the old-school guestbook archives
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venus retrograde, part 1 ~ June 20, 2004 - 7:36 p.m. i forget when it was, last winter sometime, i think. in the kitchen at edwardo's when ray, my dear-sweet-rightwing-christian friend said oh, chris says hi, and he's glad to hear you're doing well. and i stared at him, astonished, shockwaves reverberating through my body. i mean, chris. i knew they kept in touch, but that knowledge was somewhere in the back of my mind. and here i was, back in milwaukee where i'd never meant to be again, back working at the restaurant where chris and i first met, and here's ray who's known me since even before then telling me that chris says hi. i think ray was a little taken aback by my shock. i don't mean to over-sentimentalize it, he says, and i shake my head, grinning to myself, quite sure that over-sentimental was the last thing chris was, passing this message along. no, i know, i tell him. it's just-chris, you know? i haven't heard from him in at least five years. and now that i've counted, i realize it's been more like eight. chris was the first real-true love of my life. i'd had boyfriends before him, a string of punk rock boys, each scarier than the last, but chris changed everything. chris was the love that made me realize i'd known nothing about love until the moment he looked me in the eye. and we were just kids. i was 19, he was 22. i was in the endgame of a serious drinking problem, at that crossroads where you have to decide if you want to live or die. chris gave me something to live for. problem number one. chris was the one who gave me the choice, after the first time he saw me falling-down-and-puking-on-the-beach drunk. the night before the day we missed the international soccer game his parents were taking us to, because chris was too angry at me to go. he said, either you can decide you're going to deal with this problem, and get yourself together, and i'll be behind you 100%. or, you can keep on this way, but you'll be on your own. i've watched too many friends go down like this, and i'm not gonna stick around to watch if you want to drink yourself to death. and so i made my choice. i'd tried to quit a number of times already, but chris finally gave me something strong enough to hold on to, a burst of light to drag me out of the darkness. i loved him so much, too much maybe, and i couldn't imagine losing him. so i quit. that day, day after the night on harrington beach. day of the missed italy/US soccer match. june 6th. the anniversary i celebrated this month, twelve years later. we loved each other, but it was never easy. he was an artist, and so driven to create that i was in awe of him. it was hard not to feel like the other woman to his art, the one who got the crumbs of his energy and attention that were left over at the end of the day. we broke up, and got back together, and broke up again. and got back together again. a torturous cycle that ripped me apart every time. he was always leaving me, so that i never got to feel safe in our relationship, even as i believed i'd found my partner in this world. each time he left, an endless shrieking darkness would open inside of me. it was impossible, this idea that i could live without him. but each time i survived. each time i got stronger. each time he came back. and still i loved him, and still. i went away to college, finding out only days before i left that he assumed living in different states meant breaking up. i tried to date a deeply sweet environmentalist named richard, but only succeeded in putting him through hell because i was still in love with chris. chris and i got back together over winter break. and again in the spring, causing the breakup between him and the girl he'd been trying to date. we just couldn't stay away from each other. he finished art school and made plans to move to philadelphia, and it was sometime that spring that he called me up and said i've got a really stupid idea, and asked me to come to philadelphia and move in with him. and my school being the kind it was, i could make that happen. i arranged to do an independent-writing-co-op-quarter in philly for the summer, and a distance-learning quarter at a program there in the fall. because, really, there was no question what my answer would be, when he asked. my mother was really upset. i just feel like i got married too young, she told me, and i missed out on a lot of opportunities. i just don't want to see you hold yourself back. all i could do was laugh. you really think i'm going to get married?? and of course, i thought we would eventually do something like that-- there was a fantasy i had about two children, and a cabin on a lake. our little family. but that was always somewhere way down the road. and so i went, to philadelphia, to live with the love of my life. we started out in a cheap summer sublet in west philly that we shared with two rich penn students, and then got ourselves a cheap efficiency in center city. and i was deliriously happy, for a little while. feeling so grown up, buying things for our apartment and feeling like i was investing in our future together. i shopped for produce at the italian market and drank espresso at reading terminal. i got a job at a fine dining restaurant where i made crazy money dressed as a pilgrim and serving up roast pheasant and $45 bottles of wine. and he painted, and painted and painted. delivered pizzas for a crazy old greek man we both loved. and then it all fell apart, and fell apart fast. i began my study program, which involved a forty-hour-a-week internship as well as two night classes a week and homework, along with the three nights a week i was still waitressing. and i was really starting to notice my bisexuality for the first time, manifesting in a big old crush on a girl in my class, and wondering how that fit into my plans to spend the rest of my life with chris. and then he got a job working third shift at UPS, and there were whole strings of days where we never saw each other awake, sharing only unconscious space. and then i was diagnosed with cervical dysplasia for the first time, back when they didn't know much of anything about it. planned parenthood sent me a letter throwing around scary terms like "pre-cancerous," and i was losing my mind. i went to the first doctor who took my strange, wisconsin-based insurance, and he was horrible. the biopsy was horrifically painful and he had difficulty getting the bleeding to stop afterwards. chris was in the waiting room, and when we got to the elevator, i fell into his arms and cried. he tried to be there for me, he really did, but he just didn't know how. i was stretched too thin, and everything hurt. i cried every night, alone in our empty apartment while he was at work. i tried to talk to him about our problems, about things he did that hurt me, but he didn't even want to talk about it. when i got excited-- even in a happy way-- my voice would get loud and he would shush me, and refuse to discuss it any further. it got to where i was afraid to bring up anything, where my voice shook when i tried to talk to him. so afraid of doing or saying the thing that would make him shut down. it was getting cold in philadelphia by then, the trees bare. almost time for me to leave. my mother told me to stop seeing the scary doctor after i burst into tears on the phone, and arranged for me to go to hers when i got home for christmas. i made my plans, deciding to make my next quarter a cross-cultural experience in ireland, fulfilling a lifelong dream. i bought my own ticket with my waitressing money, arranged for a passport and a work permit, and blew my mother's mind when i presented her with it. i knew i had to get out, but i still believed we'd be together. i didn't know how, because i'd come to the conclusion that i never wanted to live in philadelphia again. but we loved each other so much. i believed in that. i knew we'd find a way. he took the train out to the airport with me, the day i left. sitting in the subway station, he started to cry. it always ends up this way, he told me, no matter what i do. and i reassured him that we'd get another chance, that we'd do it again, and do it better. i even called him from ireland, once or twice, burning my way through international phone cards. i wrote him letters, sent postcards. i was back at school in the spring, and recovering from culture shock. i'd had time to think, long and hard about what i needed in my relationship. and so i called him, and i laid it out for him-- this is what i need from a partner. and i really guess i expected him to say yes, okay, i can do that. i'll work harder to be more supportive. but instead he said, you're right. you deserve someone you can feel safe with. someone more like colin. colin. our old housemate. and my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach and landed with a thud. all the times we'd broken up, i'd always known it wasn't time yet for it to be over. but this time i knew. i just knew. it's not going to work, is it? i whispered into the phone, the tears aching behind my eyes. no, he said, i don't think it is. and when i put down the phone, i knew that our three years' journey was really and truly over. and it's funny what happened next, because my crazy friend gerry came by with a bunch of folks, and said hey kel, you want your own radio show? and i laughed, cheeks still wet, and said yes! and followed them up to the pirate radio station to learn how the equipment worked. it seemed like a good beginning to the rest of my life without chris. and that was a whole journey in itself, figuring out who i was without him. i'd gotten sober with him, so i'd had to re-make my life from scratch, and he'd been a major ingredient. i found myself beginning again, learning who i was and how i felt about things on my own. i dated girls and explored my world and learned my own heart all over again. and i tried to keep in touch with him, but there was so much pain and bitterness. i kept bringing old hurts to him and trying to get him to make them right, when he just wished i'd let it all go. i got a letter from him shortly after i'd moved to california with clare, describing a recent breakup he'd had, and i sent him a reply full of sharp edges which i hoped he'd take with some humor. he never wrote back. i've thought about him, time to time, of course. wondered how he's doing, whether he still has that painting studio on spring garden, with the crack addicts hanging out in front. every so often i've told the story of the first love of my life. but i never really thought i'd hear from him again. here's what happened when i did.
(((rings))) |