Just about this time last year, I was polishing off my report for Salon about the crisis in Biloxi. It was based on my first visit there, at Thanksgiving. I was also anticipating my second visit, at New Year's.
The person I considered my best friend called me every day. She'd usually be sitting in her car, using the battery charger to keep our connection alive. The story of my life then could have been titled " The Days of Just Waiting." Waiting for her calls, her emails, for our next time together.
At that time I would have said she knew me better than anyone else did. She might have said something similar about me. But, in addition to our friendship, my heart was being tugged just like hers was -- by the plight of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The most compelling thing I felt I could do would be to quit my job, sublet my flat, get some freelance assignments and drive to Biloxi.
With my laptop, tape recorder and digital camera, I would produce lots of online material that later could be easily fashioned into a book.
The problems with my fantasy were twofold:
First, how would I be able to be any kind of responsible parent to my three young children. I wouldn't be making much money, presumably, so how could I send their mother large enough support payments to keep them safely cared for? How would they cope without me in their daily lives?
Secondly, I had to be my own devil's advocate and try to separate out my love for my girlfriend from my desire to help the survivors of the twin monsters of 2005 -- Katrina and Rita. Was I just following her, or did I have my own individual drive to do this work?
In the end, my fantasy remained pretty much that -- just a fantasy. But not before it bloomed into a personal crisis that I now recognize as the worst of my life, which has had more ups and downs than one of those toy submarines filled with baking soda we used to play with in the bathtub when I was a kid.
Before it peaked, I had done and said things I'll regret the rest of my life. The depth of my sadness, when glimpsed by my little boys, scared them beyond anything they'd ever experienced. Seeing me that out of control was a trauma, I now admit, that may have left lasting scars.
At the same time this was happening, I reached out for whatever resources I could find -- therapists, friends, this blog. I kept trying to reach out for my friend, too, but she refused me. I was going to have to get through this one alone.
Flipped around, this crisis -- losing my key relationship, and not being able to follow my passion to get involved in ways I knew would be helpful -- turned gradually into an opportunity. For over eight months, day after night, I've posted to this blog, attempting to capture an emotional journey that remains far from over.
It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to step between my children and me again (and to be fair, that is not what my friend tried to do -- I did that to her and to myself.) In fact, I've long since forgiven her and everybody else in this sad story. But there remains one person I doubt I will ever be able to forgive:
The one who is writing these words.
As always, I turn to poetry for my solace, such as it is:
Window wide open, African trees
Bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze...
...There's smoke on the water, it's been there since June,
Tree trunks uprooted, 'neath the high crescent moon...
...She never said nothing there was nothing she wrote,
She gone with the man
In the long black coat.
-- Bob Dylan
-30-
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