The Different Faces of Love (The Moon, the Crazy Moon, part 3)

This started out as a response to a comment on my last blog, but it was getting so lengthy, I decided to just post it as a separate blog. It may only make sense in the context of my last blog, though, so you might want to go back and read that (and the comment) if you haven't.

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Perhaps it all boils down to me being an abysmal communicator (that may have been my problem then, just as it is now). . . or perhaps it's the dramatist in me, embellishing in the wrong way--adding a flare of romance to the story when it's really a different sort of love I'm speaking of. I mush it together in my description because there are similarities, but really what I'm talking about is more like the love and loss I felt with my sister and when she passed away, and yet my own failure with words paints it as something silly. It may be that I'm thinking too much of an audience--what words could I use that they would understand? I can get caught up in the idea of trying to word something in a clever way, a universal way--such pride, however, is not conducive to successful communication.*

Call it two-faced, but I feel misunderstood. And I'm using the backspace key a lot now in trying to explain. How should I expect my words to be clear enough for my readers understand me, when it's all still so much in process? I don't even understand me. Does denying that you have questions and making haste to cover the holes over with the quickest biblical patch to be found make one's God bigger?

I feel like I'm being pushed to action out of the expectations of others that I figure it all out already and DO something. That probably wasn’t your intention, but that’s how it felt. Why is reality so hard for me? What reality? How can reality be hard when you don't know what it is? It's the inability to identify reality that is hard. Of course, I could simplify it by ignoring the intricacies--the threads that don't line up with a particular presumption of neat, tidy fabric. But that, in my opinion, would be the sign of a belief in a small god.

Yes, the recent line of questioning with Doug may be a distraction, but I wouldn't call our friendship a sideshow. It's a distraction just like maneuvering all the kids' birthday celebrations, skinned knees, and last-minute homework and costume needs is a distraction. It's a distraction like my parents' waning health and a friend who needs help moving is a distraction. It's a distraction like the stopped up sink is a distraction. Life is full of distractions. True, the way I've worded things in the three blogs in which I've talked about Doug may make it seem like I've been obsessing, but the reality is, we have a deeper history than I have even come close to putting into words here. If anything, I’ve given voice to an over-active imagination in the “he hates me” or “he doesn’t care” side of it.

When I read “You are acting like you are trying to solve some hidden hurt, but you are justifying flirting with another man who is not the one you are pretending to be yoked to. You can't honestly love someone from that long ago to whom you have never lived with or spent much actual physical time with. Love is more than fatal attraction, or fantasy boyfriend love affairs of the mind,” that hurt. Don't stop commenting, though. Hurt is okay. We grow through it. And do keep praying that my eyes will be open, because that has been my prayer, and I do believe in the power of prayer and since I have also been praying that God would reveal to me any ways in which I’m deceiving myself, I believe He will.

What may have been missed in that blog, probably due partially to the Moonstruck references (which are about a romantic love), is the longevity and depth of the friendship history Doug and I have (and the connections he has with my family as well), and the fact that if a close female friend or one of my brothers or parents would have come to me with the same news that Doug shared yesterday, it would have sent me reeling in the same way. To me, all love is important.

It’s interesting timing that yesterday a boy came to ask Todd and I permission to date one of our daughters. The term “just friends” came up in the discussion--they no longer wanted to deny that they were more than “just friends.” I cautioned them about the logic behind that term, saying that romantic love, if it is not built on a firm foundation of friendship, will actually grow into something that is “less than friendship.” The love between friends is not something to be trivialized, and it can in fact have a more enduring quality than love that is contorted to fit the mold of romance.

Even though I wanted to know if romance was the cause of the dark period between Doug and me, I am NOT interested in romance with him now. Our friendship has weathered too great a length of time and too many storms of life to ruin in that way. Even if it seems like an excuse to some who read this, my main reason for digging and wanting to know that part of the past truly was because of the questions about relationships that my daughters have been asking me. I want to understand, so my advise to my girls will not be born out of my own dysfunctional confusion. I take it as an answer to prayer that even when one of my daughters broke up and another started a new relationship, in the midst of my own personal struggles and without me having yet found “the answers to that dark pivotal day in my past,” I was still able to offer them what I think was wise counsel. Maybe I don’t have to know the specifics of what happened back then in order to be able to find mental and emotional health now.

The appearance of silliness confirms to me that some ground is better not to be dug up because it stirs the flighty emotions of that time period. (Yes, I did get a bit caught up in it.) Doug and I have grown past that--there is no need to bring it back up--that was proved when I was able to talk to my daughters with confidence. Also, I don’t want to confuse Doug by stirring up emotions from the past that he has already worked through, so I will be careful what I say from here on out. Maybe I feel like that wounded little girl more because of my current hurts than because of anything “back then.” I will try to not let the past distract me from dealing with the issues of now, mainly the issues with Todd, but I don’t think God would have me deny the impact of a dear friend who is facing a very serious disease--that is also in the present. You would understand that he is very much like a brother, if I were to share our full history.

Hey--that just made me think of a slightly silly, yet related, little side-note:

When I was in elementary school, I had crushes on at least two of my cousins. I even said with certainty that I was going to marry one of them. All these years later, I can interact with those cousins at family reunions and there isn’t any weirdness or shame or romantic attraction, but I still love them... and I grieved when one of them was very sick... and I rejoiced when the surgery he required was successful... I sobbed when he lost one of his own children...

Love affects us that way.

It doesn’t have to be romantic (and it may actually help if it isn’t romantic). So, I’m sorry if anyone judges me for expressing my love for Doug. I was probably misleading in connecting the Moonstruck clips. The wording of that statement about love just gets me, and I tend to apply it to all sorts of love. When you love someone, they are capable of driving you crazy--there is a much deeper truth to that than what we see on the surface of Loretta’s mom’s words. My love for my dad drives me crazy. If I didn’t love him and desire his love, it wouldn’t drive me crazy when his words and actions lead me to believe that he is more proud of my brother than he is of me. Talk about issues--I’ll have to blog on that someday. Any mother knows that her love for her children can drive her crazy. And, I can't even tell you how long it took to be able to function again after the sister I loved passed away. Love can drive you crazy.

Anyway, if you’re able to get past the apparent “inappropriateness” of me admitting that I “love” Doug (realizing that it may not mean to me the same thing that it does to everyone else), I would appreciate you saying a prayer for his health. The initial blow when I got the news wasn’t like, “oh no, I’m going to lose my fantasy boyfriend if the cancer takes him!” It was more the fear of going through what I went through with my sister again. Not another sibling! Selfish, I know, but I’d rather be the next one to die than have to see another loved one go through such a painful end.

* At the risk of drawing more parallels with films that confuse, I'd like to share a clip from a favorite that touches on the complexity of love. Not saying that it has anything to do with the kind of love I was referring to--just that love is not always as neat and tidy as we'd like it to be.

Richard to Clarissa: “Oh Mrs. Dalloway, always giving parties--to cover the silence....I wanted to write about it all, everything that happens in a moment...all our feelings, yours and mine, the history of it, who we once were, everything in the world, everything all mixed up--like it’s all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less-- sheer f-ing pride and stupidity. We want everything, don’t we?”

The Awful Fear of Loss (The Moon, the Crazy Moon, part 2)

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I took a scalpel to an old emotional wound, opening it up in hopes of bringing healing.

I took the risk and asked my friend Doug to help bring clarity to a decades' old misunderstanding between the two of us. When his first reply didn't satisfy my curiosity, I pried further. Then waited. The more time passed with no reply, the more my imagination went to dark places, chiding me for being so foolish to have bared my soul.

My note had left off with:

"I don't know if I've ever confessed to you that I was often rather intentionally contrary with you. In a world where people are constantly battling over their differences, it's weird to say that it was our lack of differences that frightened me. I thought that if I were to admit that I liked too many things that you also liked that I would appear like one of those ditsy, game-playing girls who I had so little respect for... and so, when you said you liked something that I adored, I'd often down-play my admiration... and likewise I was perhaps a bit overboard about those things we disagreed on (food, for example).

"In that way, I guess you could say that good came out of the crumbling apart of our friendship, because I did learn that when you care about someone transparency is important--I should have trusted that the over-all complexity of who we are would be enough to prevent any apparent 'overly-compliant' aspects from being interpreted as fake.

"How stupid of me to BE a fake so as to avoid looking like a fake! Talk about feeding confusion. But have I really learned that lesson if I still find it hard to admit the biggest thing that I never dared to be transparent with you about--the thing that I was so certain would make you not want to be my friend any more? Hmm... I can't claim that I was immature then (as if it's any different from now) if I'm still unwilling to admit 20+ year old feelings for fear of ruining a friendship.

"Yep, I'm still an immature, insecure, fraidy-cat. But all that is self-centered. I don't want to be self-centered. I want to be transparent. I say that all the time, and then I draw my curtains... hesitating because I over-think everything. Could transparency itself be selfish??? What if there are truths I long to speak that others don't want to hear? What if speaking such things destroys the environments others have build for themselves and like?

"I'm sorry to bring you into my madness, [Doug]. These are things I probably just have to figure out for myself--things I shouldn't be burdening anyone else with. Rather than explanation or clarification, all I should really be asking for is prayer--prayer that God would strengthen me according to His word. He is able. I really do believe He is able. I just need Him to help my unbelief. And to know that when my heart melts with heaviness it is safe only as it flows into His hands.

"Thank you for tolerating me after all these years. Someday I'd like to tell you more of the things wiped out by the stroke of a back-space key, things regarding one of my dearest friendships that I keep veiled by a curtain of fear. I know that perfect love casts out fear--why must I be so far from perfection?"

Days went by, then weeks . . . and no reply. I started to take it as confirmation that the friendship was a lot more lop-sided than I'd been willing to admit. I even started imagining that I had been little more than a pawn in a plot of folly and mixed messages, the punchline of a cruel joke. That's why life could go on for Doug, smoothy, comfortably, while I was desperately itching at my scabs.

Today, I got a message from Doug. He said he sent the note because we needed to "keep the dialogue alive." Then, he went on to tell me that about 10 days ago, he went to the doctor because of a mole that had obviously changed. The doctor agreed with his concern and excised it. And today, the pathology report came back as a full-blown melanoma. "The good news," he said, was that "the depth of it was less than one cm--about a third of that." He explained that if it had been deeper, "it would have been serious, with more excision and pulling lymph nodes under the arm and all that."

His good news didn't sound good to me. One-third of a centimeter sounded way too deep, so I looked it up online and learned that anything deeper than a millimeter is of great concern because that is when it's deep enough to reach blood vessels and be spread to other parts of the body. It took a while for me to even be able to write a single line in reply. I was reeling. I couldn't stand the thought of the worst case scenario (which I have already seen play out in the lives of several people close to me.) Most of the people I have known with melanoma haven't survived. And now I was faced with the possibility of loosing someone to whom I couldn't even admit my true feelings for fear of them being taken as "inappropriate."

Finally I managed to ask him to please tell me that he meant to say "mm" instead of "cm." I sent the message, but then I had to get away to a quiet place. Todd had just returned from the store, and the boys kept demanding my attention, so I snuck out to the van in the driveway and hid in the back seat where I returned a call to a dear friend. It was helpful talking it out with her, but I was away from the computer, so I didn't check for Doug's reply until about an hour later. Oh, the relief to see that he had indeed made a typo. He meant "mm" not "cm". That still doesn't guarantee that he's in the clear, but the prognosis is A LOT better.

Needless to say, my chest has done some of those crazy contortions today. Like her mother said in reply to Loretta's declaration that she loved Ronny Cammareri something awful, "Oh God, that's too bad!" and "When you love them, they drive you crazy." (Moonstruck, 1987)

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation." (C.S. Lewis - Four Loves)