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2004-07-13 // 1:57 a.m. I've been spending quite a bit of unexpected time with C these past few weeks. A week-and-a-half ago, she came here for dinner. Last Thursday she was supposed to come again but her roommate got into a car accident (she's okay), so C felt she should go straight home after work. She talked me into coming there, though, and I got a chance to take a good look at the room that is opening up in August. You see, C and her partner, Chef, have a really nice apartment. For the past several months, they've been renting out the spare bedroom to a friend. Initially, they did it to help out the friend because she needed to get out of an abusive relationship. Before long, C and Chef must have begun to like the idea of renting out that room because, now that their friend is moving out, they've offered it to me. The funny and unexpected twist? I'm accepting their offer. I NEVER would have expected it. First, C and I living together? Never saw it happening. Second, me living with a couple? Not something I would recommend to anyone. Third - and the most staggering - half of that couple is C!!! Never, ever saw this coming. This is completely out of left field but my intuition is kicking into high gear here, telling me it's the right move. An unlikely match, the three of us living together, but it just feels like something that could work out really well. Our schedules are quite different and I know respecting each others' space will not be an issue. God, I breathe easier just thinking about it. C was even kind enough to ask Chef if they could consider charging me a bit less than they've been charging this other friend of theirs, because money has been so tight for me. I feel loved. I truly do. You know, I must admit life has not been its typical chaotic self lately. It hasn't reared its uglier head in a while *knock on wood*. I actually feel as though I have some room in my life to simply relax, to not take everything so seriously. I wish I could express how much of a change this is for me. I do. I also feel as though I have room in my life to give to people I love who are going through major transformations right now. I mean, I'm always someone to give to those I love, but I don't always make the healthiest decisions. My own life has been known to be adversely affected because I've neglected me in order to help/protect others. This feels different. It actually feels as though my hard work since the New Year has given me a space to include my friends' issues in a healthy, positive, affirming way. Good thing because things have not exactly been blazee ("blah-zay", how do you speall that?) in certain loved one's lives. Gib is not doing well. After nearly a week of no contact (craziness in a friendship where there is daily communication), she left me a quick voicemail telling me that she is not at all doing well but that she's "staying with it." Her voice sounded off, like literally on a different octave. Not her at all, but it was honest. I've been praying for her, meditating on her strength and lighting a candle each night. I don't know the details of what she's experiencing right now, but I know it's the final stretch of more than a decade of psychological healing. I admire her courage and marvel at her ability to sit with pain, fear and self-loathing until they either pass or illuminate. I feel naive saying this, but because I love her I just hope this passes soon. After what she went through as a child, and with all the work she's done in her personal life since, she deserves a fucking break. Man, no larger truth has ever been said. Yesterday, I had an unexpected day off. I thought I was scheduled to work my part-time job but I thought wrong. So, after debating between the beach and a treck up to UConn to visit my friend, E, I chose the latter. He'll be finishing his master's degree in early August and it won't be as easy to see him once he leaves campus. So, time is valuable while he's there. While we were eating Chinese food and gabbing away, he shared some wonderful news with me. Instead of taking this coming year off, working, etc, like he thought he was going to have to do, he's been given the opportunity to apply now for fall admittance into a rabbinate school - a seminary - in L.A. This is HUGE. He has dreamed of being a rabbi his entire life - God knows he'll be amazing at it - and it's beginning to actually take form. He thought he'd missed all opportunity to apply for this year but, evidently, some nationally-famous rabbi got wind of his interest and was impressed enough to make an exception. How about that? I'm so proud of him. He's writing his application this week (essays), and he's waiting to hear from the dean tomorrow about what day he should fly out for his interviews. Man, this is real stuff - it's actually happening! California! The place E and I knew we would end up. Well, it looks like he'll get there first, but I'll be a few years following. Just need to take the time to tie up some loose ends here, get some better footing financially, etc, and I plan to be on my way. I've had the sense that I might move to Cali. with Gib when she returns. We'll see. In any case, lots of movement in my life and those around me. Gib is winding up years and years of self-healing, E is at the embryo stages of watching his life dream pan out, and I'm finally - after two years of family hell - returning to a place where I can live my own life and have some much-needed distance from my relatives, especially my parents. Lots of movement. Movement that I trust. It's not all happy, though. I'm very worried about Gib. One of the last things she did before hybernating with her healing (I say that in kindness, not as sarcasm) was ask me if I've ever been suicidal. There was a quietness about her that night that was unlike her typical silence. I know she attempted it once, years ago, and a very close friend actually intuited her actions and pulled her out of Pacific waves. That was years ago though and, aside from Gib's one question the last time I saw her, she's given me no reason to be afraid. None-the-less, this past weekend especially, I've really feared for her life. I felt so unsettled and found myself talking to her inwardly, sharing all the reasons why she is not done in this world, all the reasons why the people around her find her so magical. She truly is magical. She told me once that she feels - literally - that she will have failed in this lifetime if she does not change the world in some profound way before she dies. What she doesn't realize is that she changes the world on a profound level everywhere she goes. She changes the world of every person she meets. I've heard the stories. The enraged customer at the department store she worked at during the holidays who melted when Gib reached out and asked if she could touch her hat to feel the material, the members of the writing groups she's been in who gathered together in healing circles while Gib helped BOTH of her parents die, the patients she's served and saved as a chaplain, the last-stage AIDS victims she nursed through death, this dear friend, me, who she sees completely and loves unconditionally for who I truly am, her brother who doesn't know how to verbalize his emotion and so helps her pay her rent each month even though he's got two kids in college, her father who died in her arms completely at peace with leaving this world because his daughter told him it was okay for him to go...he didn't have to live long enough to kill the perpetrator who'd hurt her so deeply in childhood. Gib has been - and continues to be - a blessing to every soul she comes in contact with. This is how she changes the world. But she doesn't see it. She has a total blind spot. I wish I could show her. I wish I could take out a slide projector and take her through her life, slide by slide, miracle by miracle, until we've both cried all the tears our souls can handle and then some. I just hope she's okay. I know she's exactly where she's supposed to be right now, feeling and experiencing exactly what she's meant to. I know this healing is perfect in its way. I just hope when all's said and done, she'll have enough strength to withstand any damage that this healing process may have inflicted. It sounds contradictory to suggest that a healing process may inflict damage but most people don't heal the way Gib does. She does everything with a full throttle. She truly leaves nothing left undone, no stone unturned. No matter how painful. No matter how beautiful. No matter how raw. It's a blessing and a curse to live as profoundly as Gib does. She is the only person I've ever met whose profoundness burries mine. Just burries it. If I were with her right now, I'd kiss her tears, one by one, and just hold her - through thrashing, weeping, bawling, smiling, self-hatred, self-love and self-forgiveness... Just hold her... But she insists on doing this alone and, though it is amazingly difficult to worry from afar, I know she needs to do this on her own. And so, I hold her in my mind and in my heart... And in my prayers...
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