​Why, do we hate Valentine's Day so strongly when our lives don't fit the cookie-cutter Disney image of romantic love? Because we've put romantic love on a pedestal and equated the lack of it with a personal failing. We sell ourselves short on all the love the world has to offer us when we only see Valentine's Day through the eyes of the perfectly posed Instagram photos and large bouquets on colleagues' desks. The reality is that Valentine's Day doesn't have to only focus on romantic love and there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a day where you shower those you love in their love language for no other reason than you're happy they exist. Sure, we should be doing this all the time. But let's be real, we're not going to. Much like we're not going to be able to maintain the spirit of Christmas all year long we aren't always going to stop and think "maybe I should spoil my bestie today". Yes, I know there's Galentine's Day but that has always felt like a white feminist attempt to have Valentine's Day without having to commit to loving on everybody while still, conveniently, leaving themselves a pathway to celebrate Valentine's Day when the "right" partner comes along.

Valentine's Day has been placed in a box of unrealistic expectations for what it means to show up for and love on your people. Every year Valentine's Day gives us an opportunity to remind those we love and ourselves that love is powerful and it can be shown in a multitude of ways. It's saying yes to your kids playing hooky on the 14th -and joining them on the couch to watch cartoons and eat heart-shaped Fruit Loops-. It's brunch with your best friends where you remind each other that yes we can buy our own flowers and there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting someone else to as well. It's babysitting your neighbors' kids so they can have a few hours to hear themselves and each other. It's calling extended family that you often don't make time for. It's centering your joy and pleasure. It's an opportunity to focus on the thing that makes us uniquely human, the ability to love beyond the bonds of blood and duty. It doesn't have to be a day for bitterness and rage.

It can grow into a day that centers our desire for connection, love, and understanding. We can make it more than a Hallmark ad. Any day that calls us to love one another more deeply deserves the chance to grow beyond the confines that capitalism has placed it in.

A little over a month ago I tossed an inflatable into the room we’ve lovely dubbed “The Library” and fired the first of what would be a series of shots on both ends that ultimately brought about the moment every couple swears they’ll never experience when they get married.  The “we need to divorce” talk.  There have been tears, rage, and more tears, because even when you know it’s the right thing to do that doesn’t erase the emotions that went into the relationship.  Instead they bubble up, unexpectedly, encompassing you without a moment’s notice.  You find yourself standing in a group of people completely in control and then out of nowhere the air leaves your lungs and your balance feels unsteady.  

You struggle to regain your composure before anyone notices the haze filling your eyes, it’s painful and frustrating especially when the world doesn’t know the truth.  You are at war with your emotions and logic, and even some days your spouse, but to the rest of the world you and your family are as they always have been.  That’s the myth of perfect at work.  Two weeks ago, The Spouse and I started the uncomfortable process of letting the outside world know where we were headed.  His outing involved work.  I went with social media because, I figured it would be like pulling off a band-aid.  Quick and virtually painless.  While it was quick, painless it was not.  

Our lives go through filters.  This isn’t a new concept brought about by social media, no matter what the newest trending article claims, it’s something we as a human race have done for generations.  Always smiling and putting the best image of ourselves, our family, and our relationships forward.  Every now and then a bit of the truth slips out, but, for the most part, our lives are heavily edited to produce a show we want people to believe really takes place.  Maybe that’s why reality television is so popular, we’re all doing it and reality television reminds us that we’re not the only ones using more than Instagram filters when interacting with the world.  Of course when bits and pieces of the filters fall away and people get to actually view the unedited footage there are questions.  One question, or a variation of it, that I keep encountering is “You guys looked so happy and perfect, what happened?”  

There’s that word, perfect.  I won’t lie, we did look pretty damn perfect some days and not all of those conversations or pictures were put through a filter.  Plenty of them were, though, and even more were left on the cutting room floor to never be gazed upon by anyone other than myself.  Why?  Because they didn’t support the myth of perfect.  The myth that my marriage and my life were aspirations that others should reach for.  I would often cringe when someone would tell me that they longed for a relationship like the one the Spouse and I had.  Of course, they only knew the bits I shared and I made sure to never share the ugly bits.   Having to share the ugly bits, or at least acknowledge that we had enough of them to terminate our relationship, has been painful.  A variety of things seems to happen when you tell people where you truly are in life, you either get support, advice which isn’t always useful or solicited, questions you often don’t have the answers to, or booze and trauma vultures.  And because you can’t peel away the veneer that the perfect myth places on life without taking some flesh with it, you get plenty of pain.

The pain is a double edged sword, on one hand it begs you to go back to the safety of the myth.  It wants you to bask in the comfort of those rose colored filters where the reality of your life was lived alone and isolated from the prying eyes that would offer their half-baked thoughts and opinions on your situation.  Then the pain grabs you and reminds you why it exist.  It shakes you and rocks you to your core, preventing you from going anywhere but forward.  While the truth hurts, pretending kills.  So you stop pretending.      

Now that you all know that dysfunctional wasn’t just a cute blog title, but an actual indication of the insanity in which our family has lived, where do we go from here?  I know the question portion is coming.  

*Engaging announcer font* Will The Bringers of Mayhem still be homeschooled?   Was it the military that caused this breakdown of such a lovely family?  Did you try hard enough?  

The line of questioning folks throw at you boarders on fucking insane, while some are legitimate and ok to ask, others are not.  I would say most, actually, are not ok to ask.  I have to tell you all before you hit that comment button, think first!  


I will go ahead and answer the most asked questions, because I’m nice like that: that’s what we all want to see happen, it’s not completely to blame nor is it totally blameless, and I don’t understand that question.  What exactly is enough and who gets to determine when you’ve reached it?  

​If you ask me I will say yes, if you ask The Spouse he’ll probably say no.  We see our relationship and its end through a different set of eyes and experiences even when some of those experiences were shared.  That’s the reality of any human relationship.  We all see the world through different eyes and different experiences.  At some point in time those differences either become the relationship's strength or it becomes their weakness.  No matter how many filters we apply or edits we make for the world, we still have to view our relationships with our eyes wide open no matter how much it hurts.  ​

​Lemonade.  An album that became a cultural phenomenon and changed the game.   I’m not a music blogger, so this won’t be a dissection of an album that dropped three years ago.  Instead, it will be a reflection on the way the meaning of songs can change as we move through the various stages of our lives. 
 
Three years ago, Lemonade filled the recesses of my mind with empowering lyrics I needed to hear.  From the raw pain of “Hold Up” to the give no fucks boss bitch anthems of “Sorry” and “6 Inch”, I had words to scream when I failed to find the courage to speak.  I cried into bottles of Jack and Captain Morgan while listening to “Love Drought” and “Sandcastles”.  Most of all, I found hope in “All Night”. 
 
That was three years ago.  

​​Today, with all the clarity and wounds of the past three years, I see Lemonade differently.   It is still a stunning piece of work on the emotional weight that comes with pouring yourself into another human being and being left with nothing in return but heartache.  Now, though, the songs seem less like declarations to the source of one’s pain and more like letters to oneself urging the tortured to turn their pain into something glorious. 
 
I no longer see “All Night” with the rose-colored glasses of hope.  I no longer blast it crying out for a love that seemed to elude me.  This change, though, has nothing to do with my current relationship status.  Over the last three years I had to find the courage to love myself wholly in all my brokenness.  I had to learn to give up the fantasies I was sold from a young age about love and family. Instead, taking time to carve out what those things meant for me in the remnants of my soul. 
 
I had to find the truth beneath the lies I was told and discover the truest love of all was the love I had for myself.  As bitter as they may have been to accept and grow from, I had to learn to see my own scars and kiss my own crimes. I learned to trust myself and not fall victim to the people who wanted to consume me but never fully see me. 

​True love is a remedy for an aching heart and is absolutely the best weapon against pain.  But life has shown me that it’s foolish to seek that remedy in another.  We must arm ourselves with an unwavering passion for who we are, the good, bad, and downright ugly; if we ever want to make headway on the road of healing from that which tortures us. 
 
It’s not an easy road to travel. So, remember to offer yourself the sweet love you deserve.  Life’s too short to spend it forgetting to love the one person you’re guaranteed to be with forever.

 It all started with a halfhearted promise.  “I’ll make things better,” he said while kneeling in the muddy field.  He loved me I told myself.  He got a ring, he promised things would be better once we were married, so surely he loved me.  Over the next eight months I inquired about wedding details, “I don’t care about that stuff” he would mumble before rushing off the phone.  On my 18th birthday, I moved in with him.  This was the beginning of the rest of my life I told myself.  A life full of fantastic adventures with my best friend, or so I believed.









Our first attempt to get married a few days later was deterred by the incorrect birth certificate on my part, because there is a big difference in a certificate of live birth and a birth certificate, apparently.  I slunk home depressed in my pretty floral spring dress.  He looked relieved and eager to get out of the khakis I had requested he wear because “It’s our wedding day we should look nice”.  “It's a waste of time”, the words lingered in the knots of my hair I had spent an hour fighting with.  He thought it looked a mess.  But, I knew he loved me, so I simply needed to try harder next time.  

When the proper certificate arrived in the mail a couple of weeks later I was thrilled, he was annoyed.  “When do you want to go get married”, the words danced from my heart and oozed through my lips.  “I don’t know”, he replied.  I shook off his indifference.  Another couple of weeks passed before we had a discussion about expectations. I had no desire to shack up for an undisclosed period of time and needed to know if he really wanted the same thing I did.  Blame my Catholic conservative Christian upbringing.  Blame personal standards.  But after a month, you’re either buying the cow or getting your milk elsewhere because I refuse to play house.  After some grumbling, he lamented that he did want to get married and we agreed on a Friday afternoon.  He didn’t want to wear anything nice or take pictures.  I granted his wish with the hope that we’d have a nice wedding one day.  I spent that Friday on edge. My heart and stomach jumped, jived, and wailed with each tick of the clock.  I had to remind myself to breath as the hours turned into minutes and those minutes into the moments that would define the rest of my life.  

The judge who married us was buried in a sea of child support filings and petty crimes when we walked in.  The defeat of his day shone on his face as I slid the marriage certificate onto his desk.  Immediately, he became animated and leaped from his seat with the joy that only the creation of marriage and new life can illicit in humanity.  He retrieved his crisp black robes from the nearby closet and announced our impending nuptials to the collection of depressed bodies that were waiting their turn to plead their various cases.  Then the judge reached for his phone and attempted to contact a buddy of his who worked at the local paper.  He had no luck.  My groom squirmed in his seat at the thought of having someone from the newspaper present at our nuptials.  Even a small wedding announcement had been out of the question.  After hanging up the phone the judge asked if he could read a bible passage during our ceremony.  Still being some version of Christian I had no problem with this but, I turned to my groom to ensure it was ok.  He nodded in that dismissive way only someone who is indifferent can and the judge smiled as he opened his bible.  Clearing his throat he asked us to rise, I jumped from my seat attempting to catch my heart as it leaped with excitement and turned to my groom.  He was still seated.   



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​My mind always slows this moment down.  I’m sure it was less than a minute, but in my mind, it becomes an eternity.  An eternity of chances to run.  An eternity to dance through the reel of what actually became a 12-year marriage plagued with abuse, infidelity, and loneliness.  An eternity to live again. 

An eternity to see every player clearly.  The judge with his confused and apprehensive glare.  The groom’s parents exchange of knowing looks for they kept his secrets better than he did.  The groom’s disdain as he willed himself from the seat and my wide-eyed naiveté.  As the reel plays in my mind, I always freeze this moment and stare at the child giving away her youth to someone who didn’t want to stand next to her.  I look through the eyes of a woman at the life of a girl who simply wanted to know she was loved, and I know she never was.  The woman knows that which the girl can not.   She knows of the lonely nights ahead of the girl, whose tears will stain every pillow she would ever own.  She knows the pain of her husband’s hands pressing against her pregnant belly.  She knows the way his words will hang heavy in her heart for a lifetime.  She knows the way laughter sounds when she’s in pain.  The woman can never save the girl.  
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No matter how many times I play this reel over in my mind, no matter how many times I reach for that young girl, no matter how many empty bottles I attempt to watch it through; I can never save the girl.  She always stands there eagerly awaiting her groom.  She always takes his hand.  She always says her vows with sincerity and passion as her brown eyes bore into his hollow blue eyes seeking confirmation that his heart beats as fiercely for her and her’s does for him.  She always signs her name.  She always stays after he pushes in her stomach and gleefully declares that hopefully he killed their unborn child.  She always runs interference and handles everything as to not upset him.  She always fixes the holes and stops asking about the stories that don’t mesh up.  She always makes sure the children believe they're loved by their father.  She always makes excuses for his noninvolvement, for her tears, for the sadness that hides behind her brown eyes.  She always stays.  Until she becomes the woman who doesn’t. The woman with the movie reel in her mind and scars upon her heart.  

On Sunday night, I made a prediction that on MLK day my newsfeed would be full of “feel good” MLK quotes and painfully silent to the current issues affecting the black community the day after.  Naturally, I was right. My newsfeed was alive with King quotes.  Or was it?  There were plenty of quotes about choosing love over hate, which follows King’s philosophy but, I was curious to see how accurate those quotes were.  I set out Googling the quote I saw the most, "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”.   What I found was interesting. The quote in question is a cherry picked sound bite from his 1967 speech “Where Do We Go From Here?”. Those two lines aren’t even sentences or part of the same sentence. The full quote is as follows (with the sections of the aforementioned quote bolded):

“And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems.  And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today.  And I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I'm talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. I've seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I've seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to want to hate, myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities, and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love.”

The cherry picked quote conveniently ignores that King was speaking about a specific kind of love.  A love that is strong and demanding, which links back to the point he was making at the beginning of his speech when discussing love and power:

“Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic.  Power at its best, power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on.”

He wasn’t speaking about some magically warm and cozy love where we all take hands and skip merrily down the street.  He was speaking, as he often did, about love that got its hands dirty and changed the world.  A love that demanded justice for every human that walked this earth.  Even if that demanding love brought you discomfort because he knew that in discomfort we create change.

As MLK day fades into the Facebook memory banks of cherry picked quotes and feel good posts that sanitize the man’s legacy, stop and think about the love you put into the world.  Is it really a love demanding of justice, are you actively working to end racism, homophobia/transphobia, sexism (for ALL women), classism, and every other fucking -ism and -phobia out there?  Or are you absentmindedly sharing more noise without thinking further about the actual context of the words spoken and continuing to remain silent about the oppression of others all while happily patting yourself on the back for being a “good” person?      ​


Where Do We Go From Here Speech

When it came to religion, I could easily examine the inconsistencies and toss the breaks in logic into the wastebasket where they belonged.  Eventually, leaving nothing but godlessness and unabashed skepticism.  With love, oh love, it hasn’t been that easy.  If there was a disconnect between words and actions, then I clearly wasn’t seeing it correctly.  A belief supported by my spouse.  I simply needed to look at everything differently.  To be patient.  To hold on.  Give him time and trust.  Always more time and trust.  I could do this.  To give superficial change, that quickly faded, more weight than years of peer-reviewed data.  Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them; the first time.”  We rarely do, though.  Why do we do this?  Why do we allow our hearts to cloud our logic?  How can we observe years of behavior, and at the mere notion of change, throw all our chips in and declare this time around it will be better?

This isn’t a post with answers. Because, frankly, I don't have any damn answers.  So, if you’re waiting for that you’re going to be shit out of luck.  I’m still tracing the rim of a Styrofoam cup attempting to make sense of this one life we’re given and fighting with the cognitive dissonance emotional attachments create.     


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