Category: stories

Valentine’s Day Massacred

Valentine’s Day Massacred

Valentine’s Day is a mess. Even if I set aside my own history with February 14th, I wouldn’t be a fan. Valentine’s Day has become performative – the day when romantic partners are supposed to pull out all the stops, and the sellers of flowers, chocolates, and anything traditionally designated as “romantic” make a killing. The only Valentine’s celebrations that don’t feel so infected are the ones kindergartners and elementary students get, if they are still anything like they were in my childhood. Chalky candy hearts printed with messages, red hots, and silly little cards from friends still make me smile.

If you’re single and would rather not be, it feels particularly cruel to have expectations of romance everywhere you go. It’s not fun, and when I lived with two other single women, we responded with a house party to watch The Godfather and eat plates of spaghetti and, of course, cannoli.

Even in a romantic relationship, I don’t think I’d want to celebrate Valentine’s Day, at least not in any of the traditional ways. I prefer my romance less scripted by capitalism and more extemporaneous and personal.

But while I’m not yearning for an expensive dinner or box of chocolates today (not that I would ever turn down chocolate!), I would love to redeem February 14 for myself.

It was on Valentine’s Day around twenty years ago that my first boyfriend (if I don’t count Blaine Disher in first grade), the first guy I ever dated, for that matter, showed up for our date and proceeded to dump me instead.

I was blindsided.

I’d been a late bloomer, and in fundamentalist Christianity to boot, so my first date didn’t happen until I was 25. We only dated a few months, but convinced by Joshua Harris and a previous marriage gone wrong on my boyfriend’s part, we “kissed dating goodbye” and were “courting.” This meant hours of processing his first marriage and a long conversation between him and my parents – and that was before our first date! Once we started actually dating, we spent hours talking about our values and kids and finances and all the things you’re supposed to talk about before considering marriage. He sent me red roses at work the day before Valentine’s Day, and when he showed up for our date and asked if we could talk, I honestly thought, “Well, I know we’ve covered all our bases, but it’s really too soon for him to propose!”

Yeah, blindsided.

Around a year later, having processed the worst of the grief, I tried to capture the moment in a poem.

Choke
(or The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre)

He said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
She wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
He said, “It’s just not there for me.”
And it started to sink in, because he wouldn’t look her in the eye.
And she said, “But what about the roses?
You sent them yesterday.”
You idiot, she thought.
“How will I explain them to everyone now?” was what she said.
“I never thought about that,” he mumbled.

And she thought, then what’ve you been doing all this time?
How could it all be meaningless to you?
But she didn’t say that, because she didn’t want to hurt him
and it was hurting him to hurt her;
she wouldn’t make it worse.
That wouldn’t be loving him
and she didn’t know how to not love him yet.
So she didn’t say that.
And she didn’t cry.

Except her voice got shaky
and her hands.
And her eyes for some reason started to water.
Her heart couldn’t understand
what her mind now saw very clearly:
he was leaving lightly
and he wasn’t coming back.

He said, “At least we didn’t let it get all that far.”
And she wondered what life he’d been living in
to say something so stupid,
and what kind of fool he was
to believe it.
And she couldn’t feel a thing
and she couldn’t understand.

He said, “Well, I think this has gone really well…
about as well as such a thing can go.
But then, I didn’t expect any less from you.”
And she supposed he meant it as a compliment
but it stung.
She wasn’t making it hard on him
because that wouldn’t be loving him
and she couldn’t stop as readily as he.

And then he added, “You’ve never tried to pressure me
I always loved that about you.”
And she thought, oh, now you tell me.
But she didn’t say it.
He hugged her bye
and she didn’t shrink
and she didn’t cling.

He drove away
and as she walked back in the house
she hoped he’d choke.

Am I glad we didn’t get married? Most definitely. Despite this incident, he wasn’t a bad guy, and I suspect we could’ve made a decent marriage, but though he would’ve ended up being a more interesting person, I would’ve ended up much more conventional than I am. And I like who I am and am grateful I’ve had the opportunity to be this me.

I still wish he’d handled breaking up with me a good bit differently. Valentine’s Day was an excruciating reminder for years. And while the sting is only a memory now, redeeming February 14 is something I’m still doing.

So, I throw the occasional Godfather party. I try to remember friends who the day may be difficult for with chalky candy hearts and silly cards. And I find ways to be kind to myself. (My favorite local bakery-cafe has a personal gourmet pizza special tonight I just might take advantage of.)

The murder of St. Valentine may be more apt to the celebration of the day than we tend to acknowledge. Few hearts in this world haven’t been broken, and I suspect far more than me long to redeem the day.

(Side note on the poem – I’d spent weeks perfecting a recipe for his favorite treat, blondies, and testing multiple batches on coworkers and family. I’d already given him his carefully wrapped box of blondies before our “talk,” and he drove away with them in the front seat of his car. I clearly remember the first post-shock anger crystallizing around that realization with the thought, “I hope you choke on them!” Hence, the final line of the poem provided a title with a literal meaning alongside others.)

 

 

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Adult Friendship – Finding, Keeping, Letting Go

Adult Friendship – Finding, Keeping, Letting Go

Every Sunday night I go to a church in a bar filled with people with stories, all kinds of stories. Stories we believe are “the word of God for the people of God,” because God is still speaking in and through our lives. This month we’ve been talking about adult friendships – finding them, keeping them, losing them, and starting all over again. In a world full of lonely people, we don’t talk about friendship enough, or even make room for it in all the things competing for our attention and priorities. And as adults? We often are at a loss when it comes to making the kinds of friendships we want. (The Nancy podcast has done some great stuff recently on how queers can find a “gaggle” of friends, but I think we all need that help.)

This is the story I had the opportunity to tell this week. It’s one that’s still going…

——

It was Easter Sunday 2014. We’d had the sunrise vigil, and the Easter breakfast, and I’d just finished leading the liturgy I wrote for our Easter service. I was walking with my friend Angela to our cars in the parking lot, and I remember telling her, “I think maybe this should be my last service. Everything is good, but if I want my life to be different – and I do – nothing’s very likely to change if I don’t change something.”

I was 41 and tired of being tired of being single. I hadn’t had a date in seven years, and I wasn’t meeting possibilities. Something needed to change and church seemed like the most doable thing.

And that was scary to say, because church meant more than the place I went on Sundays. Church meant six years of friendships, of lives lived together with a group of families and a few singles who lived in my neighborhood. We had dinner together every week. I’d known most of their kids since they were born. When I was sick, they brought me extra plates of dinner and DVDs. When there was a birthday, we threw a party. Some of their children were the only kids I’ve ever felt move and kick and squirm in their mama’s belly.

I spent the years after seminary building my life around these relationships, and now I was going to change that, and I didn’t know what would happen. What all that would mean.

So I started visiting churches.

At the first one, I met a pastor – another single woman – who came from a conservative background not too different from mine. We had lunch and met for coffee and started sharing our stories (she didn’t tell me then about her dream of starting a church where people could share good food and tell true stories and make beautiful worship together!).

At the second one, when I told a work acquaintance and his wife why I was trying to make changes in my life, Judy – a woman who is five feet (maybe) of major general, cheerleader, and CEO all rolled up together – gave me marching orders: “I’m proud of you! And I want you to go home and sign up with a dating site online! You need to go where the men are, and that’s where they are! And I mean today! Report back to me with a text this evening.” And like I imagine everyone in her life, I obeyed. (And had ten first dates in the next three weeks!)

At the third church, I found a community of gay couples who also knew what it meant to be a deep disappointment to a conservative family, as well as how to be a chosen family who could keep me afloat through that storm. I ended up landing in that church, and they gave me the support I needed as I started dating, then moved into the city, changed jobs, and even as I got involved in the queer, quirky new church in a bar my pastor friend was starting.

And when my last birthday came around, I looked across the table at the improv club where we were laughing and celebrating. There was my first friend from my new job, a beautiful friend from that new church, and two of my closest friends in the city – both of them men I met dating. And one of them came with his girlfriend of the past year, who I’d enjoyed hanging out with on many other occasions.

Those friends from my old neighborhood in the suburbs? They weren’t in the city celebrating with me that night, but they cheered me on through it all. I still go up north for the breakfast we all have together one Saturday a month. And I’m still a part of their kids’ lives. And this summer, they all loaded their kids up one Saturday morning (no small feat!) and hauled them into the city to have breakfast at my place.

One of the hardest thing I’ve had to do, the thing that never seems to get easier, is knowing how to keep friends in my life as a single person when life is changing for everybody. It turns out that sometimes that means letting go.

Swiping Right

Swiping Right

Online dating comes with inherent risks – I knew that when I waded in five years ago or so now. Anytime you’re meeting someone you don’t know, your expectations for reasonable human behavior can be upended. And anytime you have an intentional space for people to meet prospective romantic partners, you will have people who seek to use that space for their own purposes.

I knew there were risks, and I decided they were worth the potential benefits. I wanted to meet men who were interested in dating, and that wasn’t happening in my everyday life (and hadn’t been for quite a few years).

I approached online dating the way I approached most things in life, with reasonable precautions. It was a big step outside my comfort zone relationally, since I had been raised to completely avoid even a date with someone I didn’t already know to be basically marriage material for me (evangelical Christian with conservative beliefs, never married, committed to sexual purity, etc.). But in other ways, it wasn’t such a stretch. I’d been building friendships online for my entire adult life. I’m a part of online communities and friendships that are ten or twenty years old. I’d met several of those folks in person when we happened to be in the same city, and even transitioned a couple of friendships to regular in person connection.

So I knew to be careful with personal information – name, address, workplace, etc. I always meet new people in a public place, and let a friend know my plans and who I’m meeting. And I take the “trust but verify” stance – take someone at face value and verify what they tell you about themselves with Google.

It’s not easy to hide your life these days, and a person’s “online footprint” can confirm a lot. I’ve learned to check all the avenues where I protect myself to confirm that a man is who he says he is and that the circumstances of his life are what he has portrayed them to be.

And in five years, I’ve never been surprised by what I found. Until now.

After meeting a man for a lunch date, that went extremely well, we made plans for a second date. He’d told me enough about what he does for a living that I could look him up online even without his last name. I found him and quickly discovered that he has a wife and children and a bit of history that is less than savory.

He never outright lied to me – I never asked him directly if he is married or has a family. He gave a very intentionally crafted impression that he is single, and has to be because of a job that requires constant travel. He has carefully cultivated a way to talk about his life that creates a lie out of the truth (the circumstances of the job) and omission (the family he very much has). It’s not that hard for him to live a double life, it appears.

Needless to say, I back peddled out of the second date, but I didn’t call him out. Part of me very much wanted to, but it would almost certainly antagonize someone I don’t know. And the only likely change in his behavior would be to sharpen his hiding skills. The risk is not worth the possible benefits.

It’s a common cautionary tale, and I’ve heard even worse online dating horror stories from other women. I’m very grateful that I haven’t gotten lazy about those online checks.

But here is what I want to remember: this is the first time in five years it’s happened. I’ve easily met fifty men or more, and nearly all of them have been genuine gentlemen. Most men are decent human being who are trying to make life work as best they can.

Dating is not easy, and there are risks far beyond the one I had lunch with. But there are far more benefits out there, and I’ll never have a chance to meet them if I don’t start with swiping right.

Losing Sight

Losing Sight

It’s so easy to lose sight of each other. To see only what we expect or want to see instead of what’s really there. To see one particular sliver of someone and stop looking for anything else.

We do it without even noticing – that’s the problem. We don’t notice what we’re not noticing.

It doesn’t matter enough to us. We do fine with what we do see, it’s sufficient to get us through the day and so we become okay with erasing each other. With caricatures that hide people.

It’s the other way we use masks – not just to hide or protect ourselves, but passing them around to those we encounter, hiding the real people and simplifying the world for ourselves.

The professor. The black man. The boss. The uniform. The head scarf. The pretty face. The old woman. The clerk. The suit.

I see them every day. But I don’t see them. I only see the idea, the caricature I’ve been content to see. And they are more.

They are each a person with a life as full and complicated and delightful and tragic and messy and absurd as mine.

But I can’t handle that.

I’m too caught up in the full and complicated and delightful and tragic and messy and absurd life that is mine, and I don’t have room for them.

Except…

I get tired of going around in the circles of my own life. I keep at it like it’s my job, my obligation. And in at least one sense, it is. But it’s only my job in so much as I can get enough of a hold on my own life to yank it out of the way. To be able to look beyond myself and really see everyone else as so much more than a supporting cast of character roles in my life, my story.

Because the truth is I don’t have a story, not one that is just mine, at least.

We have a story. A full and complicated and delightful and tragic and absurd story that we all make together. Turning each other into villains and heroes (usually turning ourselves into the heroes) as we try to make it smaller and more manageable and easier to tell ourselves as we fall asleep each night.

But that story is a lie, or at least as much lie as the truth. Because the story is always bigger and messier and more delightful and tragic and absurd than we are ready for.

So tell me your version, please. And maybe – hopefully – it will help break me out of mine and shape it and change it beyond what I know. Maybe we can figure out how to tell a bigger story together so we can stop losing sight of each other.