• I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

~ writing my way through motherhood, doctorhood, post-PTSDhood and autism. sleeping very little.

Category Archives: romance

i would be a terrible dance teacher

21 Saturday May 2022

Posted by elizabethspaardo in kids, parenting, empathy, love, romance

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empowerment, love, children, trauma, truth, Possibility

I’ve done this dance as long as I can remember

(not the foxtrot. We did that in Gym and I was awful)

This dance of give and give and be who they want and not who they don’t and when they step on your toes don’t say a word because they might leave you and dance without someone else, someone who doesn’t complain when they step on their toes. So even if your toes are raw and bleeding and you can barely stand up, you keep dancing, because the only way to win is for the dance to last Forever

But

Inevitably it gets to be too much and you realize how messed up this dance is and so you leave. It’s always better to be the one who leaves. And if you should find yourself in that old familiar black hole, well, you’ll figure that out when it comes

They used to have these dance marathons for charity on sitcoms where the couple who stops dancing last is the winner and they’d dance all day and all night and wacky funny things would happen. But really what happens when you lose if you quit dancing is that you get so damn tired and bitter and hopeless and then that’s all your children know of life

They need to know it is not healthy at all to dance all night and all day no matter what the cause. They need to know the Baker bunion is not inevitable just because every other female in the family has it. And so, you sit and rest. You know now in your bones that there are a lot of ways to win, not just dancing forever. Know that bone that is your bunion has been trying to tell you this all these years but you wouldn’t listen. Maybe you thought you deserved to live that way. Maybe you taught them they deserve to live that way. But not anymore.

I was so afraid she’d disappear and never come back. And she did. Afraid if I said even the littlest thing out of line and I was right.

I was so close to invisible I thought I’d found heaven when I heard those words that day. To be so watched you must do everything right and yet not seen at all. And so I see them dancing the dance. And I hope I show them that the way to win isn’t to never stop. That it’s just a silly show and at the end of the day the best part is getting to rest with your feet up at home with the people that love you. And to choreograph your own life to your own song with an audience of one.

Cha cha cha

Fuck Ted Bundy

31 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by elizabethspaardo in Catholicism, christianity, empathy, Evil, kids, love, marriage, my awesome husband, narcissism, outrage, parenting, PTSD, romance, Sin

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be my valentine, betrayal, children, divorce, empowerment, Evil, fallen world, family, good, Justice, love, meaning, narc, narcissism, original sin, Parenting, religion, silence, sock monkey, stars, trauma, true love, truth, vampire, viktor frankl

Flesh of my flesh

Bone of my bone

Leave your parents cleave to me 

I am your new home

Home forever

Til death do us part

And if I make you yearn for that end 

Why that’s hardness in your heart

For if you love God

You love marriage, you love me 

And you know when God joins together

You’ll never be free

Free to be who you really are

To follow the fate signed in your stars

No you are mine and I am yours 

Don’t lock your phone 

Don’t lock your doors

We are one in heart and soul 

We are both driven by the hole 

left behind by the barren wombs that birthed us underneath the moon

Mother moon has cried for us while Brigid’s fire inspired us 

To reach for something better than us 

Wait Did I say us? 

I meant me. 

You conjure planks in all our eyes 

But yours are fine 

(It’s a disguise) 

A pleasant reflection outside of you 

Rot and decay is what is true

What god has joined together I will put asunder 

For how can we be one when your trunk is putrid and diseased at its core?

Swoop up the fruit before it hits the floor 

If you can tell a tree by the fruit it bears you’ve done a damn good job of fooling God 

For our children are precious fruit indeed 

Owing little to your bitter seed 

They grow and bloom in spite of you 

Soaring so far past the height of you 

Knowing there is something not right with you

People look at the women that fell in love with Ted Bundy

Stood by Ted Bundy

Accepted a proposal in a courtroom from Ted Bundy

And they think these women are naive or dumb or victims themselves

But has it ever occurred to you that they were there because being in love with Ted Bundy worked for them?

Instead of looking at him as this charming manipulative sociopath fooling these women

Has it occurred to you that she was manipulating him too?

Judas and Ted Bundy and Jeremy Noyes 

Sinners that God so loved he gave his only son 

God and Abraham would sacrifice their sons for the sins of the world

And so do you think yourself holy when you hurt your kids to hurt their mother? To punish her for leaving? For putting asunder what You joined together?

Because it was never about God 

And always about you 

And you, are a jealous and vengeful little demigod 

So easily beat by Brigid and Mother Moon

silver gray honey

01 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by elizabethspaardo in love, marriage, narcissism, romance

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be my valentine, death, divorce, Evil, fallen world, good, joy, love, narcissism, narcissist, Possibility, truth

We got engaged in December. It was cold and clear. In front of cameras of course (it doesn’t count if no one’s watching).

The next day, it began. It was cold and sharp. In my car along the Turnpike (with no one watching, of course).

I wouldn’t say the real you came out because I don’t think there is a real you.

You are honey mixed with gray silver micah. Lacking form and shape. You cannot be held but you stick and don’t let go. Clinging to my hands and I cannot quite get all of you off my skin. Dirt and remnants of what was and what wasn’t latched on.

I soak them in water. Warm and clear. And I watch as you dissolve and wash down my drain.

even though you technically are

06 Monday Sep 2021

Posted by elizabethspaardo in love, romance

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be my valentine, death, divorce, forget paris, jamaica, joy, love, original sin, true love, twinflame

Love came and

cracked open my ribcage.

Reached in and grabbed my beating heart and dug its nails in.

Pulled out

but

not hard enough.

My myocardium stuck on the shards of my ribs like jaggers.

Lacerated and bleeding, still beating.

Contractions spurring more

blood.

My chest empty,

a hole where my heart should be

(even though it is technically still there)

For

you are physically not

(even though you technically are)

And it kills me

Drip, drip, drip (better times up round the bend)

25 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by elizabethspaardo in empathy, Evil, kids, love, marriage, my awesome husband, narcissism, PTSD, Rape, romance, Sin, Uncategorized

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abuse, addiction, be my valentine, betrayal, children, divorce, empowerment, fallen world, family, feminism, forget paris, joy, Justice, laughter, love, morality, narcissism, Parent, patriarchy, Possibility, PTSD, rape, silence, Sin eater, trauma, true love, truth, twinflame

Water torture encompasses a variety of techniques using water to inflict physical or psychological harm on a victim as a form of torture or execution

I’d like to start this post by pointing out the term “Chinese water torture” is racist and nonsensical actually. When this torture technique has been used, it has been mainly by Europeans and there’s no recorded instances of the Chinese ever having used it.

Ok, onward and upward.

There’s this book by Lundy Bancroft I bought years ago titled “Why Does He Do That?” It’s about abusive partners and the many myths that surround our ideas of abuse. He’s a counselor that works with abusive men who either want to change or have been forced by the courts to undergo counseling. We often say abusive men need to learn to manage their anger but Bancroft argues that abuse isn’t an issue of out of control anger. Rather, it is a systemic, deliberate process used to control for the benefit of the abuser. They don’t need to learn to control themselves; they need to learn to stop controlling their partner (and everyone else in their lives they’re controlling).

In the book, he details ten different categories of abusers. The one I am going to talk (err-write) about today is the Water Torturer.

We’re all familiar with the idea of water torture. Not the waterboarding done by the US government. Rather, this idea of tying someone down and dripping water down onto their forehead slowly, drip by drip. The drops come randomly and it induces a psychological breakdown.

Lundy uses this as a metaphor for the kind of abuser who doesn’t yell or hit. He is always calm and appears to the outside world to be a great guy. He rarely slips up and lets anyone see what he’s really like. He knows how to push his partner’s buttons and get *her* to scream and get emotional. Then he says “why are you getting so worked up?” “you really need to work on your mental health problems” “stop abusing me.” He doesn’t punch or kick but he engages in subtle physical abuse such as blocking her from leaving the room or following her around the house arguing when she tries to get away. He doesn’t engage in blatant sexual abuse such as rape but rather makes degrading comments about her sexual interests, her appearance or withholds sex. He makes extensive use of sarcasm, put downs, controlling where she goes, controlling money, undermining her sense of self worth, isolating her from friends and family, badmouthing her to other people and gaslighting. Lots and lots of gaslighting.

Because you see, like Harry Houdini who helped popularize the idea of water torture, he depends upon an illusion to keep her with him. He depends on creating distractions so neither she nor the outside world can see what he really is and what he’s really doing.

The good news, friends, is that you don’t have to remain strapped down to that table. The damage done by this abuse is extensive, but most definitely something you can heal from.

You just have to keep in mind the Wizard of Oz is not real and keep your eyes on the little man behind the curtain. It’s hard to do, but you’re a badass so you got this.

I see this a lot in my practice. I have women who come in with black eyes and broken ribs, but more often they come in telling me stories of emotional abuse like this. They’ve been so worn down by it, like a pebble in a stream that becomes small and smooth over time from the water flowing over it. They are too tired and broken to leave. And they’re in love. And they’re addicted to the chemicals our brains grow to crave when we’ve been in toxic, tumultuous relationships for so long.

The University of Illinois did some research and noticed there are 5 stages to leaving an abusive relationship. The first two stages encompass the very beginning of the abused partner noticing there is something very wrong, something that goes beyond normal relationship issues. She’s nowhere close to leaving, but the spell has started to wear off. Stage three, women start to notice the effect of the abuse on their children. They start viewing the abuser’s behavior as abuse on a regular basis. And they start preparing to leave. Maybe they tell a friend what’s going on. Start stashing away cash in case they need to run. Call a domestic violence line. Stage four is an interesting one.

Stage four is the yo yo stage. You leave but then you come back. You might end up yo yo-ing several times before you truly leave. Why? Because he says he’ll change. Because being on your own is hard, financially, logistically (with kids), emotionally. Because he gets other people to guilt trip you. Because he won’t “give up on you.” Because you’re addicted to the brain chemicals. Because this dynamic is comfortable to you. Because you love him.

Stage five is the final one. You have left and you have stayed away and aren’t going back. The researchers define this as having left and stayed away 6 months or more. The abuse can continue if there are children involved and you are forced to have continue contact with your abuser, but it’s much less than before and you can begin to heal and move on.

It’s hard as doctor to have patients in those first four stages. Hard for friends and family too. But you can’t skip stages and you can’t rush someone through them. They have to make the choice to leave and stay left. You can support them by listening without judgement and validating their feelings. If you’re a friend or family, offering help with kids and other logistics can help too. And if they yo yo back, be there for them. They may be afraid to tell you. They may avoid you. Don’t give up on them. The abuser will likely make even greater attempts to isolate his partner if she goes back, so stay in her life whatever way you safely can and let her know you’re there is she ever needs you.

A lot of doctors shy away from dealing with the issue of intimate partner violence because they find it so frustrating to have a patient that won’t leave or who goes back. There are a lot of reasons women stay or return. And the sad reality is, sometimes it’s safer or necessary for her to stay. Being there to keep her as safe and supported as possible is hard, but it can be life changing for her. If you abandon her because she won’t leave, you’re just continuing the patten of the abuser, seeking to control her.

The longer you stay, the harder it is to leave. So, if you’re in a relationship with a water torturer, don’t put off considering leaving. A lot of times the reasons we come up with to stay aren’t as convincing if we discuss them with someone outside the relationship like a therapist, domestic help line or friend. Once you’re down in his world of gaslighting, isolation and control, your sense of reality is skewed. You need someone who isn’t riding that Tilt-A-Whirl.

Once you are out, the healing is not necessarily the most fun process. It’s kind of like when someone is getting over opiate addiction. There’s a lot they need to dig out from. A lot of pain and sadness and the practical part of rebuilding your life. But there’s also joy. And as the months pass, there is less and less pain and more and more joy. And you will look back and say, how did I do that all those years? How did I survive? And you’ll see what a badass you are. And that there are far better things at the carnival than the broken Tilt-A-Whirl. And you and your kids will eat cotton candy and laugh and sleep soundly at the end of the day cozy in your warm, safe beds.

That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight (or, the fault in our star)

03 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by elizabethspaardo in christianity, empathy, Evil, love, medicine, romance, Sin, Uncategorized

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addiction, beauty, crystals, death, dying, family, love, medicine, Possibility, religion, REM, stars, true love, truth, Wicca, witch

losing my religion:  southern term for losing one’s temper, “flying off the handle,” going insane  etc. Note that the R.E.M. song of this title has nothing to do with religion, despite the common misinterpretation of the phrase.

Oh, life is bigger
It’s bigger
Than you and you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I set it up

IMG_39BE05EDA837-1

I don’t remember which one became my patient first. I think it was Him. But it could have been Her. He was initially more memorable. He liked to show me pictures. Of his woodworking and antiques he’d restored. Of his boys. Of the squirrels they’d killed that year. I asked him not to show me the squirrels but he did anyway. She was quiet. Told me about the jewelry she made and the things she grew in her garden and foraged for in the forest. I do remember the day I realized they were a couple. That he was the he she talked about and she was the she he talked about. The “Ohhhhh” moment. The “oh wait, she’s *that* She and he’s *that* He!” It happens a lot in my rural practice. Six degrees of separation is not a thing in rural northwest Pennsylvania. It’s more like two.
*
They started coming to their appointments together eventually. They would tell me about their garden and their yard and the retaining wall they were battling to put up. And they would tell me about things addiction patients in rural northwest Pennsylvania tell you about. Meth and heroin and jail and stealing from the people you love and five year old kids calling 911 when their mom overdoses. They’d both been clean a long time, but everyone had relatives and friends still lost in it. They were no exception.
*
They gave me things. A piece of amethyst they’d hunted and extracted themselves. A small glass vase with a flower from her garden. She gave me gardening tips, foraging tips, taught me some herbalism.
*
They were always late. Always. That was a given. And that was okay. As long as they came. Sometimes they mixed up their days and we’d get a call a couple days later and fit them in the schedule for another day. I always held my breath until they called. Because you never know. You never really know if something didn’t happen and if they’re really all right.
*
And so it happened that they came in a week or so after their appointment in early February. I wasn’t at my office in northwest PA so they came to my office in Verona. Sam got to meet them for the first time. They got to see my other office, which is fairy tale themed. I knew she’d like it.
*
She wasn’t herself that day, though. She was sad. So damn sad. He had to talk for her for most of the appointment because she couldn’t stop crying. She’d been depressed. But it was more than that. She’d been having pain in her side a while now and it was getting worse. She’d gone to the ER and they’d drawn blood work which came back with an abnormality but when they tried to get an IV in so they could run some imaging tests, the nurse couldn’t get it. They kept poking her over and over and she ended up leaving the ER.
*
I asked her some questions to see if I thought she needed to go to the ER right now (it had been a couple days since leaving the ER and she hadn’t gone back yet). Based on her answers I told her I didn’t think it was an emergency but she needed to go back and get the test done. I said maybe she could try going to a different ER where the nurses were better. We talked about her depression and I started her on an antidepressant and told her to email me in a couple weeks to let me know if it seemed to be helping at all so we could work on the dosing.
*
I had a crystal sitting there. Malachite. A pretty dark green stone. I’d been feeling for a couple of days I was supposed to do something with it. An odd feeling kind of hard to describe. Like, restlessness. But with a stone. And before she left I took it and said, here, I want you to have this. And she told me she had something for me too. It was a necklace she’d made but she’d felt timid about giving it to me. But when I gave her the crystal, she said, she felt okay to give me the necklace.
*
He said, (or maybe she said?) that it was fitting because it had a star on it and pointed to my walls. The room we were in has a Sleeping Beauty theme and is covered in stars. (It is based off something I wrote about kids with PANDAS battling the disorder and emerging from it, like sleeping beauties waking up). I took it and told her I loved it. And I did. When I went to put it on, the chain broke, so I put it in my pocket. My back jeans pocket. And we walked out together and said our goodbyes. And Sam said they were sweet and I said I was worried about her. And I was.
*
Somewhere between there and my kitchen, I lost it. The necklace, that is. I realized it later that night and told myself, it’s here somewhere. It’s not gone. It hasn’t fallen off planet Earth. You’ll find it (this is the same thing I say to my children when they are panicking over something they’ve lost. I find it is helpful to give myself the same talks I give them pretty often). I looked a couple places I thought it must be (the cubby over my coat hook by the front door, the back pocket of those jeans I’d since thrown in the hamper) but it wasn’t. Over the next few days I looked a few other places and it wasn’t there either. I tried to remain calm.
*
Then a week later I found it. I was trying to dig a quarter out of my left coat pocket for a cashier, in line ahead of a grumpy resentful old man in the Giant Eagle “12 Items or Fewer” lane and I pulled it out instead. I was relieved. He didn’t care. At all.
*
I went to coffee with a friend that morning (please note: this is a rare occurrence) and stopped in at the crystal shop across the street (please note: this is not a rare occurrence). It had been quite a while since I’d received that amethyst. A lot had changed. And I now frequented the local crystal shop (thus, the malachite). I was browsing on this particular day and saw a necklace with a stone in it that looked like the one my patient had given me. I excitedly drew the necklace from my left pocket and held it up side by side to the other and they were an exact match. I told the women in the shop the story of the necklace and asked what the crystal was. They told me and I asked if I could take the little card that had the name of it and its meaning and they said yes. And they said how sweet it was my patient had made me a necklace. And I said, yes she’s very sweet.
*
The next day I was answering the phone (Sam was out of town and I was like a dad on a laundry detergent commercial, drowning in ineptness with a lost look on my face, trying to perform basic office functions). I was relieved when a familiar voice spoke back to me. It was him. And then it happened. One of those moments. One of those moments that create a Before and After in your life. He told me she had cancer. One of the really bad ones. There’s no such thing as a good cancer. But there are such things as really bad ones. That’s what she had. I stopped breathing for a few seconds. Parastalsis slowed. I got goosebumps (the medical term for that is piloerection. It’s the same thing that makes a porcupine’s quills stand up when it sees a predator. It’s supposed to make us look bigger and scarier, in theory. It does not, in practice). In my head I thought, “Fuuuuuuuuccccckkkkk.” I did not say this to him. I asked how she was. I asked him a series of questions trying to get more medical type details. I tried to get him to say something that would make me realize he’d gotten it wrong and it wasn’t actually cancer. It didn’t work. He said she was resting but I should call her later. I said I would. Even though I was scared to. Because there’s nothing really great you can say. Because you’re a doctor and you’re supposed to fix people and this is not something you can fix.
*
Her palliative care doctor called a little while later while I was on the other line with someone considering making a medical marijuana appointment for anxiety. They had a hundred questions and, in the end, said they’d call back once they decided what to do. I listened to his voicemail and frantically wrote down his number and called him right back. He was nice. God help me, he was a genuinely nice, caring doctor. If you knew doctors like I know doctors, the way they actually talk when there aren’t patients around, you’d know how rare a thing that is. He hadn’t seen her yet (the appointment was for the next day) but he wanted to touch base with me since I prescribe her a controlled substance and his role was pain management (also prescribed substances).
*
When I talked to her that night (well, to her voicemail), I let her know the pain doc was good people and would take good care of her. And he did. We have texted and talked since then, each step along the way, She and I. He and I. And even the palliative doc and I. There is more to it than this, various details you might not expect. But the heart of it is this: a really beautiful human being is sick with something she likely won’t survive. She is in a lot of pain. And the man who loves her is doing an amazing job supporting her through it. He is an unlikely romantic hero. Not a sappy, trite one. A genuine romantic hero. And she is a warrior. Strong and smart and intuitive and kind and creative and honest. And she is so damn young. Too damn young for this shit.
*
And so it was that I came to wear a star necklace everyday (I ordered a new chain for it the day he called with the news. I kept it in my pocket until the chain arrived). And so it was that I came to wear that necklace the night I ran into a good Christian I know.
*
The Good Christian looked at it in horror. Genuine fear in his eyes. And he said, “Have you lost Jesus?” He was distressed. I looked at him and said, “What?” And he pointed to my necklace and said it was a witch’s necklace, a Wiccan necklace. I said, it’s a star. A patient made it for me. That doesn’t mean I’ve lost Jesus. He looked… freaked the hell out.
*
And I thought of the word the palliative care doctor had used when he told me about her CT scan. Innumerable mets. Meaning, the cancer had spread to so many spots, the radiologist gave up counting. I remember when he told me that I wondered, at what point do they stop counting? 10, 20, 100? Maybe that particular radiologist was lazy and she really only has 3. But that’s not likely. When he used that word, innumerable, the hope I’d held out faded away. And I began to focus on how we could all support her in finding peace and being comfortable and doing the things with her last months she’d like to do. Because, lets be honest, doctors very rarely actually fix patients anyway. So maybe this very nice palliative care doctor and I could help her with these things. Hopefully I could be of use.
*
I thought of that word, innumerable. And I thought of the cancer growing inside her. And about how brave she is. And how sweet her he is. And I looked at this Good Christian and saw something in him. A different kind of cancer. One with innumerable mets to the soul. Dark and sticky. Inoperable. Incurable.
*
And I thought, this patient knows more about Jesus than you ever will. Because Jesus is love. And she is full of love. And she has brought joy and love to so many people. And she will keep doing that. Despite it all. She will keep inspiring other people to love. And she knows that I love her. And she lets me love her. And loves me back.
*
And that, dear reader, is not something the Good Christian is capable of. Not something he even understands. And that is why a necklace can inspire a look of dread and disgust in him. A star. An innocent little star.
*
I told my kids a bedtime story tonight. The boy in the story was looking up at the night sky when a shooting star appeared. My daughter got so excited and was urgently shouting “make a wish quick! Before it’s gone!” She was nervous the boy in the story would miss it. Because everyone knows if you make a wish on a shooting star, it comes true. Because that is what stars are for. To wish upon, to make our dreams come true as we sleep beneath their lovely glow. They’re magical. And shooting stars? They’re actually little burning meteors,  magical, glowing rocks. Kind of like amethyst or malachite.
*
If taking comfort in that means I’ve lost Jesus, dear reader, then consider me lost. Because not every sleeping beauty wakes back up at the end of the story. Sometimes her true love kisses her goodnight one last time. And releases her to shine down on us and remind us of who we are, innumerable stars in an endless universe connected to one another always.

 

***

Oh, life is bigger
It’s bigger
Than you and you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I set it up
That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
Every whisper
Of every waking hour
I’m choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool, fool
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I set it up
Consider this
Consider this
The hint of the century
Consider this
The slip that brought me
To my knees failed
What if all these fantasies
Come flailing around
Now I’ve said too much
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream
That was just a dream
That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream
Try, cry
Why try?
That was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream
Dream

No Fear in (I) Love (New York)–or, Our Lady of Perpetual Selfies

12 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by elizabethspaardo in Catholicism, love, New York City, romance

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Tags

love, truth

I got to go to New York this week. I love New York. Well, to visit anyway. Wasn’t so crazy about living there in grad school, but glad I did it. I feel very comfortable getting around the city when I visit now. And it stirs up a lot of happy memories.

I planned my trip carefully. There wasn’t much free time outside the conference I was there for, but I made the most of it. I went straight to Chinatown from Penn Station when my train got in. wonton garden. Go there the next time you’re in New York. Damn good Chinese comfort food.

I bought some Asian pears from a fruit stand on the sidewalk on my way there like I used to when I lived there. I took in the energy of the city. Whether you love New York or hate it, you have to admit it has a life to it that you feel in your cells.

I went to the top of Rockefeller Center before I left. I was the first one in line actually so I stood on top of New York by myself for a moment. I’m not one for views to be honest with you. it drives my poor husband crazy sometimes. He’s big on views. We used to go on hikes and get to the top of a big hill or a small mountain and he’d say, “Look at that view!” He couldn’t believe how underwhelmed I was. Guess I’m not a visual person.

I looked at the city below me and took pictures. Got some panoramic shots for my son Max. He’s a big fan of panoramic pictures. Guess he is a visual person.

I was hoping, quite cliché-ly, that going up there would help give me some perspective on my life.

I’ve been exhausted and overwhelmed lately, Taking in the suffering of addiction and PANDAS patients is draining sometimes. A lot of my patients have been having especially bad weeks lately.

And so has Max.

Sometimes it feels impossible. Like I’m living the Book of Job. I’m sure we all feel that way sometimes. Most of us anyway. Just one difficulty on top of another. Enough already.

It helped to get away from Verona, to spend time with a group of entirely new people, to spend some time alone too. Some calm and stillness.

Standing on top of New York wasn’t especially helpful though. Not my thing. Mountains, buildings, planes. Views don’t do it for me.

I stopped at a French bakery to get my sweetie some sweets and then on to my last stop before catching the train home. Back to reality.

I went to St. Patrick’s. St. Patrick’s is where I found God 15 years ago when I was 23. It wasn’t intentional. I went as a tourist, but from the moment I entered, it hit me. And I’ve never been the same.

I walked in now, 15 years and what feels like a few lifetimes later. I decided to pray by the statue dedicated to the Holy Family. Our family has not had peace for so long. We need peace so desperately in our house. I put my candle offering in and went to light my candle, to carry my prayers up to Heaven long after I’d left the Cathedral and headed home. But a tourist using a selfie stick and her phone to take pictures pushed me out of the way so she could extend her selfie stick over the candle and get a good shot of the statue. Really? Do you get at least a few minutes in Purgatory for that? I of course instantly forgave her and moved over to the candles on the other side and said my prayers and left my offering. I prayed for peace.

I then went to my favorite place in St. Patrick’s, the painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe. An area generally occupied by immigrants from various parts of Latin America. And me. She’s the only vision of Mary ever to appear where Mary is pregnant. So very… motherly.

Mary’s a mom so I know she gets me. So I let it all out. Told her everything while tears streamed down my cheeks and tourists walked by. I asked her for some rather specific answers, not expecting an immediate reply, but Mary’s an awesome mom and got right down to it.

Insight into who I am and how to treat my children and my patients. And insight into what is really at the heart of these things that trouble us all.

I feel renewed. Centered. In terms of my family and my medical practice. I have been living fearfully but there is no fear in love. I have not wanted to take care of myself, to be happy, because it seems selfish to take care of myself when my baby can’t, when so many of my patients and their families can’t.

It’s not a sustainable way to live. And it’s not good for my patients or my kids. I have known this intellectually for a long time. But it was always in my head, an idea unrealized, without form.

In the Catholic Church we are sensual. Protestants have formless ideas, a weekly service with a sermon that nourishes the mind. But Christ was both fully Man and fully God. We are physical creatures in this world. And so we have sacraments and incense and statues. Monks chanting and and holy water and the body and blood of Christ physically within us.

It is this smelling, hearing, tasting, touching, seeing that evokes the presence of God in us. Physical creatures seeking to know something so hard to grasp. I got up from the kneeler and looked at Our Lady one last time. I looked up at the great stone arches high above me. Took in the stained glass images of Christ and the Saints. And I felt so… protected, content, loved. Like I was home. The way a perfect home would be. What home should be. Peaceful and warm. A place you can be completely vulnerable and know you will be safe.

I realize something now. It is not that I’m not a visual person or I don’t like views. It’s that I like to look up instead of looking down. Not to see myself high above the small world below but to see the vastness of it all above and feel how small I really am. Part of something much bigger. Something very good.

No fear in love.

What Love Really Means

14 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by elizabethspaardo in love, marriage, my awesome husband, PTSD, Rape, romance

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

be my valentine, feminism, forget paris, mental illness, Possibility, true love

trenchfoot

This week is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik El Shabbaz. I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X when I was 21 and it changed my life. Changed it enough that I named my second born after him. Malcolm X was Godly and brilliant and brave. But the thing I’ve always been most inspired by in him was how much he changed and grew in his life. Why am I writing about this on Valentine’s Day? Because I wanted to write a Valentine for my husband.

He was born in the summer of ’69, a couple weeks after man walked on the moon and a couple weeks before Woodstock. He made his first film at age ten. He was an entrepeneur from the start doing everything from delivering papers, mowing lawns, to selling Grit magazine. He grew up and went away to a small town three hours away in Western Pennsylvania for college. My hometown. I was in elementary school then (I was born in 1979, the year of the collapse of the industrial economy in America. Not quite as cool). He went into computers and had a good job but he left behind the security of it to go to film school, to pursue his calling. He came home and made two independent films and got married and had a son. He found God and set about following Him. When God called him to open a cafe, he did. Crazy as people told him it was. And then he got this email from this girl who’d seen his picture on the interwebs and he decided to write her back. It turned out she’d been raped by a madman in med school and she had two kids who were dealing with mental health challenges of their own. On the day they got married she was $400,000 in debt and had failed to match into a residency and might never be able to make a decent living. He married her anyway. He’s not afraid to take risks. He follows God into the fray.

In the years since then, he has found himself facing the sacrifices of residency and the hell of PTSD. He has driven roughly 35,000 miles going back and forth between residency and our son back home. He has devoted himself to our hooligans. He has been a major factor in the amazing transformation of our son Malcolm. He has washed and scrubbed and shoveled and fixed and cooked and shopped and juiced. Wiped butts and cleaned up vomit and blood. Endured temper tantrums, meltdowns, wiped tears, kissed boo boos. He has listened to my frustrations and guarded the bedroom door from invading children when I needed to sleep.

More than that, he has gotten down in the mud, crawled on his belly, down in the trenches. He has done the real work of marriage, the emotional work. He has faced down his demons and mine. And that is the bravest, hardest, most loving thing there is. He has come with me as I travelled into the heart of my PTSD and faced my spiritual crisis. Been there through the anger and the bitterness and neediness and depression and the one-step-forward-two-steps-back-is-this-ever-going-to-end. He has come to be as outraged as I am about rape. Sometimes I think he’s moreso. When the petition we signed to stop the Bill Cosby performance at Heinz Hall worked, he was more excited than I was.

Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, said, “I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.” You can keep your long stemmed roses and diamonds. I have real love.

I love you, Poobah. I’m so proud to be your best friend. Forever.

Remembrance

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by elizabethspaardo in love, marriage, movies, romance

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

forget paris, true love

I watched a movie tonight called Remembrance about a woman who was in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II and was saved by a man whom she loved. The movie takes place 30 years later. She’s living in New York City, married with a daughter. She had thought he had died but then she goes to the dry cleaner to pick up linens for a dinner party and hears his voice on a television being interviewed about the camps.

She goes home and is trying to make phone calls to try to find him all throughout this dinner party. Her husband wants to know what’s wrong and she says she won’t say and he says, it’s not just your problem, it’s ours. No, she says, this time it is just mine.

She eventually tracks him down and goes to see him in Poland with her husband’s blessing. The movie ends with her getting off the bus in his hometown in Poland and his gaze and hers meeting.

I have become so… disappointed with most romantic movies they make because I think they really do us all a disservice when it comes to living out marriage. They fill our heads with a lot of awful ideas. They tend to end right as the relationship is starting. The whole focus is on finding THE ONE. If you’d just find THE ONE, you’d live your happily ever after. Big romantic gestures and winning the person over and finally raealizing why you always wind up with the wrong person and now you’ve learned and found THE ONE.

Remembrance is based on a true story (read about it here) that doesn’t have a very happy ever after to it. There’s a big romantic gesture at the start but then some really bad timiing and a disappointing ending. But ya know what? I kinda like that about it.

As I was watching the movie, I found myself really relating to the main character and her current husband and how this was affecting their marriage. I felt for the guy. How do you compete with a guy who saved your wife from the Nazis?? He saved her and disappeared and they never had to deal with bills and kids and whose fault it was that the minivan’s inspection was overdue and you got a ticket and…. How can you compete with that? In a romantic sense, you can’t. It’s like expecting a mother of three whose been to hell and back and eaten her way through it to compete with a man’s idealized vision of what she ought to look like. It’s a shallow, immature vision of love.

Love is a feeling, yes, but while it may first come into being by virtue of romantic notions, it certainly is not sustained that way and it certainly does not grow that way. Real love comes when we let go of what we thought it would look like. Maybe you wanted a girl with a small waist and a big booty and demure manner but instead you find yourself with an apple who curses like a sailor sometimes. Maybe you wanted a guy who’d be so emotionally intelligent he’d put Jesus himself to shame and would always say the right thing but instead you’re lying in bed at night next to a well intentioned guy who requires an awful lot of psychoeducation and tends to speak before he thinks.

Grand romantic gestures and charm and poetry and perfect beautiful bodies are nice and all, but it’s the sprinkles of this life not the ice cream. It’s not even the fudge or the whipped cream. Don’t get me wrong, I love sprinkles, but who wants to eat a bowl full of sprinkles? Love is mostly vanilla ice cream with the occasional sprinkle on top. The sprinkles are a wonderful treat, but it’s the ice cream that fills your belly.

I had a really really rough week recently that involved a really really awful 36 hour long day. I came home at the end of it and my husband surprised me with flowers and a card. He’d gotten three of our kids to sign it (including Princess) and the older two had written in things like “thank you for working hard for us.” I appreciated the flowers, I did, but it was the card that got me.

Our culture markets these ideals to us, these expectations. Of what our soul mate will look like, and act like, and do, and say. It’s only when we let go of these caricatures that we truly find love. And finding it is only the beginning.

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