7

We are all patronizing to someone at sometime in our lives. The least we can do is admit to it and attempt at overcoming this reaction to our insecurities. What is bizarre and what inevitably becomes impossible to bear, however, is being a woman of the twenty-first century living in the United States, born in the Y generation, and having a male four months your junior patronize you.

He would often say, "Can you smile for me?" and I would find that intolerable. Perhaps the most intolerable and unforgivable request ever asked of me. And yet, I would smile anyway so that I might not have to hear that inquiry for a second time but it made me feel terrible, as if I were rapping the gates of Stepford each time I cracked a smile. These hints soon became beacons and they soon began to accumulate. The biggest beacon of red light manifested in the rejection I received when I became the whistle-blower on his behavior and it was the one I ignored the most. I think that only now I can understand. For some, maybe most, one is not beaten into submission but one is essentially coerced into it through a gradual process that degenerates one's self-assurance and self-confidence until nothing of the self is left. Opinions, once lauded for their depth of understanding and their wisdom, soon become scoffed at and later laughed at. Emotions, which were once accepted as part of the human condition, become regarded as something detestably effeminate, frivolous or even volatile. It is after this gradual process that one cannot even see when one's natural reaction to hurtful and misogynistic sentiments is looked at as if it were a used tampon. Thus, one despises one's self for reacting to anything for it will inevitably be met with rejection and/or disgust. From here, there are two routes: the first, one can degenerate into complete and total self-loathing or the second, one can become quiet and numb. Then, maybe, you disappear entirely. You can become a shadow, his shadow, forever eclipsed by him. You can become the moon and shine with his light but your identity is but a mere illusion.

If you are told you are crazy enough times by the one you love and trust, eventually you start to believe it. Maybe you are crazy for believing it in the first place. You see it and you hate that you have eyes. You hear it and you hate that you have ears. You feel it and you hate that you have a soul. Can you blame those women, then, when you yourself know it is not a lack of intelligence that makes them obedient or a voluntary loss of self-worth but rather an unconscious mechanism? What can you do when you cannot even know you are dead? And what do you do, can you do, when you finally wake up in the middle of that ocean of depression and realize that the one who held your head beneath the waves was the one you loved the most?

It was a summer afternoon while walking the dog I realized he did not understand. It was on the phone in September that I realized he earnestly believed he deserved a prize. It was in the back of a concert hall in March when I realized he could not care less about me. It was at the dinner table when I realized who he would grow up to be. It was in a Macy's when I realized I became a second mother. It was in a Bed Bath and Beyond in June that I realized he thought he was the Jesus Christ for emotionally damaged women. It was on a bike in August when I realized he was one of those guys who wore cargo shorts and had an opinion on just about everything not realizing women in the vicinity had those things too. It was on a couch around ten o'clock when I realized he was abusive. It was in the garden of a friary the following afternoon when I realized misogyny was alive and well. It was November when I realized nothing would change. It was not until January at a coffee shop when he realized those things too. Maybe.

Can it be truly a tragedy that these moments as well as the others will be remembered in greater and more vivid detail than all of the tender embraces, soft kisses and sweet nothings if I feel free from the yoke of tyrannical love?

My heart sometime skips a beat when I feel around for that little shackle around my finger and find it to be missing. When I look down, however, I see one out of ten fingers disfigured and emaciated by commitment. This is what I have to remember him by; his lasting impression on me.

6

Emotions are never quantifiable and yet one often will say "I love you so much" or "I hate you so much" and other phrases of the like. It is baffling to feel an abundant amount of one emotion at one time, feel it dwindle and get replaced by others until it goes away and yet there is no measure of these feelings, no exact figure and often no distinction between one and the other. I cannot know when hope began to leave me, when it returned and when it left again but I know why. I cannot know when love turned to hatred. I cannot know when I ever wished such suffering on another individual. I cannot know when forever ended and never began. We were so sure and we were so wrong. It is a difficult moment, then, when you feel pathetic and you become painfully aware of it: when you sit in that café that you know they go to constantly looking at the door when the bell rings hoping they are there, hoping to see you sitting there; when you intentionally refuse to erase their name so you can stare at it hoping they are staring at it too; when you lose yourself in someone else and pray that they are thinking about you too even if you met in passing; when you dream dreams and hate reality; when you yearn over what never existed; when you want to be someone's crowned goddess. Can I be so egocentric and so helplessly romantic? To be this jealous, this moved, this nostalgic and this hurt over the little innocuous events that truly have little or no meaning what so ever? This is what pathetic is and I keep finding new depths each day. All these things and more are the small wounds you refuse to allow to heal, making the scars that will eventually develop deeper and deeper. And in this torture we realize we have dimension. In this pain we realize we can feel. And all of your hopes and your desires, no matter how daft and silly, mean something in your heart; in your dreams. And when you look to literature, you find that you are not alone. Even if you bury your pain in booze or pills or food or movies, or books or work, it's waiting for you when you close your eyes at night.

It amazes me how life stopped when I thought I was in love. It was, perhaps, that kind of love that creates a faux-Eden; a magical sanctuary that makes one forget life and how it is meant to function. A cloudy paradise on Mount Olympus. We were so sure, with the angst of a fifteen year old, that we had it right and everyone telling us to come down now would one day be proven wrong. It would be us who would be proven wrong. But how can anyone be blamed? How can you tell teenagers that love will wither and die and life will move on? How can you tell teenagers this will be for forever and ask them to set the date? We were just kids. It amazes me still how life goes on. What folly! I had once made a promise that it was the end and I find myself somewhere unexpectedly where never once was and it is not never but it is real and it feels good. And I can only laugh. Life is happening one day at a time. The important things, the silly things, the depressing things, they are all happening one day at a time. I will stop sometimes in the middle of where never once was to take a look around and wonder what my other is doing. At three in the morning lost in the haze of an unexpectedly charming smile I stopped to think of his cold, queen-sized bed and the snoring across the way after a quite night playing with food with Fox News blaring in the background. It did not matter if I was correct or cruel but it was a reminder that life can stop even if it appears as though the years are advancing. That is when joy dies, when relationships die, when people die and we feel like shades passing along the wrong side of the banks waiting for Charon to pick us up so that we might finally go to the Underworld. But my life was going and it felt wonderful, light and airy and all I could do was laugh. How nice life sounds, even in the most gruesome or pathetic of moments, when backed by the soundtrack of laughter.

5

There is no activity that provides a greater sense of eternal calm than being on the road at night.

In summer, the windows are open and the cool air whips through you hair and in between your toes that rest carelessly on the dashboard. You could get high with that sweet breeze. In winter, you blankly stare at the barren wasteland on either side of you. It comforts you with the haunting novocaine of a loneliness you cannot experience anywhere else but there. You can always count on the lamps casting the world in an orange hue. They make the trees look like spidery sculptures. Each one illuminating the tiniest sliver of road until the next one arrives when all of the sudden they abandon you and all you are left with are the cold white headlamps of your own vehicle and an abyss on either side of you. Everything moves too slowly for you to realize you are barreling past small pockets of civilization where people are living lives you will never know about. Even each pair of headlights is its own microcosm. It is so easy to forget that each aluminum box on wheels contains a human being that has a final destination: their mistress, their mother, their kids, their friends, their dog, their bed. It is curious to contemplate all of the lives you are passing by at 70 miles per hour. And they will go on forever as an endless stream of synthetic light guiding us towards our destinations. In these sanctuaries, life is in transit, awaiting its final destination. Nothing and everything of significance happens in these small sanctuaries.

So much of my recent life has been spent en route to somewhere. Eight hours two times a month. Sixteen hours a month. Sixty four hours a semester. Over one hundred and twenty eight hours each school year. The hours in the summer from the city to the suburbs that drove everyone except me insane. It was always such a burden but we did it anyways. Perhaps we believed it is what the other wanted. No one was appeased by this arrangement but we went on deluding ourselves that it did.

Once I arrived at three in the morning after the most blissfully haunting bus ride it had ever been my pleasure to endure. I was not met at the station. There was no public transportation and a cab was impossible to procure. When I finally arrived, I was locked out of a building with no other person to contact to let me in. Therefore, I found it fitting to leave my current position as a lonely female in the center of an empty parking lot and sought sanctuary within a public safety office whose officers found the arrival of a young girl carrying luggage at three in the morning rather bizarre. A kindly officer with a heavy Boston accent found the entire situation hilarious and let me into the building I had been barred out of. Needless to say, the wide-eyed expression that greeted me and the police officer at three thirty in the morning was too priceless to ever forget. I spent the rest of the night nursing the sick. I never had the opportunity to take that wonderful night ride again.

4

Families are such curious entities. We can never pick our own and neither can we pick those that come attached to the ones we fall in love with. It would appear that mother-in-laws are more often than not the central figures of familial discord as well as some fantastic jokes. But regardless, all families have their foibles, some greater than others. Perhaps we gravitated towards each other because we recognized the feeling of manipulated familial love and found comfort in that mutual recognition. I was thus introduced to a new family and novelty worked its magic on us all. They three felt like the center of a freshly baked cookie and they pulled me in with the scent of sweet sincerity. They were small and adorable to me and a wonderful departure from where I had come from. I was happily adopted into what felt like a quaint little family photograph that I had always desperately wanted to be a part of, even if I was just part of the landscaping. Their struggles, fights, bleak existence and general monotony of household chores was suddenly interrupted by someone completely different from their friends, their neighbors and their congregation. Odd was suddenly made even and everything felt whole. It was as if all of our prayers had been answered for we were all overjoyed to have one another.

The gloss of novelty, however, wears off to reveal the original product. Though this is a perfectly natural phenomenon, one cannot help but feel cheated of something they thought was genuine and true when it is one's own failure to accept this reality of life. It does not help when one is blinded by the cheap trickery of false advertising. It is as my mother always said to me when imperfection in the model began to appear, "Time reveals everyone's true colors." I suddenly saw what had always been and I was paralyzed with shock. What once was welcoming now felt imprisoning and I was back to where I thought I had escaped from. I hid under the covers as if it were my own family members shouting at one another and cried as if I had regressed an entire decade. I learned their history through each fight over the most innocuous things like crepes. To be fair, however, they soon discovered I had hidden my glaring quirks in order to appear meek, non-threatening and desirable but now revealed them little by little.

Adoption was perhaps the least appropriate relationship that could have developed but it was what we needed. This also was probably compounded by the opposing forces of young love and regulation. At first it had been the need for surveillance of two hormonally charged teenagers and a hyper concern for premarital physicality, pregnancy and, of course, eternal punishment allowed for all abandonment of trust. Perhaps it was because I came from an exceptionally European family that these customs of constant observance seemed exceptionally bizarre to me and became quite meddlesome when I indeed desired and deserved premarital physical contact. My exceptionally European mother would often tease me by saying that I had a number of hotel rooms at my disposal but she was much happier knowing I was enjoying the comforts of home. She would mock their folly by leaving us conspicuously alone, a custom my guilt-ridden other found exceptionally bizarre and discomforting. The first time when we were left alone by his family was for an hour during an intense Guitar Hero session. I will never forget the incredibly suspicious look we were given after an hour of innocent video gaming; the sting of burning mistrust still lingers. Their grip of physical observance loosened but guilt and obligation were employed so successfully that he never left the nest. I could not leave him and so I stayed, playing by their rules and sleeping on their couch for three and a half years where I saw everything.

3

When one looks retrospectively on the fall of an age characterized by greatness, one cannot help but attempt to investigate when and where the threads began to unravel. When is the beginning of the gradual decay of greatness? Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Christians all toppled beneath their own grandeur. So too did our love. And thus, I make the mistake that I as a novice enjoy making most. As obsession compelled me to weave this tapestry, obsession compels me to inspect these threads torn asunder seeking the origins of those pulls that made the ultimate unraveling inevitable.

We conquered each other's hearts and built an empire around ourselves. He was an island of novelty and charm in which I was free to become an explorer of another. I mapped out and memorized his topography, knowing the exact degree of elevation of each mountain and the depression of each valley. I splashed within the rivers and dove into the caves. Enamored with this world I could call my own, I made it my Eden. No fruit was sweeter nor more intoxicating than from those trees and I refused to seek the knowledge of any other. But time passed and the vegetation withered, refusing to produce anymore. It was either this or I had exhausted my resources after asking too much of that land that already gave all it had. I still know it by heart though I raised my anchor some time ago. It is always with me when my eyes are closed.

It is my own theory that his experience was instigated by a different motive. Discovery was accidental yet intriguing for what he found was a dilapidated shore, uninviting, perhaps even dangerous, and in need of some repair. Like many men who follow Christ, he measured his life through martyrdom; haunted by an impulse to sacrifice in order so that he might save. Driven by this suicidal need to rescue, salvage and renew, he disembarked onto my shores so that I might not be lost forever. He was the light of my life. He was my religion. However, for reasons still unknown to me, he left my planes unexplored and whittled away his time on my shores alone, neglecting the world he had once claimed as his own. I renounced my faith for my god had forsaken me. Now I am caught in a gale of loneliness, lost on the open sea.

2

There were only a few trips to the suburbs of New York City to visit his grandparents, though others were always planned but never actually realized. The drives were often pleasant yet they were the largest windows into the insight of his family that I generally ignored, much like everything else. In one instance, his mother lauded my intelligence and high level of education as a means to home-school my children one day and save them from the liberal indoctrination of the current school systems in place. The implication of "our children" was not as accidental as either he or I liked to believe. The dialogue on the way home was often concentrated on our relationship but always beat around the bush in hopes to avoid any more overt pressure.

There was always something comforting about visiting the home of immigrants. The minimal decor reminded me of Poland and the homes of old spinsters, widows and relatives that took care of my parents in their past lives. A number of photographs hung next to relics and there was a spot, they said, beckoning my smiling face. The food diverted my attention from the six pairs of eyes eagerly watching me devour lasagna. Polite table conversation began with asking the status of school or work. My answer was always dissatisfying to some measure; I was yet another youth without any direction. The three adults aired their grievances about the law profession and inevitably politics. It was not until the meal was over that I was always confronted with how awkward these visits were. The women got up to clean the table and the dishes and talk about things women talk about while the conversation among the men undoubtedly began with, "So how about them Yankees?" Neither a domestic nor a sports enthusiast, I merely wanted to melt into the carpet while my lack of contribution was made perfectly aware to me by stares and half-handed attempts to include me. I felt as if I was in a late-70's era film about a mismatched couple, a Polish-American and an Italian-American, trying to make it work after coming from similar yet widely different backgrounds. Perhaps it was and Francis Ford Coppola was behind a door somewhere.

Eventually the women reemerged from the kitchen and the the men plus me moved to the couch to watch either football or baseball, depending on the season. Heavy with the meal and exhausted from performing, I generally nodded off on his shoulder, triggering his grandmother to make blatant hand gestures and loud-enough whispers prophesying our inevitable marriage. It would seem grandmothers from the old country are always endowed with these supernatural powers. They always knew who would get married to whom and how their children would turn out. This one would marry that nice one from that nice family and produce a nice healthy litter and so on. Their success rate was remarkable when there always was an endless supply of rugs to sweep life under. We were told on the way back that she had predicted his parents marriage. It was an omen.

1

We were born into spring, as most things are. The buds of a young and innocent love blossomed on the porch of his home that we were forbidden from entering without a chaperone present. We were a snapshot from the nineteen fifties, which suited our nostalgia for a time long since past. He carried my books for me. We sat around the television whilst the conservatives blared about the reprehensible youth of which were clearly were not a part of in spirit but were almost painfully linked to in body. We said grace together and went to church together. Promise rings were purchased and everyone whispered about our promising future. We were a played out cliché but we happily embraced it.

Then summer came with the blissful promise of freedom. We took a permanent vacation from our painful yet privileged pasts as we hurtled towards the future at 70 miles per hour. The musty smell of dorm room mold coupled with the cinnamon scent of his skin threw me into the humid haze of passion. The stars awakened the leo and my, how we roared through those nights. The salty air blew through my hair as we took trips to nowhere while my feet were on the dashboard and our voices mingled in songs we convinced ourselves had been written for us. We ignored and defied the conventions that were expected of us, sneaking kisses beneath the watchful eyes of relics. I will always remember our arrogance of summer. The smell of spices will always linger in my heart.

Fall surprised us, as it often does. The chill of monotonous responsibilities crept into our lives and began to burden our backs too slowly for us to notice the change that was occurring. Leaves fell softly in the growing space between us, covering the tracks we once left each other - the trek becoming increasingly arduous. We did our best to rid ourselves of the foliage but all was in vain. The whisperers on their wings who once chirped about hope now cawed with concern. We cast our gaze to downward when we should have made ourselves augurs for the prophets were already southward bound. We packed on the blubber for the coming winter but nothing was to prepare us for the ice age that was to come. There was no indian summer for us. The seasons changed early.

When winter came, we were already too numb to realize it had arrived. Our lips were a passionless blue, our cheeks were ruddy with anger and our extremities were frostbitten with depression. The path between us was now covered with snow that was left neglected. The phone lines were laden with frost and the connection only grew worse before it cut out entirely. We were trapped in the Gulags of our own hearts that were on opposite ends of the Siberian tundras. It was only a matter of time. We breathed our last exclaiming that death would never overtake us. We were fools until the very end.

This a the story, for memory, no matter how far removed, is always polluted by perspective. Truth inevitably dances on the edge of fantasy. We ended nearly 1,460 days from the start, ending on the day we began, and it was a perfect circuit of poetry; a Puccini true to form.

This story is touched on here for posterity's sake and for the author's peace of mind. There are words floating around driving me to madness and they must be released from the clutter. It is not linear. It is a collection of memories, musings and theories assembled in one area. Should it be discovered, take from it what you will.

Once upon a time, there were two people...