theology&geometry

The bulge continues to embiggen and I find myself unable to stop touching it and feeling its contours when my mind wanders or I am walking somewhere. What, exactly, is in there? Better yet, who? These questions are as big as the universe right now.

This weekend Ray’s mom and my mom and sister came to town to celebrate his graduation. The conversation, naturally, turned to babythings. My sister demanded that I would want an epidural during labor (a fair point and surely technically true, but what I’d really prefer is some “you can do it” support). Ray’s mom joked about all those years that women birthed babies without pain relief, and here I was volunteering for the agony. And my mom, when I mentioned that my most recent symptom seemed to be insatiable (at times) hunger, got wide eyed and gapey mouthed. “Ohhhhhhhh,” she gasped as the elevator in the Cannon Center acended toward the balcony. “Beeeee caaaareful. You’ll gain so much you’ll never be able to get it all off!”

Sigh. At least my sister jumped in and said, “No. Eat. Feed that baby.” Which … yes, exactly. The misery of sitting through a nausea-inducing hunger pang for the off chance that it might save me a week or so in the gym? Really, really not worth it.

Later in the car when I was explaining why I want to go with a midwife and stay out of the hospital if possible, I was citing statistics and studies and anecdotes that I’ve read/seen/heard from friends with children. Mom actually said, “You know, you can read TOO much.” My mom, the nurse! (I love her and value her input, of course, I just have a much tougher road ahead of me on this issue than I thought I would.)

Pregnancy [preg-nuhn-see] noun: The state of being constantly concern trolled.

This week my little passenger is roughly the size of a lemon. This milestone seems to have come with a brand new lower back ache that I cannot seem to shake. No doubt it’s exacerbated by my terrible sitting posture at work. I’ve got to bring in some kind of foot stool so I can elevate my feet and sit with my back straight. Usually, I throw a foot up underneath my opposite-side haunch and slump down. Terrible. This is what happens when you never select a posture pal. Your spine turns on itself!

I am officially in my second trimester now. That’s fairly surreal. If what they say about the energy boost is true, I welcome it. Man, I cannot stay awake for anything, especially not a movie. Of course, any movies I do try and stay awake for seem to do nothing but annoy me lately. I have officially turned into my parents.

Ha, speaking of that. Ray said something awesome to me the other day. It’s possibly the most romantic thing I’ve ever been told.

“If you get old and crazy like your mom, I won’t mind. She’s funny.”

Awwww.

The dog, not the kid.

[Project 365

Lately we’ve been watching episodes of American Pickers on Netflix streaming, and even though I enjoy the show (okay, I mostly enjoy pretending that the hosts are secretly in love with each other and that every pick each dude makes is secretly an attempt to find the perfect gift for the other dude), there’s something I find unsettling about it.

I know the whole purpose of the show is finding treasure among junk and giving things new life. It’s the same thing with the house-flipping shows. I get that. And I appreciate that. Like any red-blooded consumer of stuff, I love browsing overcrowded thrift stores and antique malls and tourist traps that are teeming with crap. And I enjoy the personalities of many of the (usually) old people the guys encounter and try to haggle with.

But the whole thing just makes me sort of sad. Every time their weird little van pulls off on yet another country road and into yet another country driveway, I see sadness and decay. I see my home and my family history. As the pickers rifle through dusty junk in dilapidated barns with corrugated metal roofs, looking for knick-knacks with old advertising logos on them, I see an entire way of life that has all but evaporated. I don’t know. It feels like watching vultures feed on the carcass of agricultural America.

I know that sounds hyperbolic (it is!). I know I am feh-ing all over good, clean, enterprising American fun, but I get so profoundly sad sometimes watching these old people be nickel and dimed out of ancient relics that they have for whatever reason hung onto throughout their entire lives. These pickers go from rusty graveyard to rusty graveyard, prying gems out of headstones and leaving a few dollar bills under a rock. Granted, a lot of these sellers are making decent money from the pickers on the show, and in turn getting good exposure to other collectors who might be watching and researching. That’s nice.

It’s a business, I get it. But it’s a macabre one.

My family lives on one of these rural American graveyards. It might be a picker’s paradise for all I know. I just know this: It wasn’t always a graveyard. Once upon a time, those rusting heaps that are scattered throughout our sheds and barns and pastures were shiny and new (but not for long), and hauled hay, cattle, pigs, chickens, horses, corn, and soybeans all over the Mid-South.

The farm has gone from functional to almost completely symbolic in my lifetime. When I was born, my dad was a farmer. That was his job. As it has been his dad’s job. I remember when Dad wore big trucker hats to keep the sun out of his eyes as he maneuvered his tractor around the hundreds of acres he was responsible for tending. He sported the finest farmer’s tan known to man. (Seriously, you need to click that link. I’ll wait.) (Glad you clicked, aren’t you?) Even my sister was expected to help out with farm duties; some of my earliest memories are of going with her to slop hogs before school. I remember seeing pigs being born and playing in the grain bins.

When I was itty bitty, Dad got a job at the local paper mill, and his time spent doing farm stuff started to fall off. Eventually almost all of the livestock was sold off and Triple T Farms wasn’t farming nearly as many acres as it had been in the past. Equipment broke down and became too costly to fix and too expensive to replace and one day suddenly everyone in the family was punching the clock away from the farm, and we were surrounded by scrap metal being overtaken by vines and dust.

I’m not trying to over-romanticize farm work. It’s hard and it’s thankless and it’s constant. It’s tied to the fickle whims of nature. But it is honest work, valuable work. Necessary work. Work that is so organic that it puts you in touch with the very nature of life itself. These days, it is rare work.

I don’t know. It’s hard to think about how a place can become a picker’s paradise without having to confront the loss and pain that got it there.

But then again, that’s anything, I suppose.

Mom and Dad set me up with some “chrome” hubcabs for Christmas. (They are shiny plastic; I’m not insane.) I’ve been riding with two hubcaps for at least half a year now. Longer than that. I’ve lost three hubcaps over the years, replaced one. They are not cheap. But these beauties? Boy, don’t they shine.

[Project 365]

I duped Ray into traveling across the state with me for my annual trek to the family timeshare in Gatlinburg. The first day was a complete tear-filled wash (seriously, I thought we were going to die) but when we finally made it to East Tennessee, things got better and more vacation-y. The fella had never been to that neck of the woods before, and while I declined to immerse him in the Black Bear Jamboree school of Southern culture, I hope his time spent in the mismatched blinking lights of Pigeon Forge helped educate him on the idiosyncrasies of the modern South.

Actually, I’m fairly sure that he got the biggest possible dose of edumacation about the South when he and my dad got into a heated two-hour political/social/historical argument in the middle of Golden Corral buffet, during which my dad only ate one plate of ham and taters. One plate. The rest of his time and mouth action was spent imparting conspiracy theories about 9/11, the end of the world, our Muslim president, the awfulness of Abraham Lincoln, and much much more. I have, for several years now, maintained that I will not engage my father in political discussions, even when provoked unfairly, because said discussions are less discussions per se and more me crying and him yelling and everyone around us looking on in horror. And yet, there sat my lawyer-in-training boyfriend — who has never met an argument he can’t chime in on with confidence — across from my dad — AKA He Who Loves to Turn Any Discussion Into a Political Argument — and the tense words just began to flow like so much blood from the neck of a slaughterhouse cow.

Figure one: Dad mid-argument.

I felt emboldened by having someone on my ideological team, so I chimed in plenty. More than I should have, given how upset I was getting. I eventually checked out and started Tweeting about the goings-on, listening and shushing them when I felt like our table was getting dirty looks from fellow patrons (none of whom were sitting very near us anymore) but Ray and Dad just kept on keeping on. Until, that is, Ray said something that sounded a lot like, “I dunno, I think Lincoln was an all right dude,” which caused my dad to snatch up his coat and spit, “LET’S GO!!!” and storm outside. My dad never leaves an argument first. Ever. He was pisssssssssed.

We got outside and he was already in the truck, yelling at us to hurry up and get in so we could get the hell out of there, but I refused to get in until they would at least call a truce and agree to disagree. The whole way back to the room, we were lectured on how we had a lot to learn about Real History, and did we know Lincoln was most likely a homosexual?

I think Ray sees now why I don’t engage.

Anyway, that was but one amusing blip on the Gatlinburg radar. The rest of the time was spent hootin’ and hollerin’ at the stuff in the Ripley’s museum, walking through the snowy streets of Gatlinburg, feeding coins into arcade games, buying sweets at a candy shop, kicking ass at Guitar Hero (on easy!), and turning up the fireplace in our very own private suite — a major development, considering we were told while planning the trip that we would be expected to sleep in separate suites.

Turned out to be not so shabby after all. But I foresee some refereeing in my future.

More than three decades and my dad still calls my mom his “green-eyed beauty.”

Cheers, you crazy kids.

The responses I’ve gotten to what I wrote about Charlie Brown’s Sad Thanksgiving for Fatties have been really interesting. Whole lotta solidarity coming from the ladies re: the weight crazies. I’m so thankful that there are people who will reach out to connect about such a very personal issue. BUT. I hate that the need is even there. I hate that there are other people fighting this same fight, routinely winding themselves into knots of shame over how much space they are taking up in the world. I want to make it go away for you, and you, and you, and you. All of you.

I talked to my dad last night, and he told me he hadn’t meant to upset me so much by his comment. Which, yeah, I know, which is why I had initiated the apology sequence by leaving him a note last Friday morning saying as much. And then he went on to ask me if it had been “that time of the month” and when I said “it’s always ‘that time of the month’” meaning I am fucking crazy ALL THE TIME HAVE YOU NOT NOTICED THE GENES YOU ALL GAVE ME, he told me not to wear my feelings on my sleeves. Which is an interesting thing to tell a person who comes from a family of passive-aggressive people who often feel slighted at the least little thing.

I had a bit of a meltdown yesterday right before Thanksgiving dinner. Everything had been going more or less okay; I got up and on the road to the parents’ as early as I could, since my mom had texted me the day before, telling me to hightail it early since I’d be trying to outrun bad weather. I was flying solo, as Ray had to work that afternoon. That sucked, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I couldn’t get my mom to answer the house phone or her cell, and she hadn’t answered my “need me to pick anything else up?” text early that morning. My brother was at his girlfriend’s house in Arlington and so couldn’t track mom down for me. Dad was at work so I didn’t even bother calling to bug him. Finally I got my sister on the phone and she told me that mom was having a bad day and still in bed, so she was getting the turkey ready for its broth bath. Her first time taking the reins on the turkey dinner. We assessed what else we’d still need after my grandmother’s and aunt’s contributions (dressing aka stuffing to all you yankees, yeast rolls, macaroni and cheese, green beans, banana pudding, butternut cake, etc.) and I stopped off at the Lakeland Schnucks and heaped a cheese plate, couple of sodas, salad fixins, and two pomegranates into my basket. I cranked up Girl Talk and car danced my way to the house.

Things were going fine. I was in a good mood. I knew mom felt bad but she was coming around and getting ready, and my sister had the kitchen under control. I made and stored the salad, peeled a pomegranate, and went outside to take pictures of the horses as a storm blew in and we waited on the family to assemble.

And assemble we did. It got hot in that house with all the people and heated surfaces working and the outside temperature not quite cool enough for an open door to make a difference. I went into the bathroom to put my hair up to get it out of my face, and came back down to survey the kitchen to see how else I could help. My dad looked at me with a squint in his eye and said, in front of everyone, “Lindsey, are you gaining weight again?”

And, obviously, the answer is yes, by every observable standard. Yes, world, I have gained weight. I lost a couple dozen pounds several years ago by drinking only water (okay, and a glass of wine a night), cutting out all fried foods, fast foods, and sweet foods, and consuming no more than 1,100 calories every day, while working out and burning at least 1,500 calories a week. It was a fairly fucking miserable diet but I got used to it and it felt great to watch the weight fall off. I had foot surgery and stopped working out for a while since it hurt to put any pressure on it, and got out of the habit. I started letting crap food back into my life the day of surgery, when I went and ate at Soul Fish and allowed myself some French fries. Etc. And in spectacularly human fashion, I have allowed those pounds to creep back onto my bones over the past four years.

So. Back to dinner. My eyes grew wide as saucers and I said something to the effect of, “Yes, I have! Just like everyone else in the world at some point!” Bitchin’ comeback. I’m known for my wit.

And you know that feeling you get in your gut, like it could almost be accompanied by falling string music and that camera trick where it seems like the background and the foreground move in opposite directions while you stand still in the middle? I had a smirk plastered on my face while my brain raced and raced to find somewhere safe to put what my dad had just said, because it was just a bullshit, one-off comment that probably meant nothing and so what if I had gained weight? Haitians were dying of cholera and starvation as we spoke and lava was swallowing up Indonesia. And yet my brain, my useless fucking brain, could not find a place for that comment, and in fact blew that comment up on the jumbotron inside me and all my senses’ attentions were directed to it. They stopped their happy little holiday bopping and looked up at it, and all I could feel was shame and failure. Shame and failure. Shame and failure. The muscles in my face seized up and I sat there until my aunt moved away from the oven so I could back up my chair and go somewhere, anywhere, where could I go? It was storming and cold outside by then so I just went out to the carport and wedged myself between my sister’s car and the garage door and had myself a moment. A long one, I guess, because my sister came looking for me later because it was time to eat.

I played like I had been on the phone out there in the cold and not sobbing like a fool, and I rejoined the family to a chorus of “where were you it’s time to eat what’s wrong are you sure you’re okay” and then my dad said grace. And my mom hugged me and asked me if I was okay, at which point I lost my shit and ran off to the bathroom like a drama queen. I had to get it out of me, let the heaving get done. I shooed both parents who tried to talk to me through that door and I was in there for an hour. On the floor. Unable to coax myself off it or out the door. How could I possibly go downstairs and put food in my mouth when everyone had just been made acutely aware of the fact that I am more of a fatass now than I was at the last Thanksgiving I got to attend a couple of years ago?

And I know it’s overly dramatic and completely irrational and I’m ashamed to even write about it. There is a horrible shame cycle to body-image bullshit and in general I try to not even indulge those neuroses. Publicly. But they are always with me. Always. I’ve clearly got a demon that needs exorcising. I don’t really know why what my dad said hit me as hard as it did, except that his statement comes bundled with a lot of baggage and I unpacked it there on the spot and it fucking leveled me.

It leveled me because I know how I look. I have to look at me every day, get this body into and out of clothes every day. I know how it has changed and I fucking hate it. I don’t think my dad has any idea how much I hate myself, how so many moments of every day are spent wrestling with very deeply rooted self-loathing, because I keep quiet about that stuff. I can’t imagine that he could have any idea about the kinds of things I say to the mirror when no one else is around, the way I will spit insults at every dimple in my flesh, every crease, every shadow. I know how narcissistic that sounds and is and I hate myself even more for getting tangled up in this ridiculous web that I KNOW is a farce. It’s my silent shame, and it is with me always. My dad saying what he said to me — after I had gone to the bathroom to put my hair up, which is something I do reluctantly these days because I always feel like, with my hair up, you can see too clearly all the extra flesh on my face — just gave a voice to all the toxic shit that swims in my head every minute of every day. It confirmed my fears about how I appear to other people and it labeled me a failure in front of my entire family. Because, you know, fat = failure. According to popular sentiment.

I know he didn’t mean to set off that insane chain of reaction in me, and I feel genuinely awful that he feels so awful about accidentally hurting me. I spent the entire night in seclusion. After my initial shame had subsided enough for me to want to leave the bathroom then bedroom, I was overcome with embarrassment and just wanted to disappear. And yet I couldn’t make my apparently too large body disappear. I could only hide.

I am fucked up about my body and always have been. I have struggled with my weight my entire life. I remember being in middle school and attempting to see how many days I could go without eating when a boy I had a crush on called me “lumberjack legs.” (For the record, two days.) I think most women will tell a similar tale. We all want to try and act like we have risen above it but body consciousness is a quicksand. Secretly we want to look great but as though we don’t spend any time worrying about how we look. That’s the ideal. I can be a bulldog of a feminist all day long but when I close my eyes at night, I don’t want to wake up ugly and unattractive. And I FUCKING HATE THAT ABOUT MYSELF. I have tried to squelch that part of me but it comes back bigger and stronger every time I try to put it down.

My dad has said something like his comment above to me before. I remember we were riding in the car together on the way to Jackson. We were talking about relationships. I don’t remember if Phil and I had broken up or what, but I remember my dad pretty much told me that I was lucky Phil had stayed with me as long as he had, considering I’d gained weight after high school. I remember the sting I felt when I heard that. I love my dad so much and I wouldn’t trade him for any other father on this or any other planet (that fact is well documented here on this blog), but he has never quite understood that there are some things that are better left unsaid.*

And so every time I prepare to make the trip home to see the family, I look at myself in the mirror and I get nervous about what they are going to think about how my looks have changed since the last time they saw me. I am getting older, my jowls more pronounced, my thickness everpresent. If I am not pretty enough, and just slim enough, I am not good enough. Of course they don’t think that way but this is what I have internalized, what I have made myself believe.

But here’s the thing. I grew up in a family of thick people. We are all overweight or have been for most of our lives. I never really learned how to eat well; I maintained a general pickiness throughout my childhood that allowed me to eat crap food. I remember one time when I was really young that we had Brussels sprouts with dinner. I didn’t want mine because I was generally leery of green things, but my parents tried to make me eat them. I got a little bit down and then made myself sick. And I got in trouble. But I didn’t learn how to like things that are good for me. I didn’t learn how to use food as fuel. I like fatty things, sweet things, buttery things, cheesy things, breaded things. Carbs. Lord god, carbs. And of course, these things are fine in moderation. But when they are the only things you like, it is hard to moderate.**

My palate has gotten more sophisticated as I’ve gotten older, but I’m still not where I need to be and I know it. I think about it every effing day, every time I pass a reflective surface, or feel the folds of my skin touching, or hide my face from my boyfriend when I laugh because I’m afraid he’ll suddenly see all the imperfections I see and decide he doesn’t love me anymore. What sent me over the edge Thursday is when someone else copped to noticing.

I’ve got a lot of work to do. I probably need a head shrinker to help me comb through some of this, but I’ve been reluctant to pursue that route. Obviously I need to get back to exercising because it’s good for me, but frankly I am busy lately. Insanely busy with a weird, backwards-ass schedule. (“Make time!” sings a chorus of self-righteous demons cruising for a punch to the mouth.) I will make time. I’ve done it before. It was not easy. And it’s interesting because even though I have all these fucked-up body issues, I don’t have particularly bad self-esteem. I mean, I genuinely know that I deserve to be loved and appreciated, and I think I am worthy of love and appreciation. And I think I am more or less an attractive person, in spite of the extra trunk junk and the crazy in my brain.

But obviously even if I lose the weight again, I am still going to need to get that self-hatred poison out of my head. It doesn’t want to go away, no matter how many hours I spend on the elliptical.

* Dad, if you ever read this, or if someone ever reads this to you, know that I love you dearly and I know you didn’t mean anything by either of these things you said. I forgive you, and I’m sorry I made you feel horrible.

** I appreciate your kneejerk desire to comment or e-mail me diet or nutrition or exercise or whatever tips, but I don’t want them. This post is not a solicitation for advice or a chance for you to prove that you have slayed the weight-maintenance beast by imparting your wisdom. At the risk of coming off as a total asshole here, please keep your concern trolling to yourself, please and thanks.

Saturday afternoon my aunt Vicki and her crew — boyfriend Paul and friend Ralph — rolled into town for the UT-Memphis football game, an affair we had been planning for months. We had a few hours to kill and found ourselves at India Palace, heaping piles of deliciousness onto stark white buffet plates. Why is it that I can never remember to wait and get a big plate from the middle, and instead, always end up using the smallish dessert plates for my noms? Anyway. I cracked the “hey guys, watch how many refills we’ll get” joke a little too loudly, I think, because I ended up only getting two. TWO! At one point my water glass even reached nearly empty. Maybe they were short-staffed, I dunno. Also, the bf was unamused by my “punch the horse painting” joke, probably because I had no way of explaining exactly what the hell that even meant, even when sitting there, staring at said horse painting face to face, but how can someone not laugh at that phrase alone? Just say it and try not to laugh. Or think about masturbation. See? Funny shit.

We killed a couple of additional hours at my house, getting our pre-game on, and then it was a short walk to the Liberty Bowl (yay free parking!), where I was a tad dismayed to watch the stadium fill up with orange. Poor Tigers. Even when the Vols suck, their fans come to watch. The game was pretty brutal to behold. I tried to be an impartial observer; I sure am not going to root for UT and my loyalties don’t exactly lie with the Tigers either, but they are my hometown team and it hurt to see them get beat up the way they did in front of a teeming, taunting orange crowd. Alas. Sports, she is a cruel mistress.

I missed nearly the entire first quarter because I took it upon myself to go in search of beer for the group, since auntie had bought my first round and gotten me into the game. Lord god, the belly of the Liberty Bowl reminds me of both the New York City subway system and also some apocalyptic movie where everyone lives in underground tunnels and buys wares with cash — CASH!!! — from price-gouging kiosks. Oh, and there is only one working ATM in the entire world and it is located exactly halfway around the globe, so have fun getting there and back in a reasonable amount of time. Oh, and the beers are $7 and the Budweiser hawkers will only let you have two at a time, which puts a crimp in your plan to shove several in your purse and share with the group. Oh, and you can’t get a text out to inform your group that you are, in fact, not dead, just running behind on accounta the ATM situation and the bathroom situation (oh how I longed for a Stadium Pal) and the beer situation. IT’S MADNESS UNDER THAT STADIUM. Up top, however, it’s quite nice. I’d never been in there before and I must say I think the Liberty Bowl’s quite fetching, despite its age. Paul kept describing it as “undulating,” and I think that’s about right.

The score hit 50-7 and we decided that there was probably no big come-from-behind U of M win to keep us there past the third quarter, so we vamoosed. We heard the Tigers score a touchdown somewhere between the stadium and my house. My Vol-loving companions were unfazed.

It was great to see dear auntie; I think the last time we saw each other was Christmas of ’08, in the mountains at the Timeshare of Family Near-Breakdown (which she luckily missed by a day or so). That’s just too dang long between visits and I intend to remedy that in the coming year.

Photo up top is a composite made using AutoStitch Panorama for iPhone.

I have been laid low a few times in my life. Luckily (or perhaps sadly, depending on your perspective and how much you like to see me suffer), not too terribly many times. Nonetheless, this weekend I found myself on my floor in a heap, a demon of despair escaping from my lungs in great heaves. It was not pretty and it was not cathartic. It just felt like death. The death of all the good things inside me I had gotten cozy with over the past few months. It felt like getting kicked in the spiritual groin by a playground bully who stood over me and laughed at me for having the audacity to be happy. It felt like being spit on by someone you’d thought all along was your good friend. It just wouldn’t stop aching. It pulsed. I wanted to vomit up everything I had ever swallowed. Everything.

It didn’t go away for two days. I drove two hours to my parents’ house in a complete haze. I’d catch my vision blurring and my focus shifting from the road to the white line to the grooves on the side of the highway to the gravel to the grass to the what the fuck wake up you are running off the road. I should not have been driving. But I couldn’t stay in the house in my pajamas, either, loopy on sleeping pills. I had to get out. Get away. Get some space. Get some time. I thought so hard. I could have bored holes in concrete with those thoughts. They wouldn’t relent and when they did, I sobbed at the emptiness in my gut. I envisioned my drafty house, completely quiet, and I was angry. I cussed to the mirages on the road and the dead raccoons I swerved past. I got phone calls and text messages and @ replies and DMs and I could not respond. I did not have the energy or the words and I wanted to disappear.

I suppose I was (am) being a tad melodramatic but heartbreak — good ol’ out-of-left-field heartbreak — is never the time for emotional reservation, the way I’ve got it figured. You’ve got to go ahead and punch a hole and just let that abscess drain or you will be ripe with infection later. I feel a little silly for airing such intimately dirty laundry on the internet but I thought one good shaming deserved another, and whatever came of it, he would at least know that breaking my heart comes with a bit of a price. It’s not much in the grand scheme of things, but having my friends lob unflattering names at you has to hurt the ego at least a smidge, doesn’t it? And I am not above a strategic Googlebomb if push comes to shove.

When I pulled into my parents’ driveway, I saw my dad standing there, waiting for me. I couldn’t even make it all the way to him before the floodgates opened. He held me as I shuddered and sobbed. My brother put his hand on my shoulder for extra support and I cried in part out of gratitude for them. That evening I moped. Just thinking thinking thinking. What to do, what to do. I snuck out from time to time to be alone and that was, perhaps, not my best move, as sitting out under that inky country sky and those vast country stars has a way of making a person feel even more alone and insignificant than any sort of relationship breakdown. I saw a shooting star. I could not think of a thing to wish for.

Monday my parents took me to Shiloh so we could piddle and I could take pictures, if I wanted, because that’s something that usually cheers me up. We packed a picnic lunch and ate cold hot dogs in the car while we cruised past recently cleaned monuments and I listened as my dad told me the things he would do differently if he ran the park. We parked and walked down a wooded path and I sat in the grass and closed in with my lens on a buckeye moth. I listened to the wind in the trees in the same field where a line of thousands of Confederate troops had surprised Union scouts eons ago. My dad hung back in the distance, swapping stories with some folks from Eastern Kentucky and their big schnauzer, who growled at me upon my return, until I let him get a good long sniff of my hand.

My parents worried about me the whole way home, and did their best to keep conversation light. Except for when mom kept talking about all the things she and dad wanted to bequeath to us kids before they died. “I don’t want to talk about that now,” I said. “Yes, but we have to talk about those things,” she said. “I know, but not right now,” I pleaded. She got it. It was dark before I headed back to Memphis, anxious to get back to the house and the cats and get on with the business of getting on. I had half resolved to do this, this, and this … and yet.

I don’t know where this post is going.

All that thinking and all that anger have left me not quite ready to give up. I am learning some things about my capacity for forgiveness, for understanding, for love in unlikely and painful circumstances. I spent all weekend wallowing in my victimhood and felt no better for it. I realized at some point that I do not want to live as a Wronged Woman and that I have a say in this situation and its direction. I am beginning to understand that people do stupid, hurtful shit to the people they love for no reason, other than because they are fickle, imperfect humans and the human capacity for mistake-making is vastly greater than the human capacity to understand why those mistakes are made. I know some mistakes are worse than others. I am given to the belief that stupid mistakes can be a catalyst for positive things. That awful shit will crystallize what’s important in a life and, if worked on, can raise you up and spur you on.

These are not excuses or rationalizations for what was clearly fucked-up behavior. These are things I have been working to understand so that I can grow from this experience. I do not want to be a bitter person, as is my nature — both born and learned — and I do not want to be a heartbreak waiting to happen. I do not want pity. I do not wish to be complicit in destructive behavior by turning a blind eye to it, but I also refuse to allow this destructive behavior to happen just because of fear or emotional damage that I can’t get at. People do some stupid shit when they are scared. I know I can’t heal old wounds or change natures but I can love fully and clearly and deliberately, with everything I’ve got. If that ends up not being enough, then it will hurt again and it will hurt harder than before, but at least I will know that I did not act rashly or out of pain and spite, and that maybe whatever love I put out there in the world might come back to me in some way.

I don’t know where anything is going.

But for now I intend to see some things through.