2:36 p.m. - 2005-06-20
Leaving Rant
It seemed I had an aptitude for leaving. Leaving was exhilerating. Leaving had its own momentum. And nothing generated the kind of support and reiforcement from my family the way that leaving did. Leaving was proving to be both art and science. It took almost a decade each to leave husbands one and two. But, by the time Tom arrived on the scene, I had compacted the whole grisly process to a mere two years from awkward first date to cowering in the parking lot at Von's while my father deftly mounted steed number three. Leaving was my calling and no one did it better. The secret that no one knew, but could easily have scratched the thin surface to discover, was that my greatest fear in life was being left. My fear of abandonment made every other fear colorless, anemic, impotent. I never understood why anyone would stay with me. I never understood why they didn't see what I saw or, better still, not see what I didn't see. I was invisible. Couldn't they see that? I was the place where someone would be were there a someone to be there. Oh, I was able to clothe my absence with various presences. There were prsences so present that a guy would walk from the back of a class just to sit closeby. There were presences that made some want to leave their younger wives, just for a glimpse of the one who's eyes gratefully reflected back just who they most wanted to be. There were presences that held jobs, earned degrees and showed a clever turn of phrase. There were presences so loyal to my parents that any potential success was sabotaged just to prove them right. There were funny and outrageous presences. There were melancholy and sullen presences. There were promiscuous presences and virginal presences. There were presences that spent entire Saturdays at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore, trying to find some cohesive meaning behind it all. I was not above trying to beguile God Himself with my chameleon-like performances, my cast of thousands. I would "OM" for hours in full lotus by day, only to kneel, trembling, for the Act of Contrition before falling into bed at night. I would recite the Schema in the mornings only to dance with the Krisnas on Sunday afternoons. I burned incense and chanted. I went to guitar mass. I read everything by any author with Baba in front of his name. I asked Jesus to be my personal savior. I ran with the wolves and cried with abandon. But mostly, I quickly lost respect for anyone not bright enough to see the obvious, my non presence. Anyone who would not leave me was no one who deserved me. I was terrified of being left. I would do anything to make someone leave and still they would not leave. I would cry and yell and walk down the street in the middle of the night and break my favorite things and rip my dresses and call old boyfriends. Finally, I would tell them to leave over and over and over. They simply refused to leave. All of them. I have never been left. And so I would leave. What could I do? I could not bear to spend another moment waiting for them to leave and expecting them to leave and watching the window after they had gone to work wondering if they would ever return or had finally left. To forestall the pain of being left, I left. I left and I left and I left. And everyone, from parents to friends to therapists, looked the other way and told me that the next one would be the right one. That I didn't deserve to be treated that way. That the grass was most definitely greener. That I deserved better. That God only closed one door to open another. That one had to approach life with an empty rice bowl. That the universe could not fill an already full rice bowl. That nature abhored a vacuum. That life was a cabaret. That when the student was ready, the teacher appeared. That the beat goes on. And so I continued to leave. And no one bothered to tell me that the problem was not that I was invisible to others. The problem was that I was invisible to myself. And so I left myself, naked and scared, under the various cloaks of presence. I left myself so regularly that I came to forget where I had last seen myself. I left until there was no discernable self to leave. Everyone desired what they thought was me. I lost desire for everyone who desired me. I lost desire. I lost me.
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