Love/Fear

Memory is more indelible than ink.

--Anita Loos

What do you love? Ink. What do you fear? Memory.

These were questions and answers from a writing group hosted by my friend Rose. We made lists, picked salient words from the lists, and wrote about them. My own response surprised me in the "love list." Cooper, Clare, music, ink--wait, ink? Who loves ink? The "fear list" was far more predictable. It was long, but "memory" more or less summed it up. I still spend many of my waking hours, and sometimes my sleeping ones, haunted by my past.

I wrote what I thought were unrelated snippets, but I'm beginning to think there is more of a connection than I thought...

What do you fear? Memory. I remember things I’d rather not, at inconvenient times. I don’t usually sit and think, “Now I will try to remember the man who abused me, the friend who nearly killed herself and then clung to her/my abuser at the expense of our friendship, my lost year of hospitals and treatment centers and church and the world upside-down.” The memories just come, unbidden, in the middle of the night, standing in the pickle aisle at the grocery store, walking my dog. I walk about in the present, and suddenly know I’m not quite here and not quite now. I’ve gone visiting, against my will, in the land of fog, full of his tentacles, where an entire city is laid waste for me. Hardly a square inch of concrete was immune to his influence. His reach extended even to the hospital, even to the therapist’s office. He was supposed to be a shepherd, but he devoured me like a wolf. I thought he saved my life, but because of him, I'm not always sure I am alive. I’m afraid this will keep happening, that it will always be this strong. I will always relive, instead of merely remembering. And I’m afraid that I’ll never work out what, exactly I’m remembering. Will it always be so blurry? So out of order? There was a person I thought I could trust, and I have a mind I thought I could trust. One turned out to be utterly the opposite of what I thought, and the other seems to be broken. I am afraid of never understanding. I am afraid that as long as what happened to me defies logic (and it will), I will never be free of it. I will never be able to stop going back, diving back into that incomprehensible morass of pain, adrenaline, blood, tears, and lies and trying to make it whole, understandable, orderly. I am afraid that I will always have these two lives: my present life, which is quite lovely and whole, and this fragmented past that comes flying at me at random, all spikes and shards.

What do you love? Ink. Ink is a new love. I didn’t know it until my wedding. I wanted a certificate, and the only way I could get the one I wanted (Quaker-style) was to make it, so I learned some calligraphy. It was only a short process, a few days of work and lots of starting over, and when I was done with the ink, we gave it to a friend to paint a border. He called in another friend to help, and then, when the vows were said and the songs had been sung and the blessings pronounced, every person there filed out and signed, one by one, to say they had seen, and promised to remember, and promised to hold us in the Light. Now when I think of ink, when I so much as pick up a pen to write a check, or a grocery list, it is as though I am writing those vows, signing that certificate, making that choice, over and over again, every day.

...

I think, on some level, I am hoping Anita Loos is wrong. The idea of a Quaker wedding certificate has appealed to me since college, but the connection with ink was not so powerful before. But now, I think of penning those letters, signing my name, and enlisting a hundred loving witnesses, as both an affirmation of the life and the love I have chosen and a bulwark against a life I briefly fell into. The signatures of my dear ones are both a declaration to the world and a reminder to me that my present life is the real one, as real as ink soaking into paper. It is as if, every time a memory flies at me, there is a family member or friend to step between it and me, sign her name over the spikes and shards, turn me back to my husband, my home, my God, and say, "This is true."