My laptop's on my kitchen table right now, some tea lights glowing beside me. I spent the last hour helping the old folks and Russians in my building to not freak out since we don't have any power. I calmed Sheila, my next door neighbor down by telling her about the New York blackout and how the whole city came together and a friend of mine stuck a bunch of boomboxes in a pickup truck and had a roving street party in the East Village. I guess I could go out, but it's nice and quiet and I've had a long day.
I had a talk with my friend Nick today about this guy I was in love with a while back and who I saw last night and well, I basically ignored him. Nick was trying to cheer me up and then he stopped, and said "Do you know this song playing on the radio?" I did my usual "Obviously I know (insert cultural reference here)", but he called me on it and made me listen. It's "
The Heart of the Matter" by Don Henley, though he grabbed his iPod and played the Indie.Arie version instead ("Because it's more gay--after all, we love black women", Nick said). The chorus says that "it's about forgiveness". Nick said, "I don't really need to say anything" and we sat in my driveway listening to the words and well, they were embarrassingly on point.
It was a messy break-up and neither of us showed our best selves in the process. Determined as I am to make good come out everything and realizing that there's nothing I can do to change anyone but myself, I set out to change myself. At first I did it because I wanted to be so amazing, so good, so attractive, strong, understanding that he would look at me and realize all he lost. I was so angry with him. And people would tell me, "You have to find a way to forgive him." And I would say, "I do! I do! But he won't let me forgive him. He won't even talk to me. How can I possibly forgive him?" Forgiveness is tricky. It's wicked cousin- moral authority is always close behind, ready to convince you that feeling that you're better because you "forgive".
And the truth is, since then I've not let go of my anger. You know the scene in
An Affair to Remember when Cary Grant explains to Deborah Kerr, that ever since she stood him up at the Empire State Building, he's met lots of pretty girls, but he asks each of them "Where will you be on December 8th at 6pm?" Not sure if that's the actual date, but you get it-- that's when they were supposed to meet. Well, that's been me, lately. In a lot of ways I'm a better, wiser person-- I've learned to take care of myself, to be compassionate, but every time something resembling a shadow of what I had comes along, I say "Yeah, but where will you be when it matters?" I don't want to take out my anger at one person on another, so I've just given up on dating for now.
And now that I'm determined to get comfortable being my own person, on my own-- the feelings I had for this guy resurface. And it's unfinished work. In a way, all the things that happened between us have made me a better person, but if I don't forgive him, that anger, that fear, that loneliness will eventually defeat me. And that's why this treacly little song matters, Till now, I imagined coffee with him down the road, where I'd tell him how I felt, how I both loved him and was hurt by him deeply and that once he heard how I felt, he would say "I'm sorry" and I would forgive him. I've been waiting for "I'm sorry" for so long; I felt entitled to it. I even feel deep down he knows he owes me an apology. But that's not forgiveness, that's negotiation.
I walked by this guy last night, pretending he didn't exist. But I loved him and I loved him deeply and I don't regret that love. Does he deserve forgiveness? Yeah, because we all do. If
a hostage can forgive his captors, if
victims of war can forgive their aggressors, if a woman who lost both her daughter and her mother in a drunk-driving accident
can forgive the driver, in our own tiny lives, we can (and must) forgive each other and ask for forgiveness.
You know, I was raised in a very Episcopalian family and I was an acolyte (read: "altar boy") and I took a lot of it to heart. I don't think I will ever believe in the idea that Jesus was the son of God or in the idea that you will be judged by your actions and rewarded appropriately in the afterlife, but I believe in the idea of grace. It seems we live in a time where we are constantly pulled apart from our friends and family and that we have to devise new methods of coping with the massive change we seem to all be experiencing in our lives. And a lot of those coping methods mean closing ourselves off to pain and hurt; to become calcified to the pain that life seems to constantly offer. Maybe I'm just predisposed to seeing the sadness of life. But I think all of us, the worst among us included, can change. No matter what we've done, none of us are ruined. None of us are broken. The least we can do is allow those in our lives, and more importantly, ourselves, the opportunity to start anew.
And for real, the lights just turned back on.
Labels: music, personal
