Entry 8 - A Grand Debacle <Date Illegible>

I realized, through this whole divorce debacle, that my father is a truly amazing man. He fixes everything. Takes care of everything, yet is never crushed by stress or despair. He never burdens others with his problems, and is always ready to help with mine. Dr. Phil said that a man’s duty was to protect and care for his family. My father is a good man. I see things differently now. I see my mother as a shallow emotionally weak, selfish woman. Always before, she was strong - a pillar of logic and problem-solving. My dad gave up his own life and spirit for her — suppressed the things that made him himself and tried to give her confidence and self-esteem. She threw it back at him. She punishes him. She’s mean. My mother is mean and spiteful. I never noticed. I thought that was how all mothers were.

I saw clouds yesterday. Heaving rain clouds that covered the sky and dropped curtain after curtain of golden prisms into the light. Everything was touched with gold as if the universe couldn’t bear to let such a day be less than perfectly beautiful. The wind caught those golden curtains and teased them into lovely shapes-smooth curves and movement even in stillness. It was kind of like an old photograph of a woman dancing. The camera only caught blurs of motion from her skirts, her arms, but her face was held in perfect detail. I love the rain, the storms. There is no greater pleasure for me than a rainy day. Is that love? To need and miss something so you can feel it in your solar plexis? To look forward to seeing something, to treasure its coming, even if you’re not with it…knowledge enough to know it’s there? I made a choice a long time ago. Said it to myself and God and bound myself. Words have power. “Though they are only breath/Words that I command are immortal.” -Sappho. They can shape the universe. I made myself, in that first lonely period of my life, made myself into the woman I am about to become. I became…different. Now, I’m at another critical point. I begin to see - really see - but it’s not enough. I see like looking through thick ice. Vague shadows that can sometimes resolve into recognizable shapes. Something is changing.

Sometimes, I see my face in the mirror - lined, all softness burned away, skin battered by a hard life. I see smile lines and worry lines, scars hidden under skin and muscle. I see the insight of girlhood changed to the wisdom of womanhood. I bound myself. For the first time, I faced fear, danger, real pain. Real failure. For the first time, I almost stepped back from the line. I will die. I train harder and harder to push the line back. I mold myself into strength. I will work harder, there is no goal that must not be sacrificed for. So I sacrificed pieces of myself. Now I wonder if more is necessary, if I haven’t given up everything in my heart. Words have the power to change the world. I will become wiser, stronger than any man, compassionate. I will lead others with intelligence and grace and take up my place in the warrior’s hall. “I go to my fathers/In whose mighty company, I shall not now feel ashamed.” I will know fear, pain, grief, determination, isolation. I will know truth. I will be proud. I will be my father. There is no grief as the grief of loss. I lost one image of my family and its grief will give me strength enough to stand. I will be the woman I see in the mirror and I will make her better.