The Language of Grass

I haven’t written here for nearly a year. There have been many reasons. Everyday life and work have a seemingly unending list of demands that you need to accomplish to keep yourself afloat. It also has been over a year of trying to put myself back together. Much longer than I anticipated it would and it is still an ongoing process. Nevertheless, tiredness and fear are slowly giving way to wanting to share a bit more of myself once again. I originally wanted this blog to be only focused on history. Yet, I have so much more that I want to write about. And right now I need this for myself. I want to share my thoughts on history, the world, science, nature, and life in general through essays, poetry, and fiction. I am setting myself an initial task of writing and posting something at least once a month (with the ambition to eventually do so weekly). But let me start by being a little selfish as I try to start to put into words some of my experiences and their aftereffects that I’ve struggled with in the last year plus. Living through an abusive relationship is one of the most disorienting experiences one can face. So, I ask for your indulgence as I share some of the thoughts that I’ve had in navigating myself toward a renewed sense of normalcy and slowly start looking forward to the future once more.

I’ve shared some of this with friends and family, and share this now not as a mechanism to garner sympathy, but to simply start solidifying these feelings outside of my mind to start making room for something new. This all happened only two years ago. At that time I was still not very experienced romantically, but I did think I was at least intelligent or aware enough to avoid such a situation. However, the desperation to want to love someone and be loved by someone, to be frank, can give you myopia of the situation you find yourself in. You don’t really notice, or I may have simply not wanted to notice the slow emotional, psychological, and financial manipulation. The first time your romantic partner screams at the top of their lungs straight into your ear or shoves you to the ground and hits you, and then seeing the bruises on your body it doesn’t feel real. I think this only happens in the movies or to other people, not me. Having a partner coming to terms with their trauma and mental health issues, makes it even easier to make excuses for the way you are being treated. I am far from being a saint, but we’re taught that relationships aren’t easy and require sacrifice, so you believe this is part of the process. And being residually Catholic you live in a world where everyone seems to end a relationship as soon as there is a minor setback, so my pride wouldn’t allow me to end something that should have never been started in the first place. This is what I deserved. Having my own baggage to unpack, you begin to tell yourself a narrative that is continually pushed in the self-help world of needing to “get out of your comfort zone.” This was all about me and my expansion and learning more about life. It was all about me. My own issues regarding romance, trying to prove that I could handle this on my own, showing that I could be everything to someone else, and, so, any lashing out verbally or physically towards me was down to my own failings to live up to the needs and expectations of what a real-world relationship required. And the fear, the fear of another argument, another shove or hit. You do everything you can to keep the peace, but it’s never enough.

A relationship of any kind is its own entity. It needs to be fed, watered and cared for. There is you, the other person, and the relationship. What my experience has taught me though is that there is no such thing as unconditional love. At least not for us mortals. This sounds bitter and cynical. It may be, but all love should have conditions, for yourself, from the other person, and from the relationship itself. Finding that balance between giving and taking, feeding the relationship and being fed by it, loving another, and at minimum at least caring for yourself is one of the greatest mysteries and most complex puzzles one has to deal with in life. What we do accept and will not accept is deeply personal. Too much advice around today seems reduced to some listicle without taking into account how complicated life really is. But, no matter what relationships and love should be a symbiotic system. The balance will never be perfect, where at times we need to give more than we take and vice versa.

However, an abusive relationship is a mutated creature. A Frankenstein’s monster that desperately wants to survive, but doesn’t have the proper mechanisms to do so in harmony with its hosts. So it becomes a parasite, a leech, that feeds off its hosts and latches on and takes more and more primarily from one of the hosts in order to keep living. You become so accustomed to this way of life, the thought of breaking free is utterly terrifying as so much of yourself has become entangled in this. You forget that at one time before this, you actually could breathe and exist on your own.

For me, there came a moment after months of slowly realizing that now my own survival, literal and figurative, was at stake. Ending such a relationship needs to be done for yourself, but it is an act of love for the other as well, as you accept you are not responsible for everything and everyone’s actions and hardships. You are responsible for yourself. I don’t believe any person is truly a monster, but their pain and hurt are not an excuse, a justification, or a carte blanche to inflict such on others.

Leaving is only the beginning. Balancing feeling compassion and hateful anger remains part of coming to terms with this experience. Learning that forgiveness doesn’t need to include welcoming a person back into your life, allowing yourself to still feel angry and sad at times, and slowly letting this become only a part of your past, not all of who you are. Another painful aspect of healing is having to take responsibility, not for the abuse, but to ask yourself what as an adult allowed you to accept for a time living this way. You need to find some kind of answer so you can make sure you do not let it happen again, without completely avoiding life all together. Victim is a word with such heavy connotations in English. It comes with a certain disdain, a sense of weakness, and cruelly in our society an almost baked-in notion of blame for the person who is a victim. But you do need to give yourself the grace and space to accept for a moment that you were victimized, while not letting that become a permanent part of your identity.

When you take the first independent breath after so long you realize freedom is worth the healing.

A Poem:

Passing time, and this noble field, caressed by breezy kisses in the late Sunday sun, returns. The black burns of great fires give into tomorrow. The roots find home as the sky holds you up. Can you hear the language of grass once more?

Meeting Pharaoh at the Market

It was hard not to notice him. His beautiful eyes - I always notice a man’s eyes - stared at me through the crowd. His stare was strong, but also serene, majestic. I am shy by nature and only allowed myself momentary glimpses of this handsome man looking at me.

After over a decade of living in New York, it was my first time at the Chelsea Flea market. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I wasn’t expecting to find him there. I have the terrible habit of talking myself out of what I really want to do, so I just told myself it couldn’t be for me. So, I continued winding my way through the various sellers’ tables piled high with vintage clothes, old silver, and someone’s forgotten tchotchkes of a bygone era. I loved it, as a connoisseur of tchotchkes myself. But amongst all of this, I could still feel him looking at me.

This meeting felt fated then in this place (an empty lot on 25th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue, a minor miracle in Manhattan these days!) filled with pieces of everyday history, every object having a story of its own. As I weaved my way between people, I kept catching glimpses of him. I purposefully walked past him a couple of times just pretending to peruse to get a better look. Finally, I mustered up the courage to go over there.

As I approached, I was shocked that others didn’t notice him. Finally, we were face to face. I picked him up so I could look deep into his eyes. Elegantly arched eyebrows, full lips, and wearing the khepresh crown, the war crown, of ancient Egypt with the uraeus cobra on the front. He was simply gorgeous. A replica of an unknown (at that moment) pharaoh’s head, attached to a simple wooden stand. To me, this was the ultimate flea market find.

I brought him over to the seller and asked how much. Before I even had a chance to consider the price and haggle, he said “$50, no $40, okay $30!” I was ready to say yes at $50 but left feeling like a bargain-hunting champion, even though I hadn’t actually done any haggling.

I stuck pharaoh under my arm, and thank God I have long arms because this guy isn’t small. I schlepped him around Madison Square Park, even stopping in at PetSmart to pick up a few things for my little dog. In the store and walking down 23rd Street people stared at me carrying this odd-looking statue. Finally felt like the New York City eccentric I always aspired to be.

Thankfully, I got a seat on the subway, my arms were so tired, but now the real fun began. I wanted to know who the hell this guy was. I love nothing more than solving a little history mystery. I began Googling and scrolling through images. I had a sneaking suspicion this was a replica of an actual museum piece. Eureka! I found a similar-looking bust in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of a little-known pharaoh named Amenmesse. I arrived home feeling satisfied, and I left it at that.

But Pharaoh was not pleased. His stare had become colder. I knew I had misidentified him.

So, back to Googling. This time I really took my time and used those history research skills. Then I found him. Those same eyes stared back at me from the screen that now kept watch in my living room. I was living with Amenhotep III, one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty. My Amenhotep was a replica of the original at the Louvre. Now I felt extra fancy, a big-time pharaoh from the Louvre!

And Amenhotep III was a big deal. Ruling at the height of Egypt’s New Kingdom. He was the most powerful man in the world for nearly 40 years, ruling a vast empire stretching from Syria down to modern-day Sudan. Lavish palaces, temples, and mountains of gold. This was the zenith of ancient Egypt. Probably the most recognizable monument that remains of Amenhotep III is the Colossi of Memnon, giant statues that once guarded the entrances of Amenhotep’s enormous mortuary temple.

However, Egypt’s golden age, as any perceived golden age, cannot last forever. His son, Amenhotep IV, would become better known as the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten. Akhenaten’s nearly 20-year reign would destabilize Egypt as he pursued quite possibly, but still fiercely debated among Egyptologists, the first manifestation of monotheism. Akhenaten and his famous queen Nefertiti (strangely I have a replica of her bust as well, that I got in Romania, but that’s another story) would force Egypt to worship only the sun disk, the Aten.

In the end, it would be Amenhotep’s grandson, Akhenaten’s son, that would outshine them all. Not because of his achievements, but because he accomplished what every pharaoh did their absolute best to avoid, he was forgotten. Forgotten just long enough until his tomb was discovered in November 1922 by Howard Carter, revealing the greatest stash of ancient Egyptian treasures to ever be found, the boy-king Tutankhamun. So, all in all, it was a good day at the flea market.