Your bliss can guide you to that transcendent mystery, because bliss is the welling up of the energy of the natural wisdom within you. So when the bliss cuts off, you know that you've cut off the welling up; find it again. One works out one's own myth that way.
[Pathways to Bliss] by [Joseph Campbell]
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
[The Diary of Anaïs Nin] Volume Three (1939-1944) by [Anaïs Nin]
Darling I die inside it's true
Tomorrow I'll hide my love from you
It's like I always tend to do
[What Can I Do For You?] by [Illinois ]
The streets reverberated with anticipation through my early morning drive downtown. The night before had seen me tossing impatiently, the prescient taste of bittersweet resolution just out of tongue's reach, tantalizing me from the shoe box in my office. By the time the June sunshine had turned my office light from foggy blue to hazy yellow, I was already almost done sifting through the very last breaths of heartsick love.
I read three times Daniel's cruel plea for separation. I remember the first time I read the letter, years ago, sitting in front of the beige monitor and blinking dumbly at each razor-sharp truth. It seemed to be written in a language hard for me to decrypt, perhaps because it was stripped of any respect for my feelings. Gone were the vows to make things happen, no matter what. Our past efforts to bring Daniel's film-career to Oregon evaporated – erased from our history. Instead, Daniel's plea was [a cheater's armoury], its fundamental message quite clear: Let me go.
I choked on regret for that moment in time I chose to give my devoted heart to a repenting bad boy. Was I really so shallow as to believe in a love profound enough to make a devil turn saintly? Did Daniel's handsomeness – with that accent of his, and that devilish charm – so intoxicate me that I believed in the impossible and endured heartache just to call him mine? I was stirred sour by the words that led to the end of us. I had felt him struggling with the separation. I had asked Daniel to confide in me, his partner, about the beautiful, feminine faces staring into him, so full of motivations. And in response he flung at me an ignorant speech on the overpowering pull of his libido, cravings I could not geographically satisfy, and the natural affinity of The Actor to fall in love.
His "we hardly knew each other" statement instantly obliterated the hundreds of hours we'd spent online laughing and fucking, and falling in love. The cheesy expressions of love shared through music, and the sequences of events which had brought our paths together became something insignificant and random. A worthless coincidence had inflated itself in my silly eyes, that was all. The darkest part of me can see the outline of a deeper hiss between the words in Daniel's letter, one which calls me foolish for believing wholeheartedly in something that was obviously nothing but fantasy.
Everything Daniel had ever said or done to me was now suspect. In an uncharacteristically swift four hours, I sent Daniel a response. It was a relative record for me, a person who crafts and molds and situates the sequence of each word weighted by nuance and definition until its conveyance can never, ever be misunderstood. But I was misunderstood, and I had misunderstood.
After sufficiently berating him in my reply, I gave Daniel his wish and let him go:
....Let's not blame this on the kind of person you are, the acting or your libido. The truth is you don't want me bad enough and aren't willing to do what it takes to keep us alive. And that is your choice.
So I give up, too. You are free. Good luck.
Shell
I told the two women in my life – Lily and Becca – by CCing them my answer to Daniel. Lily captured her feelings about my [empty] news with a reply using Ray LaMontagne lyrics:
Well I looked my demons in the eyes, and bared my chest and said, "Do your best to destroy me. See I've been to hell and back so many times, I must admit you kind of bore me..."
Fuck the demons in us all.
I love you.
Becca, in turn, sent a message to Daniel, asking if he realized what he was giving up, saying "Please make sure you realize what you are giving up if you decide not to pursue Shelley. You seemed quite blissful with her during our webcam chatting session in November, and you deserve that kind of happiness. So does she." There was no reply.
I began an earnest effort to keep myself continuously numb. This was possible thanks to a flask of gin which followed me everywhere. To feel the full crushing weight of this convoluted betrayal as if it were a ridiculous scheme – a sin in the incompatibility of perceptions – would deny me the genuine bliss and goodness which had grown out of my "imaginary" love. Accepting the betrayal at face value would bring with it the idea that my plans to achieve success as a writer were also just folly. How could I face that?
I turned away from my Danish lover by severing all connections to him in my digital life. The unfortunate truth of my place in his heart left me raw and bleeding, and unable to endure the jovial holiday season. I attended none of the parties listed in my calendar. I cancelled Christmas, and sent Ryan away to celebrate in Washington with his father.
"I don't want to leave you," Ryan said, concerned. He was crying softly, pleading. We were both crying. My sadness was suffocating him, too.
We were sitting on our new, cheapish [Ikea couch], bought with the last of Pops' death money, waiting for Ryan's dad to come get him. The tree was up and decorated. A modest amount of gifts lay underneath it. It was a couple of days before Christmas, and just a few days after I'd given Daniel his freedom.
I was barely holding it together and fooling no one, least of all my son. And things that I had conquered and made painless –like looking Ryan's father calmly in the eye when discussing matters regarding our son – again became an insurmountable tasks. I remember that all that day my broken finger, my reminder of self-worth, throbbed with each squeezing tick, bulging with each painful tock.
My face, with its pink, swollen eyelids and dark expression, said it all. I needed time and space for a frantic release of grief and defeat. I needed to fall apart, to cry my eyes out and let the snot flow, I needed to wail [You won]! Are you happy? at the lessons I still hadn't learned.
For the first time in my life I had given complete pieces of myself to a man; I needed to figure out how to put the pieces back, how to re-create the bliss that the Viking had given me when he was now no longer a part of my life. I needed to start the ugly business of putting myself back together again. I did all that once Ryan left, but until I was alone, I did my best to pretend I wasn't hemorrhagic inside.
The arrival of my Christmas gifts in [Denmark] finally nudged Daniel into an email response to my charges sent three days earlier:
I dunno what to say - I didn't want this - never.
It wasn't just the physical thing, was the lack of all the other things too - all the things about you not communicated through a damn webcam. A poor substitute for the real thing yes, and I found myself hurting for more than just that.
When you say I'm not willing to do what it takes to keep us alive you're only partly right, cause I do want it, but it's a struggle. A struggle I'm not accustomed to and obviously cannot keep up because of the void it leaves in my heart afterwards.
I cried today when I got your package. So much effort you put in it. So much love.
Do you want me to send it back? I can hardly accept it sweetheart.
Daniel had resumed his expressions of kindness towards me. Abject sorrow pierced my fragile acquiescence with the poisonous hope of his use of present tense: I do want it. And, on Christmas Eve – the traditional day of present-opening in Denmark – a text message came. At the end of it, a digital kiss:
Everyone loved their gifts. Merry Christmas, baby. I miss you :*
My reply was curt and loveless:
I'm so glad. Happy holidays. Take care.
Was his love real or not? The darkness of my thoughts seeped into each day and rolled into the nights. My hours were spent in an alcoholic blur and involuntary, guttural sobbing. The nights were sleepless, motionless moonlit healing baths of barely-whispered mantras: This too shall pass.
Then, 20 days after the implosion of my supernova love affair, Daniel appeared logged into his instant messenger while I was at work.
Me: he lives
Lily: he's online?
Me: apparently
Lily: I just sent him a message.
"Go on. [Talk] to her."
I didn't know what to say to Daniel. I continued to mourn, to weep, and I knew I still had days and days of intense heartache left to endure. I had fallen deeply in love with a Viking – a real love – but what was there to say that would make things better? I missed him, I missed my partner and the feeling of knowing that your love won't leave you, no matter what. But mine had left me – if he had been mine at all – and in the most brutal of ways.
Daniel: hi Shel
Me: Hi
Daniel: the inevitable 'how've you been' and not requiring a long answer if you don't want to - I understand if you're still upset and hurt by me...
Me: I miss my boyfriend and dont understand why this happened.
What happened?
Daniel: I had to. As you noticed I wasn't good at this. I wanted it to happen between us but the strain of being seperated was too much for me. I wasn't happy deep inside. I miss you too
Me: what happened to make you not happy with me anymore? able to stay content and hold on until spring, when we could meet again? It's only a couple of months.
Daniel: it wasn't you I wasn't happy with. Was the emptiness. Words and cam didn't cut it. Content? I don't know - I think content just isn't good enough. I'm sorry Shell
Me: So you dont ever want to see me again, work towards our goals together to spend months together at a time, like we planned?
------13 minutes------
Me: I get it. The answer is no, but you don't want to keep hurting me?
Daniel: I'd like to see you again, but the decision I took took a long time realising for me - and took a great deal of sleepless nights and sadness. I don't wanna hurt either of us.
it was the only sane thing to do for me. I know that sounds harsh and inconsiderate, and believe me, I took a long time writing that email to you. Started on it several times.
And not a day goes by when I don't miss you, but at least I sleep better.
I couldn't stand being miserable and letting you down all the time - standing up for myself when I didn't do this and that - as you rightfully pointed out - I was no good at it.
so...
Me: are you still in love with me?
I hear what you are saying
I knew all of this as you were struggling
but you wouldnt talk to me about it or options or expectations
you said once you just needed to know the terms and you would do it, so why couldnt you share your terms to see if I could do it?
so...
are you still in love, or is it old love?
Daniel: what would the idea of that question be? I doesn't change anything - I'd only embarass myself or you.
I miss you every day - think of you daily - you figure it out
"...you figure it out..."
This rankled, this responsibility to root out the truth in words in a language I could no longer translate. The remark was cold and lacking; it is the catalyst that once again set me back on my path to bliss, a road built on the stardust of a grand love whose death I exploited.
Me: what is it you want? a friendship? a muse? to go back to being lovers? what place do you want for me in your life?
Daniel: you're one of the greatest and coolest persons I know. You have abilities - skills - and wit to match my own. Going back to being lovers would be confusing for me - for the both of us - muse, inspiration, friendship doesn't come cheap these days - but we had it - in abundance. I'd like that cause I respect you and all your craziness. Who'd ever say no to a friend like you?
but you're perhaps not able to, willing to or ready to - and I'd understand that.
of course
------6 minutes------
Me: I can give you that. but you must know that what keeps me there is that I am in love with you. I hope you someday want to be mine again. Thats just not going to go away, no matter who I'm screwing or youre screwing. thats why I asked if you were in love with me still. I still believe in us, even if you dont. And that will be in the background as you move through a life I'm not a part of anymore. Can you do that, knowing I am still wishing for you to return to me?
Daniel: yes I believe I can.
If that's the way I can still have a part of you - fo shizzle I can.
Me: Do you think about coming here still? To see me and Lily?
Daniel: yes I do. we both do. Soren and I.
Me: is that just a dream or can you make it happen?
Daniel: we'll make it happen alright. At some point. We need financing from a production company - but we have ideas as to where and how to apply.
Me: good
You will need to lead this relationship
Daniel: ok
I have some making up to do
Me: can I be your myspace friend again?
Daniel: I was torn apart finding out you left me
facebook too - but then again - I know why of course
so yes - I'd like that
please?
Me: can I be your number one friend?
Daniel: yes
Me: then make it happen
Daniel: I will - thank you
for this
Me: I need to make sure that you know my main motivation in this is that Im still in love. you know this, right?
Daniel: I know this - yes
Me: And you know while you know I'm still in love with you, I do not know one way or the other, for you. be kind with me about that fact, that I'm dealing with that, yes?
Daniel: yes
have to pop down for cigarettes - brb
Me: I have a lunch meeting, be back in 30
------22 minutes------
Daniel: I have to catch you later - I'm beat. But happy.
He was happy, in that way the Danish were happy. He was sleeping again, now that he was free of my restraints. He wouldn't tell me if he still loved me. Our words mortally punctured me like the [friendly fire] of a former ally. I thought it ridiculous that he wanted to be my friend, a cliche that smacked of formality, and that he agreed to lead the friendship was a joke.
I remember my desire to make him understand that any future interaction between us would be tainted with my yearning to be with him still. Yet, under all of these impossible conditions, Daniel agreed to endure in the name of our epic love. I was clearly asking a lot from a Danish bad-boy who had failed every one of the women who had fallen in love with him before. But from behind the curtain of the Internet, even the most devilish can play the saint for at least a little while. In Daniel's case, the ruse of our relationship lasted just over five months.
After a couple of weeks of silence, after promising to lead our friendship, Daniel changed his relationship status on MySpace to "in a relationship" and deleted me from his profile. He left blatant tracks of broken fidelity all over the Internet. I sent him a text message:
You're in a relationship?
Daniel replied almost immediately:
Yes. Please be respectful of that.
Much later I found out that he had started dating the actress he had helped to get a job on the movie that had taken him out of town on weekends. He had sent me photos of her.
From there I sunk further into the booze, and into words. At first I started to write a letter to Daniel, which I never planned to send and I never finished because of a lack of words that would make any difference. The message did not progress further than this:
I’m tired.
I’ve spent some time thinking over the prospect of being a friend to you, and what that really means.
I told you I was still in love with you, but I think it’s more accurate to say that I am still in love with the guy who believed in us. I believe that’s the guy you want to be someday, but aren’t yet. You’re too busy doubting yourself and making excuses about what you’re capable of.
But you don’t believe in us, so the guy I’m in love with is not you. You’re the person who brought about the end of us in such a hurtful, fucked up way. When you say you respect me, that you tried your best, I don’t believe you. So, what is the truth, and what is the fantasy?
The letter to Daniel a complete failure to convey my message, I turned away from him and lit some words on fire for me instead. Becca, who was working on her Doctorate at the time, began to meet with me weekly for writing sessions. We had serious goals, which we both kept. Becca wanted to walk down the aisle with her fellow classmates, and I wanted to try my hand at writing for a living. Did I have what it takes to follow my bliss without the man who introduced me to its untouchable possibilities? There was only one way to find out.
It was a gradual process. I had no focussed genre, or a solid plan, or any connected acquaintances. I simply surrendered myself to a compulsion to document feelings, sights, scents, scenes – all the complexities and symbols in life that make up a story. I scrawled snippets of scenes in small notebooks. I wrote long-form or disjointed narratives on the computer. Scribbled phrases which captured the nuances of my complicated hurt on post-it notes littered around the house, in my purse, and at my office. The embers of my future bliss glinted.
And now, today, I find myself drenched in electric memories and sunlight as I lie on the plush purple sofa which is much too large for my tiny downtown Portland office. I have reached the end of my story. I've explored the rough and smooth parts as if for the first time, seeking my final reconciliation. I lay here imagining my love's bliss as a perpetually roaring [July flame] which burned so bright that its heat could be felt from 5,000 miles away. The heat then slowly reduces to a faintly crackling ember, fueled solely by my combustible pride and somber heart. It is my essence alone in that steadfast coal pulsating weakly, alive, to the beat of the hum of energy in the air which I breath now. Each breath in makes the light receed, barely ignited. Each breath out coaxes it to burn hotter, more brilliantly blissful than ever before.
Warm, toothsome smells waffle through the sliver of spaces around my windows. The vendors on the waterfront are frying elephant ears; the vendors on the street are steaming soft pretzels sprinkled with rock salt. My closed eyelids diffuse the light rays and give the scenes I'm recalling an aged quality, as if a century had passed since they first unfolded, instead of only years. There is a seep into a deeper existential sympathy where I'm both connected and disconnected to essential life. Life is vibrating with breaths taken and lost.
I hear a low undercurrent of green [Willamette River] waves swelling and retracting. The ebb and flow of murmurs on the Saturday morning sidewalks is punctuated by the squeals of the young. A siren calls for quiet order.
All at once, thundering echoes flood the spaces between the buildings downtown. My office windows rattle to the trilling of pace drums leading the patter of many feet stepping mostly in unison. Horseshoes clop on cobblestones. A shrilling whistle prompts synchronized shouts. Traces of a rousing horn section blast the chorus to Michael Jackson's [Thriller] in the distance. Spontaneous cheers erupt and trail into happy laughter. It's the Grand Floral Parade in full march, one of the biggest of several parades planned each year for the annual [Rose Festival] A celebration of the burst of fragrant spring and the heritage of the Pacific Northwest that lasts several weeks. An essential Portland, Oregon experience, the festival includes carnival rides on the waterfront, a fireworks show, rose-growing competitions, pie-offs, auctions, auto and horse racing, crowned, teenage Queens and Princesses, costumed marathons, a music fest, and much more.
I peek outside. On the sidewalk between bodies sitting in chairs and on blankets I see the outlines where families had staked their [parade spot] the day or two before with tape and a cheap plastic chair, sometimes camping out overnight for a prime spot. The sidewalk crawls with life forces.
In the street, five rows of four teenage boys are swinging, opening, and collapsing aluminum lawn chairs in synchronized compliment to their manly grunts, a drill team parade entry. Coming up next are the [Royal Rosarians] tipping their hats to the crowd in their off-white suits and fluttering capes, after that a dance team from an out-of-state school, and after that are the [Pendleton Round-Up Court], the Queen and her Princesses, who look almost as beautiful as their coiffed horses. Just out of sight, behind the horses, is a colorful clown who is pulling a wagon with a scoop for shoveling shit. It's a wonderful sight on a beautiful day.
Sitting on the old-fashioned wooden desk with pull-out side tables my laptop purrs. My email is open to a message that I've kept in my inbox for years now, for those moments when a reminder that I am loved and lucky is most needed. And on this day of overwhelming significance, with the city vibrating with the currency of heart and soul and my ears booming with festive noises, I read it again to bolster my resolution and to celebrate my freedom from regrets:
Beloved Eldest,
Your little sister Ruthie died last night in hospice of liver cirrhosis due to complications to Hepatitis C. She was 34 years old. She was surrounded by her mother, my best friend Caroline, and the ghosts of our mothers who lead her to Our Heavenly Father. It was a peaceful experience.
It was good to have my daughter back again, Shell. You know, when her baby was small, Ruthie and Mark lived in Boise at the same time I did. Ruthie would come and stay with me when Mark wanted her out. Sometimes for a month at a time we would work on her parenting skills and her coping skills. She began to confide in me, a little at a time, about all of the bad things she'd ever done. All of them. It was if she was trying to find the right bad thing about her that would make me stop loving her. I will never stop loving my girls, no matter what.
When Ruthie and Mark moved to Las Vegas she always called me when Mark was out of control, to tell me what was going on. She called a lot. Mark would scream at her, "Why are you telling her that? It's none of her business!" and Ruthie would scream back, "Because she's my mother, and I tell her everything." And she did, too.
By the time Mark brought Ruthie here to live in [Ontario] she was in rough shape. She arrived without medication because Mark refused get it for her. Ruthie's abdomen had accumulated so much toxic fluid that she couldn't get behind the wheel of her car to drive to the hospital. Worse, Mark beat her badly a couple of days before coming here. He punched her in the belly, knocked her down, and forced himself to vomit in her face. I know this, because he bragged about it.
But Ruthie's last few weeks were peaceful after she stabilized. Her brain was already damaged from the toxins in her bloodstream. She was quite insane by the time she returned to me, but pleasantly so. She slowly deteriorated in the best possible way: without pain or cognitive realization.
Ruthie's priority was to take care of me. Isn't that dear? She hid plastic grocery bags throughout my apartment with unlikely objects, like a pair of socks and a plastic cup "in case of the aliens." She was also awfully concerned about medical appointments she believed I missed. "I've made several apppointments for you, Mom. You have got to get that vasectomy."
Another time Ruthie spent quite a bit of time lecturing me on my bad customer service. She was a Burger King shift manager again, and I was a new employee who was not keeping the condiments and napkin dispensers full. She was kind, but stern: "It's our job to take care of our customers. Never make the customers wait for napkins and mayo!"
One time she saw a pack of her smokes on the floor and admonished me for "starting to smoke at your age." She forgot that she smoked, that they were her cigarettes. She also stopped drinking. Five months before she died, Ruthie finally lost the desire for alcohol and tobacco because her mind forgot it gave her pleasure.
My Beloved, Ruthie is finally at peace. I know you struggled with your devotion to her Earthly body, with the hurt she brought and took. But now her body is Heavenly, and divine. She no longer yearns too much. She is finally alive.
But you are still here, on Earth, where I love you no matter what. Imbued in every digital element of this email is mother-belief. Your mother believes in you. Crawl inside this email and feel your mother's love.
Mom
Outside my window sirens blast a warning to parade watchers to clear the streets. The drone of voices gradually wavers in pitch and fades away. Rumbling cleaning trucks with jet-sprays and huge, spinning wire scrubbers crawl the streets to remove all evidence of what was, just moments ago, the collection of several lifetimes.
On street-level I catch the cleaning trucks rounding the corner, leaving the roads wet and clear in front of me and ready again for traveling to a new destination. I just stand there for a moment, feeling the electric imprints of the past flicker throughout me. I'm enjoying this moment of achievement, of telling the story of my digital love one final time. But, like the streets that still reverberate with beat of a marching band's pace drum, my journey will forever resonate from the time, once upon a time, that I gave my heart to a Danish man.
SAVE THE DATE! The Epilogue, the last piece of The Miracle in July, will be published July 6, 2010.
Never miss a segment by subscribing to this story by [web feed] or [email]. If you enjoy The Miracle in July, please consider making a [donation] to help the author follow her bliss.
The Miracle in July is the work of author Michelle Anderson.
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