51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life (33 page)

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Authors: Kristen McGuiness

BOOK: 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life
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“Everyone has that dream, Kristen,” Mom replied.
 
“Do you have that dream?” I asked. She said no.
 
“I doubt that everyone dreams as big as to think that they will vacation on the Mediterranean,” I explained. “But it’s really not about the location, Mom. It’s more about what I’m looking for, about what I want. I want a life filled with magic.”
 
And as if on cue, Rocky sat down and would not move. My mom turned around to look at him. We were worried he was tired or sick, and then we looked up, and our breath stopped short. A deer stood there, having emerged from the woods. A doe peeked out from behind him. They skipped across the road not ten feet from where we stood and leaped into the crags of the mountain on the other side. The doe disappeared, but the buck stopped. He turned around and looked back. He looked directly at me.
 
And I know that’s what Lidia and I are working on: magic. Oliver believed in magic, and maybe that’s why I still hold such a candle to him. But I also know that I cannot be true to the magic if I keep pulling disappearing acts. I need to stand strong like that deer. And despite the barking dog, despite the intimidating humans, despite all my fears, real and false, I need to stop, hold the gaze, and speak the truth.
 
I lie on the floor; Lidia sits over me. “Kristen, we are made of mother earth. And there is nothing that we can do with our flesh that she has not given us the right to. We can throw out those dogmas of our childhood. We can have faith that we are all cut from the same cloth. You can do whatever you want as long as you are okay with it. As long as it is part of your truth.”
 
“I know.” I am beginning to cry.
 
“Are you now ready to speak that truth?”
 
For a long time that’s why I drank and used. So I could leave; so I could find the abyss. Lidia asks me when I first checked out, and I can’t even tell her. I can see myself through the years doing it. At four, at five, at seven, at eight, eleven, twelve, sixteen, last week. I leave, but my choices and consequences are made in my absence.
 
It seems an awfully unfair way to live. And certainly not one that is going to help me find, channel, and create that energy I now see everywhere in my life. It just won’t.
 
“Are you ready to be present now?” Lidia asks. “To join the council of your ancestors, to create your destiny, to be a real part of this world, even when you are scared, when you are hurt, when you most want to run away?”
 
I tell her yes, and she asks me to make the request myself. And I do. “Great Spirit, council of my ancestors, I ask for the strength, for the courage, to live my life here, now. To be present, to fulfill my destiny, to experience every lesson along this great journey.”
 
The energy is thick in the room and tears stream down my face. I can hear Lidia getting emotional, and I realize that just as she is healing others, so she is being healed. And it makes what we do such a beautiful process. Because our energy goes both ways, it goes all around, and it fills the room.
 
And then I let it go. I let it all go. Fear. Pain. Oliver. Magic. Doubt. My future. I let the energy flow out, and I feel more real than I ever have before. Lidia and I close the session, and I get up. We turn on the lights and open up the blinds, and I don’t even know what world I am in.
 
She stands in front of me and says, “You are the last energy session I have scheduled to take place here before I move.”
 
I could be bashful and pretend like it isn’t perfect, but it is, and so I speak my truth: “What a beautiful conclusion.” And she agrees.
 
45
 
Date Forty-Five: The Sparkling Ribbon of Time, Act II
 
I am sitting in the button-down shirt I wore today and my underwear. A crumpled tissue sits by me. My eyes are swollen. My heart hurts. And I feel like I might have had one of the best dates of my life.
 
As I tell Oliver as we walk past the Sparkling Ribbon of Time at the Observatory, “Some dates are romantic. And some are truth-seeking.”
 
“So this is a date?” he asks.
 
I shoot him a glance and smile. “Yes, but this is a truth-seeking one.”
 
I called him yesterday morning after my 7:00 a.m. meeting. I leave a strong, professional, very dignified message, and he calls me back almost immediately. We talk for half an hour, and he is the same man I knew so many years ago. The same poetic rat-a-tat, the passion, the intimate knowing that always made me feel like he was on the inside of my brain. We hang up with plans to meet up, and my eyes swell with tears. Because I know instantly that I am still in love with him. And that no matter what, our date will end as the truth-seeking variety and not the romantic. At first, I say that it cannot end any other way. That I cannot go down that road again. But then I am talking to my sponsor, and she asks me why not.
 
Lidia also asked me that, and I begin to ask the same. Why not? Why can’t this story end the way most people like them to—happily? The long lost romance reignites. The flame turns back on. Prince Charming returns home. But that was always the problem—I was never Oliver’s home.
 
We meet the following afternoon at the Observatory. I set it up that way because I have so far taken everyone I love there, and Oliver is no different. I also love a good setting. I get there ten minutes late because I have been at the stables, and I need to spend some time with Arrow before I can spend this time with Oliver. I text him as much. I get there, and I don’t see him anywhere. I go inside and pull out my phone and see a message from him: “I’m jumpin.” I think he must not have gotten my text. I think he is leaving. I go outside to call him, realizing how cruel it would be if I finally show up, present, whole and ready to go, and because I am ten minutes late, I will have missed him.
 
Thankfully, he is there. And after a couple of minutes, we find each other and go inside. I show him the ribbon of time. I want to stop and talk with him about the vastness of the universe and all the things that fuel my flame. But we are there for one reason—to talk about a little romance that happened between two people four years ago. Nothing more. And though we might lean slightly into each other, though we might still walk in perfect step, I can feel him holding back, and I know that there is someone in his life. But I don’t ask. Not yet.
 
Because I don’t want to know yet. I want to pretend for a moment that there might just be a happy ending here. We get water. I chat with the cashier and offer to pay, and I watch as Oliver bends down nervously to pick up a quarter he has dropped. And I realize that I am calm and cool and strong in this, and that my dear friend is not. I am in this moment, standing in my riding boots and my tight jeans, standing with this man who is real and next to me and everything I have ever wanted. I know that he can tell that I have changed, that he can see it in the way I smile, the way I speak, the way I lead us outside and take control when before I had none. And maybe that’s what is making him nervous.
 
We try to find a quiet spot, and we end up on the observation deck, overlooking the entire span of this great city where we met. I pull out the last chapter I wrote from when I was at Lidia’s, and I read it to him. Because in it, it says everything I could say, or want to say. It also opens us up to saying everything that needs to be said.
 
And we do.
 
Oliver tells me about me, about what I was like when we were together. He leans up against a pillar, and I can feel his energy. Not in an explosive way, though, just in the solid way that he is telling me things that have been sitting around for years waiting to be said. I listen to him as though he is describing what someone was like as a child. Because I don’t really remember what I was like before I got sober. I know some things, but I forget sometimes that I wasn’t all bad. That people loved me.
 
I ask, “Did you love me?”
 
He doesn’t hesitate as he holds my gaze. “Yes. Absolutely.”
 
Oh, God. Oh, God.
 
For years I never knew, and yet I always knew. I press forth. “Then, what happened two years ago? When we went out to dinner, and I stayed at your house?”
 
He is prepared for me to ask this question. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I just got scared. I can’t tell you why. I just did.” He pauses, “And I think I might have just begun dating someone at the time. I think that’s when it started.”
 
And I already know as I ask, “Are you in a relationship?” He nods his head. I try not to let it hit me. I had prepared myself for this. And then for some reason, I had unprepared myself for it. So it hits me. As I look into his eyes, as I talk honestly with him, I feel her presence in our conversation. Oliver tells me about her. How he knew her for years, how she has brought a quiet wholeness to his life. How she helps him to focus and listen and do the right thing.
 
And I know right then what I have known all along: that Oliver found himself a schmoo. He tells me the woman I painted for him wasn’t quite right, and I agree. Because I thought he would have ended up going a little exotic. But that was silly of me, because that’s not what he would have wanted at all. He would have wanted to go home.
 
Oliver and I revisit memory lane for a bit. A few great kisses, a few hungry moments. He tells me how he has been reading about St. Francis of Assisi. Oliver always loved telling me stories. We had both hidden in books when we were kids. Once we met, we found ourselves again under the sheets, making a tent, whispering late at night when the rest of the world was asleep. We made up stories about our future; we peeked out as dawn began to rise; and we pretended the night would never end. And then we left each other, before we ever got a chance to see what happened next. But Oliver’s stories, the poets he introduced to me—they were the keys that unlocked my sobriety and saved my life.
 
Oliver tells me about the small village in which St. Francis once lived. At one point the villagers found themselves attacked by a local wolf, and so they went to St. Francis and asked the great man for help. Apparently, this wolf had been eating their children. St. Francis went to the wolf and gave him a mound of bread, and the wolf ate it. He gave the wolf a mound of meat, and the wolf ate that too. The next day, St. Francis walked into town with the wolf at his side. He took a piece of bread out of his satchel and handed it to the wolf as they walked. The villagers all asked, “How did you stop this wolf from eating our children?” And St. Francis told them, quite plainly, “I fed him.”
 
Just as he did so many times before, Oliver holds up the looking glass for me and shows me my metaphor. Because I am the hungry wolf. Walking along, starving for love like I once had, with Oliver and with others. And all I want is a piece of bread. But for some reason, they always fear that I am looking to eat their children. Oliver jokes that his current relationship isn’t like the torrid tryst we had. I can’t help but laugh even though it hurts. “That’s a good thing, Oliver.”
 
I look down and out across Los Angeles.
 
Our time is up and as much as I want to tell Oliver about my life, I think we’ve said enough. As we turn to go, he asks, “How do you know if you have a drinking problem?”
 
He had mentioned earlier that he was currently not drinking, and I knew something was up. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know that I can be responsible for opening that door. Or maybe it’s the only thing I can do. So I tell him, “You know when it no longer works for you, and yet you still can’t stop doing it.”
 
But it sounds so cliché and easy that it gets tossed off in our conversation.
 
What I want to say is that seeing the ravages of alcoholism does not prevent you from having it. That is one of the first delusions that must be smashed. And then you go to a meeting, and you listen, and you get the book, and if you got
The Shining
, you don’t kid yourself that there is any other way to do it and still live a happy, healthy, and spiritually productive life. And if anything else, by doing that sort of legwork, you will know whether you have a drinking problem or not.
 
That’s it. That’s all. The rest is up to you, my lovely friend.
 
Oliver walks me to my car. He reaches out and holds my hand, but in a good, kind way. We stop and hug, and there is no major chemical reaction or explosion, just two people who know each other enormously well. He tells me that we don’t need to be strangers, but out of respect to him, his relationship, me, we do. I tell him I will e-mail him this chapter as he has asked, but otherwise, I will see him again in two years to catch up. I hold on to his hand as I open up my car door. I cannot look at him as I say, “I will always love you, Oliver.” My voice cracks, and I hold on tight as he replies, “I will always love you too.”
 

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