Prisoner # 6

Posted on | November 15, 2010 | No Comments

as written over the course of a month, from August to September 20, 2008. As I looked within among all the men I have loved in my life, there were 9 that I was still holding on to. This wasn’t something I knew, it was only what I felt. Where every time I would feel a hit on my self-esteem, I would go to these memories for validation. Because I was unable to validate myself. And so, because I cannot surrender something up until I have let myself feel it: I wrote. I let each of them course through my mind and heart one more time – and I cried, and laughed, and felt acutely so many feelings that I can’t even begin to express it all. And then, I closed each letter of gratitude for each of them with a prayer of Surrender. I gave them each to God, and I let them go as the long-held Prisoners of my Heart. The process of cleaning out the Deepest Cavern was my way of starting to love me…for me.

Jason


The first weekend we moved into our house on Phyllis road (from New York to Boston), my friend and I stood behind my parents blue van and spied on the boy next door: Tan, tall, kind of cute. Playing basketball by himself. We finally got up the nerve and went over and introduced ourselves. He asked if we wanted to play, and although I did I was too nervous. I loved basketball – but we sat on the grass in his yard and watched him. I was 14 and he was 15.

His little blue Centra (after the white van died). All 4 years of high school, saying hi to him – occasional family outings together. Seeing him walk by me in the hallways, and knowing he saw me: these big, deep, dark brown eyes that I would meet and then look away. Always, though – I would catch his eye as we passed each other in the halls all through high school. He was one year older than me. My junior year he came with me to perform a concert at Mass Hospital school (where my mother worked for so many years), sitting in our green van and singing the “One time two times” to Lauryn Hill’s “Killing Me Softly.” Singing with him, harmonizing with him, playing the piano with him, competing with him, anything active and athletic with him.

Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire – Smile of the Great Spirit. The winter I came home for Christmas from Utah and he took me out for the night down to Newport, Rhode Island…the Cliff Walk where I had a bear hat and bright fuscia coat. We tripped and he fell and I fell into the grass and we laughed so hard we cried…and he carried that slight scar from that day forward. That’s the night (the constellation) Orion came into being, where I found out that U2 was also his most favorite band. Where we saw we had so much in common.

And then that summer, after my trauma – I walked across the street as he walked towards me, with his chick magnet hat and brown skin and bag of golf clubs…and those same brown eyes looked at me and saw me. He fell for me, hard. And very quickly. I wasn’t so sure about him, liked him but wasn’t really interested. I worked as a lifeguard and he kept trying to kiss me one drunk night…my brother Jake and I went with them up to New Hampshire and Alton Bay and we sat talking late into the night in his car. He kissed me to U2′s “Heartland” and even then – I wasn’t sure how I felt about him. Within a couple weeks, though – my heart was tripping over itself and I was a gonner.

He was the greatest gift God could give me – the safest and deepest net of love that he was able to give and continued giving for 5 long years. He was the reason I learned what Love was, after it had been taken so deplorably from me. He was the reason I did not become embittered and lost amid the mazes of untrue love, commitment, and loyalty. He built the foundation of love and relationship in my broken heart. And I have built upon it, ever since. Even with the fires and wars, the burned stones of his foundation still remain.

Our relationship was very physical…he was tall, long legs, lovable cro-magnon head and smooth brown skin and endless brown eyes. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and spent that summer in a heated haze of fun, adventure, competition, music, late nights, New Hampshire, sex, beaches, and lots and lots of fun. He came to the 1000 Islands with my family, and we too christened Chipmunk Island across from Hill Island! That started nearly 5 years of loving and being with Jason…breaking up…not talking – but only because of the religion, none of it had to do with love. For he was a Christian, and I was a Mormon. He showed me that I was worth loving again, that I was worth more than the horror that I had lived through. He, too, had been through a lot of pain with an old girlfriend and his college years. We went through our ups and downs with each other, were each other’s best friend, and pushed each other to the limit of what we thought we could take. Our love kept bringing us back together.

The agony of my parents refusal to accept him. His Nanna and how I loved her. His family. He taught me how to feast upon the scriptures and search them and he taught me how to sincerely pray. He wrote me songs on the piano and sang them to me…“She’s beautiful, she’s beautiful, so beautiful” and “My Angel.” I had never loved anyone as fiercely or as powerfully as I loved Jason. Delirious? “Summer of Love” song was the theme for our whole relationship. He was the great summer of my life.

And all of it besides that first deliriously happy summer was long distance. New Jersey where he forgot himself, to Pittsburgh where he found himself again. Me in Massachusetts and then out to Utah – and still we remained together, always searching always looking always hoping that one of us would convert so then we could get married. Our first Christmas he gave me earrings. The next a bracelet. The next a necklace. The next was supposed to be a ring, but since it wasn’t – I got another diamond necklace.

I always said that being with Jason was like Swishing with Scope: he is intense and forceful and unrepentent, arrogant and powerful and intelligent and stubborn. He is competetive as all get out, with a voice that can harmonize with a dog. His insecurities also abounded though – he was never big on complimenting me on anything, or never asked me to sing or play or paint him something. That hurt me, as those are ways I show love. When I bought a guitar, he bought one that looked identical to it, like he couldn’t stand the thought of me being better than him at something. He felt the man was the head of the house, and had the final say in things…and his heart was very set on what he already thought. However – I loved him with all the heart I had access to, and went through pure agony when I felt my family was making me choose them OR Jason, that I couldn’t have both. He handled my family well, and never spoke ill of them or unkindly. His family was my family, and I spent a lot of years accumulating many adventures, thrills, memories, and a proven love that seemed to pull us back again and again and again. I learned so many things from Jason, as he did from me. I will never regret the time spent with him, for him, or about him.

Lord, I ask for forgiveness in hurting Jason when I cheated on him with Brent. When I allowed that kiss to happen without being free to accept it. I forgive him for not opening up his heart, I forgive myself for expecting him to. I release Jason unto you, Lord – from the deepest cavern of all, I cut loose the chains that held him there. I release him from my dreams, for he no longer serves me. I give myself permission to grieve him, to mourn all our years together, to grieve the fact that we didn’t stay together, that he didn’t convert to “my” church. I allow myself space and acceptance to grieve him in whatever way I need to in order to release him entirely and completely and forever. I validate the love he had and has for me, the role and life we played together and lived together and loved together. I give gratitute for the promises and miracles we were for each other, I validate the security and consistency that he brought to my life and wounded heart, and the peace that came with his gentle smile. I allow him to exist as a memory of love and learning, and release all the parts of him to Thee that no longer serve me, that keep him bound to me in unhealthy and unnecessary ways. Lord, as you take him from me, please replace that enormous void with Thy presence, Thy voice, Thy spirit, Thy color, Thy hope, and the sweet peace of Thy atonement and deep empathy. I ask Thee humbly, Lord, to validate my worth and infinite divinity in the cavernous hole that is left behind now that I release Jason from the Addicted Cave of my Heart. Please keep him safe in Thy arms and care, as I know Thou wilst. I so now trust you with him. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

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Category: Emptying The Cavern, Letters to God

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