I know that I owe much to the many persons and events that have helped shape who I am. I was not some lump of unformed clay that was molded overnight. It seems unjust to simply choose a few events and persons, and not give credit to whom and to all where it is due. Yet, the culmination of all my experiences and relationships may have sat inert within me, like a stick of dynamite without a fuse. You see, I am all fire and water. I can’t ignite if my waters are not flowing.
The story of the catalyst that sprung me into motion, the story of the fuse to the dynamite that blew my life apart is a tale as old as time. But to say that I have been in love, that I have broken hearts, and have had my heart broken in turn, this is too abstract.
Yet how can I render with justice the events in my life that have transpired, the relationships that have inspired me to pursue the study of a field that has become the very bed within which a new season of my life is firmly taking root? Like the seeds that are planted long before any green shoots can push their way through the soil, the life which I am cultivating now was sown seven years before their germination; and though every detail, every memory, every recollection is as gold to me, this statement would turn into a book before my tale was told. Perhaps then I will start at the end, in the dark before the dawn.
One summer not too long ago, and yet a lifetime ago, my husband and I were preparing for the celebration of the 4th of July. We had invited my parents, my brother, and his new girlfriend to our home for a barbeque in the afternoon and fireworks in the evening.
It was sometime around midday after my family first arrived. I left the pots simmering on the stove and climbed the stairs to my office to take a break. I sat at my desk checking Facebook. And there on the main screen was a little red 1 above the friend request icon. I clicked on it, and saw a name that was not unfamiliar to me, but of a person whom I had never met.
This was the name of the girlfriend of my old boyfriend Valerio whom I met seven years before. I wondered why on earth she would want to friend me. Curiosity kept me from declining the request, and yet I found it a bit unsettling; even unnerving to the point that a small cold stone began growing in the pit of my stomach.
It was not too long ago that Valerio mentioned this girlfriend to me. We had been in and out of touch over the past six years since our split. In truth, it had always been Valerio that made the effort. For all those years every so many months the long string of numbers from his international call would appear on my cell.
I would think of the last time I picked up the phone when he called, the night before my wedding. It had been less than a year and half since our breakup. It had been hasty, and I had been the one to do it. I’d been so furious with him. I refused to be with someone who took his own health and future so lightly. I did not want to be dragged down. I wrote him a long fuming letter. I told him that when he decided to get his act together and when he decided to do something with his life that he could talk to me then and not a moment sooner. But I didn’t wait. I didn’t think he would ever change his habits. I didn’t think he would ever find the motivation to do something productive with his life.
I suppose he heard second hand from his uncle, perhaps third hand from his grandmother. That I was getting married to my high school boyfriend although it had been he who had asked to marry me first.
It was a brief conversation. I could hear the struggle in his voice. He simply wanted to ask if I was sure of my decision. If marrying Matt was going to make me happy. That all he cared for was my happiness.
I thought to myself, our parents have spent a fortune on this wedding. I promised to marry Matt. How could I walk away now? Matt and I are going to finish school, we are going to make careers for ourselves, and have a successful life.
And so I lied. It came out so calmly. Yes, I would be happy. Yes, this was the right decision for me.
And so every so many months I would sit watching his name light up on my screen and thinking of our last conversation until the machine picked up. I could never bring myself to answer it. I didn’t know what to say— I was afraid that hearing his voice would crumble my resolve; that I would realize what a big mistake I had made.
When I wouldn’t pick up the phone he would text me. Occasionally I would write back a short reply. Only a handful of words. I couldn’t resist. Sometimes we would have little conversations. Once we had a big argument and I didn’t hear from him for a while.
He’d heard I gotten pregnant and wanted to know if I’d had the baby yet, to know if it was a boy or a girl. It was actually my sister who was pregnant, but somewhere through the grape vine it got mixed up.
I didn’t understand why at the time, but I was so angry. I asked him what business of it was his. Valerio asked me not to lie to him. I blew up at him for suggesting I was a liar. And he said he just couldn’t get it out of his head, he couldn’t stop thinking of me, and if only I would let him, he could love me like a sister—to just please let him stay near me.
I lashed out at him. I pushed him away, because I couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t handle knowing that Valerio still loved me. I couldn’t look at my own feelings honestly.
Many months later there was another repeat of the same conversation. Valerio insisted I tell him the truth or not write him at all. I tried to explain how mistaken he was, but he kept insisting that I stop trying to protect him. I gave up in frustration, and we didn’t have a real conversation for many years after that. There was just an occasional text. The phone calls I never picked up.
Around four years later my husband and I were getting ready to head out to a nearby farm to pick blackberries and cut some pumpkins from the patch. It was a couple hours before we’d decided to leave when Valerio sent me a text asking if I could video chat with him. So much time had passed, and I thought that perhaps there would be no harm in it. I was curious to see him after so long. I wanted to see him.
Valerio’s microphone was broken, but I could still see him. He had a scruffy goatee that wasn’t unbecoming. He looked older. A little worn, but it was still the same face I fell in love with. There was some general chit chat. I told Valerio I was in school, and that I’d soon be graduating with my Masters. That I was working on a historical fiction novel. He said he’d like to read it. He asked if it bothered Matt that we were speaking. I told him Matt was okay with it. He mentioned a girl, Simona that he’d been dating for four years. Four years? I was surprised. Around the time I got married. And she was 21? She was young. I asked how they met. He said it wasn’t anything particular like me and him. That it was a simple history; simple but intense, and she’d just left him. I was sorry to hear it.
And then he broke the news to me. His grandmother had committed suicide. That spunky old lady with the sassy wit. . . I was in utter shock. I couldn’t believe she was gone. He said she’d been unwell lately; her mind wasn’t all there. She’d jumped from the roof of the beach house. He had been there when it happened. I told him how sorry I was. That she was a lovely lady. She had been so fond of me, and I was very fond of her too. Valerio told me once that she said it was a shame we didn’t get married, and that it was his fault that he’d let me get away.
Then he told me his mother had cancer. Valerio told me there was nothing they could really do for her, but I didn’t immediately grasp what that meant. We talked for a little more, and then I asked him if we could speak another time again soon, that Matt and I had just been heading out the door before he called. I didn’t stop to think why Valerio was telling me all this. I was so sorry for all that he was going through, but at the same time I’d been so happy to see him again. I could see us becoming friends. The idea of having Valerio in my life again, it lifted me in a way I couldn’t explain. He asked if perhaps sometime, if it was possible, if Matt and I would come and visit him in Marina? I said of course, that it would be a great pleasure. Of course Matt wouldn’t have a problem with it. I would make sure of it.
After that I went to the jewelry box and took out the gold bracelet his grandmother Olga bought me after we’d first met. It was a going away present. I took out the necklace she bought me the following Christmas. I hadn’t worn them for a long time, because they reminded me of Valerio. But I began wearing the necklace she gave me. It was a little red gem covered in facets with six small diamonds in the setting above. I wasn’t sure what it was when she gave it to me. Never before had I seen such a clear red stone. Valerio told me it was gem quality carnelian. Later I’d learn that carnelian was worn to strengthen courage, or valor; that this particular quality of carnelian was also known as the blood of Isis. I have often wondered if she’d known she bestowed me a stone whose properties were synonymous with the name of her grandson. I cannot imagine she would have ever sensed the irony of its nickname.
I wrote him a couple of times in the next few months, but there was no reply. I was busy with school and with working on my marriage which had just gone through a really rocky spell. We had a few brief texts the following spring. He was incoherent and wasn’t making much sense. I replied to him that I thought he might be drunk, that I was asleep, and that I would talk to him in the morning. He apologized, said yes him too, and good night.
I set my phone on the nightstand and lay back in bed. A moment later my cell buzzed with another text message. He wrote that he missed our time together in bed. Yes, I thought, he must be drunk to say something like that. He hadn’t mentioned anything of our relationship since the night before my wedding. What would possess him to say something like that to me? I memorized the text and deleted it. Matt was angry that Valerio was writing me in the middle of the night and I didn’t want him going through my phone the next day and finding that. I didn’t respond to it; I didn’t want to acknowledge what he was saying. What he might be asking.
I understood immediately that it wasn’t exactly the sex he missed, but what it signified. We’d only made love once. It was the last night of the last trip I took to see him. I’d been on the fence about sleeping with him. I woke up in the middle of the night with the sinking feeling I would never see Valerio again. That I would end up going back to Matt. Yet I wanted to tie myself to Valerio in some way, to share something with him that would be ours alone. And so in the middle of the night, as the rain beat the shutters, as we listened to the thunder echo along the cliffs where the waves crashed down below, we gave our virginity to one another.
I wrote Valerio the next morning. I reiterated that I thought he must have been drunk. I wanted to give him an out. To give him an excuse that he could use to take it back. I sent a couple of e-mails in the next month and a half. Nothing. Now it was midsummer and here was this friend request from the girlfriend Valerio said had left him. Why on earth would she want to talk to me? Had she seen my name on his friend’s list and wondered who I was? I sent Valerio another e-mail explaining that Simona had friended me, and asking if I should accept. I sent it and went down stairs to stir the pots on the stove, and to talk to my family. I told my mom that Valerio’s ex-girlfriend sent me a friend request on Facebook. She thought it was odd too.
Unable to keep away from my computer, I went upstairs. I sat in my chair biting my nails, wondering why on earth she would want to contact me— her ex-boyfriend’s almost fiancé; her ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. I didn’t think any good could come of it.
I hadn’t heard from Valerio in a month and half. I wasn’t sure how long it would be before he would reply. Curiosity over took me. I accepted her friend request and sent her a message saying that I didn’t believe we had ever met.
She wrote back immediately, introducing herself as Valerio’s girlfriend, and if I had heard the terrible news.
Valerio’s girlfriend? I wondered if maybe they’d gotten back together in the past few months. And the terrible news? Valerio had already told me earlier in the fall that his grandmother had committed suicide, and that his mother was gravely ill. Had she passed away too?
No, this wasn’t about his grandmother. And his mother had died a few months before. No, Valerio was dead.
I read this and my hands flew to my eyes. No, it wasn’t true. It wasn’t possible. I had just heard from him a month before. He wasn’t dead.
My family came running up the stairs. I must have been shouting, and they’d come rushing to see what was wrong. I told them. I tried to explain. It didn’t make any sense. Who was this girl? What kind of sick joke was she trying to play? Was this some sort of lover’s revenge for a bad end of their relationship?
Our messages flew back and forth. They’d found Valerio’s body at the beach house? A month ago? He had a gunshot to the head? The gun was found across the room? He’d been missing for four days before his sisters had called the police?
Four days?! Why did they wait so long?!
Because Valerio had gotten into the habit of disappearing for days at a time. That his life had taken a turn for the worst. That I didn’t know how bad it had gotten in the last few years. Bad company, bad habits, Valerio was bent on a path of self-destruction. Simona said Valerio spoke of me often; he said I was one of the greatest loves of his life, and for this she wanted to make sure that I knew.
My mother told me to call Valerio. I had his number saved to my phone, but I had to use a calling card to call internationally. It had been so many years since I last called him. He was always the one to call. But I hadn’t heard from him for a while now, and he didn’t seem himself when he texted me in the middle of the night. It wasn’t like him to be inconsiderate like that. I tried to write down the number. But there were too many numbers; I kept losing my spot in the sequence. It was like some horrible nightmare I’ve had a dozen times before.
I’d be trying to make a call to Matt or to the police, and I would keep miss-dialing the phone number. My fingers wouldn’t find the right keypad. And now there I sat, unable to copy a stupid phone number by hand from my cell phone. I threw my pencil in frustration. I covered my face with my hands. My family and my husband all stood crammed into my office, not understanding. Why was I acting like this? Of course Valerio was fine. My dad tried to assure me that it couldn’t be true. That he was suspicious of this Simona. That he was best friends with Valerio’s uncle; that Adone would have called and told us.
I begged my father to call Adone, to clear this up immediately. But he’d left his phonebook at home. And it was too late to call Italy anyway. He told me that he would call tomorrow. Everyone tried to carry on as if everything was okay.
I remember we were all sitting at the picnic table outside on the hill that overlooks the harbor. Matt served me a plate of food from the feast we’d cooked all that morning: carne asada, refried beans, Mexican rice, zucchini with cheese. All my favorites. I couldn’t touch it. I pushed my plate away, and sat silently. My brother’s new girlfriend, whom I’d never met before, was sitting across from me. She got up and came around from the other side of the table and wrapped her arms around me. She was the only person who hugged me that whole day. I let my tears stain the fleece of her sleeve.
She said suicide was a selfish act. That the person never stops to consider how its going to hurt everyone they leave behind. They leave a mess for everyone else to clean up. I shook my head. Valerio always treated me selflessly. The rest of the day was a haze. I remember standing in the back yard of a neighbor’s house with my family and friends. I stood there looking out over the Los Angeles basin. As I watched the fireworks pop and sizzle over the different cities, I had a vague feeling of how much it all smacked of irony: the first day I met Valerio there’d been fireworks in the evening for a festival, and now there were fireworks again that he was leaving me forever.
That night I woke up sobbing. I couldn’t see because I was crying so hard. I had been talking in my sleep. I heard myself moaning, “Don’t go, Valerio, don’t leave me!”
My limbs were so heavy. It felt like someone had been hugging me tightly, and I could barely sit up. I woke Matt up with my crying. He tried to hug me, to ask what was wrong. But I pushed him away and told him to go back to sleep, that I’d be in my office. I went to my desk and sat. I turned on my desktop. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I Googled his name. There it was. There was his Facebook picture. The picture I’d asked him to put up after I finally got him to make an account.
And there was article after article of the mystery in Camerota. Of the young man found dead with multiple gunshots in the apartment of his uncle. Of the drugs found in his apartment upstairs. Then some articles saying it was only a single gunshot to the head. But the gun had been found in a paper bag along with some bullets some distance from the body. That his body had been sprawled on the couch. I knew which couch it was. I pictured his lifeless body lying where we’d once sat quietly talking and holding hands. I couldn’t read anymore, I couldn’t see the screen from behind all the tears. A strange calm over took me. I felt warm. I could have sworn Valerio was standing right next to me.
I spent the next day writing back and forth with Simona. She wanted very much to talk of Valerio. She didn’t know any of his other girlfriends. She wanted to know how much Valerio and I kept in touch. She wanted to know my history with Valerio. She was surprised to learn that he’d asked me to marry him, and only after a month of acquaintance. She mentioned that he said we had remained friends. That the reason we talked so much was that I was sad and lonely. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I never picked up any of his calls.
I tore my house apart looking for every single memento I’d saved from my relationship with Valerio. I gathered all our pictures. I took hundreds of them during the two trips that I visited him. I made an album entitled “In Loving Memory” and put some up on Facebook. Simona later told me she was glad to see he was happy once. That she had so few pictures of Valerio, because he wasn’t fond of having his picture taken. I wondered at that, he never once complained to me.
I took out his old sweater he gave to me to keep. He’d been wearing it when I gave him a new sweater the one Christmas I went to visit. I wore the sweater constantly after I broke up with him. Looking at the old pictures, I don’t know how I could have been so blind. I have all these pictures of a trip Matt and I took to Japan while we were engaged. There’s my halfhearted smile that doesn’t reach my eyes, a diamond engagement ring on my left finger, and Valerio’s wool sweater that I wore so much I wore holes into it. I began wearing it again. I went to sleep in it. I couldn’t take it off.
I got out a jar of his hair gel I replaced every so many months after it lost its smell. I never used it; I don’t like to use hair gel. It just kept it under my bathroom sink. Sometimes when I was alone I’d unscrew the top and breathe deeply, and I would remember him standing bare-chested in front of the mirror. I’d take a smudge of the gel and rub it between my thumb and forefinger, remembering how he looked as he ran it through his hair with his fingers, flashing me his bright whites through the mirror.
I dug out an old plastic shoe box that had been sitting in my closet for the six years since our breakup. I snapped off the lid and the smell hit me like a truck. I tried not to get everything wet with my tears. Inside were a couple of his old cigarette packs I’d saved. I untied a red ribbon from one of the cartons. Inside was the last cigarette he promised me he’d ever smoke after we’d made love that stormy December night. He shared that cigarette with me. He laughed softly as I coughed and sputtered. Though it might have been his last, it was definitely my first. I asked him to save the stub for me. He placed the stub in the carton, tore the elastic ring from the condom we used, and tied down the lid so the ashes wouldn’t get everywhere. After I learned he’d died I took up smoking just to smell his brand in the air. I would close my eyes, and it was as if I’d just kissed him, as if he’d just left the room.
Inside the box there was also my old pajama top I’d saved because it smelled so strongly of him from that last trip. I breathed it in. Through the smell of my shampoo and soap I could smell him. I could smell our bed.
Underneath these were a dozen other little things. Some letters and poems, a stone he picked up off the beach, a couple of bottle caps we’d been fidgeting with one night that he took me out to dinner. A dozen little things that would look like junk to anyone else. A year of the most intense love relationship in my life; it depressed me that it all fit into a little shoe box.
I rummaged through my old computer tower trying to dig up e-mails, pictures, and instant message conversations. I found my old cell phones and copied down all the texts he’d sent over the years. I found my very first cell phone. It was a gift from Valerio the first time I left after we’d met. I was so mad at him because I knew it was a gift he couldn’t really afford. On it he stored all his contact information and a pre-paid SIM card. Now there were only a couple of text messages left. When I got engaged to Matt I was still fuming over Valerio and I deleted all the texts from when we were dating. I regretted it not too long after that, and I saved every single text he’d sent ever since.
I felt I’d go mad from being unable to find all the other things I misplaced, the things I’d lost. I couldn’t find a video tape I had from us walking around in Italy. I couldn’t accept that I’d never hear his voice again. After all the times I’d refused to pick up his phone calls. I wept bitterly for months because I lost countless e-mails from our long distance relationship. My old undergrad e-mail account had expired two years after graduation and I lost all his letters. I had only printed out four of them. I read them and reread them. I memorized them by heart.
The next day as I sat at my desk surrounded by all the things I’d gathered I began to feel a sort of panic. Seeing all these things drudged up so many memories. I grew frantic as I considered the idea that I’d forget them again. I pulled out a scrap of paper and scribbled,
My love, for so long I have wanted to write down our story, but I didn’t know how to end it. I have lived a stagnant life of indecision since I left you, because for me, our story was not yet complete. Foolishly, I’d hoped of having more time to be with you somewhere down the line. For so many years I didn’t know if I would stay in a marriage where I felt only half alive, or if I would someday find the courage to go to you. But you have chosen the ending to our story yourself. You have taken yourself out of this life, and chosen for me.
So now, I will write down our story and send it out into the world; and God willing, someday, in another life you may come across it, and you will recognize our bittersweet history, and hear again the song of our hearts. Our love was a private affair that we shared with only a very few, and never in entirety. To expose the mistakes I am most ashamed of in my life will cost me dearly. But the pain that I will have bled to write it down and share it will be worth knowing you might someday be sure of where to find me; in the beautiful Marina di Camerota where I found you in this life, and hope to find you in the next.
I spent the rest of the week locked in my office. If I wasn’t writing down our story, I was lying on the floor sobbing. I didn’t care to bathe or dress. I lost eleven pounds that first week. I barely ate anything; the smell of food was nauseating. I tried to get some sleep during the day, because I kept waking up in the night crying. Unable to go back to sleep I’d go to my office and reread the diaries I’d kept from our time together.
It went on like this for about three weeks, and then my sister Bridget came with my nephew to visit for a month. I’d been forced from the cocoon I’d spun myself, and I found it agonizingly painful to spend all my time around my family. They couldn’t understand my grief. Why should I be mourning for some guy I dated seven years ago? What did Matt think of this? Why wasn’t I being considerate of Matt? They insisted it was inappropriate that I was grieving for Valerio.
So I put all my grief in a box. I tried to smile and enjoy my sister’s visit. She’d come all the way from England and I only ever saw them every couple of years. For years I’d given up driving, because I developed a phobia of being behind the wheel. Now I drove us everywhere– to Disneyland, the San Diego Zoo, the park. I was so numb I didn’t have the ability to feel fear, to feel much of anything except my grief. But I didn’t have the time alone I needed, let alone the time write.
One night I dreamt I looked down at my arms, and along my forearms were drawn slits from wrist to elbow. The slits were drawn with an extremely vivid azure blue oil pastel. My skin was as bright as if the sun was shining on me, but everything else in the background was as dull as if some of the color had been leeched out. I awoke in a sweat with my heart pounding—confused and frightened that I might subconsciously want to hurt myself. Then this image began intruding during the day.
The longer I bottled my grief and the longer I waited to resume my writing the more graphic and more frequent the images became, until the marks were no longer of oil pastel. They became wounds from which this viscous blood would ooze. Sometimes the image would be more in black and white, and the blood was black tinged with red.
Finally my sister returned to England. I had the quiet time and space I needed to be alone and quiet my mind. Exhausted, I didn’t resume my writing right away. After a couple of weeks the images of my slit wrists started coming back when I would think of writing. Still, I continued to procrastinate. Except this time viscous blue ink oozed out from the slits and onto the ground. I’d been thinking a lot about why it was that I used an azure blue oil pastel, and say, not a knife or some threatening weapon. I was rather fixated on the idea; it kept returning to my thoughts. I began recalling some dreams involving art supplies that I’d had several months before Valerio died. I began thinking a lot about how I hadn’t painted or drawn, touched my music, or kept a journal much since I left Valerio. I was eventually able acknowledge that my dream from the first night and the way it haunted me during the day was related with the urgent need to express my grief creatively.
Disturbed by this connection, I picked up my pen again. Sometimes when I felt blocked, when I felt like my grief would overtake me but I couldn’t find the words, I took a blue pen and drew lines down my forearms. It soothed me; it reminded me to allow myself the permission to write down my grief. The more I wrote the less the images intruded into my mind, until the intrusive thoughts disappeared altogether.
Yet not only did my depression linger, it deepened. This wasn’t some cloud I was standing under that might one day be blown away. I felt it in my very bones, and it settled into me like roots grow into the ground. I was exhausted from my unrelenting grief, and I didn’t know how to go on. Although some of my friends were supportive, none of them had personally known Valerio. And my family continued to chastise me for mourning for an ex-boyfriend. My husband was supportive of me, but I couldn’t speak to him of my grief because it only added to his own. I knew I was in trouble, so I made an appointment with a therapist.
I must have had an angel looking over my shoulder, because I didn’t realize there were different approaches to therapy. But Janet was the perfect therapist for me. I was adamant about taking the time I needed to experience my grief despite the great pressure I felt from my family to move on. I would grieve on my own time table, I would not be rushed. I would not push my grief away. I had to sit with it. Experience it, to meditate on it. I kept repeating to Janet that somehow this was my soul’s work. That I would follow my grief no matter where it took me; even as I clung to the precipice of disaster, my resolve remained as firm and unshakable as a mountain.
The first few months I gushed out my story. I shared my writing. The mementos I’d gathered. The letters he wrote me. I shared the dreams I’d been having. I was in awe and intrigued by them. From a young age my dreams have always been of a vivid nature, and I have frequently experienced lucid dreaming. But the more and more I repressed my creative expression, the less and less I was able to recall my dreams until I reached a point that I couldn’t recall them at all. It was only in great times of stress that I suffered from spells of terrible nightmares.
Now I was able to recall dreams in long sequences and startling detail. I dreamt of the elements, and of my childhood home. I dreamt of being flooded by the ocean, and of clogs in the pluming. I dreamt of volcanoes erupting, tornadoes tearing up buildings, and of over grown gardens. I dreamt of holes and caverns in the ground formed from earthquakes. I dreamt repeatedly of finding my way into and out of caves and endless forests. I had a few dreams of Valerio, and I would wake up crying because I had to leave him behind. I dreamt of hermaphrodites and of being a hermaphrodite, or of being a woman and then a man. I had countless dreams of unsuccessfully trying to keep my mother out of my childhood bedroom. Over many dreams I was less and less able keep her out, until finally I had to retreat to my neighbor’s house. I’d hide in her windowless attic or basement. A breakthrough in my depression was signaled when I dreamt that the basement I’d been hiding in was finally filled with light, and I could see in the reflection of a mirror that the mother I was running away from was an aspect of myself.
I read to my therapist from the journals I wrote in every morning about these dreams. If it was an especially significant dream, I would type it up and share a copy with her. She would suggest books and authors that I might read since I was an avid reader. She encouraged me to draw and paint the images and figures in my dreams.
I once described to her a sort of vision I had while I took a light nap. I’d taken a hot shower, and then I lay down in bed. I fell into a light sleep. Into that space where I was barely awake, yet dreaming.
In the dream I am walking along a dirt path in a thick forest valley. The colors are unusually vibrant. Like stained glass—dark, rich, yet back lit. The sun is setting, and I can see the last of the golden rays on the tips of the pine trees. I am accompanied by a figure that I can only see in my peripheral vision, and we are walking in the cool shadows where the fall air is rich, fragrant, and moist.
I have the impression that he’s hooded, masking his identity from me, but I trust him. We are having an important conversation, though I can’t remember what it was about. We reach the base of a cliff at the end of the path. The cliff is only 8 to 10 feet high, and standing on top is Mercury, but he is wearing a golden breast plate with a red cape and a helmet. The figure tells me too look up at Mercury and take heart; that we must continue up the mountainside.
The dream shifts, and we are atop of the cliff on a new golden sand path, which cuts through a bright green meadow. It looks like springtime in the meadow, because the green is the bright soft green of new grass. Mercury is behind us, still at his station.
We walk along the path as it hugs a huge hill. I feel hesitant because I can’t see around the bend, but the figure urges me to continue following the path. When we reach the other side the sun is setting and bathing everything in a beautiful rosy light. The figure tells me to look at the mountainside, and I can see that part of it has eroded away, revealing golden sandstone. From the stone are three male lions that had been carved naturally form the erosion of the elements. One is standing, one is lying down, and one is sitting.
And the figure asks me in my head, “What do you see?”
I say, “Three lions.”
“What do they mean? What do they represent?”
“Courage.”
Then I am able to turn to look out over the valley, and I can see the endless forest I’d wandered in below.
And then I wake up.
After I recounted this dream to my therapist she suggested I read the Anatomy of the Psyche by Edward F. Edinger. I got chills as I read from a chapter on the psychological process described as calcination. Edinger cites the “The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine” noting a formula for calcination:
“Take a fierce gray wolf, which . . . is found in the valleys and mountains of the world, where he roams almost savage with hunger. Cast to him the body of the King, and when he has devoured it, burn him entirely to ashes in a great fire. By this process the King will be liberated; and when it has been performed thrice the lion has overcome the wolf, and will find nothing more to devour in him. Thus our body has been rendered fit for the first stage of our work.”
(qtd. in Edinger 18)
Edinger asks us to consider this formula as a metaphor as he invites us to examine an interpretation by John Read. Together with Read’s alchemical interpretation and a careful consideration of the fantasy images of the story, Edinger argues that there emerges a formula for a process of purification that produces a refinement of objective consciousness— a transformation of the psyche (19).
I recognized immediately that the valley floor and the hilltop I climbed are those places where the wolf of desire roams. I sensed the significance of Mercury as my guide between the realms and the part he plays in my transformation. I understood the lions carved out of stone by the elements as a symbol of purification by weathering a reconstruction and refinement of my emotions and intellectual understanding. That like the lions, different stages in the transformation of my psyche would require times when I would need to rest, to wait and be patient, and to take action. And only then would I be able to turn and see the valley and the golden sun—to see the forest for the trees.
In the times when my strength nearly faltered, when I felt so hopeless that I couldn’t imagine going on with my life, I recalled this dream. I clung to it, and I had faith that all this suffering couldn’t be in vain. That it all had to be for something greater than myself, that I only had to climb the mountain and endure the trials, and that someday I would be able to see the forest for the trees.
I began reading more about Mercury. I learned of how he was the guide into the underworld; that he was the only god who could move freely between the three realms. That among his many talents he was not only regarded as the herald of the gods but of change and transformation. Here lay the subtle meaning of Mercury within my dream, for it was he who helped me traverse the lower realm of the valley to the higher realm of the hilltop. I was fascinated by the concept of alchemy; I felt that its mysteries bore great significance on my own experiences, and reading of it helped me to contain and understand the depths to which I’d plummeted. That the reason I felt like dying was because my reality was being deconstructed, and I would have to rebuild it from the ashes.
I began studying various cultural mythologies on death and transformation. I meditated on goddesses such as Hekate, Persephone, and Isis. I constructed an alter to honor the elements and meditated on the meaning of their various appearances in my dreams. I found works by Jung and von Franz on alchemy and added them to my growing library on metaphysical and esoteric teachings. In Jung I found a kindred spirit and reading his books on archetypal psychology was like talking to an old friend. The concept of archetypes threw sparks for me and I continued my studies with the roman pantheon of gods which also broadened and deepened a new found love for psychological astrology.
I always paid serious attention whenever my therapist made a book recommendation to me. Among the many books I read at her suggestion I also discovered Liz Greene after I expressed an interest in learning about my astrological chart. Within the language and structure of astrology I was able to organize and bring fresh meaning to my experiences. I studied most of the rest of Greene’s works as well as many books from her circle of colleagues. Their works intrigued me, because they applied archetypal psychology when interpreting the astrological chart. I understood from them and recognized in my own life how there was great synchronicity at work between the course of my life and where the stars hung at my birth. My astrological chart became a sort of map for me in which I could navigate the subterranean world of my psyche.
I continued to record and share my dreams as I pursued these studies. There was one particular dream of Valerio. The dream was brief, but it struck a great emotional cord within me and I related it to my therapist.
In the dream I am in a very dark space. It is pitch black all around me except for myself and Valerio. We are bathed in an illuminating light. He is lying down on some sort of bed or table and I’m kneeling beside him. His hands have been cut off, and his left eye has been plucked from its socket. My heart bleeds with empathy as I take in the expression and tears on his face. Gingerly, I sew two hands back on, but these hands are not of flesh. They are a metallic powder blue, yet they are made of a light alloy. As soon as I am done sewing on his hands they turn to flesh. I place an eyeball in the empty socket, but it remains glass. I feel another slew of grief at this, but I understand that he no longer needs an eye to see from the left.
Then I wake up.
As I recounted this dream to Janet, it reminded her of a folktale titled “The Handless Maiden,” and she suggested I take a look at Women Who Run With the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I picked up a copy of the book, and once again I was not disappointed. I was deeply moved by her rendition of the folktale, and I wept at how the explication of her story corresponded to my own inner life.
Estes describes the tale as representative of the majority of the fundamental journeys that comprise the regenerative cycle of a woman’s psyche; a cycle that with each revolution portrays an initiation into or deepening of the rite of endurance which carries a woman through her journey within what she refers to as “the underground forest” of the psyche (Estes 388).
The familiar chill swept over me as I identified with what she described as “the poor bargain;” a bargain that trades our sense of intuition for “a promise for something that seems rich but turns out to be hollow instead” (395). That “every mother’s daughter, if given half the chance, chooses the poor bargain at first,” but with time this may turn “into a watershed event that brings vast opportunity to redevelop the power of the instinctive nature.”
Estes explains how “loss and betrayal are the first slippery steps of a long initiatory process that pitches us into… the underground forest;” that “when a woman surrenders her instincts that tell her the right time to say yes and when to say no, when she gives up her insight, intuition, and other wildish traits, then she finds herself in situations that promised gold, but ultimately give grief” (396). Sooner or later this bargain is fulfilled, and the maiden will be initiated into her journey in the underground forest by the loss of her hands– “that is, her psychic ability to grasp, to hold, to help herself and others” (405).
Although it is Valerio that’s wounded in my dream, I feel that it is really my hands that were severed and my left eye that was plucked from its socket. I underwent what Estes describes as a descent or process of dissolution: “the difficult loss of all of one’s dearest values… the loss of vantage point, the loss of horizon lines, the loss of one’s bearings about what one believes and for what reasons” (408). I recognized the wounding I received from his death—the loss of a friend and lover and of all possibilities between us. I was confronted with my motivations for leaving him and marrying Matt, and the irrevocable consequences of such hasty decisions. I was tortured because I couldn’t make up for the pain and suffering I inflicted on Valerio; but by confronting the harm I dealt him, I could also identify that which was damaged in me.
The severing of my hands signified the helplessness and hopelessness I experienced because I no longer had the opportunity to rectify all the wrongs I had dealt him. If one considers that the left is associated with the feminine, the unconscious, and intuition and the eye is an organ for perception, then the missing left eye becomes symbolic of a loss of perception in intuition.
When one does not respect the little voice that whispers warning from the heart one loses the ability to benefit from its wisdom. The night Valerio called me before my wedding and asked me if this was the right decision for me, I didn’t heed the little voice that whispered. As Estes predicted, I had damaged my relationship with my intuition, and I lost touch with my inner seeing, yet at the same time I was given the opportunity to “redevelop the power of [my] instinctive nature” (395).
Although I replace the left eye in the dream, it remains glass. However, as I meditated on this; I felt that this was symbolic of the repossession of intuition, not its irretrievable loss. Considering that glass may be a reflective surface and that it can be used as a magnifier, I understood the glass eye as a tool to be used by my inner seeing. A physical eye is limited by what it can perceive in physicality. The removal of the left eye not only allows my inner seeing to perceive beyond the physical and the obvious, but is enhanced by the glass lens of reflection and magnification.
Valerio’s death forced me to deal with issues I had repressed for many years, and with diligent work and commitment to my grieving process I have repaired, if not enhanced my relationship with my intuition. I work hard to keep from falling back into the somnambulistic state that allowed me to strike my poor bargain in the first place (395). And although I have gained much from such dedication, Valerio’s death remains a wound that must continually be washed and kept clean—a process I instinctively feel keeps me in contact with my inner knowing.
Reading and reflecting on Estes’s book brought me great insight and comfort. I was enchanted with the language of her story telling, and I admired how she used her abilities to reach out and inform others of the treasures she’s unearthed in her journeys. I have always been a writer at heart, and I have tried to imbue my writing with great depth and insight. But for so long I felt like a lost wanderer.
In the story of “The Handless Maiden” three years go by before the maiden is forced to lose her hands. Estes says that this time is essential to the process of initiation into underground forest of the psyche, that “in hindsight, women see the preparation for their initiatory descent mounting over a long period of time, sometimes years, till finally and suddenly over the edge and into the rapids they go;” that
“this period of time is sometimes characterized by an ennui. Women will often say their mood is such that they cannot quite put their finger on what it is they want, whether it be work, lover, time, [or] creative work. It is hard to concentrate. It is hard to be productive. This ever restlessness is typical of this spiritual developmental stage.”
(Estes 403)
I can see where and when my poor bargain was struck, and I can identify the years during which I suffered from this restlessness. I wanted my life to be about so much more than owning a nice home, and having a nice car. I wanted a career that had less to do with making money and working toward retirement, and more to do with what excited and invigorated me. But I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant or what that would be, except that I wanted to write. I didn’t work, because I was afraid to be drawn into and unable to escape from the rat race. So I went back to school to earn my masters. Still I felt lost, I hadn’t gained any direction. So I stayed at home, and with the support of my husband I tried to concentrate on my writing. But I found it difficult to concentrate, because so much energy went into convincing myself that I was happy with my life.
Experiencing Valerio’s death, the challenges that it presented to both me and my marriage, have worked a great alchemy upon me. I fell into what Thomas Moore describes as “a dark night of the soul.” A bad situation was made worse because I had a less than an ideal support network. It was worse than less than ideal, because the people that I rely on most could not or would not comfort me or support my grieving.
I had to fight tooth and nail to carve a space for my grief, to understand that I didn’t need the permission of others to grieve. That I would grieve on my own timetable and not according to what others thought appropriate. Had I not sought counseling, had I not doggedly pursued writing my memoir, exploring my dreams—if I hadn’t tried to take some meaning away from it all, I would not be here today.
These trials have breathed new life and purpose into me. I now have direction. I want to help others by reaching out through writings such as memoir and historical fiction as well as disseminating others’ stories that offer thoughtful insights into the struggles of the darkest moments in our journeys; stories that offer counsel and encouragement to those who desperately need some connection to the greater meaning of things. I wish to offer something to buoy hope instead of being tied to and drowned by the anchors of hopelessness and meaninglessness.
There are certain vital concepts that one should comprehend in order to be a great writer, and one of the most important elements of the craft is a thorough understanding of the structure story. I believe that an in depth study of archetypes will reveal the most fundamental patterns of story making. Whether a tale of warning or of hope, we tell stories in order to process and frame our struggles of human experience and archetypes are the very bones of human experience and understanding. Studying these patterns will enable me to widen my perception of the broader and greater meaning of our experience, and help me to more clearly perceive the threads that unite and tie us together. Attending the mythological studies program at Pacifica offers me a great opportunity to join a community that honors, respects, and works toward similar goals.
ladyslipper26 