the lessons of connections: 2019
content warning: rape
Since I first started blogging in 2011, I’ve taken the time to write a reflection at the end of each year. Usually I posted them. Those words took bits and pieces of memories, photos, and writing to build something that I felt shared a glimpse into the highs and lows. I never want to share a highlight reel – that’s not real. Instead, I share my reality. I share what has happened and what is yet to come.
This time, I want to do something different.
I started this the usual way. I spent time perusing the year in photos. I started to read old blog entries, old journal notes. I scrolled through social media, and I reached into my mind, hoping to pull out something that I felt like sharing.
Then I stumbled upon a text post I saved. It’s between a photo of an old story (I don’t know what else to call him) and another of my old team (two jobs ago). It says this, from Bianca Sparacino:
I don’t remember finding that. I don’t remember saving it. But it impacted me deeply.
At the training retreat for my fall fellowship with Future Leaders in Action and the Iowa Department of Human Rights, I learned how to define my core values and use them to empower and align my life. They are education, safety, and (can you guess it?) connection.
Much of 2019 involved education – whether it was personal or professional, short-term or ongoing. Much of 2019 also involved safety, in a myriad of ways. All of 2019 focused on connection.
I learned how to connect with women all over the country via an online book club organized by a college friend. I learned how to say no for myself when a past job started to make me question my worth, my value, myself. A dear friend told me that I always seem to be running away, and while I still have that constant urge to pack a few bags and drive, I learned how to (usually) stay. I learned more Spanish, through communicating with native speakers and starting classes this month (surprise!). I learned how to accept kindness and love and respect from a partner, even though it’s difficult (I have more learning to do). I learned that choosing sobriety is a choice I make daily, and that each time, it’s one of the best I’ve ever made.
As far as safety, I’ve learned that what my favorite poet (Andrea Gibson) was beyond accurate when they said this: “Safety isn’t always safe. You can find one on every gun.” The reality of that has hit hard, so many times.
When 2019 started, I felt unsafe in my relationship with most people. I didn’t want to trust friends, family, coworkers, anybody, because the person I used to trust the most ripped my heart out and shattered it in a million pieces – and left no fingerprints behind. In 2018, they were my best friend, my closest confidant, my partner in all senses of the word. I found out after the breakup that I thought was for good reason that they had been dating their “ex” the entire time we had been together. I still feel blindly nauseous acknowledging that, acknowledging that I didn’t see any red flags. That a person I would have damn near died for took my love and respect not only for granted but also as something replaceable, as something they could tap into when they weren’t receiving it elsewhere.
The start of 2019 involved a lot of strangers that became memories. I found safety in one particular stranger while we listened to live jazz and sipped on cheap drinks. I drove through a blizzard to meet him. We bonded so quickly that we said, “I love you,” in the first hour of meeting and half-joked about getting married that night. We didn’t. We did however confide in each other often. We built a friendship that provided me the safety I needed most – genuine respect.
At the end of March, I abandoned a friend in the middle of a snowy parking lot to go home with a person I just met. I craved attention and spontaneity and later would find out that this was part of my mania. That person raped me. I fought back, hard, but rape is not a winning situation. I never reported it. I never saw him again. What I did do? Tell that near-marriage friend. He was the first person to know, and one of the first things he said to me was that I did not have to report it and that it was not my fault. It was not my fault. I wanted to talk to my therapist about that, but she died the day after. It felt like the universe was conspiring against me, against my efforts to heal and live.
Regardless of whether it was, I learned that safety isn’t always safe. I’ve since fallen out of contact / friendship with that person who helped me so much. I’ve found myself in situations where yelling and threatening pepper spray were all I had – like in broad daylight at a busy gas station (as if nobody else around had eyes) or in my apartment when the maintenance guy let himself in without warning and I woke up to him next to my bed. The places that we claim as our own are not always that because the world is not built that way. Not yet. That’s why I value safety so much – I intend to make the lives of others safer every chance that I get.
That’s part of the connection value, the power of helping others. But mostly, it’s the power of learning from each other. In the last year, much of what I’ve learned has been at the expense of someone else’s experience. Sometimes that meant a story shared verbally, in a book, on a stage. Sometimes it meant watching something that I couldn’t change, no matter how much I wanted to try.
Always, it meant acknowledging that I am not alone in this world. This past year has taught me that I have something to learn from each person I encounter, whether it’s big or small, whether I see it then or later. The guy I saw on a unicycle a few days ago, with bright sparkling lights around the spokes, taught me to seek joy in everyday activities. My fellowship cohort taught me that we all have pain to work through, that we all have joy to give. My partner has taught me (and likely will continue to teach) that it’s valuable to take everything one day / step / thing at a time.
And I have taught myself that solitude is not the same as loneliness, that my life is mine before it’s part of anyone else’s, and that I don’t have to be brave & happy to be strong. There is strength in sadness, too.
I am ending this year unemployed, having not visited friends or family out-of-state in months (some in more than a year), and not knowing when I can return to therapy – something I truly need. It’s not a sparkly celebration for me.
Yet it is.
Because it is a chance to continue, a chance to learn, protect, and connect more. It’s a chance to write more of my story. As a writer, I will do just that.
Since I first started blogging in 2011, I’ve taken the time to write a reflection at the end of each year. Usually I posted them. Those words took bits and pieces of memories, photos, and writing to build something that I felt shared a glimpse into the highs and lows. I never want to share a highlight reel – that’s not real. Instead, I share my reality. I share what has happened and what is yet to come.
This time, I want to do something different.
I started this the usual way. I spent time perusing the year in photos. I started to read old blog entries, old journal notes. I scrolled through social media, and I reached into my mind, hoping to pull out something that I felt like sharing.
Then I stumbled upon a text post I saved. It’s between a photo of an old story (I don’t know what else to call him) and another of my old team (two jobs ago). It says this, from Bianca Sparacino:
Please, just let love in. Tell people how you feel, and do not worry about being too much. Be too much. Care too much. Let people show up for you. Let people remind you that there is goodness in this world. Be vulnerable, do not be afraid of what you feel. Try to find the beauty in each breakdown, try to move forward and let go; try to learn and believe in new beginnings despite what you have been through. Kiss the faces of your friends, hug their broken pieces back together, laugh loudly and hope loudly and live loudly and be gentle with yourself, be gentle with your healing. Connect, connect, connect – with every ounce of who you are, with every inch of your patchwork heart. Connect with the people who make you feel deeply. Connect with the things that make your hands shake, embrace the things that make you aware of just how lucky you are to be alive. Please, just connect – because beautiful things are vanishing each and every day. Do not let your heart become one of them.
I don’t remember finding that. I don’t remember saving it. But it impacted me deeply.
At the training retreat for my fall fellowship with Future Leaders in Action and the Iowa Department of Human Rights, I learned how to define my core values and use them to empower and align my life. They are education, safety, and (can you guess it?) connection.
Much of 2019 involved education – whether it was personal or professional, short-term or ongoing. Much of 2019 also involved safety, in a myriad of ways. All of 2019 focused on connection.
I learned how to connect with women all over the country via an online book club organized by a college friend. I learned how to say no for myself when a past job started to make me question my worth, my value, myself. A dear friend told me that I always seem to be running away, and while I still have that constant urge to pack a few bags and drive, I learned how to (usually) stay. I learned more Spanish, through communicating with native speakers and starting classes this month (surprise!). I learned how to accept kindness and love and respect from a partner, even though it’s difficult (I have more learning to do). I learned that choosing sobriety is a choice I make daily, and that each time, it’s one of the best I’ve ever made.
As far as safety, I’ve learned that what my favorite poet (Andrea Gibson) was beyond accurate when they said this: “Safety isn’t always safe. You can find one on every gun.” The reality of that has hit hard, so many times.
When 2019 started, I felt unsafe in my relationship with most people. I didn’t want to trust friends, family, coworkers, anybody, because the person I used to trust the most ripped my heart out and shattered it in a million pieces – and left no fingerprints behind. In 2018, they were my best friend, my closest confidant, my partner in all senses of the word. I found out after the breakup that I thought was for good reason that they had been dating their “ex” the entire time we had been together. I still feel blindly nauseous acknowledging that, acknowledging that I didn’t see any red flags. That a person I would have damn near died for took my love and respect not only for granted but also as something replaceable, as something they could tap into when they weren’t receiving it elsewhere.
The start of 2019 involved a lot of strangers that became memories. I found safety in one particular stranger while we listened to live jazz and sipped on cheap drinks. I drove through a blizzard to meet him. We bonded so quickly that we said, “I love you,” in the first hour of meeting and half-joked about getting married that night. We didn’t. We did however confide in each other often. We built a friendship that provided me the safety I needed most – genuine respect.
At the end of March, I abandoned a friend in the middle of a snowy parking lot to go home with a person I just met. I craved attention and spontaneity and later would find out that this was part of my mania. That person raped me. I fought back, hard, but rape is not a winning situation. I never reported it. I never saw him again. What I did do? Tell that near-marriage friend. He was the first person to know, and one of the first things he said to me was that I did not have to report it and that it was not my fault. It was not my fault. I wanted to talk to my therapist about that, but she died the day after. It felt like the universe was conspiring against me, against my efforts to heal and live.
Regardless of whether it was, I learned that safety isn’t always safe. I’ve since fallen out of contact / friendship with that person who helped me so much. I’ve found myself in situations where yelling and threatening pepper spray were all I had – like in broad daylight at a busy gas station (as if nobody else around had eyes) or in my apartment when the maintenance guy let himself in without warning and I woke up to him next to my bed. The places that we claim as our own are not always that because the world is not built that way. Not yet. That’s why I value safety so much – I intend to make the lives of others safer every chance that I get.
That’s part of the connection value, the power of helping others. But mostly, it’s the power of learning from each other. In the last year, much of what I’ve learned has been at the expense of someone else’s experience. Sometimes that meant a story shared verbally, in a book, on a stage. Sometimes it meant watching something that I couldn’t change, no matter how much I wanted to try.
Always, it meant acknowledging that I am not alone in this world. This past year has taught me that I have something to learn from each person I encounter, whether it’s big or small, whether I see it then or later. The guy I saw on a unicycle a few days ago, with bright sparkling lights around the spokes, taught me to seek joy in everyday activities. My fellowship cohort taught me that we all have pain to work through, that we all have joy to give. My partner has taught me (and likely will continue to teach) that it’s valuable to take everything one day / step / thing at a time.
And I have taught myself that solitude is not the same as loneliness, that my life is mine before it’s part of anyone else’s, and that I don’t have to be brave & happy to be strong. There is strength in sadness, too.
I am ending this year unemployed, having not visited friends or family out-of-state in months (some in more than a year), and not knowing when I can return to therapy – something I truly need. It’s not a sparkly celebration for me.
Yet it is.
Because it is a chance to continue, a chance to learn, protect, and connect more. It’s a chance to write more of my story. As a writer, I will do just that.
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