Dostoyevsky once said that "the soul is healed by being with children."
Dostoyevsky once said that "the soul is healed by being with children."
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"We met in the summer of 1989. He was fifteen and I was thirteen. He had been climbing trees with his bare hands all afternoon, down by the lake near William's Edge; all the high school boys went there in the summer to cool off and fetch themselves battle scars. He came riding back into town with his white shirt all ragged and dirtied, the arms cut off at the shoulders. Holding onto his bike handles, standing on the pedals the way my mother warned me never to ride my bike, he was everything the world needed: young, strong, overly confident. His hair was wet and his face was dirty. He turned his head oh so slowly, and I knew he was something special. The trick was to get him to understand he was my something special."
Your topic:
First Impressions
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Anne of South Carolina writes:
"Why is it harder to forgive those we love than those we do not? Why, once our inability to forgive makes us stop loving, do we then forgive (and sometimes forget) what they did? And why, in unloving and forgiving, do we re-love, despite the hurt that comes back?"
I can't be sure if Anne submitted this topic with our falling out in mind. The funny thing is, although we've been back in touch again through Facebook, we have never broached the topic of our falling out and how we feel about it now, seven years on. When she submitted this topic, I actually had no intention of talking about Anne and me, but as I'm coming to learn, these posts have a funny way of becoming whatever it is they want to become.
So, to answer your questions, Anne, I can only tell you why I could not forgive you...and how I finally learnt to let it all go.
Seven years ago, I was so mystified as to how you could do something that would have such hurtful effects on the lives of those around you. With the wisdom I'm slowly accumulating in my old age, however, I see now that the decisions you made were never malicious. I don't think anyone ever wants to hurt others by the actions we take. We grow up and have new experiences, and if we were all being honest, we would all admit that sometimes we feel compelled to do things that we thought we'd never do. Sometimes life draws you a certain way and even if you know that what you are doing may make another person unhappy, you still go through with it because it feels essential to your happiness.
One could argue that this is simply selfishness; I dunno, maybe it is. But I do know that we all must live our lives the way we are pulled, and we do the best we can, and sometimes we make mistakes, and people get hurt.
You see, these last seven years, I have found myself making some of the same decisions that you made back then...some of the same mistakes that other friends have made as well, friends that I was also unable to forgive. But unlike what I did to you and them, the friends still surrounding me have found it in themselves to forgive me for my mistakes. To me, that is amazing, it is humbling...and it also makes me very ashamed.
The way I see it, I have done nothing to deserve such forgiveness because I have failed to extend the same compassion. But having been granted such mercy, I have learned that everyone is worthy of a second chance.
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I know a lot of people don't put much stock in ghosts, but on this matter, I really had no choice but to become a believer. I grew up in Hawai'i, and if you grew up in Hawai'i too, then you know that Hawai'i is THE MOST HAUNTED-ASS PLACE ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET.
Every single child in Hawai'i spends their youth scared shitless by their surroundings thanks to the endless retelling of local ghost stories that just never seem to get old. Apparently, you are never too young to be told a frightening story about faceless women in movie theater bathrooms. And at some point you're going to be choked by a ghost in your sleep, so you might as well be reminded over and over again until it happens to you. Sometimes, when I think back on my childhood in Hawai'i, I feel like all we ever talked about was ghosts, and when you live on a teeny tiny island, you get the feeling that they're all around you.
Don't take pork over the Pali Highway. Stay out of Morgan's corner. Don't pick up the lady in white on the side of the road. No, scratch that: Pick up the lady in white on the side of the road. Don't even think about taking that rock home with you, idiot! You wanna die?! - Look the Night Marcher in the eye. It was nice knowing you!
To this day, no ghost story scares me like a ghost story from Hawai'i. They just seem so much more potent...and that's because they are true. You die-hard skeptics out there will chalk all this up to hocus-pocus superstition in Hawai'i, but dude, trust me: Shit happens there. Hawai'i is an incredibly sacred and mystical space, and Hawaiians have a close relationship with nature, their ancestors and the supernatural world. Spirits abound, and almost everyone I know in Hawai'i has had an experience "not of this world"...but let's talk about me for a second, okay?
When I was in high school, I had my first encounter with the "choking ghost," a spirit that pins you down while you sleep and gets all Chief Bromden on your ass. There are many personal accounts of this ghost, with quite a few reporting seeing something on or by their bed. When this happened to me in high school, I heard deep, mean voices in my bedroom somewhere to my right, only I couldn't move my head to take a look. After a few minutes, I finally broke free...and later discovered that whatever had been in my room, it had turned my alarm clock off. I know, right? - That's freaky shit.
Fast forward to the beginning of 2008, on the beautiful island of Kauai, where I was playing tourist with my then-boyfriend, Luke. Wanting to get a taste of the "real Kauai," we had checked into a cute B&B near a beautiful valley. To be honest, I got the heeby-jeebies from the place as soon as we pulled up to it, but I told myself that the place had a whirlpool jacuzzi. Whirlpool jacuzzis are never haunted.
Sho'nuff, the first night we slept there, I had my second encounter with the choking ghost; this time, I heard strange Hawaiian music coming from the valley outside. It was no less terrifying than my first experience, only this time, someone else (Luke) had been in the room with me, and he swore that he had felt and heard nothing. Hmmm. Maybe it had been a dream, but how do you explain what happened the next night?: I awoke suddenly in the middle of the night, all of my senses on the alert and a strong feeling like something was in the room. Even more frightening was the fact that Luke had woken up at exactly the same time, with exactly the same feeling.
Well I don't need to tell you that we checked the hizzell outta that B&B and into a 4-star resort the next morning. Later, after doing some sleuthing on the Google, I discovered that the B&B was just down the road from an old Japanese cemetery, and in one of the most active menehune valleys on the island.
Yeesh. I don't know about you, but all this talk about ghosts and hauntings has me spooked. When I lived back home in the islands, I never liked retelling ghost stories myself; I worried that simply mentioning the spirits was enough to draw them to me. Save me Jebus, that's the last thing I ever want! So, if they're listening right now, this is all I have to say: I mean you no disrespect...please don't visit me in Brooklyn.
And now....I'm off to bed. (eek)
Thank you to Carmen D. Hopper of Virginia Beach, Virginia, for this topic.
Posted at 03:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
**Author's note: This post may not be suitable for the easily offended...or for 2-year-olds. My apologies in advance.
The first time I ever swore, it wasn't even a swear word but I still got in trouble. I was seven years old and the offensive expletive was the wicked, naughty phrase "Son of a gun." As soon as the words slipped out of my mouth at the dinner table, out of the corner of my eye I saw my mom's face whip around to look at me. I sat there, frozen, with a growing sense of dread. Damnit, I was in trouble. I turned to look at the fire-breathing dragon sitting where my dear mother had been not a moment before, and had I had more swear words in my seven-year-old vocabulary at the time, I am sure I would have thought to myself, "Oh shit."
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When you grow up without a lot of money in your family, every new thing you get means the world to you. It doesn't have to be a video game set or even a new bike - in fact, extravagances like that are well outside the realm of possibility for a kid who goes to school with holes in her shoes (yes, I did). No, even the smallest of things - a pin, a book, a doll from the $1 Win-A-Doll machine in the local diner - feels like a luxury when you never expect to get anything nice.
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We are talking today, of course, about Visible Panty Lines, those lumpy little lines that delineate the exact shape and placement of your undies for all the world to see. You say you're wearing granny panties today? Yeah, I can see that, but thanks for sharing anyway.
Most women deal with VPL every morning when getting dressed. Every day's outfit requires careful planning of proper undergarments to ensure that the outerwear is not eclipsed by the underwear. It's an exhausting practice and sometimes you just don't have the time to care...and that's the day you accidentally wear bright pink panties under white pants and you wonder why everyone keeps looking at you "down there."
Of course, you can always just go without underwear all together, although you expose yourself (no pun intended) to the risk of SAGF (Shameful Accidental Genital Flashing), not to mention it can get a bit drafty. These occupational hazards aside, there is sometimes no getting around going commando to combat VPL, especially when wearing a form-fitting dress. This is thanks to what I like to call "a negative BTPR" (Body-To-Panty Relationship). Let me explain.
I am not toned or particularly hard of body. I am soft, all over, but especially in my curvaceous bits. The result of this has been a lifelong battle against elastics.
You see, most undergarments are made with elastic bands - the contraction of the elastic is what keeps the underwear physically on your body. Now, if I had a body like a Victoria's Secret model, that contraction would probably not be such a big deal - my rock hard (or perhaps just skeletal) body would not give an inch when that elastic starts to contract. The outline of my hips would remain a smooth, unbroken curve, and would look pretty damn good in a dress!
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I would just die if you ever walked in on me:
1) Having sex.
2) Removing unwanted hair.
3) Vamping in the mirror.
4) Having made-up, speak-out-loud conversations with people who only exist in my head.
Yes, I do all these things, but no, you will NEVER catch me doing them. My fantasies about Ryan Reynolds are nobody's business but my own, thank you very much (but for the record, those fantasies do not involve hair removal).
I prefer to keep personal and private things "personal and private." Unfortunately, privacy is hard to come by when you live with other people. For ten of the last eleven years, I have lived with roommates, making me an expert at secrecy and stealth. Thankfully, I have never been walked in on doing anything mortifying, but I have caught some of my roommates in the middle of several embarrassing acts.
For instance, I once caught a roommate flirting with himself in the mirror. He had been home alone trying on shirts in preparation for a big night out. From what I could gather, this process involved striking a GQ pose in the mirror while casting a sexy smile at his reflection. He had left his bedroom door wide open.
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Everytime I visit my doctor, I prepare myself for the worst: A simple blood test could reveal that I have a terminal illness that I never knew about, an awful condition that was waiting to ambush my life when I least expected it. Call me a worrier, call me a coward, but I admit that I am terrified this will happen to me.
Is that so silly? After all, these things DO happen to people...
In fact, it happened to Marty, my friend Erin's baby sister.
Thank you to Erin Seitz of Brooklyn, New York, for this topic. Erin's Avon Page
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