love

My Fragile Heart

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

In my not-so-tiny city, I have been so blessed to build a not-so-tiny chosen family. I have scores of older brothers I never wanted, big sisters to swap closets with, little brothers who show up on my door and leave with packed healthy lunches for the week to prove to their real mothers that they are actually eating green things, and the older artists in my life that have become almost “on-site” parents, aunts, or uncles when my real parents are scattered across the country.

I had tea with two the other day. I had met her briefly working on a show and when they were in a pinch several months later she hired me to stage manage for her husband. We laugh still about how she hadn’t really known me before that project and had unwittingly unleashed me on him. He wasn’t expecting someone who could out sarcasm him in the rehearsal hall. Now I’m the first stage manager he calls and we’ve all become close friends.

Like the good aunties they are, the conversation turns to my love life and any boys that may need a good scaring. (If I’m lacking, they always know a few good boys…)

I explain my current long distance intercultural situation.

He is drumming his fingers on the table by the time I finish. I don’t even bother to ask, I raise an eyebrow instead.

He tells me to be careful. He doesn’t like the sound of where this might lead, not because of the cross-cultural part, but because without full support from both families, we don’t have an end date to the distance, there isn’t a happy ending in sight for us, not yet. Though we’re working on it. I am reminded that my heart is fragile, more fragile than I know. Just because I have survived heartbreak in the past, doesn’t mean I should be okay with the potential or likelihood of experiencing it again. I should never have to go through that pain again and again – like he did. It almost ruined him. His wife agrees. She watched heartbreak almost kill him. They tell me to be careful.

If I can see the brick wall ahead, why am I driving 90 miles an hour straight into it?

Heartbreak and the shattering grief will change you. He says. Love isn’t always worth it.

Which while I understand the sentiment, I know he comes from a place of love and care, and I recognize what he is saying,

I completely disagree.

Maybe he’s right, that this relationship I have will end in heartbreak because of the challenges we face. Maybe a broken heart is the ending I have to look forward to in all of this.

But the world has never been a worse place for love put into it.

And a broken heart heals with time and love. They are proof of the love I am surrounded by, if I am broken I will heal.

If I am changed, it will be for the better. I will be stronger.

My heart has been broken before. In the gasping sobs, breakdowns out of the blue, can barely eat for days, years worth of scars and healing, kind of broken. It took two years and contractually obligated communication before we could be in the same room together peaceably, kind of broken.

But I wouldn’t change a thing. The bad days do not negate the good. I would not give up the mountaintop picnics and smuggled wine to be spared the tears and anguish later.

I will not step back and deny my heart the joy it has found in this person, in order to protect it from what may come.

The odds are stacked against us, it is likely that this ends with my heart in pieces again.

But I would not lose a moment of this love just to be spared the pain later on.

Suffering is a part of life, aren’t we so lucky when we find something worth suffering for?

xoxo

Faith

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

I was spoken for,

I told you no.

As the hope drained out of your eyes,

I felt regret tinge in my heart.

I wondered if you saw it.

 

Then I was just me.

You knew but didn’t say.

You stayed my friend,

my support,

my rock.

Because you knew.

Your faith was stronger than my doubts,

Stronger than my indecision,

Stronger than me.

You had faith in me and my heart.

You had given me yours, without asking for more.

You had faith I would realize,

I would hand you my heart in time.

You were right.

And I envied your faith.

Your faith in me

Your faith in God

Your faith in love

Your faith in miracles.

A faith I had never had,

But I started to learn it from you.

For it took faith to hand you my heart,

before you left me for good.

To trust that even over 8,000 miles,

you were keeping it close, keeping it safe.

And to have faith

that despite the obstacles,

I would see you again.

The days are long.

The distance is hard.

The space between us sometimes seems

insurmountable.

But you taught me faith.

And it is your heart that beats in my chest

to remind me,

that sometimes you just have to close your eyes

and jump.

The Stars

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment
The night falls like a comforter pulled up and over the sun.
A lazy slow night as the light fades away. Another day gone.
One by one, the stars slowly began to emerge and light the path home.
He sent us
They seemed to say to me in their twinkling.
Daylight broke and we were no longer needed there.
So he sent us to you, he who cannot walk you home, has sent us to guide and keep you safe.
Another day passed over from around the globe.
A gift to you from your lover who stands in the rising sun
to send you the moon and stars
who greets them every evening to ask;
is she well?
The moon and the stars are my guides and my love,
until the day I can follow them home to you.

Don’t Tell Me I’m Beautiful

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

Don’t tell me I’m beautiful

I don’t care.

Tell me I’m brilliant,

Tell me I frighten you,

Tell me something about my

eyes that isn’t lovely.

Or better yet,

Don’t.

Tell me how you notice that I notice

everything.

Tell me you love watching me work,

watching my mind untangle the knots

and people I wrangle daily.

Don’t tell me I’m sexy in cargo shorts,

That my headset hair is hot.

Haven’t you noticed?

I don’t care.

I don’t want to be beautiful.

I don’t care about pretty.

Anyone can be pretty.

Beauty is not a thing to achieve,

is not what I have worked so hard for,

it is not what I want.

And the more you tell me I’m

beautiful,

before you tell me I’m

brave,

The less I want it.

The less I want you.

A Thank You

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

There’s a quote that’s been circling the internet; “Someday someone is going to hold you so tight that all of your broken pieces will stick back together”

It’s clearly intended to be thought of as a reminder to hold out for that soulmate coming down the pipes to fix everything simply by existing. (Pardon the cynicism)

When I first took it, I saw the romantic context and ignored it. I thought of my brother whose answer to anything is to hug me until my shoulder blades merge or to act as a breathing heating pad and flop on top of me. I thought of my roommate who has warm meals waiting for me on the bad days, and whisky for the worse ones. I think of how grateful I am for the people determined to not let me actually break into pieces.

I hit a spot of continual bad luck and not-so-good people recently. I’m in a town far away from my support group and the strain causes the cracks to break. Like any healthy, well-functioning adult, I continue to pick at my scars. I have the good days and I have the bad days. Even on the good days I feel  the lead weight in my chest and the sharpness of the broken edges.

You start waiting for the person to help put you back together.

I certainly wasn’t expecting who it would be.

Then he calls out of the blue. A former roommate from an internship years ago. Two years since the last contact I had with him. We catch up. He lives on the west coast now, but he’s traveling. He’s going to be in town, am I able to see him?

We meet for drinks that turn into dinner. I’d forgotten how he cuts through my defenses. How he calls me out on my bullshit and notices when I distract from questions I don’t want to answer, or have an answer to. He asks the difficult questions. He demands answers. He interprets my answers and recites them back to me, simplified. I spend hours untangling the knots in my mind. He cuts through them in seconds.

He tells me what he knows about me, that he doesn’t think I’m aware of yet, or ready to embrace yet. From a few months as roommates and friends, he lays out a bold judge of my desires, progression, and what’s holding me back.  And infuriatingly, he’s right.

He tells me about his life. His travels and where he’s currently settled, for now. He’s in an incredible open relationship, the kind that makes you believe in love and people being in love and the simple ways to make things work.  Things are never as complicated as we want to make them. It’s beautiful how devoted he is to her, how in love they are, and how they are in constant, completely honest communication. It’s refreshing. It’s hopeful. It’s also startling when I’m informed that she fully expects him to spend the night with me.

Which is the short version of how I woke up this morning tangled in my sheets with another person. And you remember that there is a difference between feeling desired and feeling valued.

While I won’t see him in another several years, while I am likely to not hear from him for another year at least, the man next to me is someone who both desires and values me, who respects me and pushes my boundaries and tries to get me to push them for myself.

He makes me think about the next steps. I know I’m sitting at a crossroads now, he made sure I saw the other paths to take, or make on my own.

In the moments before I acknowledge my consciousness, I notice that for the first time in long time, the edges feel not so sharp. The familiar pain and weight in my chest feels warmer, softer. A balm has been laid on my beaten heart, the bruises are fading, the scabs to scars. It’s a road yet ahead, but the pieces have remembered how to fit back together.

You find the help and the inspiration in the places you don’t expect, in the people you don’t expect. They arrive and they shake things up, help you stand up, and let you alone to try to find your own balance again.

I’m a cynic who believes in fate and fairy tales, not of the garden variety. And I believe in gratitude, for I am lucky in the people that I manage to find who pull me out of the deep end when I need it.

 

The Not-So Stranger

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

We spent hours talking together again last night.

That’s three times this week we’ve spoken until 3am.

You don’t have my phone number, I just recently learned your full name. We know each other’s childhood stories, we exchange notes on museums and authors, we know religion and politics, and yet we don’t really know each other.

You know how I have a gift for faces and first impressions, you tease me and quiz me on strangers that wander into the bar. I know I surprise you and throw you curveballs, but you don’t want me to know, so I pretend not to see your blush or the slight raise of your eyebrows.

You think I’m silly and interesting, I think you’re funny and clever.

You walk me home when it gets late. It’s only recently you’ve hugged me. You’re not from a world where people hug like I am, but you noticed, so you hugged me goodbye a few months ago. For the first time, it was you that surprised me.

Every time we part at the corner, I always wonder. What could happen, what would happen, if I lingered longer, if I kissed you on the cheek, or squeezed your hand as I left? It took me so long to get more than a greeting out of you when our paths began to cross. Months have passed since then, the neighborhood recognizes us as friends now, I don’t know when my thoughts of you moved past that. I wonder if you ever get that spark, or wonder about me. Do you think about grabbing my hand when we bump at the bar? Do you wonder what I’d do if one evening you leaned in?

Or is it all in my head? Are you just quiet? Too shy to say something or uninterested in your young conversation companion.

At what point do I choose to be the one to bridge the gap? Or do I at all?

Maybe I don’t. Maybe I sit here and smile as you mock my youth and I tease a smile out of your serious face. Maybe I fall a little further as you straighten your sleeves and re-button your cuffs before you rise to leave. You’re precise and crisp in your movements as in all of your decisions. Was one of them me? Or not me?

My movements and decisions are messy and impulsive. Am I too much mess, or just enough to maybe shake you up?

That’s my messy decision to make I guess. Whether or not I shake you up one night or let you live in your crisp, defined world because my coloring outside the lines may be too much.

But we all could use some color, don’t you agree?

As Life Moves On

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

Dear Friend,

Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new chapter, a new adventure in this crazy story we’re trying to write. You took the brave step, you looked around and realized that what once was our home has become a new story where you no longer fit.

I want you to know how proud of you I am.

Your infectious smile and attitude brightened the halls of that office. You welcomed hundreds of nomads like us into a temporary home and each season for them, and for us, it was home. It was our lovely sanctuary. Every inch of that small town is covered in memories of silliness and kindness and making names and lives for ourselves for the first time. We lived for years in a fairy tale.

There’s something so heartbreaking in outgrowing your fairy tale. Your happily ever after is no longer. Did they change? Did we? Somehow the shoe no longer fits. You waited longer than I did. Determined that the world we loved would return, you stayed to save it.

Then overnight it became beyond saving.

You grew so brave. The girl I met with so many years ago would never have been able to face down our mentor, father figure, and friend to tell him you’ve been pushed too far. You gave your notice and walked away with barely a backward glance.

I remembered the first night we met. Our cars full with everything we could call our own, stashed in the attic room of a dilapidated intern house. We’d be moved to another house the next morning, they didn’t know what to do with us so they stuck us there for the night. You had long dark curls and a huge bright white smile that lit up the room. We sat cross legged facing each other on a creaky twin cot and began telling each other our life stories. Somehow in those first hours we knew, our life stories from here on out would include each other.

By the next year we were known as a pair. They roomed us together, and when our contracts changed, they moved us again under the same room. We spent our days working to support a company we loved and our nights on mountaintops, covered in paint, or slipping each other love notes and McDonald’s apple pies when we got caught working or loving too hard.

Ups and downs have always been the two of just skipping rope and stepping on forward.

Then I got an offer out of state, you got a full time contract, I fell in love with my city, you created a life in the small mountain town.

I hitched up to see you this summer, and when you had to work, I cleaned houses alongside you just to be able to see you and pretend like old times we were still moving side by side. We moved like nothing had changed, while around us, everything was changing.

I produced a play I knew you’d hate. You raced the Metro North to Poughkeepsie after missing your stop in order to make it for the closing show. You brought a card for me, I had chocolate and a stuffed animal for your upcoming birthday waiting with your ticket.

You wrap up your end at this place that was our beginning. There’s a love note like this one waiting at your door. In a few weeks, I will be waiting too.

So much is changing, one story ends now, the next is just beginning.

I don’t know where these new stories will take us, but I know one thing for sure; your name will be in the pages.