“What happened to your eye?” Dhaval asked.  “Was it another drinking accident?”

“Yes,” I replied, nodding.  Lame excuse, but not entirely inaccurate.  At least it wasn’t “falling down the stairs.”

After reading the above, the obvious question that comes to mind is: why the FUCK would you stay in a relationship like that for so long??  What the HELL WERE YOU THINKING??

It has taken me some time to find the right words to explain myself, but I have finally found them:

Staying in a toxic relationship is a form of addiction.

Damien was like a drug. He’d treat me like shit six out of seven days of the week, but it was that one day of honeymooning that kept me coming back for more.  He manipulated me with lies and verbal abuse, and made me believe that I was worth nothing.  It’s really as simple as that.

Ever since I was a child, I so desperately wanted to feel like I was good enough to be loved.  Damien capitalized on this.  I looked to him for affirmation of my self-worth, which he rarely gave.  I hoped that if I could just stand by him and be perfect, to always say and do the right thing at the right time, that I could be the one person who’d inspire him to change, and I would be rewarded with his love.  My perception of love was so twisted – it was really just a form of self-hatred.

To make matters worse, his abusive behavior and alcoholism were a reflection of his own insecurities.  He was intimidated by my intelligence and achievements.  He was intimidated by my friends.  He both admired me and resented me for being everything he was not.  I tried so hard to help him believe in himself, but he equally worked to make me doubt myself.

I wasn’t happy, but I couldn’t bring myself to want anyone else.  Over the course of the year I was dating Damien, I was presented with a number of “alternatives,” or guys who were interested in me, perhaps the most notable of which was my friend Bright.  Bright is the kind of guy you can bring home to your mother; he’s handsome, he has a really good job with Microsoft, he owns a house, he’s funny, intelligent, and polite.  We had really good conversations that were honest, inspiring and compassionate.  I knew that a guy like him would be good for me, but for some reason I could never see myself being romantically involved with him.  Life is so funny like that; you make all the appropriate calculations and things still don’t quite add up.  The way love behaves will always be a mystery to me.

Guys came along, but none of them could break the spell Damien had over me.  Ideally, I should have realized on my own that I didn’t deserve to be treated like shit, but I didn’t love myself enough to have the courage to leave. There was a point when I decided that this, perhaps, was my lot in life.  I decided to love Damien and accept him for who he was, even if he hurt me.  I was resigned to the notion that I would probably be miserable for the rest of my life with rare spats of happiness, and could only hope that he would change for the better.

And just when I thought my fate was written, Chris became a part of my life.

I guess from the first time I saw Chris, I had a strange feeling that our paths would cross in a significant way, but I dismissed it.  It took a couple of weeks of working in the same lab before we introduced ourselves to one another.  It took another couple of weeks of my friendly overtures before he seemed interested in talking to me at all.  And then suddenly, he wasn’t interested in just talking to me – he seemed interested in me.  I tried to downplay my curiosity about him at first, but surely enough, I started to like him back … a lot.  He was incredibly funny, he got along very well with my friends, and being around him just felt really good. Consistently good.

But I was still stuck with Asshole.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I think you should break up with Damien and get with Chris,” Will, my bartender friend said, as I sat in Kai’s Bistro drinking a whiskey coke. I had introduced Chris to Will several days before, and Chris had won him over with his knowledge about playing Craps and homebrewing.

“I mean, Damien hasn’t been anything but nice to me, but Chris is just so cool,” he said.

I sipped my whiskey coke and sighed.  I knew he was right.  And after almost a year of darkness, I knew it was time to let go of Damien and step into the light.

******

There are never any guarantees in life.  There was no way of knowing how things with Chris would work out, and it was not his responsibility to rescue me.  I was scared of the possibility of being rejected and hurt, but I knew I had to just suck it up and take a risk.  I finally realized that I wanted something more than the shit life I was living, and that finding someone who helped me feel good about myself was actually possible.  Ultimately, I had to save myself.

In the aftermath of the breakup, things haven’t exactly worked out as I had hoped, but I don’t have any regrets.  My life is one million times better than it was a year ago, and I am so grateful for that.  I do believe that life may not always give you what you want, but it does give you what you need.  I needed someone like Chris to show me that I could be happy …

… and now I don’t expect anything less.

“You’re mad. I’m mad. We’re all mad here.” (Quote from the Mad Hatter)

Call it a gift or a curse, but I have a very good memory, one that is reinforced by my emotional nature.  Sometimes I wish I had more of the first and less of the latter, or less of both altogether.  Sometimes it feels like I’m living in the past.

This is probably why I always loved poetry: it is an art of associations.  As I sit here drinking a weak cup of coffee … suddenly it is much, much more than a coffee cup.  It is a symbol of ritual, a communal object, a reminder of my dedication to friendship and compassion.  Suddenly the memories are flooding my coffee, bittersweet and filled with melancholy.

I wish I could just look at it and see that it is nothing more than a kitschy ceramic mug.  I need to adjust the lens through which I see the world — I am waaaay too hindsighted.  If only I could take the things that have happened in the past and set them on fire, using combustible memories to propel me forward.  If only.

I’m just speaking in abstractions and I hate that.  First rule of writing, is to always be specific.  The devil is in the details.  But maybe later.  Right now I just feel like ruminating.

1. Start playing competitive Scrabble (again)
2. Join a Hula halau
3. Work my way up to swimming a mile (again)
4. Play team sports (again)
5. Learn how to play the drums
6. Learn how to ollie on my skateboard, and hopefully not seriously injure myself in the process
7. Seriously start working on writing my book
8. Refashion my wardrobe

Most of these will have to wait until February, after the dreaded General Exam.  But the overall goal is to start doing things that I really want to do, one step at a time, and build up my confidence in the process … because let’s just say that my self-esteem definitely took a hit this past year.

#5 and #6 are in honor of my weakness for guys who know how to do either of those things.  I’d like to prove to myself that the small things that I find appealing in other people, I can also learn to do.  After all, why not?

More Auld Lang Syne reflections to come …

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear

For auld lang syne,

We’ll take a cup of kindness yet

For auld lang syne.

I’ve always loved this song.  I love the melody and I love the beautiful simplicity of its lyrics.  Auld Lang Syne is a Scottish phrase that literally translates to “Old long since,”  but more loosely translates to “Days gone by.”

It’s been quite a year.

If I could go back in a time machine and tell December 2008 Melana how much life would change over the coming year, I don’t think she’d believe it.  Even now, I am bewildered by the events that have happened.  I experienced some terrible, terrible things, and it will take many years for me to recover — and even then, there are some scars that will never fade.  But in the end, my story is a story of hope and survival — a story of courage in the face of adversity, a story of love in the face of self-hatred and loathing, and a story of the pursuit of authenticity. If I gather these lessons into my heart and remember how far I’ve come, why should I doubt myself?  Why should I doubt that goodness will come into my life, if I were to only let it?

I met up with my friend Zach for drinks to celebrate our one-year “Acquaintance anniversary.”  I’ve only known him for one year but he already feels like an old friend.  I’m sure we will be friends for a long time … I just have a hunch.  I have hunches about lots of things.

I vented to him my frustration over the situation of my love life, and he listened intently and made insightful comments.  Almost exactly a year ago, we were chatting over the exact same topic, except the players were different and so was the intensity of the drama.

We met at the Eastlake Zoo Tavern, my usual watering hole, on a fateful Sunday night last year.  December 28, to be exact.  The only reason why I remember this is because it was three days after Christmas, and the events surrounding Christmas are extremely vivid — I can even recount the outfits people were wearing that day.

I was not well.  My alcoholic, psychopathic, verbally and physically abusive boyfriend had gotten into a yelling match with my best friend two days earlier.  They both were scheduled to work that Friday night, and he ended up walking out on his shift after getting into a sticky situation with one of the bar patrons.  He told her he was leaving, and that he was not going to deal with immigrant motherfuckers.  She told him to do his job.  He told her to fuck off.  She flipped him off as he walked out the door.  And there I stood, jaw to the floor, absolutely flabberghasted at what was happening.

And like a starved puppy, I ran after him.

“Damien, you have to listen to me,” I said. “If you walk out again you are going to get fired.”  This was the third time he had walked out on his shift.

“Get away from me!” he shouted.  Along with some other very not nice things. Then the “immigrant” walked out and approached us.  He did not look happy.  Oh, this is just fucking great.

“You wanna fight, man?” he called, holding his hands out in the usual threat display.  He came closer. I was between the two of them as he approached, but I didn’t move out of the way.  Instead, I turned and looked the guy straight in the eye.

“I’m sorry.  Please, just let it go.”

The guy looked at me for a few seconds, scowling.  Then he turned away and went back to the Zoo.

Damien will never admit that I probably saved him from getting in trouble with the police that night.  By all rights he should be in jail.

The rest of the events that night are fuzzy.  As Damien got on the bus and threatened to throw away the iPod nano I had given him for Christmas, and that things were “OVER,” I felt my heart shatter, for the billionth time.  For the rest of the night I ended up hanging out with my friend Bright, who I followed along on his post-holiday drinking escapade, absolutely dazed.  I was in post-traumatic shutdown.

I didn’t talk to Damien for the next two days.  I never knew if our relationship was over or if, once again, he was just blowing smoke out his ass.  So I went to the Zoo again, on a night he wasn’t working, because I had nowhere else to go.  My life completely revolved around my asshole boyfriend, at the expense of relationships with my friends, family, school and work.  And that’s when I met Zach.

Sometimes, when you really need it, life throws you a bone.

In the middle of being depressed that night over my bad relationship, I accidentally began to hang out with a group of friends that night at the Zoo.  As I moved along the circle, I was eventually introduced to Zach; skinny and tall, with boyish good looks and a slim hoodie, I thought he must be gay.  He looked like an effeminate emo kid, after all.  My assumption led me to believe it was “safe” to talk to him, because the whole sex thing would not be an issue, so I did.

Then he eventually asked me for my phone number … whoops.

In between chatting with Zach, Damien started texting and calling me.  He called Renee a bitch, he called me a bitch, he told me that he hated me, blah blah blah.  I excused myself and shut myself up in the “Employees only” closet, where a person within earshot may have heard the muffled screaming as we argued over the phone.  This was my shithole life last year … it was my own personal hell.

Over the next few days Zach became my new secret friend.  He lived in the U-district, so I snuck happy hour drinks with him, and we chatted about our bad relationship issues.  He was going through some of his own confusion with a “friend that he occasionally sleeps with,” a girl who was also experiencing some serious psychological problems.

In a way, it felt like we were dating, although we never slept together or anything.  He liked me … he smiled at me and bought me drinks, and gave me compliments.  He was pleasant company, which was so refreshing to have in the middle of my chaotic life.  Our circles did not overlap, so our meetings felt like taking a “timeout” from the rest of life — a timeout to reflect and chat.  Having him in my life probably helped me more than either of us could ever imagine.

I was always up front with Zach about what was going with my tumultuous relationship.  Eventually, I was back in the thick of it, and things were only about to get worse.  Zach, however, continued dating around, and found an awesome girlfriend a few week later.  He’s still really happy, and I’m really happy for him.  Maybe someday, I will be able to say the same for myself.  But for now, this New Year’s I will be single, for the first time in several years.  And I’m starting to feel ok about that.

A cup of kindness goes a very, very long way.