted me the next day.
You really got under my skin. I can’t stop thinking about you.
I would later learn that no, this was not a line, and that, like many nice Jewish boys, he didn’t have much “game.”
So I texted back, “I’m free on Tuesday and Sunday night. Pick one, and be yourself this time. I don’t know what that bullshit was. Just be yourself.”
I went upstairs to see Grandma, who was sleeping with her chin to her chest. She had lost many of her words, by then, but when we locked eyes, hers flickered with some sort of recognition. She didn’t say much, closing her eyes, opening them, reaching out for the magazine in front of her, but too weak to turn the pages.
I nuzzled my head in her neck, which smelled the same as it always had, only the sour smell of medical ointment was stronger now. I held both of her hands, and sang, You Are my Sunshine, and she tried to mouth a few of the words.
I got up to go to the bathroom, and she asked, calling out to the air in front of her, “Where are you?”
I leaned over, coming up from behind, and whispered, “It’s okay. I love you. I’ll be right back.”
“I love you, too,” she said.
When I got back, she looked at me and said, “I’m dying,” and again, “I’m dying.”
I did not say, “No you’re not.”
I said, “It’s okay.”
* * *
As it turned out, Lee’s actual “self” was kind, funny, patient, supportive, communicative as hell, and honest. He had dreams, aspirations, was a hard worker, and was happy to hit binge-watching Netflix together all weekend just as hard. I was able to make a decision to trust him, because I felt safe enough to let myself be vulnerable, knowing that I was someone who could walk away if it didn’t work.
With Lee, there was no drama, no battle for control. He did what he had to do, and what he wanted to do, and he gave me that same respect. It was nothing to feel threatened by. Not having control over a lot of things, I found, can actually be very freeing.
I no longer defined love as this crazy, painful passionate plight of chaos. It wasn’t about finding someone who would “protect me” or “take care of me.” It’s peaceful and sustainable, and it requires, for me at least, two people who are already whole to come together in order to form something new and wonderful.
I had been spending a lot of time in what some people refer to as the “graduate” program for friends and family members of alcoholics, figuring out what did and didn’t work in my life, what traits and behaviors were no longer useful or necessary. I learned that being aware of what I did yesterday could help
me understand and accept who I was today, so I could be the person I wanted to be the next day, a slightly better version of me, for my own sake, and for his.
Years of stepwork in both programs, and in therapy, resulted in some permanent rewiring of my brain. I could easily distinguish between the way things looked to me, or appeared to me, and the way they really were. I examined what would happen if all of my worst fears came true, following those thoughts until they dissolved, oftentimes never coming back. I figured out how all of my fears affected the way I made decisions, and the ways I was willing to be more flexible about those decisions on any given day. I learned how to show respect and tolerance to all of the people in my life. I was honest with my sponsors about what I did and how I felt and where I could do better. I started to do yoga regularly, even when I couldn’t “get it right.” I started to meditate, even if I didn’t do that perfectly.
These tiny doses of calm became a permanent baseline; where there was once anxiety, there was now a deep breath and a shrug.
In September of 2014, I was constantly worried about my father’s safety because of all the threats he was getting.
After the new Southbridge board of directors put wheels in place to convert the affordable housing cooperative into privately owned co-ops, my dad formed a group that challenged the way they presented their information—not very transparently—and tried to keep the vote from passing. The very vote itself had torn the community apart. Women were fighting and putting each other in the emergency room. People were looking down instead of saying hello in the elevator. The people who were “for it” wanted to suddenly own apartments they never paid for in the first place, and the people against it didn’t like the idea of robbing other people of affordable housing, or of elderly people on fixed income potentially being forced out by rising rents and flip taxes.
When people decided to take sides, my dad went from being the guy who helped create after-school programs, the guy who stayed with your mother when she fell in the street until you could get there, the guy who ran the Halloween parties, to one solitary guy “standing in the way” of their making a profit. Nobody really cared that he was the guy who, on September 12, helped get everyone their medication and cell phones and food. People gave him the finger as they walked by, or they shouted, “I’m going to fucking kill you” or “I hope you drop dead.” Someone threatened to have their dog attack Gucci, who was thirteen years old by then.
* * *
On the day that it finally happened, I woke up, kissed Lee on the head, and let him sleep a few minutes longer. The night before had been rough, because, on his way home, he had been attacked on the subway by a crazy guy. I’d told myself not to worry that he was unexpectedly missing for twenty minutes after texting “almost at our stop.” He was okay, in the end, but it wasn’t lost on me that after all those years of worrying about that exact thing happening, it did; and there was literally nothing for either us to do but get back on the train the next morning and hope for the best.
On the day that it finally happened, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and looked around our new home. Lee and I decorated it with photos of our trips together, pictures of the ocean and lakes and waterfalls mounted on wood. A mantra, It’s a good day to have a good day, hung over my desk on canvas. I made coffee in the Kuerig he’d gotten me for Christmas, and stuffed some messy handfuls of gluten-free cereal into a sandwich bag, flakes dropping to the kitchen floor. I sat down at my computer and began looking through stories my writers had submitted at our news site that focused on people doing good things for other people (and animals). I was working thirty hours a week at a day job, and on the side, serving as Managing Editor at a site dedicated to good news only.
On the train, the taste of coffee still in my mouth, I thought about what Lee and I would do for dinner. I wouldn’t obsessively worry about our relationship, its state, its future. Our life together was there, just like sleeping and eating and all those other things that are sometimes a little bit of work, but easy, natural. Nothing was going to yank it away.
On the day it finally happened, the walk to the office was pretty chilly, with hopeful spring daffodils defying the weather. People waited for their breakfast to be flipped from a spatula onto a piece of parchment from a food truck, and I texted my mom and e-mailed my dad as I hustled toward the corner of Park Avenue and Fifty-Second. As always, my mom had sent me five emails about sales on stuff I didn’t need. I waited for the elevators at the bank that specifically went to floors two through twenty, and I said something silly to Dana, the secretary, as I walked in.
I’d worked there for a while by then, continuing to pursue my writing, just like most of us creative twenty-something’s had to do, a bunch of cobblers mushing all these jobs together because we had to pay the bills. I passed the cubicles and offered a cheery, sing-song “Good morning!” loud enough for everyone to hear and tossed my coat onto one of the other two desks in my office that belonged to nobody, under a TV nobody ever activated. I flicked the lights off—one of many defenses against the still pervasive chronic migraine attacks—and lit a candle. I double clicked Pandora and brought up a list of calming music mixed with pop, rap, yoga music, and, of course, reggaeton.
On the day it finally happened, Dana came in and closed the door behind her. She complained about how the bosses treated her, how overwhelmed she was, what they’d said to her already that morning, how she couldn’t take it. “Maybe you can set limits on your time today, and tell them what you can do, rather than what you can’t,” I offered. But mostly, I listened. Sometimes, people needed you to just listen, and it was usually easy to read who needed what and when. As Dana turned to leave, she said, “I don’t know how you’re always so happy all the time!”
How uncanny it was, indeed, that I had somehow become the “happy one.” Not in this crazy, wide-eyed, come-drink-the-Kool-Aid way. Just, naturally happy, cracking jokes, smiling, asking people about their day, and listening. At first, I felt I was foolish to let myself be happy. I had always waited for the other shoe to drop, for something bad to happen to take it away; people were malicious; people got sick, people turned “bad.” People died. People tried to hurt you, to sabotage you. I had to train myself, when the feelings of happiness and love and calm came up, to trust it. To quiet whatever was swooping in to try to take it away. That took guided practice too. I had become my father’s daughter, chatting with the guys who made the sandwiches at lunch, the FedEx guy, the waitress, giving off the air, most likely, of someone who had been through no pain at all, nothing hard in life, someone who was naïve and in for a rude awakening when the reality of the world hit her hard. At least, that’s what I would have thought about myself, if I was in the other person’s shoes.
But this feeling of joy that comes from cooking and singing along with Spotify, or taking an early morning walk and appreciating how clean and crisp the air is, before all of the cars and the people thicken it up, are simple pleasures I’ve never had room for before. There’s a lightness behind it all, even when things rattle me—the sickness of a loved one, too much stress at work, something as simple as hunger or lack of sleep. I may not be a total Buddha who has found a way to watch it all unfold from up above on a fluffy cloud, but there’s clarity, space between it all, that has replaced the deep grip that these external things used to have, the one that used to jerk me around in all directions.
On the day it finally happened, I walked over to the Citi Group building during lunch and sat in a women’s meeting and was bored. Bored! It was such a luxury, my mind not racing ahead to the future, or dwelling backward in the past. Being where I am, that delicious slice of a present moment, even if it’s boring, is a gift. “She is so put together, how much time does she have?” someone asked my sponsor. I had begun to rely on the meetings less and on myself more, but I would never completely abandon them. I resolved not to leave the community that gave me so much without trying to give something back. I had reduced my therapy sessions with Dr. J to o
nce a month, and I emailed her when too many things became just too much, because, for all of us, they do, sometimes.
On June 9, 2015, the day it finally happened, I got back to the office, looked down at my phone, and saw a text from my mom.
Grandma is in the hospital. She’s having trouble breathing.
* * *
I hustled through the emergency room that I had rushed through so many times before, knowing exactly where to go. I saw my mother first, at the foot of the hospital bed, crying. Grandma had an oxygen mask on, and underneath it, she was wearing bright pink lipstick.
She had an oxygen mask on, and she was wearing bright pink lipstick.
“It’s ok,” I said to my mom, kissing her on the head.
I went over to Grandma, pulling a chair next to the bed. I whispered, “It’s ok. I love you.”
A male nurse eventually came in, kicked the locks off of the wheels of the bed, and rolled her toward the elevator.
“How old are you, young lady?” he asked her, even though she obviously couldn’t answer.
“She is ninety-eight,” I said proudly, giving him a look like, can you believe it?
The very last thing Grandma ever said to anyone was to my father, the next morning, as he wet her lips with a small sponge.
She mouthed, “Thank you.”
But by the time I got there she was just trembling and gripping the side of the bed, making noises with her throat but not much else. The hospital Chaplan came to read her last rites, and my mother and I cried. I held Grandma’s hand, but it was not her hand. I kissed her forehead, but it was not her forehead, not really. Days had turned into months and years that I watched little parts of her rise up, up, and away, and I kissed them each goodbye, mourning in slow, painful increments, and loving what was left to love. Tears quietly came anyway, but I knew that she had left already.
By the time the arrangements were made for hospice care, and by the time my father and I had to convince my mother that morphine was the best thing for her, to minimize any suffering, I didn’t feel that fear and all consuming despair that I’d always expected to feel when the time finally came. I had gotten so much extra time with her, so much borrowed time.
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