There is a man in a purple shirt. I am drawn to the lines of his face. He has a black scarf tied around his neck. He rests his age atop a chair.  He is not alone in this frame. There is another man in the picture, a best friend or possibly a lover. He waits. We all do.

I stand quietly and watch Merce Cunningham blink on film. This is all part of Tacita Dean’s contribution to the Haunted exhibit at the Guggenheim.  As I watch, I know that Merce Cunningham has already passed away. I think. There is a particular sort of poetry in watching a dead man breathing.

So, I put on a ridiculous dress and drink Heineken beer. I make myself dizzy on some ballroom dance floor. I tell stories. I hug friends. I eat a cheese sandwich as tall as the Chrysler building. I ride the subway. I take a cab. I sit on the bus next to a woman with a jar of pickles in her purse. I sing along unabashedly with a shirtless man playing an acoustic guitar in the middle of central park. I blush easily when he winks at me. I carry his smile for three or four city blocks. The skyline becomes punctuation for the conversation I have with a dear friend on a gorgeous New York Night. I laugh with my roommates while taming runaway split ends or slipping on high heel shoes. I spend an inordinate amount of time waiting for the elevator. I feign interest. I clap politely. I use an entire box of Band-Aids. I eat croissants and shop for perfume. I corner women in the bathroom just to thank them. I regret some mistakes. I repeat them. I make a point of going alone to the museum.

Tacita Dean’s work is on the sixth floor of the Guggenheim. Merce Cunningham sits in a chair projected by memory and light. Countless people pass this light and become projected into the art’s frame. We become these beautiful silhouettes against the stillness of the old man. We come in and out of focus. Nothing is permanent.

I have spent a lifetime holding back. I want to use my body. I kneel at Cunnigham’s feet. I brush my shadowy hand against his cheek. It is not enough for me to simply observe. I also need to participate.

Buses carry strangers traveling crooked highways. On a bus in some weary landscape, there is a woman with swollen feet carrying a plum she hides like a secret in a brown paper bag. I do not know her, but I want to.

Maybe tonight. If I sit real still and listen closely, she might tell me her stories, like varicose veins or the picture of her grandson she keeps pressed in the pocket of her factory apron.

I want to bear witness to her graveyard shift, and her memory of the ugly brown sweater her Momma forced her to wear, second-hand, in her third grade school picture. That was the sweater that made her whole life itch, if only for a day.

It is only when the night pitches itself heavy with stars, and my own babies are bathed and put to bed, after the dishes have been cleared from the table and washed by hand in the sink, and all the dresser drawers are stacked with fresh laundry, that I find a quiet place to reminisce the day that is filled with the fragments of stories.

Only then, can I lean my head close to the warm red raisin of this old woman’s mouth, and write down everything she says.

I am just an ordinary woman. This is enough.

I want to live my life like romance. I want the red bloom of lips, the moment a lover enters my body, rain glistening on the back of train cars, sobbing violins. I want poetry spoken in a whisper against the curve of my spine. I want a hand on the meat of my thigh underneath the table. I want hungry fingers fumbling against stiff zippers. I want teeth to bite down and break the skin. I want an exaltation of moans and sighs in darkened bedrooms. I want to forget that I exist.

I want to forgive.

When I tell people that my son has been diagnosed on the Autistic spectrum, they look at me with pity. They say, I’m so sorry, with the sadness we reserve for the dead. Conversations take on the tone of funeral dirges. I do not fault people. I am familiar with grief.

Will my son have a best friend, go to prom, obtain a college degree, live on his own, love his job, get married, become a dad?

I do not have these answers. Do any of us? I think that there are better questions.

Will my son laugh? Will he be happy? Does he love?

I love you, Momma. I love you like a volcano. You are beautiful, Momma. Your hair smells like love and sunshine. Sissy is my best friend. I want to be a pirate. Let’s be pirates, Momma? We will sail the angry seas. Yo, Ho! Yo, Ho! Can we go outside and play? I want to run. See how high I can jump? Let’s play tag, Momma? You’re it. I’m hiding. Come find me. Pick me up. Want to hear me sing my ABC’s? Spin me around, Momma. I’m gonna hug on you. I am going to wish on the stars for chocolate cake. I want to eat chocolate cake all the time. Eat cake with me, Momma. Let’s eat cake.

My son. He is. He does.

I tell my daughter stories. There once was a little girl who was born with an enormous heart. The child’s heart was a mountain. The small girl was born perfect and full of love. Still, there existed empty spaces inside the cavern of her heart. These empty spaces rattled like pennies in a tin can

As this little girl grew, so did her heart.  Experiences filled her. The more she loved, the more her heart expanded. As her heart widened, the wind whistled in the beautiful open spaces.

The small child became a woman with a heart that thundered.

My daughter listens to this story hungry for the part when the woman becomes a mother. Oh, how the heart did stretch itself then, I tell her.

The story ends with the woman wrinkled and grey. Her heart, grown as big as the universe, beat with the memory of all the woman ever loved, finally is silent.

When the story is over, my daughter who is two and lives every day like it is a poem waiting to be written, asks,

Momma. Does a heart so big ever break?

I stare at my daughter’s hands. I think about all the things her hands will reach for, touch. My daughter’s hands are both her present and her future. They are round and soft, still chubby with an infancy the rest of her body is starting to separate from. I stare at my daughter’s beautiful hands. I listen to her whistling heart. Her heart that is a mountain.

All hearts break, baby.

I want to tell my daughter what loss feels like. I want to share hospital rooms where you bleed out babies onto sterile tables, and doctors try to fill your ache with gauze. I want her to know that angry fingers force themselves into places they should never be. I want to turn on the news and rock her hard like an earthquake. I want her to starve in my arms, just so I can arm her against hunger. I want her to get lost on the safety of her small bed, so I am sure to find her. I want to protect her. I can’t.

All hearts break, baby.  I want you to remember that when a heart cracks open, the love a Momma has for her daughter never spills out.

I put my daughter’s perfect hand inside my own. We thunder.

Hearts break. Hearts recover.

My daughter wakes up in the middle of the night. She cries for me. I find her lying cold and wet in a tangle of sheets. In the marriage of her night light and the moon, her skin is pale as halloysite. She shivers as I change her pajamas.  Shaking against my hands, my daughter is small and vulnerable. I feel tenderness like a Neruda poem.

My daughter reminds me of Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks. Neruda writes of the mermaid who stumbles into a bar. She has no clothes. The drunks assault her. They burn her body with cigarettes and toss hate like burnt corks. The mermaid, not having language, is silent through the entire assault. She does not shed a tear because tears do not belong to her. After the drunks have finished with her, she exits out the same door she entered. She climbs into the ocean and swims away. Neruda says she is clean as white stone. She swims towards emptiness, towards death. 

I find comfort in Neruda’s poetry. We are all swimming towards death. Even my daughter with new skin, moonlight perfect, unblemished, will die one day. As I put my daughter back into her bed and pull up her covers to meet her chin, I am reminded of her namesake. Last year, my Nana waved a wrinkled hand at death. She and death flirted. He rested a bony hand in hers before losing interest and relenting. I went to see my Nana in the hospital. Hooked up to monitors, she looked so small against the bed rails.  She was as beautiful as my daughter waking up in tears against some foreign night. We are all swimming towards this great empty.

When my daughter wakes up at night and calls for me to comfort her, I swell with love. I am simply overcome with it. I think about Neruda, mermaids, and drunks. Most times, I am comforted. Then, there are times when I get angry. My daughter so small, all of us so vulnerable, the arrogance of corks and cigarettes. At those times, I rage.  I dream of fire. But, even clothed in words, with the burden of my emotions, I am certain the river will wash me clean.

I am terrible at math. I had a teacher in 9th grade who thought she knew me. Why does two plus two always have to equal four? I complained to her one day. I hate absolutes. She shook her head. No. You don’t. You love absolutes. You just do not like numbers because they do not bend to your emotional appeals. She stood smugly in the classroom, holding a piece of chalk. She appeared to marvel at the powers of her own perception. I did not agree or disagree, instead, I abandoned the math problem. I left her extra-help session and headed down to the library to read. I knew she would continue to add me up as sum. I did not have to be there to witness.

I hate numbers but I love words. When I was small, my grandfather use to read words out of the dictionary.  Unfamiliar words, weighty and multi-syllabic. He would read a word and encourage me to guess at the meaning. It never mattered if I knew the correct definition. My grandfather believed that words were more than what a dictionary implied. He taught me that the basis of all good stories was to rely on my instinct and leave the rest to chance.

The other day I was driving my car on a road that was punctuated with power lines. These lines looked like a series of raised crosses or the masts of ships. I was open to either interpretation. As I drove, I imagined the plot for a short story. There was a man and a woman. They journeyed together, but remained separate. She sat with her hands neatly folded and wondered what would happen to her body when she died. She wished for more than the maggoty rot of decomposing bones buried underneath black earth.  I could clearly see her profile as she turned to the man, whose hands appeared like risk holding only loosely the steering wheel. She wanted answers he did not have. She recognized her own fault was to admire someone more than she admired herself. She saw power lines dotting the landscape like death. He saw the masts of ships with eyes as rouge as the dream he had of pirates. This man and woman were bereft of words, but not of stories. I write these people down and I think about how their narrative informs my own life.

There are very few things in my life that are absolute. I am a woman. I love my family. I like to tell stories. I write to figure myself out. Yet, I am often unrecognizable. I think it is arrogance to feel you can pin a person down just because they have an aversion to math. I am and I am not the woman in that car. I use to fear worms. I don’t anymore. When I was small, my grandfather taught me to be self-indulgent by affixing my own meanings and interpretations to things that others saw as fact. Imagination is born from just that sort of daring. When I write, emotions and logic sometimes blur. I am okay with that. Some things I write are fiction. Some things I write are fact. What fills the spaces in between are a million interpretations. Me. You.

Marriage is hard. That is such a simple statement. A true statement. Sometimes marriage is too hard and a couple realizes that they need to walk away. I think that is incredibly brave. I can not imagine how hard it would be. I wonder how many of you have ever wondered if that couple might be you? Maybe you thought it in your head when disappointment built, or aloud in arguments where you strike out to hurt. If so, you are not alone.

I met my husband while in college. We started talking at a dorm room party. We have not stopped talking since that night. We moved in together within six months. We were young and relatively poor college kids, rolling up quarters to buy gas and the cigarettes we smoked back then. We laid on the rooftop. I use to ask him, What if?

What if a genie said he would grant you every wish you had, but it would mean that I had to lose a leg or be horribly disfigured? Would you do it?

Inside a silly game, we both knew what I was asking. There were things that made me afraid. What if you hurt me? What if you lie? What if you break my heart? What if I break yours? I wanted protection against the inevitable.

This year, my husband and I will be married for 10 years, together for over 14. In this space of time, I have broken my husband’s heart in ways both small and large.

Some would say that I am not an easy woman to love. I have thrown around the word divorce as a weapon. I have let my anxiety get in the way of my logic. I have pushed away my husband’s need for the simple intimacy of having me, his partner, look him square in the eyes. I have spent hours on the internet engaging with others when I should have been engaging with my husband. I have even wondered, in the very darkest of moments, if Dave was truly the one. If you knew my husband, what we have together, you would know that this is the most egregious fault. I am not proud.

14 years together. We are not poor. The roof is over our heads. The ground is under our feet. We construct and deconstruct our daily boundaries. We ask questions. We no longer play, outright, the game of, What if? Instead, we live it.

What can we do to make sure our children grow up healthy? If we buy the new house will it be something to make us happy, or a burden we can not afford? What are all the ways we can ask forgiveness for how we hurt each other? If we evolve separately, let us promise to remember that we love under the exact same stars?

I think that what and If might be what constitute a marriage. My marriage has been a series of what and if. It has also been about, Why? I used to constantly ask why does my husband stay with such a difficult woman? Why does he continue to love me so faithfully when I have made so many mistakes? Knowing Dave, he will answer for himself. He will come here and he will say sweet things because he is good and kind and whole in ways that I admire. I am lucky that way.

I do not know if we can ever truly explain, why. Sometimes we just are.

When my husband and I first met, I was unsure and insecure. For a long time, I thought that David saved me from myself, my loneliness, my pain. I have learned that another person can not fix the cracks, the fissures of self. I can take credit for that all on my own, even if I am still a work in progress.

There was a time when I could not see past all that David did for me, to realize that I do for him too. I note with pleasure the absence of space when my hand reaches out to find his. I am a really good listener. I fill our house with goofy laughter. I burn toast with grace. I mother with love and good intent, always, his two children. I am a devoted wife.

I am also a reflective enough wife to know that i have been selfish. Finding myself should not be about dismissing the person that I love. This is what I hope to be forgiven for.

My husband and I are beautifully bound. We fail in a million different ways on a daily basis. But add us up to sum, and we make it work in all the ways that count.

David, I love you. Then. Now. Always.

Last night, I read a post from a well-known male blogger* that made me confused. He wrote about being in high school, having a crush on a girl, being denied her affection. As I first read, I could relate. Who hasn’t wanted someone or some thing so badly they experienced anger when denied? I have. What happens, however, when anger spills over into action?

This particular blogger wrote about thrusting his hand between a young girl’s legs when he and she were both in high school. A girl he described as wearing a silk blouse and no bra. A girl that he desired. A girl that did not want him. While pushing himself unprovoked and uninvited between her most private space, he demanded, “Is this what you wanted?” The story ends with the girl in tears in the backseat of a car, and the blogger admitting his own actions were scary.

I wrote a private e-mail to this blogger and asked him why he shared the piece online. I wanted to know what his motivation was for publishing it. He replied by telling me he wrote the piece because it was true. This made me furious. Does truth automatically make something acceptable? If we write our dirty, hateful, secrets are we immediately made brave just by the telling? What sort of community are we if we heap an author with praise just because he or she sits down and writes about his or her own repulsive act? What sort of society are we when another blogger comments that the young scared girl in that car was not even a victim?

My head spun. I tasted bile in my mouth. I physically shook. I needed to step away, from that blogger, from Twitter, from my own head. I went to sleep. Upon waking up this morning, I realized something. I thought my anger came from wishing this blogger had written the piece with more remorse. Not true. It was not really about that blogger. What I really want is retribution for all women. I want every single man who has ever hurt a woman in a sexual way to spontaneously burst into flames right….about….NOW!

Am I angry? You bet I am. I think the question is why isn’t every person angry that violence still happens in small ways like the backseat of that car? What good is sorry, really? If the two men that took advantage of me, while I stumbled like a sloppy drunk in the snow, apologized for the bloody raw ache they left inside of me, would it make it better. Fuck! No!

This post is not about re-hashing my old wounds or stories. I’ve claimed my own status as a survivor. I do not need to go backwards even when there are posts and people that trigger the memories that propel me down the rabbit hole of my own history. I just need to make sense of why this particular post from this particular blogger had me so enraged. There has to be more than just the telling, his and mine. Simply writing it down is not enough. What do we learn from it?

Some of you who’ve been reading me for awhile might remember a story I told you about when I was younger. There was this cocky kid named Tommy who corned me on a deserted stairwell. He thrust his fingers uninvited and unwanted up my skirt. I was this shy, awkward, girl who had never been looked at much less touched by a boy. It was not what I wanted. It made me scared and confused. What I left out, when I previously told the story, was that three days after the stairwell incident happened Tommy asked me out. I said yes. Yes? It felt strange and scary but good to be wanted, even when the wanting part was done all wrong. Just writing those words brings back all the confusion I felt when holding the phone to my ear and saying yes to dating a boy who previously violated me. I never told Tommy that what he did that day on the stairs felt dirty, frightening, and wrong. I never spoke up when he broke up with me and spread untrue rumors about my body to the entire class. I never said a word. Silence is a weapon young girls and women are taught to use against themselves.

When I first read the post of that popular male bloggers, I felt the same type of conflict that I felt as the scared confused girl I once was. This post was written by a blogger I knew and generally liked. Someone I saw as gentle, dorky, kind. I never would have imagined that story being attached to his history. After reading the post, I could not help but question every thing I knew about him, start to read deeper and more sinisterly into what I thought were previously funny and harmless tweets. It made me wonder how much I could really trust any online “friendship.”

Knowing the blog world like I do, I knew the commendations for his “bravery” were coming. This is where the real tension was for me. I started to doubt myself. Who was I to be angry? Who was I to speak out in dissent? In fact, I wrote a tame first comment on the post where I danced around the issue of my own discomfort. That is what “good” girls are trained to do. Aren’t we? We don’t rock the damn proverbial boat. We never speak out. We maintain the shame in silence.

I think when women are silent we all become the metaphor of that girl in the backseat of the car with some angry guy trying to shove his fist between our thighs. I’m not going to let that happen to me. I can not worry that what I feel is not the acceptable response of the community at large. I can not worry about my own alienation. I will not be 12 years old again, crying in my childhood bedroom.

I think what that male blogger did to that girl was disgusting and wrong. I think some of his tweets are inappropriate. I hope that people read his post and they are shocked and disgusted too. I thought about linking him, but I do not want my writing to be about calling someone out. Even though, that is what I am essentially doing. This really is more about me trying to deal with the complexity of my own emotions.

I hope his post is read. I hope people actually discuss, disagree, determine their own feelings outside of the context of the group. We can learn from this, from anything, if we are willing to go further than just to write disclosure off as some brave act. I do not think there is anything brave about what this blogger did in writing his past down, even though I too found myself using the word “brave” in his comment section. In fact, I think writing this post was an inherently selfish act because the blogger is the perpetrator and not the victim. What is he really looking for? Absolution or traffic? The answer makes a difference to me. Even if it is absolution, it won’t be found so easily here.

I have learned that women do not always need to be so forgiving. I was at 12, and even at 19, forgiving others and hating myself when waking up bruised and missing my underwear. I will never again let my own silence make me that complicit.

*edited to add the link of the blogger. Go here to read his story. Although, since my post has come out, his initial post has changed. He has “toned” down his story. It was originally written about her not having a bra and him putting his hand between her thighs, not just resting on it. I wonder why a person would edit a post that they wrote because it was “true” then quietly change it when people took issue with it. Interesting.

*New Edit*

I asked Neil why he edited the story after the comments and my post came out. He wrote this, “I edited it because it was too intense and I wasn’t getting the reaction I wanted. I am not a journalist. I am a writer.”

*Final Edit*

Neil changed the original blog post back. He also shared this post. I think it is only fair of me to post it. I also hope we continue to have conversations as a community about all the issues that came about because of all these posts and tweets.

Thanks for reading and commenting.