Trauma Work Summer Part Eight: The End

 

This story feels like so long ago already! Spoiler alert: the trauma work seems to really have helped! When I returned to my school-year job, I felt a joy so strong that I might have been ACTUALLY filled with sunshine! I feel more three-dimensional and grounded, like here at almost-fifty-one I might be an actual adult. Maybe the work saved me, for a little while.

Back to a few weeks ago: the panic lit by the Fire Prevention Play just wouldn't go out. After I confessed my attraction to Summer Princess, I couldn't convince myself I wasn't a threat to her, that I wasn't somehow coercing her to be near me whenever she was near me. 

Prickly and sometimes-moody as she was, she did NOTHING but try and stay friends! While I was coloring/providing a sensory area on our field trip to Dave & Busters, she played an old version of Animal Crossing and sat quietly with me. Back at camp, she made August Valentines with me and the kids. Summer Princess and I took turns picking out dreamy/moody songs amongst the cutting and pasting. She was being a pretty wonderful friend, and I couldn't access the friendly, sunny part of myself.

I knew it was wrong for me to be there with her in such a panicky/heartbroken state, so I ended up leaving camp a week early. I still love her so much (now in a peaceful, non-urgent way) and I'm so grateful for our friendship, however flawed and brief. If by some miracle you're reading this, Summer Princess, thank you. I'm honored to have spent a few weeks basking in the glow of you. I wish you a super-sparkly life and every wish come true.

The Monday after I said goodbye to camp, I went on a roadtrip I'd been planning all the hot, traumaful summer: A trip to my high school hometown, sort of an Exposure Therapy final project. I wanted to face the apartment complex where my Main Trauma happen and the house where my dad made the MT worse by providing my number one intrusive thought: "You brought this into our house."

I spent a two-day trip staying in the most lovely Airbnb, nurturing my inner teenage self and listening to lots of podcast recaps of Fire Walk With Me. In front of the (still very ugly) house, there was a beautiful yellow rosebush. It must've been an heirloom rose, the smell was exquisite.

Laura Palmer was there in my head, a shaman and a doula, helping me lead myself down the path to a new life of innocence and hope.

Maybe I'll write more about that adventure one day, but for now, I just wanted to tell you: I'm happy. My coworkers surprised me with an early birthday cake before the long weekend. This week I'll be both seeing my favorite band AND watching Fire Walk With Me on a big screen! I even like somebody who kinda makes sense for me.

I want to freeze all these happinesses in carbonite, make them permanent, unassailable, unquestionable. I want edges defined and boundaries drawn and a notarized certificate that says I'm not doing anything wrong.

But it feels okay to sit in the present, eat leftover early birthday cake, and hope.

Southern Charmer: The Satisfying Sequel, Part One

Now in our story we've made it to early September, my birthday week! Fifty, the first age I've been genuinely unnerved about. I was freaking and grieving. I had to stop writing in my six-year journal because of the on this day of it all. I always love my birthday, but it also brings up memories--the fancy dates with The Shy One, the falling out with my brother, the creeping fear that I'll never achieve any kind of closeness again. The newly arthritic knee that had kept me from swimming in the ocean all summer.

The one thing I wanted on my birthday was to walk along the beach.

Pause to let TS Elliot chime in:

Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each

The rest-stop peaches were sublime and the day was clear and cool enough, but my mood was definitely Prufrockian. My knee ached (The medication would come the next day.) and my tire light was on. I felt a million years old and I wanted to sleep forever instead of going home for friends and cake.

(No matter WHAT'S going on next summer, I need to not shirk the beach. At least 9 times in 2025, any season, any length of time.)

BUT ALSO, in the midst of all the pining and nostalgia and the knowledge that the arthritis is sending tiny bone particles everywhere: An easy light. A cute new old friend.

A week or two before the birthday waves, the Southern Charmer had pinged me on Feeld, and I didn't register at first that it was him. When I did realize, I felt a spark of yes run up my sternum and up to warm my ears and cheeks. Yes.

Perfect Birthday Date with The Shy One, Part Three (A Good Cry)

 

(As I finish up writing about this gorgeous date from three weeks ago, last weekend’s worry and jealousy has come and gone. I did everything wrong and it turned out okay. There was no Perfect Unicorn Lady because they weren’t looking for one. He had a lovely spouse weekend full of sunshine, rest, and friends. I want my brain to remember that, no matter who else joins his constellation. I want to have more faith.)

Back to September second: When we got to my apartment after the Dreamiest Uber Ride Ever, after I put his leftover lobster mac and cheese in the fridge, I took him upstairs to try the new purple ropes. I showed him how to do an overhand knot, then how to redo that overhand knot so it would land in the right place. The whole scene, the whole night, was purple, just shimmering with otherworldly magic and regal beauty. Purple. That’s how I feel about The Shy One.

Sex, of course. Beautiful and THOROUGH and sweet. He drifted off and promised to wake up around 2am to do a whole bunch more. I knew he would make good on that promise.

But after The Shy One fell asleep, I got sad. It felt like my g-spot was connected to my tear ducts, that a physical and emotional floodgate had opened up. My birthday had brought with it more family estrangement, my brother treating me with contempt and control. My brother had called me a hateful bully for trying to stand up to our most insurrectionist relative, and I’d cancelled the family Zoom I’d scheduled for the following night. (In favor of an art installation friends’ night out though, yay!)

I was also crying because it was going to be almost a month before I would see The Shy One again. It felt almost like a long-distance arrangement, even though we live in the same city. It was the feeling I felt so long ago when Perfectly 1993 Guy came to visit from college—acutely aware of how many hours were left.

I got up out of bed to write, but I put the notebook down midpage. The sweetest man in the universe was sleeping in my bed upstairs. If I needed to cry, I could cry to him. So I did. It felt like the biggest step.

He gathered me up and held me while I cried. I felt bad because “I miss my brother” was hardly sexy date talk. But The Shy One listened. He comforted me and I let him. We didn’t talk about the too-far-apart dates, but we’ve started resolving that by now.

At my cousin’s birthday party in 2008, my brother flipped out on me about a social justice comment I made during a family board game. “You ruin every party,” he said. That characterization has stuck in my head and in my heart. In some ways, it’s true: Thanksgiving of 2016 very much deserved to be decimated, even if one of my nephews has never quite forgiven me.

So I feel guilty about having had less-than-ebullient emotions in the middle of such a magical night, but I’m so, SO glad I confided in The Shy One. I’m glad I let him see the vulnerability that had bubbled to the surface. I’m grateful that he made me feel safe enough to cry.

Plus, when the promised 2am hotness came around, I felt even more warmth, love and trust with him. A perfect, perfect night indeed.

Perfect Birthday Date with The Shy One, Part One

 

(I’m behind on my cuteness reporting—this date was two weeks ago.)

(Right now, The Shy One is getting ready for a spouses' trip wherein it’s likely he’ll/they'll hook up with a friend. In my head, (I know almost nothing about her) she is the perfect unicorn and will definitely negate any future need for me. He has taken great care to assure me that that won’t be the case, (the negating, I mean) and the assurance means a lot, but still. It’s a vulnerable moment to be paragraphing about him, or maybe the perfect moment. They haven’t invented that turn-me-into-a-compersion-robot-for-the-weekend technology yet, so I’m doing my best to love myself through the complicated-but-mostly-just-rooting-for-him fraughtness.)

Now for the fancy date story! Although, as we’ve established, I see myself as Upstairs in the Downton sense, I’ve never seen myself as someone who could be taken on a fancy date. Sweetie-Now-BFF and I have treated ourselves from time to time, but being taken out someplace by a man? That’s movies, not me. So when The Shy One picked a fancy steakhouse downtown to celebrate my birthday, I was completely dazzled and pretty intimidated.

I had weeks to prepare/make myself nervous. I spent a good chunk of time scrolling through purple dresses online and I found the perfect one: long, gauzy, royal purple, with a thick satin ribbon at the empire waist. The shop had it labeled “mother of the bride” but to me, it was a princess dress. It came right away and fit perfectly, just like a shipping fairy tale.

Then, on a solo mini-vacation in an artsy mountain town, I found just the right baubly necklace at a flea market for three dollars! And a pretty beaded mauve purse at a vintage shop that looked like the inside of the B-52s collective mind. I hadn’t bought a specific purse for a specific reason since my wedding nineteen (!) years ago. It was like Artsy Mountain Town was playing the role of fairy godmother.

Purse-buying aside, I tried (unsuccessfully) not to get too carried away about this date. I was a little overwhelmed and self-conscious, had even a little trouble feeling worthy. This is a thing I run into a lot these beautiful, romantic days—how is this happening to actual me?! A year ago, I couldn’t even get The Coach to come fuck me in person!

When the Friday night of the date arrived, I felt so gorgeous that I texted my closest neighbors to see if they could come take my picture. I ran into them out front and posed for the camera while I waited for my Lyft.

I never went to the prom (My date, the prettiest hippie girl in any given mosh pit, got scared to go because we’d been targeted a bully lacrosse player girl a few times. I had the perrrrrfect dress picked out for that night too though, fresh from the Thrifty Shopper. It was pink polyester with long floaty, translucent sleeves that had sparkly buttons at the cuffs. Someone had sewn it by hand, and there was a same-pink-fabric triangle sewn in at the neckline. A little on the nose. I wore that dress A LOT in my late teens/ early 20s. You may or may not remember that disco had a Nineties revival.) but this 2022 birthday moment was a little taste of what prom might have felt like.

When the car pulled up in front of the restaurant, I saw The Shy One and said to the Lyft driver “Right here. Oh my goodness, look at him.”

He was wearing a light blue dress shirt and, in his pocket, had perfectly matched blue shades. He looked as nervous as I felt, and we went inside.

As she led us to our table, the hostess asked, “Do you have any plans after this?” and I could not find it in me to be a normal person in that moment and just say “No, not really!” and deflect the question. But we DID have plans afterwards, and all I could picture was my new royal purple set of ropes.

“…Sort of?” I said, giggling and trying to stifle a huge smile.

“Do I want to know? She asked, leading us up the formal staircase to our booth on the mezzanine.

“Probably not!” I giggled some more.