The Rose Garden, Chapter 18 – Love and Loss

Venice Carnival – Masked Lovers, Source https://flickr.com, Author Frank Kovalchek, Anchorage, AK, (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

WARNING:  Graphic Images

“He heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds” (Ps. 147: 3).

The hotel clock reads 4:30 AM.  I can see from the bed that it is still dark outside.  Unable to sleep, unable to bear the thought of spending another day in Los Angeles, I pick up the phone and reschedule my flight. 

That done, I move around the room, gathering and throwing things carelessly into my bag.  I walk over to the closet, stare briefly at the blue silk dress I had hoped to wear on Mulholland Drive, but decide to leave to it behind.  

Downstairs in the rental car, I head on unfamiliar freeways to the airport.  The trip is a blur.  I veer sharply to the right, across two lanes, to make my exit.  Horns blare. 

Once on the plane, I stare blindly forward.  My chest heaving, I begin to sob.

I have been fortunate in both male and female friends, but have loved three men deeply in my life.  Whether lanky, wiry, or muscular, all three were men of integrity and high intelligence.  All three were incapable of commitment, at least to me.

All three were lawyers, heaven help me.

How does the heart choose?  We seek out what we have known, try as we may not to do this.  The choice (unconscious though it may be) is an attempt to correct for past mistakes, to erase the scars.

I sought out emotionally elusive men — men unable to love me.  As a result, love caused me far more grief than joy.  What kept me in the relationships was not that these men loved me, but that they might.  I was familiar — in a sense comfortable —  with being loved only marginally.

The other characteristics I selected for were kindness and a history of suffering.  I wanted to ease pain, but justified behavior toward myself other women would not have tolerated.  I never considered whether I deserved a healthy and fulfilling relationship.

Both sexual abuse and codependence played a role in this.

I settled for little, believing I deserved less.  In fact, I did not see myself as deserving of love at all.  I simply assumed a normal, stable man would reject me; would be unable either to understand or put up with my pain.

My hope, my unspoken prayer, was that someone capable of kindness and with his own knowledge of loss might be better equipped.

It was to such men I was drawn.  One lost his father early to serious illness.  Another suffered at the hands of a cold and critical mother.  The last was abandoned by his father following divorce.

The problem with my approach was that I sought out men as wounded as myself.  Though not worth any less, those deeply wounded early in life may find it difficult to love or be loved.

There is too much risk involved in revealing the true self.  Instead, they repeat unhealthy patterns, and inflict damage of their own.

Certainly I did.  As an example, at a college concert my sister had looked forward to attending with me, I opted to sit near the object of my affection and his date, rather than with my sister.  That verges on masochism.  Yet, had he told me he loved me, my own love would likely have evaporated.

My sister remained steadfast.  I remember standing in the front hall, nervously checking my reflection before heading out for the evening.  “You look beautiful,” my sister said.  “If he doesn’t love you, he’s an idiot.”

Though I cannot say with any certainty, I suspect now that two of the men I loved may, themselves, have been victims of emotional or covert incest.

Fear of intimacy can be well-founded.  Those of us who suffer from it seek out difficult or impossible relationships.  Normalcy is perceived as boring; intimacy, as suffocation.

The goal of healing the beloved can become the justification for our existence.  Paradoxically, the beloved is chosen for his or her inability to heal.  It is the resulting tension that constitutes the real glue of the relationship.

“You have a wonderfully feminine quality.” “I love your body.  It’s so responsive.” “Any man in his right mind would want you.”  All lies men tell women.  All lies I have cherished.

When our relationship ended, I packed and shipped for safekeeping to a friend the emails one man and I had exchanged.  Though the dream had died, I could not bear to part entirely with the words.

Miracle

We long to be seen by the beloved, both as we are and as we might be.  In the eyes of the beloved we see redemption and restoration.  When we are denied these, the experience is wrenching.

I came close to suicide only once.  After some eight painful years with my first love (and several attempts at breaking off what little there was of a relationship with him), I finally saw that the situation was hopeless.  There was no future for us.

The grief was unrelenting.  I cried daily for six months.  When I could find no relief, I seriously considered slitting my wrists.  What held me back was concern for my sister.  Any life I may have touched, any achievement on my part in the years since, owes her that debt.

Then one day a miracle occurred.  I have no other word to describe it.  I awoke and the pain was gone.  My psyche had healed itself.  God had mercifully intervened.

I have shed tears over other men.  I have cried in the shower.  I have cried in the rain.  That memorable flight across country, I cried the whole way from California to New York.

I still have one of the textbooks the first man I ever loved “lent” me, when I was a law student short on funds.  Out of misplaced pride, I had resisted an outright gift.

I kept for some time the vase in which peach colored roses were delivered to me — laughable “evidence” that I once meant something to someone.

I did try a “personals” ad.  Woman equipped with mind and heart seeks man similarly equipped.  There were few takers.  Directed at a singles group to draw a self-portrait, I scrawled a blue rose with enormous thorns.

Thankfully, I no longer confuse pain with passion.

The Monster Lurking

Shortly before I moved out, my father found me crying in bed one night.

“What’s wrong, Annie?” he asked gently.  It was a vulnerable moment; had been years since the last episode.  I let my guard down.

“He doesn’t love me,” I managed to explain between sobs.

“Can’t you think of me as your boyfriend?” he asked, as he reached for me.

The monster was still lurking.  I bolted.

Virginity

It should be reiterated that sexual abuse may include, but does not require, intercourse for the child to be damaged.

Nor is there a calculus of pain, a standard against which the suffering of individual victims can be objectively measured.  All pain is pain.  The emotional pain of a child who is fondled can be as great as that of a child who is raped.

I did not have sexual intercourse until I was well past thirty.  Virtue is no longer valued at that age.  In any case, I had not delayed sex out of any moral sense, but as a means of distancing myself from the molestation.

Attenuation

There is a concept in criminal law known as “attenuation.”  Evidence illegally obtained may be purged of that blight, if it is so far attenuated or removed from the illegal conduct that no deterrence would result from exclusion of that evidence at trial.

In delaying sex, I was attempting to purge my life of the molestation.  The torment of thwarted desire was preferable.  It seemed the only option open to me.

Innocence v. Integrity

Unfortunately, innocence cannot be regained.  It took me years to realize that the loss of innocence does not imply the loss of integrity.

It took me even longer to feel anything during intercourse.  Foreplay was always wonderful.  But that first time, I had to steel myself to proceed.  My partner had no clue.

Since my father never touched my throat, it has remained an erogenous zone.

Children

I put off having children for much the same reason I delayed intercourse.  I could not risk exposing a child to the possibility — however remote — of molestation by my father.  By my twenties, I was waiting for my father’s life to end, so that my own life could begin.

Truthfully, I feared I might molest a child, myself.  It was not that I had any inclination to do that.  Rather, I had absorbed my father’s guilt through the pores.  My very flesh seemed suspect.

In my thirties, I considered single-parent adoption.  I felt stronger by then, but was dissuaded from adoption by the argument that a child deserves two parents.  I was not confident enough to respond that a single loving parent is surely better than none.

I remember awakening early one morning to the babble of a neighbor’s baby.  The sound — as sweet as birdsong — brought tears to my eyes.

As difficult as it was for me, I think now the decision not to have children was the right one.  I was for many years a workaholic.  I would not have let myself spend the time on parenting that a child deserves.

Flashbacks

Late in my thirties, I began having flashbacks.  I could not at first grasp the significance of these.  Nor could I make them stop.  The images were confusing; came on spontaneously without any discernible trigger.

Things finally fell into place one evening.  The man I was in love with at the time was, like my grandmother, of Eastern European origin.  Like my grandmother, he had blue eyes.  Like her, he kept me at arm’s length.

In recognizing that pattern, I realized for the first time that it was my grandmother who had, emotionally speaking, been my mother.  A hole in my heart was filled.

Though a thousand things still remind me of Grandma — cinnamon, farina, pear nectar, apricot cake filling — the flashbacks have not recurred.

Loss

In speaking of loss, I cannot fail to mention one particular friend.  J, a “Bronx boy” and fellow attorney, was truly the salt of the earth.

While politically astute, J had a vast and generous heart.  Ever a loyal friend, he found jobs for countless attorneys down on their luck.  Above all a family man, his life centered on providing a home and future for his children.

As the Managing Attorney of a legal office at the World Trade Center, J  experienced the 1993 bombing attack on the Trade Center.  Because of that, his office evacuated quickly on 9/11.  There were no fatalities.

J, however, died two years later in the Staten Island Ferry disaster.  He was on his way to his son’s ballgame at the time.

Loss takes many forms.  My father wrote about the loss of his father’s treasured violin:

“As soon as [Father] closed his eyes [in death], the gypsy was here.  ‘Oh, your father was a very good friend, and he always promised me the instruments, and his books after his death.’…Instead of kicking [the gypsy] in the rear, we let him take the whole kit and caboodle.  Ach, the beautiful high masses on Sunday!  [All that music lost!]”

The lament, I believe, was not for the violin, but for his father.

Poured Out on Sand

When love is poured out on sand, when loss is (or seems) pointless, we struggle over questions of meaning.

The Sacred Heart

As good Catholic children, my sister and I collected the colorful holy cards portraying Jesus, His mother, and the saints.  Catholics venerate a particular image of Jesus known as the Sacred Heart.

Often the Sacred Heart is depicted as Christ with His exposed heart encircled by a crown of thorns.  Gruesome as this image may appear to non-believers, devotion is not to the image (or the bodily organ depicted), but to the Savior whose love was so great that He sacrificed Himself on the cross for sin.

Suffering and Unrequited Love

The question of why God allows failed or unrequited love is as profound as that of why He allows suffering.

We are granted free will.  Love is the ultimate gift of that free will.  Love cannot be forced; however, when freely given, it represents the choice to place the good of another before our own.

The question becomes whether we are capable of loving without gratification.  Certainly, God is.

When we suffer for no apparent reason and without fault of our own, we are experiencing — to an infinitesimally small degree — the pain God endures as a result of sin.  It is not something any of us would wish.  We cry out to God for relief from suffering.

Pain and Injustice

Whether physical or emotional, pain when unabated saps our strength and resolve.  Yet, the more closely we contemplate suffering, the more the real injustice becomes clear.

If it seems unjust to us that we suffer, how much more unjust that we — the creation — should be permitted to inflict pain on the Creator?  And this solely because His love allows it.

Wounds

Some wounds are mortal.  Others just feel that way.  Our job is to continue on.  Whether it is returned or not, love is always a gift.  It expands the heart and enriches the spirit of the giver — far outweighing any pain.

The Don Henley song, “The Heart of the Matter,” gets it right.  In the end, “It’s about forgiveness…Even if, you don’t love me anymore.”

Copyright © 2008 – Present Anna Waldherr.  All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60247-890-9

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