interlude 4

interlude 4

She sat there,  Why is it THAT moment that sticks in my mind? Certain memories were so burned in her that she would never forget them and yet the ones she wanted to remember faded much too easily.  She sat in the courthouse and what seemed like an eternity was merely a few moments.  “Guilty” they had said.  She breathed. The hard benches reminded her more of church rather than a courthouse. The wooden stake in her knee high boot dug into her ankle.  At least that comforted her.  God she thought, how the hell did I get here?  Her mind began to wander.

Christmas break was over and school had started again.  Her brother was still missing and she was getting worried. The worry and events leading up to that day were hazy but he was missing and she was scared. She was sitting at the lunch table in the crowded lunchroom facing the front doors of the school.  She was eating and laughing and talking with people when she looked up and saw her father charging in. That was the memory that stayed with her: her father charging in and the realization that her father was not a man to be trifled with.  

He was a southern Baptist minister. He was big and obviously used to holding his audience captivated. He was the kind of man that spoke of and with the Divine and he did so with authority and, therefore, wasn’t very interested in the authority of the world. He marched past school officials looking over the vast amount students in the lunchroom looking for his daughter. Looking for her. There was clearly something wrong.

She stood silently, her friends looking at her. In that moment she knew.  She knew.  She held herself together and walked to the front, as he had not yet spotted her.  His eyes said it all. The pain and fear and need to find his daughter was so pervasive she could feel it.  He needed his baby girl and she knew it. She walked slowly not wanting to hear the reality any sooner than she had to and then he saw her when she was only a few feet from him.  Her mother was just behind him and she stepped forward wrapping her arms around her. Her mother had been crying.

“Oh God, he’s dead isn’t he? He’s dead”, she said

Her mother held her tight and her father right next to her tried to catch her as she began to collapse. A few feet from where they stood was a bench and her parents managed to get her there as she sank. Her reality of innocence and peace and faith and God and all that she knew was evaporating from her soul in that moment. It was as if in one instant the entire world had changed. She sat there on that bench knowing what her mother was about to say while the noise of the lunchroom continued.  There were so many students that few had realized what was happening.  The world continued to turn and go on and she couldn’t make sense of it.  She could not grasp it.

“They found him Hannah.  He’s gone. Aaron is gone.”

“Someone killed him mamma?”

“Yea baby someone killed him.”

In the haze she hadn’t seen the school administration people approaching asking them to come into the office and to come out of the hall so as not to attract attention.  They were walked into the office where she sat she couldn’t remember now if she was in shock or sobbing but she remembered the cool leather chair against her back.

She sat there a few moments and then, “I need my stuff out of my classroom. I left my book bag and my stuff in my classroom.”

“We’ll send someone to get it.”

The moments after that were hazy. Someone got her stuff and a few friends at her lunch table who saw what happened had followed her into the office to see what was going on. She remembered Jess being there and hugging her… or was it Rei? Yea it was Rei. Or maybe it wasn't? She didn’t remember anymore. The memory faded there.

Her mother’s voice reached her then, nudging her out of the courtroom bench. It brought her to the present. The courtroom and the fluorescent lighting and the news cameras outside were real to her again. That one memory of her father charging in that day was so very real. She couldn’t grasp why all the memories around it were so hazy.  She stood and gave a brief smile at the jury not sure or not if she was relieved that she would not need to use the wooden knife or not. She had carved it out of her mother’s wooden giraffe letter opener weeks ago. She fully planned on using it on the defendant who had killed her brother had he not been convicted. She walked out of the room past the metal detectors surrounded by people she barely knew and didn’t care about.  

              Her other brother was near and in the wheelchair too sick to walk, her father an emotional mess beside her, and her mother behind her. She wished she felt happy about the verdict. She didn’t though. She couldn’t. It was the first time she had remembered feeling absolutely nothing.  Her thoughts shifted, Mark really likes me. Maybe we can make out later or something. She sighed. That would be nice. 

Chapter 4: Shawn

Chapter 4

Shawn

This is not so much a story as it is an emotional outpouring. It was written the summer of 2011 shortly after arriving in Thailand. I was heart broken and overwhelmed. It was impossible to write his story then or what impact he had on my recovery at that point. Perhaps I will write it later. 

         

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

           It breaks my heart that you’re gone from me.  It breaks my heart to know that you were so lovely and for a moment you were mine and I was yours and now it’s no longer.  For a moment I thought I could hold onto eternity with you.  It was brilliant.  And then that flame burnt through as if it was never there to begin with.  Perhaps I will not always love you or even compare future men to you… but I will always remember that spark that second night when I dropped the walls around my heart and let you in with grace and ease.  For a moment I was yours and I was wrapped up in you.  But you made your choices and you let the flame die and even though I hate it, I am moving on.  
           It often still breaks my heart that you’re gone from me.  You were so lovely in those moments.  I cannot love all of you—I am not so hopeless.  But those moments when you held my hand and comforted me in the dark, those moments when you made love to me like no one had before, those moments when you washed my body in the shower—I will love those.  They still make me smile.  I will love those moments but I shall not linger in them.  I will not allow myself to long for them again—they cannot happen again like they once did.  They are dust and dreams and they are gone from me just as you are gone from me.  But I will love them and cherish them the same.  They are mine.  You are not.  I release you from my fantasy and I release me from the cage it created in my heart.  I love you today.  I will not love you soon.  Reality.

 

Interlude 3

interlude 3

She sat on the floor in front of the bed. She sat on the floor and cried silently.  She was naked and she cried.  She wasn’t devastated because she couldn’t feel.  But she was something.

Maybe angry?

She wasn’t sure.  She was devoid of hope on almost every level though and this she knew: death sounded good. Death sounded like heaven on days like these.  She didn’t pray for death.  She didn’t pray at all anymore.  She longed for it.  She hated him more than anything.  She hated that she didn’t know how to leave.  There she was, stuck in that hotel room silently crying while he was passed out on the bed.

She held the glass in her hand.  The rum was still cool even though the ice had melted long ago.  She had held vigil all through the night until the sun had finally started to rise.  Naked and drinking, she forced herself to stay awake during the comedown to keep him from trying to kill himself again.  It was ironic really, because she wished him to die and couldn’t allow herself to let him do it.  Not because she didn’t really want him dead but because she was afraid of the guilt that might consume her if she allowed him to do it, if he actually succeeded.  Not that he would succeed.  He was shitty at doing things right the first time. Or the second time. Or even the third.

The rum had stopped being effective hours ago.  Maybe days ago.  She hadn’t slept in two or three days.  

She let out a sigh.  

He would wake up eventually and the nightmare would start again.  He wouldn’t remember what he did to her in his insane state of being high for days on end.  Even, if by some chance, he knew inside his heart what he had done, he would never allow her to know it.  He wouldn’t allow her to know understanding.  

He was as dead inside as she was.  He made himself the victim too.  They blamed each other for the insanity and rage.  But she knew.  She knew it was his fault that she was here on the floor in that damned hotel room, naked and crying, trying her best to stay awake so he wouldn’t die.

He stirred.  Her heart nearly stopped and she prayed that he wouldn’t wake up.  The panic began to set in.  The anxiety was so overwhelming she couldn’t do it.  She couldn’t handle it.  She started rocking back and forth, unable to stop the comfort reflex. She rocked and threw back the last of the rum into her thirsty mouth as tears streamed down her face.  She wiped the tears and the snot away with the back of her arm

“What the fuck are you doing on the floor?”

She didn’t respond.  She couldn’t.  She just couldn’t.

“What the FUCK are you doing on the god damned floor?!”

She rocked.

He sat up and leaned forward and touched her shoulder with his cold hand and only then was she able to react. It wasn’t quite human; it was more as if she were almost an animal. She let out a wail and dropped the glass that was still in her hand, it thudded to the carpet as she rolled away from his touch still crying, snot dripped down her face. She turned as she pulled away to turn and faced him.  She emitted another wail as she saw his face and met with his eyes.  

His look back was one of confusion.

“Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

She breathed and tried to reconnect with reality. Any reality. She breathed. Finally forcing words out of her mouth.

“You bastard, you god damned bastard. You raped me and you act like nothing happened? You pretend as if I should be fine with it? Like it was nothing?? NOTHING? NOTHING?!” her voice had started low and calm and was escalating into screams of rage almost not even making sense.

“Please” he responded calmly and coolly, “You could have left and you know it.  You didn’t even try to walk away from it.”

Tears kept rolling.  “You were going to kill yourself if I didn’t, you fucked me while I cried no.  I screamed no.  And you kept going.  You would have actually tried to kill yourself too wouldn’t you? WOULDN’T YOU?!”

His face was stoic and completely unresponsive to her anger, “You didn’t have to. God, Hannah you’re so pathetic. PATHETIC. You want to say I raped you when you laid there and let me do it just ‘cause I said I was going to kill myself? You’ve completely gone batshit.”

She couldn’t do it.  She just couldn’t.  Her panic reached into her throat and she began to hyperventilate as she rocked.  She looked around her. The world was spinning and she couldn’t get it to stop.  She dragged her broken body across the floor and saw the rum bottle next to the bathroom door still half full.  He was still talking, calling her names and telling her she was pathetic.  She barely heard.  She grabbed the bottle and crawled on her knees into the bathroom, shut the door behind her and locked it.  She promptly vomited on herself unable to get to the toilet. And then she drank until the bottle was gone and passed out naked, alone, in the dark of that bathroom on the cool tile floor for as long as she could remember.  

In the haze she heard him beating on the door.  It felt like it was in a dream though.  There was nothing in her left to care.  That cool tile floor felt more real than anything else in her existence.  She breathed.  She slept.

Chapter 3: The Woman whoe Loved me Back to Jesus

Chapter 3

Jill

a.k.a

“The woman who loved me back to Jesus”

    I’ve heard it said that one should be able to look back at their life and it read like an amazing novel with twist and turns that could have happened a million different ways.  This is no different.  I had moved to Pennsylvania because my brother lived there with his new-ish wife and it seemed a better option than living with my parents.  So I met Jill at my first meeting out of rehab in northern Bucks County and without that first, quite simple, acquaintanceship my purpose for life and god and living would not have found me the way it did.  A million things had to happen exactly the way it did in order for that moment to happen.  

Jill was my first sponsor in the 12-step program I participate in. She is not a likely woman to end up as a close friend to a girl like me. 14 years my senior, married, a career and a child… when I met her I was unemployed, unable to drive due to a suspended license, single and crazy.  But there it is.  She became my sponsor and stayed that way for only a few months.  “Breaking up” with her as my sponsor was probably the best idea I ever had.  It allowed a friendship to grow that she and I both needed.  

    She was never the kind of woman who would push her faith on someone—it isn’t her way but she is a churchgoer.  Jill is incredibly talented at loving people (or at least loving me) exactly where they stand and never seems to judge.  That love is incredibly attractive and I often wondered where she got it from- I am not the easiest person to love.  Regardless, not having a license myself gave us a chance to get to know each other better.  Jill routinely picked me up every Friday for our meeting and we’d talk all the way there and all the way back.  It was what we did.  Those conversations are really what allowed us to become so close.  We talked about my current boys and insanity and she talked about her husband and raising her kid.  We were in two very different parts of our personal journey and yet we both lived vicariously in the other person’s shoes.  

    The friendship was kind and soft and gentle.  It never swayed from that.  It was consistent.  While other women and friendships and relationships and boys were coming in and out of my life like hurricanes in the ocean, Jill was the island.  She was the safe space that never moved.  Occasionally tides might change her a bit… but she was always the same consistent island in the storms of my early recovery.  This was pivotal.  Without that place of safety I realize now that I could not have held on to my sobriety like I did.  

The relationship was different for me because I never needed Jill.  This lack of a need meant that the serious codependency issues that I was still fighting never really entered the relationship to any significant level.  We could go weeks without speaking and we’d meet up again and it would be as if I’d never left.  She gave me the freedom to be myself and just liked me the way I was.  There was no whirlwind of emotional connection, instead it was full of gentle transitions.  She is the woman I trust most, who’s opinion I hold most dear and she is the woman, when things go bad, that I call first.  It has been that way from my earliest days clean until now.  An inconsistent consistency has always been the best part of this relationship.

The love that Jill had and embraced me with was something that I wanted.  I was attracted to it. I had never had it before and despite her inclination to fight depression or frustration with child rearing she always had an underlying love.  Despite her fears of change, occasional fights with her husband and a past that could still sometimes haunt her that love was always present. I wanted it. I didn’t understand where it came from but I knew that whatever she had was something good and true and I enjoyed every bit of it.

Understand that Jill knew me more than anybody at that point.  She didn’t know all my secrets or even my past but she did know me and she knew what drove me.  She knew where I was in my step work and she knew where and what I wanted to be someday.  Sometime around a year and a half clean I started a third step.  A third step states that “we turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him” and this was something I struggled with.

I grew up the daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher.  Religion, is and was, the very back bone of my childhood.  God was a very black and white being. If you believed that Jesus was your lord and savior then you could be forgiven and you could go to heaven.  If you didn’t believe in Jesus then you would go to hell.  Period.  In a third step I realized that I didn’t believe this anymore but, despite the fact that I didn’t believe it, I still had a very hard time letting this concept go.  I was raised with it and it was ingrained in my psyche from the time I was a small child.  But, the thing was, is, that I didn’t want to believe it anymore.  I didn’t want a God that was so small… but regardless of where my addiction had taken me I still really loved Jesus.  

I just couldn’t believe that some of the friends who saved me time and time and time again since being clean could go to hell just because they didn’t pray to Jesus.  It didn’t make sense to me. So there I was in a third step trying to find the God I knew and loved and rationalize my faith in this Jesus I adored with the literal readings of scripture from my past.  And there was Jill.  Jill was a woman who had been to the depths of addiction just like me and as different as we were the similarities were striking.  After all, we went to the same rehab (though owned by different companies) 14 years apart in Houston Texas—this is just one example of “coincidences”.  

One day, after a rough patch in life, Jill picked me up from work and took me to the park and we just enjoyed the day together.  We were very close on an emotional level and Jill asked me if she could share her testimony with me that she had written for a Christian 12-step group she and a few people at her church were starting up.  I obliged and sitting there listening to this woman pour out her heart, her wrongs, her pain and her anguish all at the feet of Jesus was something I hadn’t experienced in years.  I didn’t just feel Jesus’ presence in that moment—I knew the presence.  I hadn’t experienced it years and years and my walls and my heart and all the questions about God and how He or She really was all just evaporated.  They didn’t matter.  God was there, Jesus was there, and Jill and I were there.  It was all so very real.

It was the moment that I realized that regardless of the rules and regulations on Heaven and Hell that I very much loved Jesus.  I loved the idea that my God was the knight in shining armor I had always dreamed of.  I loved the fact that this particular concept of God had brought my friend and I together and on such an emotionally intimate level.  Whatever way this God sorted out the afterlife was Her business… I was content with the moment I had and the love and joy I felt for the first time in so very long.  In that one pivotal moment Jill had loved me back into the warm embrace of Jesus that I had so desperately longed for.  The concept and understanding of Jesus was very different than that of my childhood but regardless that moment gave me purpose for the rest of my life. The concept and understanding of Jesus would change again in the future, but for that point and purpose in my life, it was what I needed.

Within a few months of that pivotal moment I began really exploring who God was in my life.  I started talking with God and God with me and it was in those earliest days that I remember my faith being pure and genuine.  If God said go… I went.  It was then, when I still wasn’t exactly sure what I believed, that I realized God was calling me to Thailand.  It’s a funny thing knowing that the God of the universe is calling you to be of service to another country around the world when you have no idea what you believe about that God except that he’s pretty rad and he likes you and you like him back.  But there it was.  I trusted the pull and the power and Jill sat back and watched it happen—often thinking I was crazy but enjoying the show regardless.

A lot of people thought my conversations and directions from God were crazy.  Only two people seemed to understand or (at least) hide their real thoughts: my mother and Jill.  They just let me find my way… and find my way I did.  Jill was there so many times when I was going through broken and breaking relationships, through moving to school (and further from her) and finally getting my license and she was there through money problems, physical problems and family problems.  Even though she was often physically far from me at this point in my life she was always close by.  When all else had failed Jill was ever present.

I spent holidays with Jill.  One Thanksgiving and a Christmas.  Her daughter was my favorite kid and her husband never ceased to get on my nerves and point me in the right direction.  Their family was often the peace and escape I needed to gain perspective—and whenever I stayed with them we were in Church on Sunday.  Jill, and her family, provided the example I needed to see what God was in very simple terms.  God was all about consistency.  Jill was all about consistency.  I wanted to be all about consistency.  God was also all about gratitude and God was all about the presence and the power and the belief that regardless of our own understanding of doctrine we could worship together.

After a few years I began seriously searching for my own understanding of God.  I was desperately afraid of my parent’s disapproval on my own interpretation of scripture and my own development… but then there was Jill. She loved me and accepted me whether I liked Jesus or was a pagan; I was safe no matter what.  I never feared disappointment from Jill and having that support gave me the freedom to find God exactly as I understood him… even when it didn’t agree with our church’s theology or even when it didn’t agree with my parent’s theology.  And this was pivotal.  I realized that the greatest love I needed was the love in that freedom.

In this freedom I developed an understanding of God that was deeper and more awesome than I thought possible.  I dwelled with the Creator.  I learned Hebrew and Greek and I read scriptures.  I worshipped in Buddhist monasteries, mosques, sweat lodges, various churches and kirtans.  I put aside my fear of my parent’s judgment and relied on the freedom in Jill’s love and acceptance to fully explore the amazingness of God’s love.  I hung out with Jesus, Buddha, Allah and the Divine Mother.  I learned how to pray and meditate and to fully understand obedience.  I found out who I wanted Hannah to be.  I wanted Hannah to be simple and something amazing.  I lost everything for the shit in the bottom of a bag once; I would gladly sacrifice what I had for the sake of something better.  I decided my service was to God first—and if that meant living a life of service to the people around me then that is what I would do.

So I went to Thailand.. and then I went again and then a third time.  I finished college with a degree in religion and found that my God was ever present throughout it.  So was Jill.  In school, I called Jill or went to her house when I couldn’t handle the stress of school anymore.  In Thailand, I called Jill from overseas to get perspective and to find balance.  Perhaps it’s this balance that allowed me to find hope and understanding— regardless of what was going on around me.  I had peace and freedom and love.  Then one day, that peace, freedom, and love weren’t just coming from Jill… they were coming from me.  Whatever Jill had had, she gave to me and now, I had the ability to give them to myself.  For the first time in as long as I can remember I could look in the mirror and just like myself.  I liked me.  I loved me.

This woman who had so tenderly and softly loved me back to Jesus and given me the gift to love myself.  Because she had consistently loved me for so long, I could believe that I was worth loving.  She showed me that I was worth the effort to love.  I felt beautiful on my own for the first time in my entire life.  No one had to tell me, no one had to validate me and I didn’t need some physical imitation of love to corroborate what I already knew was true.  I was free.  Jill gave me this sense of freedom in my own life.  We are still friends and probably always will.  I joke often that Jill is the woman who loved me back to Jesus, but she didn’t just love me back to a God that I could understand… she loved me until I was able to fully love myself.  Gratitude doesn’t begin to express the realities that I am present in today.