The Grieving of Elphaba

I will say this, woman to woman, (knowing well you are here and how our curiosity works): My problem is not with you. I am not on a campaign to intervene in anyone's new-found happiness. Asking for obligations to be honored is not asking for a resurrection of what has died.

You are welcome here, step into the light. Isn't it odd we've never been introduced?



And as with Ace, his first wife, your comments and questions, the versions of stories you're told or need to tell, will always have an open forum with me. That is who I choose to be- as a human, not just an ex-tra player in the scene.


And there's a difference that no one but Ace could know... I asked her in the best way I knew how. She was gracious, gave me an honest summary... but didn't divulge details that may have helped me see. Not one part of this, none of the story with me is her fault, I am not casting blame... but I wanted to know - didn't want to encroach- but was too young and inexperienced to see clearly through that summary... I spent a lot of time trying to 'help him forget her with me.' He gladly filled in the details she was too nice to give... he just wanted to be a good dad, have a family and stay married for fifty years... he was sad at her cheating, didn't know what to do - tell their son or allow him to think she was a better person than he knew her to be? She's not who he told me and I must grieve having allowed his version too much credibility.

You haven't asked- and I can not meddle.  Maybe you don't care to know. I fight against that, too. Since this entry is all about raw honesty. To fight one man (or two)  for the security you are due, then align yourself against another woman's same fight... I find that so hard to be true. I think, surely you don't know. Surely,  you've been told I'm a shrew.  I grieve the loss of my voice,  Not getting to be myself, carrying the version you've been told instead.

Why would you want to be my friend, I know.

But I started thinking about this differently when LittleMan started school at 5 years old. Waiting for his class to let out, I chatted with parents and step-parents of every kind. And I realized then- in the way that people do when they grow- that I could be talking to Ace and not know. (My heavy exposure to Seuss this week is showing I know... but I am defenseless against impromptu rhyme most all of the time...not just 'Seuss Week') 


And so. (also channeling my inner DiCamillo)


If before this thing took shape, I found you to be my table mate - at a Fort Gordon show where there's dinner and plays... I'm sure we would be fast friends. And as Ace said to me long, long ago - we would be good friends if it weren't for that husband of yours.



But I mean it differently... she wanted to be as far from the drama as could be... we were alike but our friendship would cost her sanity.

In this way, I mean he gets to say who he wants me to be... a villain in his story. I grieve the picture he has been painting of me.



I don't know what you've heard and I don't need to know either - but I've been dissected alive as my older kids' mother.



You can have no idea, with only one person's truth in a six person tale.

"I hear from three" you say...



Some are under a spell.



Are you the kind of woman who gets a thrill by keeping my belongings? Do you feel more important when my children call you mother? You seem too nice for that to be your position... and yet, you say I'm not welcome to retrieve my possessions? That's what I was told.. but I've oft been lied to.

Or do you partake in his joy of suffering and suppressing me. 

In either direction, I've been found wanting without ever having spoken.



I grieve that the price was so high and my value - our value-  so low.



I grieve learning that patterns are more real than promises.



Truth seldom rolls in gentle, but she will not be denied.



I grieve being foolish, for believing new love could grow in the soils of old revenge.



Chad.



There is grief over being maligned. Over truths that remain suppressed.



Elphaba.



I grieve ongoing deception and the unaware extras in a show being put on for my sake alone.



Who sends their ex-wife pictures of himself kissing his new wife? A man who needs her to see...



I grieve that I cannot speak the truth without disturbing someone else's day at sea.



... something to do with vital honesty.



I grieve.

It is natural and fitting to do so.

For what I have lost, for hard lessons won, for things that will never now be. 

But I do not grieve his finding you, 

only my loss of me.  

crucifixions

If your aim is to be Christ to the world... or even to just one soul... do not be surprised at your own crucifixion.

You Are Here: --> acceptance

D--> A--> B--> D--> Acceptance -->H

Next Up: Hope

Dear Three: To The Woman Dating My Husband

Dear Three,



Hi, I'm Deuce. We haven't met yet, but we will.

I've known about you long before auditions began.

And I've always told him I aim to be your friend.

There are children involved, after all.



You are no doubt lovely, and gentle and kind.

He has top-shelf taste though his budget is sometimes inflated.

He says he is going to wife you soon; very, very soon he tells me.

Perhaps sometime in early October,

when my birthday rolls around.



I think he intends that to stun and sting.

But I am already quite numb from the earlier blows.



Though we are not exactly divorced yet, I tried that whole kinstugi thing.

The gold we found in Rome's mountains could not heal or seal us, and all the King's horses and Prince Simon's men, couldn't put us back together again.

It takes both sides holding their broken parts, together.



While I must note the ease with which two decades have been discarded, it is only a reminder for myself.

You must not read into my tone a longing or desire to change this tide.

To call him back to my side.



We don't crash onto such shores without first losing a battle with the raging sea.

This letter is simply a note of welcome, a word of warning, if needed.



Have you met Ace, yet ?

I would call her One, but he often said "I've got to look out for number One" when referring to himself and his life's affairs. I believe you will find this to be one of the most accurate statements of all .



There was a time we were not permitted to speak of Ace, nor the son she bore him in their youth.

You'll find she is nice, and lovely and gentle and kind...



More in common than you'll realize at first.

There will be differences, but more-so, similarities.



In the beginning, she offered a similar courtesy to me, though she was more brief and to the point:

"He's a liar and I don't care who he dates" she said.



She was finished then as I am now.

He leaves you no choice but to be.

You'll see, eventually.



I know stories will differ, mileage will vary.

Even now, he would have me believe his own fanciful versions of the story we were both there for, assigning himself roles of both victim and hero, while I am cast as villain.



Some days, he is nearly successful at convincing even me.

If I hadn't seen his fingerprints wrapped around young throats for myself, or if I could forget that night in Kentucky, my own breath obstructed as he carried me down our hall by my head, almost he'd persuade even me.



He recently shared with our youngest daughter during visitation, a version where I set out in search of some love, new.

"I didn't do this," he told her  "it was your mom who left me."



She is young, but not too young to remember the yelling and the fear he doused our home in, the struck match of grabbed throats and the hold-your-breath encounters when he wasn't very kind.



She remembers the Christmas tree, sailing down the stairs and the splinters of wood when he killed that dining room chair.

After all, it wasn't even that long ago.

She remembers him telling us all to go... and stay the heck gone, too.



He likes to say he hopes I find what I was looking for.

I was looking for safety and an end to the anger, to the constant battling our home had become.

I didn't find it and I don't walk away feeling his best was done by me.



Still, I wish you both the best and all the happiness that may be had under such circumstances.



May this third time be his charm.

shattered

It was meant to be one of those poetic, possibly romantic gestures.



We were celebrating two decades of life together. There had been some brokenness along the way to be sure, but we had survived, persevered and even as recently as this very trip, chosen each other once more.



A few months prior, in a fit of anger, he had taken off his wedding band and set it on the hotel dresser where we were arguing staying before driving himself to the lake.



True to the well-worn pattern, he drew near once the mood had lifted and wanted his ring back, but it had been indefinitely misplaced by then.



We talked of getting rings tattooed.

But he couldn't mark up his body, he said.



Instead, he said he ordered an identical ring to the one he removed. It was coming in the mail, any day now, he said.



I found out later they don't make that ring anymore.

He had not placed an order, but I am sure that he meant to.



Back to the future-past, where we find ourselves in Orlando (Lake Buena Vista to be exact), celebrating twenty years of a continuously renewed subscription.

I purposed to draw another circle around my chosen-again one and headed down to the gift shop.



I chose the shiny black ring.

Some because it mimicked a tattoo and some because of the darkness we had seen.

We always tried to work those quirky little traditional markers into our anniversary gifts.

When we marked 11, it was steel. On our anniversary date, I ducked into a cobbler's shop and asked for two steel nails.



For 15, it was a tiny clay Krystal burger, with Swarovski crystal onions.

Twenty can be marked with china and platinum.





 I had seen the picture online that we have all at some point re-posted about kinstugi and the beauty of sealing broken things with gold. You know the one:

I thought I would do is this: break a china bowl, seal the cracks in "platinum gold" and place his new ring inside.



So I took a purchased china bowl into the bathroom of 'our' Embassy Suites and  dropped it on the floor.

It didn't break the first few times. I'm not really sure how many times I dropped it before it broke into four distinct pieces.



Perfect.



I trimmed the brokenness in platinum gold paint.

I sealed it together with E6000 (That stuff is really amazing!)

Or I attempted to. It would hold together, until it wouldn't.(Okay, somewhat amazing.)

I used the hairdryer to try and seal it faster, firmer.

I tried to seal it from the inside.

I tried to seal it from the outside.

I tried from both directions. 

I tried to seal it with the paint.



The bowl would not be fixed.



Lesson:

Some shattered bowls stay broken. 



As Paul Harvey would have us do, I bring the story now to rest.



I threw the bowl away and thought of something else to finish the gift with meaning and metaphor.



We put the children to bed and had dinner in the lobby restaurant just below.

I gave him the ring (which he would remove again a short while later)

And the lyrics to a song:

"...Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete

Could we just be broken together?

If you can bring your shattered dreams and I'll bring mine

Could healing still be spoken and save us?


The only way we'll last forever is broken together..." 

But in July, I realized it was time to let the broken bowl be broken.

 

The song, like me, means well but is mistaken.

You absolutely can last forever, broken but not together.

With broken shards you can sever ties, shatter vows and gild your lies.

New bowls are cheap and easy had,

Swipe left for paper, plastic, diamond-clad.

Broken bowls can't hold things, like cereal or wedding rings.

But pieces can be moved about, rearranged and mired in grout

Now I am mosaic.

Early Release

As if we had memorized a script, came the request from one who had called himself beloved:

"Release me?"



We, the children and I, had just listened to the recording where Neil Gaiman read 'A Christmas Carol' at NYC Public Library and we had begun to listen to an audio drama of the same story.



So, the scene where Belle releases Ebenezer was fresh in our minds.



But listen, it has never been far from mine.



I should mention we've been traveling down the crooked alley of divorce for at least a half a mile. We are closer to the end of that passage than the day he filed his intent...



Best Man and Maid of Honor replaced now with attorneys on either side.



The Reverend who married us in his backyard and bumbled through the vows  replaced by a judge,  honorable and wise.



There is no music, but the courtroom's bailiff has a delightful sense of humor and keeps things running smoothly. She tells us when to sit and stand and speak.



We meet in courtroom 2B, inviting metaphors about 'Not 2B' at your leisure.



Together, we and our witnesses have taken new oaths, oaths to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth unless it will land us in debtor's prison or at the mercy of paying alimony. Then we have apparently decided to 'posture' our way through. Well, he has.



But listen, this has always been his way.



From what must there be release? I cannot speed up judicial proceedings, nor did I set them into motion.

My hope for the return of a friend both kind and gentle was pulled from my grasp at his own angry, insistent command.



"So, do I have your permission?" he asked me two weeks past.



Rest easy, my old beloved, those aren't my chains you wear.

I wear the chain I forged in life,' replied the Ghost. `I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?' 

Scrooge trembled more and more. 

`Or would you know,' pursued the Ghost, `the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!' 

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing. 

`Jacob,' he said, imploringly. `Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!' 

`I have none to give,' the Ghost replied. `It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men...

And so I sent Belle's reply as my own:

For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past. 

`It matters little,' she said, softly. `To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.' 

`What Idol has displaced you?' he rejoined.

 `A golden one.'Have I ever sought release?'`In words. No. Never.'`In what, then?'`In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,' said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him;' tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now. Ah, no.' 

He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle,' You think not.' 

`I would gladly think otherwise if I could,' she answered, `Heaven knows. When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl -- you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow. I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were. 

He was about to speak; but with her head turned from him, she resumed.`You may -- the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will -- have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen.' 

She left him, and they parted.

And being given this release, he thanked me, said he had needed just this freedom from me and before he turned to go, offered me first place in line for his newly available heart.



Lucky me, but I declined, for he is a free man and I must stay to bury these vows.

Besides, I am not sure he would be able to handle my ex - that man is truly a work of arts.

Twelve Steps

I pulled through the parking space so that the rusted front bumper on my ancient 4x4 lined up with the shiny tail lights of various newer model sedans. Swim against the flow, indeed.



I  lingered in the car, checking my reflection in the visor mirror and stalling with my phone, as if the calls I receive are ever not Luis from Indonesia wanting to speak with me about my cable rates or Carmella from "Chicago" congratulating me on winning -again!-  the vacation package of a lifetime.



Nice folks, Carmella and Luis.  I always look forward to our chats.



There were no new messages since I had put the car in motion three blocks prior, so I shut off the ignition and climbed out into the bleak midwinter. The sun had not shown up today, and the gray blanket of clouds keeping it hidden offered no warmth.



The drizzle that had been dampening the town's spirit all day quickly dissolved my cloak of warmth from the car's heater.



My approach to the double glass doors was heralded in a crunchy staccato rhythm by shoes that had started pinching the minute I put them on. The mist began to clump, rolling large cold raindrops over my uncovered head and down the back of my neck.



I quickened my pace towards what I hoped was a well insulated, centrally-heated building.

It was a not-for-profit organization, so there was no guarantee that comfort could be afforded. It was also an old building, so even if comfort could be afforded, there was no guarantee City Code Enforcement would  permit it.



Our hopes are met in a thousand tiny ways each day without us stopping once to acknowledge how disappointed we are not.



The warmth behind the doors pulled me in and began to huff warmth on my fingers and toes , my goose-fleshed neck and the tip of my nose.



~::~



One by one, they introduced themselves.



Clockwise, and one-by-one, the semi-circle shared their struggles with various '-isms' in a slow wave that was to culminate and crash with me at the end of the line. Whether liquid, powdered or pixelated, everyone seemed to be on a first name basis with the master who held their chains. They described dances with temptation, moments of will power and flashes of regret. The immense struggle of 14 different lifetimes, and all since last week's meeting. I was weary on their behalf.



My turn arrived, as I had been anticipating since I'd left my house an hour and a half before.



I cleared my throat and feebly started "My name is... well, my name was... I mean, I guess you don't need to know that, my name is Luellen. Most folks call me Lu."



You've probably seen in movies how the next line is supposed to be "...and I am an alcoholic" to which the circle is supposed to reply "Hello, Lu"



But I did't name my vice and the only thing that met my introduction was the longest two seconds of silence I can remember inhabiting in all my 43 years. By design, that silence encourages you to keep talking, to fill it up so you can sit back down... so I continued "...I'm not an alcoholic and I've never used drugs. I came here because I really need some friends and thought you guys may not be a bad place to start."



I didn't sit back down because I had not stood up, which I now realized would have been a good idea because there was no visible way to indicate that I had said all I cared to. Being on the end of the semi-circle gave me no where to look in expectation for another speaker to begin.



~::~



....maybe I will continue this sometime...