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New Orleans was such fun with Amy Grant Lover. The Bakistani Muslim and I bought feather boas in rich, jewel tones of scarlet red and deep purple, and we clutched them protectively around our necks as we scurried down Bourbon Street in the pouring, freezing-assed rain. Amy Grant Lover brought his digital camera and instructed us to "make love to the camera" as he snapped digital pic after digital pic as we sat inside some seedy cheeseball bar. My feather boa inspired me to drink Singapore Slings, which actually taste like three-day old ass. Amy Grant Lover and I got drunk (Bakistanis don't drink) and sang Amy Grant-Peter Cetera duets ("Next Time I Fall") at kareoke. Amy Grant Lover also sang "Pharaoh Pharaoh" to the tune of "Louie Louie." Then Amy Grant Lover sang the entire musical score to Sunset Blvd. We later went back to the hotel, and we sat in the lobby, marveling at all of the scantily clad vampires and vampiresses milling about in the lobby. (We had the fortune of staying in the hotel during the WHIPS INC. convention). Dog collars and pleather abounded!
The above paragraph is an email I received from Maryelizabeth this morning, and it is illustrative of why I am so glad that she is in my life again.
She makes me laugh.
She was in New Orleans for a conference with her ever colorful friends from her PhD program, and that was her summary of their weekend.
If you read this entry you'll have most of the story of the past, but I haven't really explained the story of the present.
Maryelizabeth and I are friends again.
I'm not sure how it happened, but we are.
We would chat daily at work before I removed instant messenger from my computer. Somehow the casual hilarity of that chatting atmosphere, where we could hide behind the ease of our familiarity and our mutual memories, lent itself amazingly well to allowing us to catch up with each other. To rediscover each other.
To forgive each other.
She came into town on numerous occasions this fall, and we always found ourselves going out together. She would sleep on my couch when she was too tipsy to drive home, and I would sit at her feet and we would talk until four or five in the morning. Just about things, about people, about life. Never about our all that had happened in the ten years of our friendship or the five years of our estrangement.
Maryelizabeth sent me a card in the mail the other day, finally acknowledging our past. Our present. She wrote that she knows that she has done some "unbelievably asinine" things in her life and that she is so glad that we have been hanging out again. She said that she doesn't think either of us wants to rehash everything.
She's right. I realized this as I read her card. Sometimes there is absolutely no point in dwelling on the wounds we carve in each other over the years, though they be indelible and deep. When you choose to forgive someone, to accept someone into your life without judgment, you can acknowledge the wounds without drowning in them.
There is more to see.
With Maryelizabeth, I choose to see the brilliant mind that is working on a dissertation in a field she chose so she could help to understand and to help those with the same problems she faced as a teenager. I choose to see an adventurous spirit about to embark on an internship in a large city she's never even seen. I choose to see a brave heart that has closed to the adulterous boyfriend of five years and is slowly opening to a man who overwhelms her not with psychotic behavior but with kindness.
I read the words of her card and I realized how grateful I am to be able to make this choice.
And I stood there at my dining room table and burst into tears.
I'm not really one for bursting into tears. Oh, I do it on occasion. But I'm more of a slow, silent weeper. But there I was, feeling overwhelmed with relief. With happiness. With forgiveness. And maybe with just a little bit of regret.
I regret that I couldn't let go of hurts she had caused me when I'm certain now that I hurt her just the same. I regret that I saw all of her flaws while being so blinded to my own.
The day we spent at Voodoo Fest was definitely a turning point for us, I think. We stood in the preposterously long burrito line, leaning on each other so we wouldn't fall down in dehydrated exhaustion.
And it struck me that we had leaned on each other for a very long time. And then there was a time when we didn't.
And suddenly there we were, leaning on each other again.
I choose to see the mercy she has shown to me in her willingness to overlook the horrifically bad way I handled the situation between us five years ago. I choose to see the hysterical laughter we bring out in each other. I choose to see the shared memories of a happy childhood.
I choose to see the eyes of teachers rolling in amusement as we pulled one stunt or another. I choose to see the photograph of us sitting against the window of the school bus with our arms around each other with the wind wildly whipping and swirling our long brown hair together. I choose to hear the sound of her voice mixed with mine as we sing the words of the crazy songs we made up as kids that we still know by heart.
I choose to see the home movie of us lying drunkenly in a bed on New Year's Eve at age seventeen, sharing a pillow and singing Auld Lang Syne, forgetting the words and laughing and starting all over again.
Starting all over again.
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An Occasion of Sin by Andrew Greeley. I have no idea what's taking me so long. I've been a total book abandoner lately. Listening Frank Sinatra, My Funny Valentine Journal Quote du Jour In a battle of the cynic versus the hopeless romantic, I had no choice. I've been fighting cynicism for years. The romantic won. I knew I had to stop this before it started, or I would end up with another layer of ice and stone around my heart. --fragmented (part two), from Jette's Anhedonia Inspiration du Jour
Harry
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Harry :::
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