Imitation of Love (Volume 3 - The Grown Up Years)

crush /krəSH/

noun

informal

a brief but intense infatuation for someone, especially someone unattainable or inappropriate.

This is going to be the last post on this subject, and it's a long one, so strap in. Writing has been painful but insightful of the way I have grown up seeing romantic love, and by extension, the guys I've liked over the years. Each week I slip my self imposed deadline because it gets harder to look at myself as I write about years that edge closer and closer to my current age. I mentioned my ex-husband in the last post. I am careful not to call him a college sweetheart; I didn't have romantic relationships at West Point that resembled “sweet” anything. It would be convenient to rebrand us as "college sweethearts;” it's a nice shorthand to skip explaining the actual gritty details of your relationship. We only went on three dates while we were both at West Point, two of which were movies -- not the optimal venue to connect when both parties are introverts. He also met me on summer break between my cow (junior) and firstie (senior) year; he was a year ahead and had already graduated and been commissioned. This was my 21st birthday, and I am pretty sure we descended on T.G.I Friday's for dinner and my first legal drink. I was staying with my sister and her family in in Dover, Delaware, where she was stationed, and he had made the two hour drive east from his parents' house in Maryland. He surprised me by excusing himself from the table and moments later, a singing, clapping crew of servers appeared at our table with a dessert, complete with a lit candle. Before we left, I had at least one of those ridiculously sweet cocktails (ah, the days of not worrying that diabetes is going to show up on your latest lab test). We finished the evening walking around my sister's neighborhood after he dropped me off. Just as we returned to the house, he leaned in for a kiss, which was also unexpected, and awkward. But he had driven all that way, and was consistently clear about liking me.

I completed my last year and he went on his way until I learned that I was assigned as an Air Defense Artillery officer, which meant I would attend the officer basic course at Fort Bliss, where he was stationed. The gears turned and clicked inside of my head: maybe it was meant to be. Very simplistic thinking, I know, keep in mind I was 21. As my early August report date approached, he reached out more and more. He was the first familiar face I saw after crossing the El Paso city limits and stopping at a hotel. We went on a few more dates, I started my basic course and weeks later, he started a five month deployment to Saudi Arabia. I see now how these types of events create a manufactured urgency. It was a variation of what cadets went through when they were seriously dating and had to decide if they wanted to get engaged to ensure a better chance at being stationed together. In the land before cell phones and social media, people had ways of disappearing completely when you parted ways and there was little chance of winding up in the same place at the same time ever again. I was not in a rush to get married, my motivation was more about not wanting to put myself through the trial and error and inevitable repeated heartbreak that comes with dating. If I could "lock in" (as the youth say) with a person who lived enough of a similar life to understand my experiences, and treated me well (and at the time I had no evidence showing me otherwise), maybe I could bypass some of the messy, painful lessons.

The interesting part about trying to take shortcuts: at some point you may find yourself rerouted to the territory you tried to avoid.

I got married thinking that would shut the door on my pattern of crushes and unrequited love. Marriage declares to the world that you have a person, and you are that someone's person. What could be more comforting than certainty in a perpetually uncertain world? Marriage offered the promise of individuals joining in a bond that was greater than the sum of its parts. I got married without examining what I expected out of that union, or even asking myself if it was truly what I wanted. When you convince yourself it is another block to tick on a checklist that covered adulthood, checking the block became a task that brought you closer to life goals. This guy was as good as I was going to get, my young mind told me. My thinking was reinforced by my sister; when I was a cadet, I showed her a posed photo of him in his football uniform. His arms and face were rich chocolate, and practically glowing. His eyes had that steely look and his solid jaw gave him a movie star presence. On the back, he’d written a short message to me, signed with “Love ya.” He likes you? She said. I said yes, and she was impressed. Her verdict that this one was a catch was additional information to file away. I respected her opinion and survived my time as a cadet partly because of her guidance and support. I saw no reason to look further. It's embarrassing to admit this because it says more about me than him. This type of logic is not uncommon when you become accustomed to dismissing the value of your own wants, or even worse, when you didn’t even bother to figure out what you wanted in the first place. This was the era of, “Choose the guy who treats you well,” not, “But do you like him?” It was a deliberate calculation: “He must love you more than you love him for this to work in your favor."

My first workplace crush happened four years into my marriage at a job I took after moving from Texas to the DC area. I found the job on Monster.com, the commute was horrendous, but after a year and a half of looking, this job was looking like the best I was going to get (notice a pattern, here?). I have a much earlier post about an incident at this job. This entry is one of my favorites, but the job was rife with disrespect and "teachable moments." It was here where I met M, who worked for my company but in a separate daily setting, under different customers. I don't know how he initially engaged me in conversation, but he would swing by my desk to talk, and over time, our discussions expanded. He was light skinned, slim, with a moustache, soul patch, a beautiful head of hair just shy of being an afro, and a light Caribbean accent. He had retired from the Army at the top enlisted rank but carried none of the rough-around-the-edges demeanor that seemed to be common in senior Army NCOs. He dressed in button down shirts and suits, drove nice cars, and was about fifteen years older than me.

Our conversations eventually came around to salary. M observed that I was in a desk originally configured for an admin assistant (as a “perk," people came in to install higher walls in my cubicle so I wouldn’t be subjected to the half walls and customer-facing vibe that the admin assistants had). I had a nebulous concept of my job and a coworker who had been there for years who was supposed to teach me some of his functions but instead seemed to relegate the easy but time wasting tasks that he didn’t want to handle (I refer to him as“Important Job” in the post I linked). “You’re a West Pointer,” M said, “You don’t belong here.” It felt validating to hear that, not because I believed I was better, but because I knew I was capable of doing more. When you go from being in charge of 30 soldiers and 88 million dollars of equipment, shredding papers and printing slide briefings for the daily stand up meeting can feel like experiencing an extended death. We discussed salary, and he said our company was lowballing us, that I needed to look for something else and his recommendation was to seek a job at the Pentagon, where he had once worked.

I was new to this game and when you first leave the military, you’re accustomed to having a career where, if you’re fortunate, you can stay there. You trust that someone will take you under their wing and their loyalty to you will yield a feeling of loyalty to your organization. I was lucky to run into M early in my career because he was the first person to tell me that in this game, your loyalty was to yourself. These companies, even the ones with employees who were veterans, were not loyal to us. “How much do you want to make?” He asked. I had never considered this. I arrived to my early job interviews thinking I would be lucky if they took me, and had a mental calculation of the minimum salary I would need to live comfortably. In fact, in my first post-Army job in Texas, the company that hired me gave me five thousand a year more than I requested because my number in the interview was so low. When I went home and shared my thoughts about looking for a new job at a higher salary, my husband said, “Are you sure you should leave? You haven’t even been there a year.” I contrasted this with the phone conversation I heard him having with his brother, who was leaving the Army with a Top secret clearance, but as a junior enlisted soldier without a degree. “You should ask for sixty-thousand,” my husband told him. That was fifteen thousand dollars more than what I made. His lack of encouragement was because this was the first job I landed after a year and a half of being unemployed and dependent on him. At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if he thought it made sense for his brother to earn more since he was single, and would have to foot the bills alone, buying into the thinking that in a marriage, the wife’s income is supplementary, and less important.

My talks with M extended into going out for lunch, or sometimes taking a break in the middle of the day to cruise in his Range Rover or convertible Jaguar. Eventually we chose a lunch venue where another group from our office was gathered for a farewell to a departing employee. “They’re going to talk about us,” M said. “Let them talk,” I said. Technically nothing was going on, but whenever you tell yourself that, something is going on. When he gave me birthday gifts, a plain set of pearl earrings and a small flask of Tresor perfume, I freaked out and we had a talk. “I share more with you than I do with my husband,” I said. He understood and we took a break from each other.

When I got sent to Fort Bragg for work, I logged into the computer and initiated my job search. Not long after that I landed a position at the Pentagon with a 25% raise and a shorter commute. My husband was happy for me, but credit went to M. In my time between jobs, we met on one of my days off, and went into D.C. to tour a museum. "I was thinking of buying you a single rose," M admitted when we linked up, "you could sniff it and just throw it away." It seemed like a sweet sentiment until I shared it with Heather. "Oh, whatever," she said, "he just wanted credit for having the thought without actually buying a rose." Another time, much later, we met for lunch. By then I had already left the job at the Pentagon for one that paid even more. I was quickly learning how to take advice, be loyal to myself, make connections and keep an eye out for opportunities that fit my background. At lunch I voiced a desire for a higher salary that he thought was asking too much. With that opinion, M lost his luster and my heart was free.

I didn’t have a crushes everywhere I went — some workplaces were crush-deserts; there just wasn't anyone in the inventory that caused my heart to skip a beat. Eventually I realized these feelings cropped up because it was important for me to know that someone saw me — meaning they observed something in me that might not be obvious to others. At a more recent job, about ten years into my marriage, this someone was R. He was older (please spare me from the “Daddy issues” diagnosis, it’s so cliche), divorced and a retired Army officer. He was serious about his work; only once in four years did I see something not work related displayed on his monitor. He revealed himself after I returned from maternity leave. This welcome yielded a hug, and an admission that he had missed me. We sat at cubicles directly across an aisle from each other and rarely talked. I generally assume people don’t like me unless they show me otherwise, so my thought was, he missed me? Really?

R’s quiet nature and work focus caused me to think I was on neutral ground, but he did and said little things that indicated otherwise. Once, it was a comment about what he would do as my partner, if I weren’t taken, which is a completely inappropriate sentiment in a professional environment. When you are deep into a marriage where you often felt like a nuisance, or “too much,” it felt life-giving to hear another person voice how they saw you in a positive light. Another time, he commented about the work I probably did at home, with two young kids — acknowledging that I was probably constantly sorting and donating their outgrown clothes and taking care of things. It was so specific a description, because yes, that was something I did regularly, one of the many invisible tasks to manage storage and keep a household running. R had southern charm and humor; when tasked with something next to impossible, he’d claim our boss had him “spread thinner than Piggly Wiggly peanut butter.” As the years went on, more personal details emerged, including that he had initiated his divorce due to his ex-wife’s unrestrained spending habits. I admired him for that — statistically we keep hearing that men don’t leave their marriages, even when they’re unhappy. I kept my feelings to myself but answered honestly when another female coworker who was also a friend asked who caught my eye. To my dismay, she told him. Nothing changed, but knowing that he knew was particularly mortifying and went against my personal rule of keeping that crush under wraps. After all, I was married, and I knew how foolish it was to think about someone else that way.

When my husband accepted a job that allowed us to commute together, pick up time sometimes ran late. I would wind up being one of the last people at my desk, watching R pack up as he prepared to leave. “Is he coming?” he’d ask. “He is,” I’d say, making a joke that my husband’s minutes were longer because they were “football minutes” — a play on how a one hour game expands to three and a half thanks to time outs, halftime and commercial breaks. We would laugh. Sometimes he’d ask if I wanted a ride somewhere. Looking back, this might have been a soft pick up line, but I’ve never been one to catch hints.

I left the job four years after I started. Contract and leadership changes resulted in lower pay and more restrictive rules for employees. In my usual fashion, it was better to leave on my own terms than wait for the ship to sink. R hugged me goodbye and just like that, I was out of the door and off to the next adventure.

Every time I left a job crush, I missed the person. At the job I’d develop a pattern of seeing if their car was in the parking lot to decide if it was going to be a good day, or entering the office with an eye peeled for their presence. After enough time passed, the feelings would fade and I could transition into remembering them fondly. Instead of waiting for that transition, I addressed my feelings about R by writing terrible poetry and saving it as a draft in my email account. It was never going anywhere; this was my way of dealing with feelings I felt ashamed for having, and believed I should not have had in the first place. Of course my husband found it.

He was deeply hurt, and rightfully so. I did not deny his feelings and tried reassuring him that I had never intended to send the message; there was no email address in the “To” line. I knew this didn’t matter, the damage was done. When we shared this incident with our couples therapist years later, she looked at me and stated, “That was a betrayal.” Yes, it was. I would have been just as hurt if I had stumbled on a message written by my husband to another woman going on about his feelings and how he loved her. “No one will love you the way I love you,” my husband said during one of our talks, “you know that, right?”

I couldn’t figure out why this seemed like a loving statement but didn’t feel that way. It wasn’t until years later that I understood this line was straight out of Emotional Abuse 101. When I read an internet stranger’s post on Reddit describing a very similar statement from their partner, I gasped. Was there a hidden script they followed that the rest of us didn’t know about?

I took on another new job and on the first day I had to check in at the corporate office before someone escorted me to the government site, where I was working. There wasn’t much for me to do but sit at the desk and read documents; I wasn’t going to have computer access until I was vetted by the security office and granted access. I was going to be part of a three person team, and the other two, T and K — both men — who had worked with each other before I entered the picture. By the end of the day someone had to drive me back to the corporate office so I could get back to my car for the drive home —this was T. We exited the building and I smiled when I realized his car was the same make as mine. As we pulled into the company parking lot, he gestured towards a boatlike sedan. “Is that you?” I couldn’t tell if he was joking and I said no. Finally we pulled up to my little hatchback and I looked over to see if he was surprised. We said our goodbyes and I drove home. The following day one of the first things he asked was, “What’s your car’s name?”

How did he know my car had a name? Why did he think to ask— not if it had a name, but what was the name? His intuition was spot on, my car did have a name, “James,” due to my issued license plate having the numbers “007” at the end, and the British history behind the brand. It struck me as odd, because T was a military retiree, and I didn’t associate quirk or a question like this to someone who spent most of their adult years in the military. In fact, I suspected T was gay until he mentioned his wife. I appreciated the question, and the thinking behind it. My husband would roll his eyes at car naming as if to say it wasn’t cool, it wasn’t cute, it was dumb. That was how I often felt when he didn’t understand why I liked certain things.

At work I remained guarded, declining lunch with T and K and instead remaining at my desk to eat what I’d packed. I was still coming out of the shame of that discovered email, and I didn’t want to leave myself open to continuing the pattern. I lasted roughly four months. The feeling hit me after I’d snuck a photo of T sitting in his cubicle with his back to me, oblivious to the spy in his midst. He sat at his desk chair in his button down shirt and black sweater vest. His bald head was turned slightly, providing a glimpse of his beard and glasses. I couldn't place why that photo shifted something in me. Around the same time, I was keeping a dream journal on my night table. When I had a dream about laying beside T, trying to hold his hand and also trying to maneuver my ear to his chest so I could hear his heartbeat, I knew I had failed to stop my own pattern. I did not write about that dream in the journal.

Looking back so many years later, these things strike me as obvious alarm bells that I needed to assess my life and figure out what I needed. I was so used to feeling odd and ashamed of the way I’d go down this path repeatedly and keep falling into the trap of finding a high in another human being. I didn’t have any idea where to start.

This went on for two years. Our little team grew closer and closer because our work problems felt unique to us. T insisted on training me on an online tasking tool, so we would sit side by side and click through the different functions. He teased out personal information, and shared some of his own. Eventually I caved and joined T and K for lunch in the cafeteria on the top floor of the building where we worked or at a local restaurant when we needed a midday break. We moved desks several times, but always remained clustered together. When you work that closely, it becomes near impossible to avoid sharing your personal life.

I knew how I felt but I walked right on the line. I took in T’s comments about enjoying the book The Hobbit and paired it with a complaint that he could not find his letter opener and I presented him with a letter opener designed to resemble a Hobbit’s sword. I liked the way he seemed so touched that someone had listened and put thought into a gift even when it was something small and inexpensive.

One year we both planned to attend a conference for work, but T was away for a meeting as asked me to make his reservation and pay for his registration fee. I mistakenly used his personal credit card for the registration when it was funded by our organization. Even worse, the website explicitly stated they would not provide refunds for credit card purchases. I had a complete meltdown when I realized my mistake, and immediately called T, who remained calm about the $450 charge that would show up on his bill. I was so frazzled I didn’t make it to lunch time so I packed up my things and went home. When I shared what happened with my husband, including using the credit card number, my husband said, “He trusts you like that?”

I met T’s wife on one of our team lunch outings. The following day T declared to me that she “was a fan,” which was funny because I didn’t like how she had treated him during the meal, or how cold she was when he hugged her. I know my assessment was unfair partly because of my own feelings, and also because no one knows the truth about what happens in a marriage except the two people in it. T and K met my husband, who reluctantly agreed to join us for lunch at the same spot on a different day. I wanted him to meet the two guys I worked with all day, the same way I had gotten to know the cast of characters from so many of his previous jobs. What I didn’t seem to understand was, you can’t make your partner take interest. I wanted him to meet them, yes, but more than that, I wanted him to want to meet them.

The conference trip happened right around my two year anniversary at the job. T and I, and a bunch of others from our office would be there. K stayed behind. This was my first time at this annual conference, and I found it overwhelming. Not only was the day packed with information sessions and networking opportunities, we also had built in meals, which meant perusing the buffet line and finding a seat at one of the huge round tables set up in the enormous ballroom. If you didn’t have a buddy with you, this meant sitting among a bunch of strangers and making yourself open to potential questions and small talk. In other words, an introvert’s nightmare. Given the prospect of repeating this schedule for four days straight and you might understand why I was ready to leave by the middle of the second day.

On the afternoon of the second day, T called my room to ask if I wanted to venture out. He figured out there was a bus, and he’d gotten tickets. I felt exhilarated. I picked out something to wear and walked to the lobby to meet him. What followed was the most enjoyable date in my entire life. Looking back, I could figure out why. We were two years in with a solid friendship with occasional flirting. I knew this person, and without the pressure of feeling like I had to make him like me, I could relax and talk openly, because we had already built that rapport. We started with dinner by the water, and T wasted no time.

“Do you love me?”

Before I could question why he was asking, I nodded slightly, and bowed my head. The secret was out. This had never happened to me, and I knew no amount of denial would allow me to come back from it. Despite knocking out that question early into the evening, things did not feel awkward. We walked and talked, and five hours later, finished up with drinks at a pub that came complete with a server that had a soft Irish accent. We rode the bus back the hotel. Instead of sharing a seat like we had when we arrived, T sat on the other side of the aisle. He walked me to my room, and we hugged goodnight. I tossed and turned. I texted Heather, alarmed at how I was feeling. I had never wanted someone so much in my entire life.

This time was different because I had finally encountered a person who challenged me, and also seemed to appreciate the way my brain worked. We had moved beyond the usual office banter, the stolen glances, the inside jokes. Every time we crossed a line, we drew a new one, only to cross that one later. “What’s missing,” T would ask, referencing our lives and our respective marriages. It was a valid question that I should have used as a stepping stone to examine myself. We could enjoy each other without the contempt bred from familiarity. This relationship felt special, and like the only thing I had just for me, while every other aspect of my life required consideration of my kids, my husband, and my mother, who also lived with us. And, to be honest, part of this was a fuck you to my husband. No one will love me the way he loves me? Challenge accepted.

My relationship with T lasted two years. Being with him was fun and light at first but devolved into something unsustainable and heavy. The relationship progressed like an addiction, life-giving and exhilarating in the beginning, draining and restrictive by the end. Eventually when we met up, I was glad to see him but despondent when we said our goodbyes. I felt seen by T, but the nature of our relationship meant the world would never see who I was to him, which wound up being more important to me than I initially believed. These things don't end well, my sister once said, and I knew she was right. A cell phone billing error resulted in my husband discovering me, resulting in the single most destructive event in my life (so far!). Living a life where fear dictated my actions, paired with focusing on being "good" instead of being true to myself had led me there. Instead of figuring out what I actually wanted out of life I had followed the checklist only to realize the checklist had stifled me. Often people will blame an affair for the end of a marriage when the affair is a side effect resulting from the state of the marriage. I regretted hurting my husband, but I could not bring myself to say I regretted that relationship with T. When my husband tried to diminish my actions, claiming I had "made a mistake," I corrected him. He had a way of controlling the narrative, and reducing my experiences to his interpretation of events. "I did not make a mistake," I said, "I made a series of deliberate decisions."

My husband demanded I find a couples therapist and I did. When he got angry, I listened. When he called me names or wished ill on me, I took it. He had every right to be angry, devastated, sad and hurt. “Not after what you did” became a familiar refrain when I would bring up a paper cut that looked minor when compared to the fatal stabbing I had inflicted upon him. My voice became muted, and all of my husband's offenses throughout the years were dwarfed when compared to my actions. What I eventually understood was, those feelings didn’t give him the right to be abusive, and I did not want to spend the rest of my life with a husband who weaponized his forgiveness. To paraphrase the words of Cheryl Strayed, I had to be brave enough to break my own heart. No one gets married imagining they will eventually file for divorce.

I read books and blogs about limerence, a term that seemed to perfectly describe the way I felt affection for certain people, to the point that I obsessed over them and idealized them beyond human measure. Every crush did not become an obsession, but many of them did, to the point that thinking about the person was akin to having an app open that I wasn’t using running in the back of my mind. I felt shame for being a weirdo who could fall in love in an instant and get consumed by daydreaming, despite being married with two kids and an already full life. What I failed to realized was a “full” life is not the same as a “fulfilled" life. To quote T, "What's missing?"

That was what I needed to figure out, what was I seeking in these other people, and why? What did I need to change about myself to stop, because this was not how I wanted to keep living my life. What did I want?

I listened to the "Hidden Brain" podcast episode featuring Dr. Kristen Neff. She described having an affair with a married professor. That relationship had ended her marriage, and like me, she had also married young, to a guy she had met in college. In order to make progress she had to distance herself from feeling shame by cultivating self compassion. Developing self compassion isn’t easy when you are accustomed to an inner voice who works overtime as your personal bully. The best way I could practice was by talking to myself the way I would advise a dear friend approaching me with an issue. Kindness. I had to face the lessons I had missed after decades of avoidance. Self compassion helped me understand that what I wanted mattered, and I should not have been expected to abandon myself in romantic relationships. Self compassion helped me understand there were patterns that I developed in childhood that carried over into adulthood. Those patterns helped me survive childhood and became detrimental once I became an adult. I was in my 40's and didn't need to operate in the same way anymore. Self compassion isn’t a pass for shitty behavior; it is grace extended for being human.

I've stopped looking for a car in the parking lot or a favorite person sitting at a desk as a way to determine if my day will be bright or disappointing. I know more about myself, and know a secret relationship and double life is not something I will put myself or anyone else through again. I can appreciate qualities in some of my male coworkers and without going off to the races in my head. On one hand, I miss the unbelievable high of a newfound crush, and on the other, I never want to feel mentally ill over anyone again.

Imitation of Love (Volume 2 - The College Years)

I went to a college that wasn't a college, it was a federal service academy. This meant wearing some form of uniform during every daylight hour, living in barracks, not dorms, and being put in situations that hindered healthy social development because nothing about that place resembled a "normal" experience. I was also dealing with being challenged academically. I had decent grades in high school, and was talented at taking standardized tests, but I had no study skills. When you're introduced to a learning method where you read about the subject ahead of the in class lesson and you skated through every exam and major assignment in high school, it's a humbling experience. I spent my first two years on academic probation as I attempted to level off mmy GPA.

When I went to West Point, I knew it would be a population that skewed very white and very male. Women made up less than 15% of the population, and less than 10% of the Corps of Cadets was black. I did not want to admit it out loud, but with those numbers, I expected the odds of having a romantic relationship were ever in my favor.

It didn't take long to figure out I was wrong -- female cadets were not treated like a hot commodity. Now that I'm older, I understand why: this place drew the most traditional men and least traditional women. With the ratio as it was, we wore the same uniforms, we went through the same challenges -- trying to impress us in their uniforms and by boasting about their daily life was a tall task. Knocking us down a peg or ten was a way to reject us before we could reject them. We even had a derogatory name based on the wool uniform pants we wore: gray trou.

My pattern of crushes continued, and I continued not to do any introspection on why I was this way. Having a crush felt like the intensity of taking drugs without the nuisance of paying someone to obtain them. It took decades to look at myself and see the patterns, but at this age I was a bit of a junkie.

That said, I didn't actually want a boyfriend -- I didn't have the capacity to manage the academic course load and the emotional load of a romantic relationship. On top of that, sex and possible pregnancy was not an option. Remember, I was like Mayo from "An Officer and a Gentleman," I had nowhere else to go. Imagining the shame of squandering a West Point education because I'd gotten pregnant was all the birth control I needed.

There were guys that pursued me; Some guys didn't want female cadets but not all. There was a guy a year behind me, another who was a classmate in Gospel choir, and a few others, to include my husband (and ex-husband) to be. Sometimes they were too nice, and by this I mean not amenable to the occasional gossip or snark. I don't talk bad about people by default, but if I need to commisserate, I need that other person to be there for it, not to scold me or say "Giselle, that's so mean." We're human, we're not always going to be our best version of ourselves at all times. Sometimes we need an accomplice to join us in our observations of fuckery in order to truly connect.

I went on dates, but it was usually a one and done deal because I was either too awkward, or I wasn't motivated to give it another go. There were also times when I had to fend off or give in to unwanted sexual encounters. Dating in a healthy way was a challenge as there wasn't much time in the schedule to get to know someone and go for outings off post. We could take pass on weekends, which involved hotel rooms, binge drinking, and rushing into sex. One of these weekends, I rented a car with my friend T and went to Penn Relays. We didn't get a hotel room, which landed me on top of a hotel bedspread (yes, ew) in a bed with a classmate who I liked, but not that way. Another guy was asleep in the room with us (also, ew) when he pressured me into a blow job. Saying no only resulted in being pushed to say yes. Sometimes you bend to another's will because you weren't prepared to fight. Where was I going to sleep, I thought, in the rented Nissan Altima in the parking lot? If I had to give my daughters advice in the same situation, I would have said yes, sleep in the car. Most recently I saw this person at my twenty year reunion, and he hugged me and acted cordial. I played along (more fawning, ew) but have him blocked on every social media platform.

Oddly enough, I was comfortable talking about this with my friends, who understood completely. "Ah, yes, the courtesy blow job" Heather said over the phone, and we laughed. The shame I felt wasn't over the act, but for not standing up for myself and leaving the room. For awhile I even tried to gin up a crush on the guy as a way to retroactively make that encounter more palatable (no pun intended, really). I knew I didn't want to put myself into that predicament again.

The entitlement some of the guys had stunned me. One classmate, a football player, came to my room uninvited, hinting about how much he would love a massage. I don't know why he thought I was the audience for this, we didn't really know each other, and this wasn't an effective way to win me over. Another time I was with T again. We were visiting a hotel where a bunch of our friends were hanging out following the 500th Night dance (sidenote: this is a celebration for cadets in their junior year when they have approximately 500 days before graduation). She and I split company and I was cornered in the hallway in separate instances by not one but two different classmates, expecting sex. What baffled me most was, I did nothing suggestive to these people, I was simply walking around. I didn't flirt with them, I didn't lead anyone on; my existence in the same place where they were, and that place being outside of West Point, was all it took, apparently to ask, "Are we ever gonna have sex?" This time around T and I did have a getaway car. My 500th night date, who happened to be my future husband at the time, had been able to join me for the dinner and speech but could not go off post with me because he was still serving punishment tours (see, this is one of the many aspects of "not getting to have a normal social life" at West Point). He did, however, have a car because he was a senior, and they could own and park their cars on post. Before we went to the hotel, I sweet talked him into lending it to us, and fortunately T knew how to drive a stick shift. As soon as I found her that night, we made our escape and I gave her the rundown on how my night had gone. My now ex-husband uses this story as evidence that I used him because I knew he liked me, but he doesn't seem to understand how grateful I was (and still am) for the favor.

While I was a cadet, we were organized into academic companies during the school year. These companies were units of approximately 110 cadets, and we lived in the same floor of the barracks, we ate mandatory meals together, paraded together and played intramural sports together. I spent my first and second year in the same company, and between sophomore and junior year I, along with every other classmate, "scrambled" to new companies. This occured with the reasoning that you could get a fresh start if you had a not so great reputation. It meant meeting new people, changing roommates and re-establishing yourself. Before everyone split off to their summer assignments, the incoming cadets got to visit their new academic companies. Whenever someone asked where I was scrambling, I would hear, "Oh, T.M. is in that company!" He was the president of the class ahead of me, and I didn't interact with him until I arrived at my new company the following semester.

Junior year in the new academic company includes a "Cow-Firstie" bash, an unofficial weekend get together between the incoming juniors ("cows") and the seniors ("firsties"). It's held at the house of a cadet who volunteers their home for the debauchery. From what I understood, the point was to drink, bullshit, crash and get back to West Point intact before the evening accountability formation. During one of our lunch formations, T.M. made an announcement that he had room to give someone a ride. He had the voice of an M.C., the humor of a stand up comedian, and the car -- a classic convertible Camaro -- of a celebrity. Nothing about this guy was small, and I, who was usually the shrinking violet, was interested. I talked to my roommate R about him, and apparently he had inquired about me. On the weekend of the party, I caught a ride with T.M., and we drove across the Hudson river in the famed Camaro with the top down, aimed in the direction of the party. At some point we stopped for gas, and he emerged from the little convenience store with a can of Dr. Pepper and a small carton of strawberry milk. "You have to try this," he said, and mixed the two. It was surprisingly good, and it felt like he had let me in on a junk food secret.

I also got him to leave the party early because I planned to finish the night at a CAS Jam, which was at Camp Buckner, an outpost where every cadet spent the summer between their plebe (freshman) and yearling year. Camp Buckner was deserted during the school year, but Barth Hall -- the recreational center there -- was open for business. When I talked to T.M., I said I didn't want to finish the evening getting drunk and sleeping over at someone's house, it wasn't my thing. He nodded and appeared to empathize, although I suspected he didn't agree. We reached Barth Hall, and there were plenty of CAS members milling around outside. When he pulled up (remember, he was known by pretty much everyone) and I stepped out of his car, we caused a bit of a scene. Not many people actually knew me, and on top of that, when you're quiet and shy, it's an invitation for people to develop their own stories about you. The resulting story was, "She likes white guys." There are variations on this, "She only likes white guys," or "She doesn't mess with black guys," or whatever else can be derived from being dropped off at a party with mostly black people in attendance by one of the most well known, highly visible white guys in the Corps of Cadets.

And who was my ride home from the CAS Jam? My future (and now ex) husband. If I had a crystal ball, I would have penned several seasons of a dramatic comedy based on my life back then, while everything was still fresh. We had danced to a couple of songs, and he offered to drive me back to the barracks. Our ride home was quiet; this was my first encounter with him alone, and he seemed intense. He parked, I thanked him for the ride home and quickly dashed off to my room.

T.M. and I hung out for a month before things shifted. Most of that time he was serving punishment tours, which meant he couldn't leave post. He still went to the Firstie Club, the bar intended for (you guessed it) firsties, and would wind up in my room for some drunk flirting before going to bed. In an odd twist to the story of me "only dating white guys," T.M. revealed his insecurity one night after one too many at the Firstie Club. I had told him the story of the classmate sniffing around for a back massage, and he said something to the effect of, "All the black guys want you." I had to reassure him that this didn't matter to me. Besides, wasn't it more important to be liked and wanted? I didn't believe any one of these guys offering themselves actually liked me. It felt like the opposite.

T.M. also had an on and off yearling girlfriend, who I pretended didn't exist. That was just the start of my pattern of ignoring red flags to indulge in the potential of another person. T.M. was also older -- he had served in the Army as a linguist before coming to West Point, which meant he was 24 to my 20. When you are still living in a place that had a boarding school vibe, including bed checks and a designated time for "lights out" you could argue that everyone there was at the same stage in life, regardless of biological age.

I spent a long weekend visiting my sister to meet my newborn niece, and before I left, I lent T.M. my body pillow. He was going to be stuck in the barracks, so he sent me off with a note and told me not to open it until later. When I unfolded the note, I read, "Tonight I'll be holding your pillow and wishing it was you."

That note sustained me. Finally, I thought, after decades of holding torches for people I liked who liked me but not in that way, I had found someone with mutual feelings. And, as that old saying goes, "Easy come, easy go."

My roommate R was a diver, and on occasion, I had the room to myself when she had a meet at another school. Soon after I returned from my weekend away, R had an away meet, and this was the chance for T.M. and I to spend some post-lights out time together. Yes, it was against the rules, but there was no way to catch every cadet who broke the rules. I was my usual awkward self, even though this was a wanted encounter, and as far as one could get from a courtesy BJ situation. T.M. slept in the room, both of us crammed in my twin bed until the sun came up. We woke up on a Sunday morning. As T.M. quietly slipped out of the door, he promised to talk to me later.

Apparently "later" meant "never." The man ghosted me two decades before that term got added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. This was a near-impossible task, considering we lived down the hallway from each other, and would see each other at breakfast and lunch formation, and every other mandatory company event. To make things worse, seating assignments at the tables in the Mess Hall shuffled on occasion, and this time around I shuffled to T.M.'s table. That was by design, of course; T.M. and I had planned it before I had become invisible to him.

I remember trying to talk to my mother about what happened. This was new territory for me, as childhood had taught me not to share anything personal with her. When I called her in need of a sympathetic ear, she delivered her response in a mocking tone: "Oh, did someone break your heart?" My mom was a competitor in the suffering Olympics, and since she was widowed, my little problems were laughable. This was both hurtful and oddly validating, as my original childhood instinct was correct. My sister became my confidant. "I don't know what to tell you, Giselle," she said as I pressed the hallway payphone receiver firmly against my ear, "It's a terrible situation."

I stayed at the table out of sheer stubbornness, seated to the immediate left of T.M., who sat at the head. I kept my body tilted away so he remained a blur in my peripheral vision. He was his usual loud self but I found him more obnoxious than endearing since I wasn't in on the joke anymore. Every day I dreaded breakfast and lunch. Eventually I enlisted a male classmate to swing by the table in the mornings, and in the afternoons, you guessed it, I asked future ex-husband to get me. When I tried explaining what was going on and why I had asked him to walk me away from that table, he held up a hand. "You don't have to share." I'm sure he was trying to spare me but I wanted him to know what happened. This was playing out to be another life lesson from one of those other old sayings: "Don't shit where you eat."

I spent the rest of that year slowly getting over someone who was in my face for another eight more months, until he graduated. During this time, I also went on a few dates with my future ex-husband. There were no sparks with him, but he treated me well, and that placed him solidly into the category of "someone I would marry." I know, I know, wrong again. If I had that crystal ball, I could have put more thought into the conclusions I was making, but this was the best my 20 year old brain could do at the time.

There are more stories from those four years but this post is long already, and I've done enough scab picking for today. One misconception I had was believing the crushes and obsessions would ease up after I got married and could focus my love and attention on "my" person. How wrong I was.

Imitation of Love (Volume 1 - The Grade School Years)

As long as I've been in mixed gender environments, I've had crushes on boys. In some cases there is a quick moment of realization and a switch flips in my heart and that guy becomes THE guy. In kindergarten it was Sean, a friendly boy in my class who was funny, sweet and gave me his phone number. I remember my sister studying the little scrap of paper with his handwriting and saying, "But it only has six numbers." Well, we were five. He tried. There was a yearly outdoor party my family used to attend. We would drive through rolling hills to a sleepy estate that sprawled over acres of grass with big old shade bearing trees. It was a party where people gathered in small groups because the total number of people in attendance was too big to be contained in one spot. At this party you may never even see the hosts, and people came and went according to their schedules, because the point was to show up, bask in the surroundings and enjoy the serendipity of not knowing whose path you'll cross. This was the type of thing where, if you were a kid, it was imperative to find the other kids and figure out if anyone was playing games or getting into something interesting while the parents were socializing.

This party was where I found Sean from my kindergarten class. We quickly paired off and found a tall grassy hill, which promised fun times of rolling down on your side and running back up to do it all over again. We weren't consumed with the fear of ticks or any of the other dangers the modern world tells us are lurking in the grass. At the bottom of the hill was a parking area where a young woman walked towards us. "You should try rolling down the hill," Sean told her. I couldn't believe it. We didn't know this person, and here he was, boldly suggesting this grown up roll down the hill in her nice blouse and skirt. "Oh, I rolled down the hill earlier," she replied, a typical grown up lie. I thought that was the end of it. There's no way she'll do it, I thought, but with enough persuasion, Sean had this person going up the side of the hill and rolling down, nice clothes and all. That was the glimmer moment for Sean. I was duly impressed, this boy from my class who didn't even know his complete phone number, had successfully gotten a grown up to do his bidding. That's some serious rizz, as the kids say (are they still using that term?).

Other crushes followed. In first grade I liked two different boys, Brian P., a quiet dark-haired boy known for his drawing skills, and Michael F. who had a soft rounded face, loose curly hair, and a gentle demeanor (They both had Italian last names; first grade was my era of returning to the roots on my mother's side). Most years I set my sights on one boy, usually not a popular one that everyone liked, but a boy who seemed perfect to me. In fifth grade it was a short Jewish kid named Derek Y. who engaged with me in sort of a love-hate thing. Our desks were near each other and we spent the school day roasting each other, but also sharing what we liked -- those red, black and white Air Jordan high tops, and "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister. Despite our witty banter, I was sure he liked the girl everyone else--boys and girls-- seemed to like: Amber C., who had arrived at our school in third grade as a beacon of style with her Benetton sweatshirts, skinny Guess jeans, perfectly permed shaggy hair and glowing complexion. Imagine my surprise when a friend approached me to ask if I wanted to "go out" with Derek. What? He liked me? He liked me? I was too shocked to consider the consequences of saying yes so I rejected the offer immediately. In my world, unrequited love was supposed to stay that way.

Sixth grade was an anomaly -- I didn't really like anyone that year. Many of the kids in my neighborhood got shuffled into a different elementary school much closer to where we lived which meant there would be no sequel with Derek, no chance to right the wrongs. That year I spent a lot of time pining over him, regretful of my rejection. I hoped that seventh grade -- junior high school -- meant we would be reunited in the same school again. I imagined visiting my old elementary school and making amends, admitting that I actually had liked him, and that yes, I would like to go out with him. At this point I was self aware enough to understand my runaway imagination wasn't normal. This kind of daydreaming was strictly between me, myself and I. If I kept journals back then, all the possible scenarios would have been written down, the make believe scenes played out, and I'd click my pen, shut the book and hide it. This is why I'm amazed when my kids tell me about interactions, observations and thoughts about their latest crushes. For me, that was highly classified information, certainly not something to share with my mother or even my older sister lest they found a way to use my vulnerability against me.

Seventh grade brought Eric W. into my world. We had English class together and I hardly spoke directly to him. Over the year I learned he was adopted (if I remember correctly, his adoptive mother was one of the teachers at school). His last name said "Jewish" but his complexion and hair texture was more racially ambiguous. He was kind, but this became the year of getting tongue-tied around my crushes so we didn't talk much. I asked for advice from my friend Janet, who told me to call him, but to act a bit dumb, so he wouldn't feel bad. I knew this was terrible advice and thought, why should I dumb myself down? Who does that? I didn't say that to her, and I also didn't call. I will say both of these people are present day Facebook friends. Eric joined the Marines and is currently a commercial airline pilot (I sure can pick 'em). He also married a black woman, which tells me I had a chance. I say that because as I got older I understood there were guys that didn't look at me that way -- who would never look at me that way -- because I was not the love interest they envisioned for themselves. It's a hard realization, but no one said the truth was easy.

I started eighth grade a month after a cross-country move to California to a place much less diverse than the New York suburb where I'd spent the first thirteen years of my life. This meant people would try to be clever and tell me I'd "look good" with the one or two other black boys in our class. I held nothing personal against these guys, they seemed nice enough. It feels insulting when someone decides for you that you have less than a handful of prospects because they're using the same logic as someone sorting laundry and trying to make a "close enough" pair out of a pile of single, unmatched socks.

My attention ultimately landed on Greg L., a slender boy with a charming sense of humor layered over an angsty soul. This crush stood the test of time, lasting well into high school. To borrow a term from the movie Vanilla Sky, he was a proximity infatuation. Like me, he was also a new kid in eighth grade, and over the years we wound up in many of the same advanced classes. He also had a friend named Dan that my best friend Heather found alluring. As much as I preferred to savor my crushes from afar with as few words exchanged as possible, Heather preferred to take center stage and pursue her love interests for sport (the pursuit of Dan W. will be its own blog post, now that I think about it. Put a pin in that one, I'll come back to it in another post).

One summer, out of the blue, Greg called and asked if I wanted to go to the movies. Would I? I wasn't going to repeat my road not taken with Derek; I said yes. We were both old enough to drive by then and he picked me up in his dad's sporty BMW coupe. After being surprised by my sister's engagement, my dad made a point to be present to meet my date which felt overbearing but understandable. We then drove back over to Greg's house, where his dad greeted me and wished us well. There were no movie theaters in Half Moon Bay, which meant a drive "over the hill" to watch his selection: Beauty and the Beast. The entire time, I could not shake my awkwardness. We know sleep paralysis exists, but maybe "date paralysis" is also a thing. More than once I've ruined what should have been a fun time out trying too hard to think of what to say or how to be in the moment instead of freaking out inside of my head. That date was the first and last one on one outing with Greg. Other occasions followed, including a venture to see Frank Sinatra live, but that time Heather joined us. In some situations I needed a conversation doula to keep things moving along with minimal pain. During those years I pined for Greg, I watched him pine for pale-skinned, cheerleader-adjacent, elfin-looking girls. He was mixed also, but white and Filipino, and I sensed he felt guilt for not feeling the same way about me.

My last high school crush was Rob P. who took up headspace my junior and senior year. He was also my coworker at the library and in many of my classes. Rob had a too cool way about him with his unnaturally colored hair, pierced nose, perpetually baggy jeans and declaration that he had chose to become vegan. He was tall and lean, with a rectangular face and cool blue eyes, an appearance that aligned with his Scandinavian last name. One weekend Heather and I perused the aisles of KMart when she shared how she had spent hours on the phone talking to Rob and his assessment of me was that I was "super nice." She managed to pull out of him that he liked me liked me, and I wasn't exactly sure what to do with this information. We worked together and a library didn't exactly lend itself (see what I did there?) to chit chat. This hand-wringing went on for months, until I went with the absolute dumbest option: telling him in the parking lot right before we embarked on a three hour shift together. "I like you," I said. "Sorry," he replied. And scene.

I always had Heather as my soft place to land with her wise voice of reason. As we proceeded through the agony of our crushes she would remind me that we had so much ahead, with so many more people to meet. High school was going to be a short period in our lives and hopefully not the best part. She was right, of course, but what I didn't realize at the time was that these crushes would continue into adulthood, along with the painful awkardness and overthinking. Stay tuned.

Get busy living or get busy dying

If you've watched the Shawshank Redemption, you'll recognize the quote that inspired the title of this post. It's simple enough, and sometimes the simplest sayings are the most profound.

The story is originally by Stephen King, a storyteller with a gift of highlighting the horrors of ordinary living, in this case, a man imprisoned for a crime that he didn't commit. I won't rehash the whole story. If I discover it playing on TV, I'll sit down and watch it. I own the DVD. I know I have the short story in a paperback somewhere in my basement. It's beautifully constructed with an ending that is *insert chef's kiss here* ideal for anyone with a desire for true justice. The message to get busy living or get busy dying comes up when an elderly prisoner is released and cannot adapt to the complexitities of the modern world. He became "institutionalized," so accustomed to living behind bars that he became comfortable. I know the message isn't strictly about prison, but life, and how easy it is to become comfortable and complacent to the point of limiting one's potential. The dream stays forever out of reach, even if the person leaves the literal or figurative prison, they still live like they're behind bars.

I grew up with a mother who often seemed discontent. Her imagined future usually included some castle in the sky, and I kept watching that castle get crushed. The example that stands out the most was her plan for when my dad retired. They were supposed to split the time between the U.S. and Sardinia, her original home. Not in the plan: my dad dying before he reached retirement.

She adjusted quickly, and still decided to move back to Sardinia, with the goal of living with her own mother, and just as quickly that goal was dashed, too. My father died in February and Nonna followed him in April the same year. I think she was devastated, but somehow kept it together until she could drop me off at West Point that summer. She also seemed tired of her own tragedy, saying she didn't want to keep telling a sob story about how her husband died, and her mother died two months later.

She did move back to Sardinia for a few years, but she relied heavily on one of her brothers to show her around and help negotiate deals. Now the castle in the sky became a house that she wanted to have built. The land was picked out, on a bluff overlooking the crashing waves of the Mediterranean sea, but there was always red tape, and no clear explanation of how to speed up the process. Frustrated, she returned to the U.S. after three years to live near my sister. This was convenient because it meant my young nephew and niece had their grandmother nearby, and my sister and her husband, both active duty service members could get a break. Then, like any unnegotiated arrangment, resentment built. She lived in that home for fourteen years, long after my sister and her family moved on to a different station.

Finally, she proposed moving in with me. Keeping a house was a headache, and in her mind, pooling resources in a bigger home meant saving money and gaining space. She envisioned a detached apartment over a two car garage. You know, the kind of thing that's very common in movies and TV and incredibly uncommon in a cookie cutter suburban neighborhood. She wound up with a large bedroom, a shared bathroom and claim to the home office on the main floor.

She often ceded what she actually wanted to have the comfort of living with others. I understand that but it broke my heart. I felt she allowed herself to get old after moving in with us, and maybe something in her gave up. I asked her if she was happy once and she simply said, "I'm not unhappy."

Being "not unhappy" sounds like that secret that gets revealed every year when one of the Nordic and/or Scandinavian countries takes first place for happiness, and maybe there is some truth to that. We know happiness is fleeting and unsustainable. We want fulfillment, purpose, meaning and connection. The trick is to be able to find those things in ordinary living.

The anger I felt when my mom died was because I wanted more for her, and I wanted her to want more for herself. When she moved in with our family, I wanted her to get busy living while it seemed like she just wanted to get busy dying.

Her complacency was a thing I disliked in myself, and I knew that. As I get older I have become more content with doing less, and deciding what I can eliminate to add ease to my life. It's liberating, but I also know I shouldn't veer all the way into constant comfort. I become anxious before traveling now; anxiety didn't affect me much when I was younger. I use GPS even when I know where I'm going because I like the reassurance. As a person who charted a course from Delaware to my first active duty reporting location in El Paso, Texas using only my Rand McNally road Atlas, it's pretty terrible how far I've fallen. Certainty brings comfort but limits potential for adventure.

That's where I get upset with myself. What's happened to me? Where is that person I used to be, who wasn't swayed by the unknown ahead? Why am I more secure behind bars?

She had always wanted to go to Paris, and the closest we'd gotten was when we were flying home on a family trip from Sardinia and our plane was detoured to Charles de Gaulle Airport. I don't even remember if we got off of the plane and entered the terminal. Even after she moved back to Italy, she didn't plan a trip to Paris. Why not? It was the waiting game, again -- wanting company, someone to share the burden of planning, and I see this same quality in myself. I postponed visiting Iceland for over a decade, partially out of being discouraged by a spouse that didn't want to go, and partially because I put the bars in front of myself.

Maybe the bars we put up were a way to protect ourselves from the inevitable disappointment of a crumbling castle in the sky.

Was it even abuse?

I recently read a book with this title (authored by Emma Rose Byham); I was drawn in because the question so aptly describes what one asks themselves after something occurs that might possibly fall into the category of "abuse." There is so much emphasis on physical violence because that's an area that leaves little room for questions. Bruises, broken bones, and other injuries are visual evidence. Words can be disputed. If someone, say, punched a headboard but not your face, does that count? The silent treatment, verbal threats, name calling, flexing their shoulders while glaring at you, using personal wounds for shaming -- do these things count?

There is quite a bit of behavior we file into gray areas, and those gray areas lead to moving on with your life, and sometimes burying it because you know the apology acknowledging all of the mistreatment is never going to happen. You can't get stuck on it, life keeps lifing. If we held all abusers accountable and siphoned them out of society, we would have to annex entire continents to house them. Where is the line for what's acceptable and what is not?

For as long as I can remember, one of my sister's front teeth was gray. It was like a lightbulb disconnected from power while the rest of her teeth remained bright. The story was that she fell and hit her tooth, and I accepted that. I didn't think to ask for details or where it happened, or to even ask her directly. She fell, she hit her tooth, and this also meant a series of dental appointments including a root canal to deal with the dead tooth. She was seven years older than I was, and from what I know about the story, she was 12 when she "fell."

Only in adulthood did I learn that my sister wasn't clumsy; my dad had punched her in the face.

Their relationship was often contentious. I know she was looked upon as the kid who didn't live up to her potential at school. This was high crime to my parents, both of whom survived childhoods short on money and education. They provided us with a comfortable home -- we each always had our own bedrooms, we never lacked food or clothing, and we were fairly well-traveled. From what I can see now, as an adult, they did what they could to ensure we had what they had both lacked as children. But, whenever my sister seemed to fail in appreciating what she had simply by being who she was, arguments, and physical punishment followed. I don't know what led to the punch, and, it doesn't matter.

My dad's patience was short and his temper was scary. If something set him off, there would be a change in demeanor and a shift in the atmosphere. He'd unfasten his belt and pull it through the loops -- no one got hit with the buckle, but the leather end tip wielded a painful and lasting sting. Once, when I was on the verge of being punished, I fled to my mom and asked what I could do to prevent it. "Tell him, 'Please don't hit me,'" she said. The next time I faced punishment, I did exactly that, and it worked. My dad never brought out the belt or hit me ever again. I was really young, maybe 4 or 5. It would make a great story of redemption except he never stopped abusing my sister.

The last time was when she was 19. Our house was not a home where you could expect to stay beyond society's expected timeline. If you were an adult but not in college, you had to do something, preferably independently funded and away from home. Valerie joined the military.

She signed on with the Marines to be an air traffic controller. Why? Because they had the nicest dress uniform. It's as good a reason as any for a 19 year old with a sense of style. Because it's the smallest armed service, they were not going to have a slot in that specialty available for her until months later. "Go talk to the Air Force" our father said over dinner. My sister being my sister, rebelled, which led to yelling, and finally him standing up and striking her. She left the house for a long walk. And not long after that, she signed up with the Air Force.

The thought of her being in the Marines was laughable, not because she wasn't capable, but because each service has a certain mentality. Even if its uniform wasn't the prettiest, the Air Force was best suited to her personality. She made a career out of it, retired, and still works for the Air Force as a civil servant. Around company, my mom used to joke that my sister was originally intent on joining the Marines because of the uniforms. She always left out the part where her husband hit their daughter for disagreeing with his advice to talk to the Air Force recruiter.

His advice was sound, and his response to her will always be wrong. Abuse is always a means to an end, and sometimes even results from good intentions, as wild as that sounds. It's rooted in trying to control another human being to achieve the outcome you want for them, you, or both of you. Isn't that the twist with abuse? We often receive abuse from people we love, who are supposed to love us, but if abuse is about control, and love is about freedom, the messaging becomes confusing. If they abused us, did they even love us? If I love them, should I soften the story so the good in them isn't completely eclipsed?

My dad mellowed with cancer. We spent the last five years of his life in California, and my sister got married and had his first grandchild. While I was in high school I got into a fender bender; I spent the afternoon dreading his reaction when he came home from work. His only question to me was, "Are you okay?" It was as if some changeling had taken over, sparing me from the lecture that I was careless, or that I'd have to use my library salary to pay for the damage. I don't wish cancer on anyone, but if he never had it, I might never have seen that side of him. From what I know, he and my sister made peace towards the end. She made peace with our mother as well, even though I witnessed her confronting her about "the fall." My mom was in deep denial, and perhaps that's what has to happen when you are financially dependent on an abuser. The moment you are honest with yourself about the ugly truth of your situation, you either acknowledge that you have to change things or remain complicit.

I don't know why our mother gave me the advice to ask him not to hit me. It meant I carried something similar to survivor's guilt because I was spared and my sister was not. As a mother it's hard for me to understand. As a mother, I also acknowledge that I parent my kids based on their individual needs, and that I'm going to get a lot of things wrong.

If you asked me if my ex-husband was abusive years ago, I would have adamantly denied it. His way of exerting control wasn't usually with physical violence, but with shame, threats, the silent treatment, gaslighting, sulking, name calling and physical intimidation. Early in our marriage, when I took over a year to find a job, he asked, "What would your dad think?" I was caught flat-footed. It seemed like an honest question, but also a gut punch. He never met my dad, he only knew he was ambitious and fairly successful in his field, despite not having a college degree; I'm guessing he believed someone like that would be disappointed in his unemployed college-educated adult daughter.

He used that line again, nearly two decades later in our marriage, referencing my affair. Whenever I confronted him about it, he dug in. "I'm not shaming you," he said, "I really want to know what he'd think." Every time I mentioned how much it bothered me that he weaponized my personal loss not once but twice in our marriage, he would defend himself, insisting his question was earnest. Eventually I knocked my dad off the pedestal my spouse had built for him. "I don't know what he'd think," I said, "Maybe he had an affair himself."

For the longest time I believed I deserved the punishment. I figured most couples recovering from infidelity went through this until they sorted themselves out. Sometimes things felt calm, and then something in the moment would affect him. One morning I confronted him about an old relationship injury, a piece of artwork from an ex-girlfriend he'd insisted on keeping. I wanted to know why the compromises I had offered were not enough. When he replied that he was a "knucklehead," I wasn't satisfied with the explanation. "No, what's the real reason?" I insisted. What was the motivation, what did he get out of pushing his agenda? He didn't want to hear it. How could I, the cheater, have the nerve to question him about old shit? We sat in bed, facing each other, and approximately six inches from my face, he punched a hole through the headboard. This time I did know what led to the punch, and, it still didn't matter.

I got out of bed and shouted "This is not okay!" And then I got ready for work. Because life keeps lifing.

When you're asking Google if punching furniture is abuse, you already know the answer, yet I still did exactly that. Had any one of my friends had come to me with that story, my assessment of the situation would have been solid. So why was it so hard to assess things for myself? If part of you believes you deserved it, advocating for yourself can feel like a steep hill to climb, made more difficult because you're starting from the bottom of a pit.

We are so often told to accept abuse because a man lost control of his anger. Strange how that doesn't happen in professional settings with their bosses, co-workers or clients. Sometimes we're even asked what we did to provoke it. I'm tired of living in fear of men's anger, first with my dad, then with my ex-husband, and now, perpetually of all men I encounter.

His behavior afterwards showed me he knew he was wrong. He single handedly disassembled the heavy wooden sleigh bed that I loved, and hauled it down two flights of stairs to the basement. He asked me to choose a new bed that I liked, and he offered to pay for it. The old bed frame remains out of sight -- stowed in the storage area in the basement -- its damning hole in the headboard serving as proof that what I experienced happened, and that I'm not crazy. When I confronted him about it later, in a calmer moment, he'd say the headboard was thin, and he didn't expect his fist to go through, that his reaction was akin to pounding a fist on the table for emphasis. There was no acknowledgement of how intimidating it must have felt considering he was twice my weight and ten inches taller than me. No voicing that he was sorry, and no remorse for reacting in a way that frightened me. There was no apology, but instead, a rationalizing that each individual in a couple has their moments, and that I'd done awful things too. And besides, if I hadn't kept pressing him, he wouldn't have done it. This twist in logic made me responsible for both my behavior and his. More recently, he claimed that I should know he'd never hurt me, and I thought, but he had no problem with me believing for a moment that he would. "What if our older daughter got married and her husband punched the headboard," I said. "I'd investigate what happened," he replied. What was there to investigate? In what universe is this acceptable? More denial.

This isn't the only instance, and I am not even getting into the other examples, or my kids' experiences. I have journals with notes, and have told my kids to write down their thoughts and feelings, especially for those times when I wasn't there as a witness. Having a record ensures time won't erode the memories. I used this example because it's the only one I've got with photos of physical proof of a man who punched a headboard in an effort to get his wife to shut up. Visual evidence gives everyone who sees it a snapshot of the scene.

When I realized I was married to someone who expected me to be okay with how he treated me, who expected his "forgiveness" to be a license to punish me in whatever way he believed I deserved, I could no longer deny the ugly truth. I read books, I listened to podcasts, I did whatever I could to affirm that abuse is never deserved, even if you've done something that hurt that person. I was fortunate to be able to leave. I recognize it's often not an option, and that we celebrate marriages in quantity of years, but not quality of the relationship. There is shame in leaving, in downsizing your house, in being the cause of a "broken" family. If everyone has to be complicit with abuse in order for a family to stay together, isn't something still broken?

What about the good times? That was another excuse -- can't we take the bad with the good? To paraphrase words from a close friend of mine, how much poison in your beverage makes it acceptable to drink? Ten percent? One percent? Three parts per million? The good times are part of the cycle, and you can spend years in good and neutral times. It doesn't dilute the unacceptable.

Another book I read, titled "See What You Made Me Do" by Jess Hill emphasizes that there is no obvious indicator of who is abusive and who is not. When everyone experiences each other differently, and if Joe down the street is cordial and charming to me, how am I supposed to know he goes home to his family and turns into Mr. Hyde? And, families commonly have rules not to discuss their business with anyone not under the same roof. And what counts? A stern look isn't an arrestable offense, but it can be the effective method to keep another person under control. Coerced sex gets into murky territory, and pressing charges makes everyone's life harder. If someone does talk, and the police arrest the abuser, who is also the breadwinner, a family may wind up living in poverty. With all of these factors in play, paired with the confusion of accepting abuse as something that accompanies love, how do we solve it? Is abuse something we are supposed to accept as an aspect of being human?

I drafted this two weeks ago, and have dreaded writing it. Some of my older posts mention my ex-husband in mostly glowing terms, and full of adoration. Some of that stemmed from that need to show the good side of him, to affirm to myself that I had chosen well, and some was genuine affection. The points of contention remained hidden, because blasting it on the internet isn't the way to address problems in your marriage, but if the marriage is over, all bets are off.

Silence works in favor of the abuser; while I don't want my blog to become a series of tales of woe, I also don't want to deny the ugly truth.

The dog who caught the car

For nearly two decades I've wanted to visit Iceland. I first heard of it as a cool destination in the early 2000's and when I saw images of the Northern Lights, I was sold. Something about being on an isolated island with less than half a million citizens appealed to me. I held onto that wish for years. I remember mentioning wanting to see Iceland to my then husband, a Jamaican import who prided himself on loving the tropical climate of the Caribbean. He considered my vacation suggestion and replied in a jokingly pitiful voice, "But it's cold there!"

I filed that vacation away as something that would happen later, when the time was right, whenever my intended would change his mind and be more open to the idea. On hold indefinitely -- on the backburner -- another dream deferred. I spent much of my marriage feeling like an alien, as if the things I liked or wanted were weird, and not in the cool, quirky way, but in the odd and undesirable to "normal" people way.

We traveled to other places, and these trips were mostly spurred on by weddings, or, in one case, a couple we knew had a timeshare opportunity that allowed us and another couple we knew to piggyback on their vacation to Rome. That was a wonderful trip, and at the same time, I wasn't exactly a fan of group trips. I don't believe more is always merrier. That means there is more socializing and small talk to entertain, more people to get on your nerves, and more people jockeying to fill up the trip itinerary with items on their agenda. The group trip makes for great comedic scenarios in movies, sure, but life isn't a movie.

Fast forward to last fall, I was on the cusp of divorce and Iceland was now well known for its tourist attractions. Forecasts for the Northern Lights were optimal because of the solar cycles, so what was stopping me? I had attempted to plan a trip the previous year with a friend, and I bailed. I chose my travel dates and planned for my youngest kid to join me. With four days to fill I had to figure out what to do. A close friend of mine sent an email listing the hotel she chose and the tours she took when she had visited, and that was a decent start. As I planned, I realized it was the first trip I had planned completely on my own.

When you spent most of your adult life married, almost everything becomes a joint venture. Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes each side bends to meet in the middle, or in some third neutral territory, and sometimes you concede what you want because it's not going to work for anyone else. This time I could choose how much or how little I wanted to do, I could choose which tours I wanted to take, and there was no committee to vote on any of it. I booked a one bedroom apartment in the hotel my friend recommended. I booked the flights. I booked one of the tours and decided I would watch the Northern Lights forecast and choose that tour after we arrived. There was some anxiety over it because what if I traveled all that way and something was a bust, or I chose something disappointing? There's no one to blame but myself if that happened, and that felt heavy.

On top of that, we flew out days after the election. The only thing I recall from election day was waking at 2 the following morning, looking at the results and saying, "I can't do this again." While mentally preparing for my trip, I scolded myself. How could I plan something so frivolous in a time of despair? What was I thinking? I know what past me was thinking. That guy isn't gonna win. I had made the fatal error of allowing myself to think it wasn't even a possibility. Didn't anyone watch those debates? This shouldn't even be close!

We flew out on a red eye on a route that curved along the North American coast; every time I looked down, I saw the the Atlantic seaboard glittering below. If I looked straight out of the window, Orion greeted me in the clear black night sky. About an hour before landing, I noticed what looked like thin streams of clouds. But they weren't clouds, exactly -- they moved, slowly, and I realized I was seeing the Northern lights.

They don't look like the photos. Digital cameras have made it easy to tweak settings and see the colors flourish in real time as you're capturing the moment. My eyes couldn't pull out the colors, so what I saw looked like a thin, fuzzy, grayish-white stream. Time lapses speed things up into a mesmerizing and vivid dance of colors fluctuating in the sky, but that's camera magic. Regardless, it was a new-to-me experience, I was still in awe, and grateful I could see them before we even landed.

We arrived at our hotel in Reykyavik at 8 in the morning and the sky was still completely dark. While we were there, the sun rose at around 9:45 and set at 4. It was enough time to walk around and see things, and a great excuse to return to my room after dinner to shower and get cozy. We had one big day tour where we saw waterfalls, a windy beach with black volcanic sand, and a glacier. Everything ran so smoothly, and I simultaneously felt grateful to see it and guilty for being a tourist trampling through in a few short days, piling on and off of the tall passenger vans the tour companies used to cart us around.

We did our Northern Lights tour on the last night we had in Iceland. The tour companies are kind enough to cancel if it's unlikely to catch them, and rescheduling is easy. We piled on to our bus and the driver got us away from the city onto roads that faced unobstructed expanses of night sky. Then we waited. My 13 year old didn't like the tour guide as much as the one we had a couple of days before, and kept making an exaggerated pouty face to show her disappointment to the point that it's become our running joke. As soon as things looked promising, the guide parked the bus and told us we could go out when the lights showed up. It was cold, I was layered up, and I had adjusted my iphone camera settings. This was nearly two decades of dreamy bucket list wishing about to come true.

And we saw them. My 13 year old was not impressed, but I stayed outside capturing as much as I could. Even after taking the photos, I continued to tweak the adjustments on some of the pictures to saturate the colors for dramatic effect, but the landscape ended up looking so red it might have been mistaken for Mars.

Disclaimer: It didn't really look like this

I'd like to go back with both kids and see Iceland in summer, but I'd also like to plan more trips to other destinations. I hung on to Iceland for so long that there's a bit of grief now that I've checked it off the list. I'm the dog who caught the car and is now realizing maybe I didn't actually want the car; I wanted something to chase.

If friend, why not friend behavior?

At almost 50 I have a pretty sizeable number of friends. I read an article once that had an illustration that showed a representation of personal relationships as concentric circles, ranging from the small circle closest to the center to depict those closest to you, to the large outer perimeter -- those who know you because your paths cross regularly enough, but don't actually know you. I've felt lucky in friendship. Almost each new life experience I've had -- a horrible work environment, a local chapter of a writer's club, taking sunrise photos on the shore of a nearby lake -- has resulted in finding at least one friend.

I believe friendship requires mutual respect, a feeling that each person values each other, consideration, and empathy -- the same things needed for love and affection. I haven't had an issue finding this with my closest female friends. Can you guess where I'm going with this? My friendships with men, if you can even call them friendships, have been complicated and problematic.

I went to a college that I believed would provide more insight on men. I don't have brothers and often felt uncomfortable around boys. Going to a service academy that was about 90% men didn't do much to reassure me. There were guys that were nice to me, but I felt distrustful. Do they want to know me or was it like that fortune cookie joke, did they want to know me in bed. My senior year of high school, my own newly widowed mother provided this advice, stated smugly: "Men only want one thing." You don't have to be a master of riddles to figure out what she meant.

It's a pretty dismal thing to believe your value to men might very well amount to how soon and how well you'll put out. I want to believe that isn't true. I don't think I'll give my daughter's the blunt advice my mother gave me, but I'm not going to lie, either. If I only use my life experience as evidence, it may be dismal for them, too.

When I separated from my ex-husband, I had hoped we could maintain a friendship. I never should have burdened myself like that. Like many men, he took friendship to mean I would be available for phone calls or texts at his whim. One Saturday morning he stopped by with my youngest kid and his dog in tow, and let himself into my house because he wanted to talk. It didn't matter that it was 8 a.m. and I was in bed enjoying a slow and quiet morning, and that *I* didn't want to talk. He wanted to talk and therefore, in his mind, I should entertain it. There was no phone call, no warning text. It didn't end well for him. I took that incident and recalibrated my expectations.

He'll ask if I talk to any of my other friends the way I talk to him, and I counter with, "my friends don't treat me the way you do." Isn't that at the core of it -- friendship means each side is holding up their end of the rope. It means you meet in the middle of the bridge, not that one person is perpetually crossing the entire bridge to meet the other. It causes me to question the ideas men have about friendship and causes me to suspect many of us are operating from vastly different definitions.

I remember whenever anyone who fell into the category of former-fling-but-not-ex-girlfriend-who-still-held-a-torch reached out, my ex would reassure me that this person was a "friend." This all inclusive bucket category confused me. Why do men get angry when they are "friend-zoned" when many of them refer to former people they fucked as "friends?" Do men see friendship with women as the catchall for before and after sexy times? In these cases, friendship seems to be a waypoint in the course of pursuit and inevitable retreat phases but not a valuable destination in its own right.

I've had other men befriend me, but they only like the agreeable, fawning version of me. The moment I raise an issue or want to take the focus off of their interests, or, gasp, criticize them because I don't like how they treat me, it's a problem. They seem to want to call the terms of the relationship, as if I don't get an equal say. My ex is hurt that I don't consider him a friend. The solution to that is simple -- act like a friend! His hurt feelings aren't going to bully me into a change of heart, not anymore. This post is not intended as a slam on him; he's not the only man in my life who unilaterally seemed to think he could declare the status of the relationship.

I have a long running joke with three of my friends on our ongoing group chat. They're all college classmates of mine, and the joke is about the previous class president, who was also a friend of mine. As cadets in our senior year, we had taken a trip to the mall with the goal of buying his fiancee a few gifts. At one point during this excursion, he said "It could have been you, you know." That's it, that's the joke. Anytime he did or said anything on social media, the joke would re-emerge in our group chat. In life's typical you can't make this shit up fashion, at our twenty year reunion, his wife wasn't there, and I, who was in my hotel room because I had not forked over the money to pay for the dinner event, was summoned to the hotel ball room to star in the role of plus one. This was comedy gold for my friends, who were all in attendance. As I've matured, I see how little this "friend" actually cares about me. I looked good in person and on paper, and therefore was deemed worthy enough to consider a "could have been." But does he know me? Did he consider that I had a choice in that declaration or was I supposed to melt and feel flattered that I had been chosen?

It's the same way with friendship. Friendship doesn't happen because one declares it. Friendship requires practice, and, hard to believe, friend behavior. I suspect the entitlement my friend the class president felt is a widespread phenomenon that expands into all of those concentric circles of friendship. Paired with that entitlement is a warped perception of love. There are people who think love means you can treat the other person like shit, and if they put up with it, they're a keeper. Notice how the decision making is one-sided. I imagine this entitlement is why my couples therapist had to emphasize to my ex that only one person has to want to leave to initiate a divorce. When you think everyone is living in your world, you may start to believe that your way of seeing things, including the labels you place on your relationships, is all that's required for validity.

This is a societal problem, and I have not quite worked out the dissertation to explain all of it. When someone is raised to see the opposite sex as inferior in every way, how, as an adult, can this person be a true friend to anyone of the opposite sex? When someone is raised to believe they will be the head of the household someday, and everyone in that household "under" them will adopt their last name, simply because they were born with the chromosome combination that indicates it's their birthright, a friendship enacted as a valuable connection between equals appears to be a contradiction.

I don't think any of that is difficult to understand. The women in my life seem to get it; the verdict is out on the men.