Circa 2004 or 2005. Written during the post-divorce, pre-Eric era. I've lost track of how many bookshelves and books I've added since then...
"What is to give light must endure burning." -Viktor Frankl
Aberdeen Shade. Fleur de lis. Black Coal. These are the colors I used to redecorate my bedroom after my divorce. Redecorate isn't quite the right word though: Renovate, perhaps? Resuscitate? Redeem? Resurrect? Restore?
The divorce wasn't so much a process of soul loss as soul retrieval. My soul had been lost years before the actual physical separation from my ex- husband. After removing the last of his pocket T-shirts and the last traces of Brut cologne from what used to be our bedroom, I laid down crucifix style on the middle of my bed and half sobbed, half whisper-screamed, “Take it back . . .Take it all back . . .” Whichever parts of his soul I was still carrying with me, I wanted to purge.
Once the physical liberation was complete, I dug out a musty-smelling copy of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones I had stashed in my basement where my ex-husband wouldn't see, and wouldn't bother searching. (There were so many places that he never took the time to explore.) At first I hid the contraband book under the mattress (next to the one anthology I had at the time of women's erotica). Two years and 300 mostly used and discount books later (and several more erotica anthologies), it seems almost silly that I felt I had to hide that book. But at the time I was afraid.
My ex was a Christian of sorts. And during our marriage I had agreed to express my faith through Christianity and to teach our children to do so as well. That pact was made when I was sixteen years old. For the next sixteen years I taught Sunday school, read the Bible, and obeyed my husband. For the next sixteen years I tried to be the perfect wife and mother. And for the next sixteen years I worried I was going to hell.
Before my ex-husband and I were married, I could share with him my desires and my fears. I could share my imagination and experiences. I could share my beliefs and my doubts. Before we were married, I shared my interest in tarot cards with him and he bought me a Rider Waite deck. After we were married, he was afraid that the tarot cards were evil, so I sacrificed them along with my own value system, my own sense of right and wrong, and my self-respect. “It’s ok,” my ex told me whenever I doubted my faith. “You don’t need God. I have enough faith for both of us.”
Graduating from college cinched my place in hell. At first I could share with my ex what I'd learned by reading A Doll's House and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. But by the time I read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and completed an independent study on language and consciousness, my ex blamed my education for the failure of our marriage. It was bad enough that I doubted my own faith, but college had taught me to doubt his, too. It had taught me to challenge his value system, his sense of right and wrong, his authority, and his sense of superiority. He was afraid something was wrong with me. He was afraid something was wrong with him. He was afraid that nothing would be the same. He was afraid I would break the pact. He was afraid I would “corrupt his children.” He was afraid I had become “everything he had ever hated.” He was afraid. He was afraid. He was afraid.
And after a while, I became afraid as well. I became afraid that perhaps he was right: perhaps there really was something wrong with me. After all, it was true: my education had changed me. And it had changed our marriage. Perhaps I had succumbed to evil, and he was only trying to protect me, like he had always tried to protect me. Perhaps it was all my fault the foundation of our marriage had crumbled.
Or perhaps I was more afraid that it really wasn't entirely my fault. That he was no longer my protector. If that were true, then it meant the battle lines between good and evil were no longer drawn around us, but between us. It meant I had to protect myself from him. It meant war.
I was petrified that a war would hurt him and me and our children. So scared that for a while I stopped desiring, stopped doubting, stopped imagining, stopped believing. I stopped reading. I stopped being afraid of going to hell and started living in it.
After digging out Zen Flesh, Zen Bones I started making solo trips to the bargain books section of Barnes and Noble and allowing myself to purchase self-help books. Traditional titles at first: Letting Go of Anger; When Someone You Love is Depressed; Successful Women, Angry Men; Healing the Shame that Binds You. Before the divorce was final, I bought doubles of some books to give my ex. It hurt that he wouldn't accept them. I kept trying to figure him out and help him. With the help of a therapist, I learned the best way to help him and my kids was to stop trying to take care of him and take good care of me. To do that I had to let go of who I had become and figure out who I was becoming.
Who I had become was a recluse. I had isolated myself, out of a fear that the evil lurking within me would infect others. Out of a fear I would be seized by evil in places I had never gone before. But as the inner terrain became less threatening, the outer terrain became less threatening as well. Within a year, I was able to expand my horizons and began exploring library book sales and used bookstores. From the library book sales I acquired treasures such as Edges of Reality; Beyond Good and Evil; What Makes Women Sick; The Will to Meaning. From the used book stores I self-consciously snuck home more esoteric titles: Working with Your Chakras; The Ecstatic Journey; Sacred Contracts; Don Juan, Mescalito, and Modern Magic. Occasionally I would even splurge on new books, gems I could not find elsewhere: Understanding the Enneagram; The Wisdom of the Serpent; A Woman's Journey to God; All About Love: New Visions.
I even bought myself a deck of tarot cards. It felt a bit rebellious. And at the same time, I still doubted myself. I wondered if maybe I was evil for desiring them. I wondered if I was even more evil for exposing my children to them. When I finally realized that I had acted just like Eve, and my ex just like Adam, I sat in the middle of my bed and started laughing uncontrollably. I had thought at first the war was with my ex. Eventually I learned that the battle between good and evil had begun long before the divorce, long before the tarot cards. It had begun long before me.
By the second year after separating, I had so many piles of books in my room that a friend of mine with OCD took pity on me and donated a bookcase. I resisted the bookcase at first. I enjoyed the chaos in my room. Plus, the scattered masses added weight to the room. They made it feel more solid. They added color. They added depth. They added protection. And they were like a giant mirror: they reflected me.
Other than moving my ex's stuff out, I had done nothing to the room but add books. And sort the stacks every so often. Sometimes I would sort by genre. Sometimes by author. Sometimes by subject. Sometimes by color. Sometimes by cover material. Sometimes by size. But then the boundaries would get blurred, and I would have to arrange the books all over again. I would have to decide which spines would be visible by passersby, which would peek out, ambivalent about being seen, and which would stay hidden.
In addition to the erotica anthologies, one book remained hidden for a long time: Flowers from Hell: A Satanic Reader. It is an anthology of works by authors such as Milton, Marlowe, and Poe, authors who equated Satan with Imagination.
Finally I got overwhelmed by the chaos and decided it was time to put up the bookshelf. I also decided that in order to put up the bookshelf, I would have to paint it, along with the rest of the room. The chakra book came to mind when I selected the paint. Fleur de lis I chose for the wall opposite my bed. The color of dark wine. Of dark, oxygen-rich blood. The color of life. Perhaps the deep red color reflected a need to work on a particular energy center. Perhaps I was trying to get back to the root, to my roots. For the wall behind my bed I chose Black Coal. The color of death, perhaps. But coal is also a source of fuel. A source of heat. Heat is a means of transformation.
Aberdeen Shade I chose to adorn the other pair of opposing walls. A light to punctuate the darkness. It is the color of sand and reminds me of walking barefoot at the beach, one of my favorite places. I also used Aberdeen Shade to sponge-paint the acoustic tiles on the ceiling. Paradoxically, the sand color appears dark against the stark white of the tiles. I can look up at the ceiling and see patterns and shapes in the paint like I used to look up and see patterns and shapes in the clouds before I became afraid and stopped imagining.
Once the decision was made to redecorate the room, I immersed myself in the process, determined to finish it all in one day. No scraping, no taping, no tarps to protect the carpet. A six-pack of Coca-Cola and songs from the 60s and 70s fueled my determination. I rolled paint on the walls as I danced and sang to “Shambala.”
Three Dog Night. The last time I’d listened to them was when I was ten and lived in the apartment on Holley Street in Phoenix. I remember that apartment the most even though we lived several other places and spent the least amount of time there. I think I remember it the most because it was the apartment my brother and mother and I lived in after my parents' divorce. And because it was one of the few places in which I had my own room. There were only two bedrooms. My mom had her own twin bed in my brother's room, but mostly she slept on the pull-out couch. I slept like a princess in the new canopy bed with the yellow and white gingham Holly Hobby comforter set I got to pick from the JC Penney catalog. My room may have been the nicest room in that apartment.
After fourteen hours of painting, the bedroom I was restoring was starting to look like the nicest room in my house. And I was starting to feel guilty about the past. I felt guilty that after the divorce I got a new canopy bed but that my brother didn't get a fancy new bed. I felt guilty that my mom didn’t have her own room. I remember waking up very early one morning to see my mom’s boyfriend leaving. Apparently he had spent the night, and my mom didn't want us to know. I wonder if she craved more privacy in that small apartment the way I crave more privacy now. The way I craved more privacy the first night I let the first boyfriend after the divorce spend the night. I wonder where my mom hid her books, her letters, and the equivalent of her tarot cards. I wonder where she purged her guilt.
And I wonder, what would have happened if I had been able to keep that room on Holly Street, or if my mom had married that boyfriend? What would have happened if we hadn't moved to New York, or if my mom hadn't left me and my brother at my grandparents' house where I shared a room with my aunt for a year before I was allowed to move in with my mom and the man who would eventually become my stepfather?
What would have happened if I hadn't I slept on a bed behind the couch in the living room after I finally did move back in with my mom, or if I hadn’t had to share another room with my brother until I was twelve? What if I hadn’t needed to put a lock on the door of that room to protect myself from my stepbrothers when my brother moved out? And what would have happened if I hadn't gotten married at sixteen and shared a room with my ex-husband for seventeen years?
The bookcase was painted last: Black Coal. I placed it against the wall opposite my bed and left it empty for a while so it could dry. I wanted to be empty, too. Instead I felt full of guilt that my ex was unable to get his needs met in the relationship. Full of guilt for not being able to quell his fears. Full of guilt for every mistake I ever made that fed his fears, his shame. Full of guilt for all of the unkind thoughts and words I had hurled at him when he abandoned us. Leaving, it turned out, was the best thing he could have done for all of us. Destruction was the only thing that would allow new growth.
Finally I began to let go of my anger, my guilt, my fear, my expectations. “The fairytale is over, Mom," my eldest child informed me one day. I was discovering that somewhere down the road I had done all of us an injustice by trying to become an idealized version of who I thought my ex wanted me to be instead of the real person I was, warts and all.
The bookcase was finally dry. I curled up in the middle of the bed and apologized by proxy to the teddy bear who had become my new bed companion, “Forgive me . . . I take it all back . . . I take it all back . . .”
***
The bookcase has long since been filled. And organized. And reorganized. The Holy Bible currently rests comfortably next to The Varieties of Religious Experience; The Essential Tao; The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. And, unashamedly, the stacks on my dresser have grown taller than ever. I've bought a few recommended books: A Symphony in the Brain; Colors: The Story of Dyes and Pigments. Several gifts have made their way in: Think on These Things; Wonder Women; Altered Art; Thresholds of the Mind. A separate stack has been reserved for books authored by friends and former teachers: Breaking Open the Alabaster Jar; Sisters of the Thirteen Moons; The Emerson Dilemma; Wild Ride to Heaven. And the most recent additions to what feels more like an alchemical laboratory than a bedroom sit on my nightstand, next to a small lamp: Traveling Between the Worlds; Transformed by the Light; Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief.
It occurs to me that I have now spent nearly three years alone in this room, which is as much time as I have ever spent alone in any room. It also occurs to me that I should probably put up another bookcase. But that would mean dismantling all of those ever-changing but ever-present stacks. I can’t say that my battle between good and evil has been won yet. That I never have moments when I fear I've somehow lost a part of my soul. But when I look around my room, I am reminded that there is always a place to go where it can be restored. Where I can be restored. Where I can wash away my sorrow and my pain. Where the light shines.
“I suspect many of us might never sign up to experience the light if we knew how much darkness we would have to face first,” I said to a friend recently. “But in the end, it is worth it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment