Lady Anne

You think you know me, don’t you?  You’ve heard stories, so many stories about Lady Anne Skipwith.  A beautiful woman, who married well and had a good life…

Until she and her husband, Sir Peyton Skipwith were invited to a ball.  Not just any ball, but one held by the governor himself in the capitol city.  They graciously accepted the invitation, and a few weeks later were happily staying as guests in a house just down the green from the Governor’s Palace.  On the night of the ball, Anne got separated from her husband, and when she went to find him, he was not alone.  Anne’s older sister, Jean was with him showing considerably more than sisterly affection.  Anne ran from the palace, stumbling across the lawn and losing one of her beautiful shoes.  Returning to the house she was staying in as a guest, she found a bit of rope and in a fit of grief hanged herself from the landing rail.   For years, people have been knocking on that door, trying to return the lost shoe.

Poor girl, poor sad Anne.

But there are other stories, you know.  Perhaps you’ve heard the one about Jean, poor Anne’s sister.  She went on to marry Sir Peyton, became the new Lady Skipwith.  It’s been said that on that fateful night, Jean followed Anne back to the house.  Anne was above stairs in her chamber when she heard someone coming up the stairs.  Thinking it was her husband returned to beg for forgiveness, she went to meet him with an open heart.  But it was Jean, not Sir Peyton that met her on the steps, and when Jean saw Anne’s pity and compassion she was overcome by such a dark rage that she grabbed Anne’s dress and flung her down the stairway, snapping her beautiful neck. 

Such sad, sad tales.  But that’s the thing, you never can tell what stories to believe, can you?

Oh yes, my name is Anne Skipwith.  I did go to a ball with my husband, and perhaps that’s what killed me.  But the real story, the TRUE story starts some years before.  I was heavy with child, my third.  It was June and all the cicadas were greeting the close of another day with a rousing chorus.  I went from my house to find my sister, Jean.   She had taken a book to the gardens, another novel or a scientific treaty- I never could keep track.  Wandering the flowerbeds I heard her voice, a breathless laugh.  Then I heard someone else.  They were there- both of them sitting on a stone bench.  My beloved sister and my dear husband.  He looked at her with such passion, such gentle love, suddenly I felt like the interloper.  I tried to move, to cry out- but I couldn’t.  I was caught there, behind the hedges watching as my husband leaned over and tenderly kissed my older sister. 

I froze, unable to think, unable to breath.  Then, with a snap I came back to myself.  I was eight months along; Jean had come up to help with the lying in.  In my state, what could I do?  I was terrified of doing something to harm the pregnancy, to bring the baby too quickly.  And besides, who knew if I would even survive- it’s not just the birth that’s dangerous you know- it’s the possibility of sickness, infection that comes later.  Showing myself would only cause more hardship to my family.  I loved them both so.  I turned, and walked away. 

Well the baby did come, not too long after.  A beautiful baby boy (girl?)  Jean stayed by my side, caring for me, my children….and my husband.  They did nothing to rouse my suspicion, nothing was outwardly wrong- but I knew.  A woman can always tell.  Still, I was healthy, and so was my baby- and that’s all that mattered.  I kept quiet and did my best to forget, everything. 

Life continued as it does in the countryside of Virginia, the years passed and my children turned into sturdy toddlers and then began to shed their baby fat and have opinions and thoughts of their own.  It was a pleasant, peaceful existence.  One day my husband came to find me in my dressing room.  He was glowing; we had been invited to a grand ball but the governor of Virginia himself!  I protested, I did not want to leave my children behind, but he insisted that they were old enough to be without their parents for a few days.  Perhaps, I suggested, their Aunt Jean could stay with them- she loved them so!  “But Anne, don’t you understand?  Jean is going too!  The whole family together for a long weekend in the city!”  Oh, I understood.  He would not hear of any further protests, when I said I had nothing to wear he said I should have a new gown, and shoes to match.  And so, before I knew it I was bundled up into a carriage with my husband and my sister, setting off to Williamsburg.

The journey was smooth, and we were welcomed into Williamsburg; before we knew it the ball was upon us.  I buckled my new shoes on and settled the smooth silk fabric over my hoops, determined to show nothing amiss.  I had always liked parties after all.  Peyton and I stepped a minuet, and several of the country dances before I excused myself to find a glass of punch.  When I returned, he was nowhere to be found.  A quick glance around the room show that Jean was missing as well, and I could feel my stomach drop into my feet.  So this was it, how predictable.  With a smile, I slipped out the back door and into the gardens.

They were in the maze, at the very center.  They didn’t see me approaching.  Before I knew it, I was yelling, screaming at the top of my lungs for the whole world to hear.  God only knows that names I called them, and then I was running- sprinting back to the house I was staying it- to safety.  My new shoes were loose, one slipped off and stayed on the green but I didn’t stop to retrieve it.  I was on my bed before I knew it, my shoeless foot tucked beneath me as I clutched a pillow to my heart.  The minutes crept by, and then I heard the door open.  The steps were too light for my husband, they must be….yessss. 

She came up the stairs and I rose to meet her.  I could feel the cold fury rolling off of her before she entered the room.  Yes, she was my sister- and I knew her better than anyone else in the world.  Better even than my husband.  I knew what to say to make her blood boil, and I had said everything I could in the gardens.  I was on the landing by the time she got there.  She looked up at me, and then I did the one thing I knew she could not stand.  I looked at her with pity. 
“You poor woman.  You poor old maid.  You can’t get a husband so you’ll steal you younger sisters.” 

That’s when she screamed.  The last thing ever I ever heard was her wailing.

Have you ever been betrayed?  Have you ever realized that the one person you love more than anything else in the world, the one person that you would do anything for doesn’t love you? 

First you’re devastated with grief.  Then you get angry.  Then, you get even. 

I am no simpering fool.  Do not pity me, for I chose my fate.  Who do you think wrote to the governor, begging for an invitation to the ball for my dear sister?  Who ordered shoes a size too big? I knew what I was saying to Jean in the garden that night, knew she would come after me.  It was no accident that my scarlet shoe was outside the house that night, pointing the way to me.  And then, when she found me I did the one thing that I knew she could not stand; I pitied (or forgave?) her. 

If you had the chance to punish someone, would you simply punish them for life, or for all eternity?  She pushed me down the stairs that night, and yes I broke my neck- but she sealed her fate as well.  She is trapped in this house with me, she can never escape the sister that she wronged.  Poor sweet girl, poor sweet Jean.  She lived with my husband, never expecting that when she died, she would come back here.  And I will never let her forget it.  It’s like my red shoes, don’t you see?   All these years later, everyone feels sorry for me, tries to help me find them.  They hate her, curse her, dare not speak of her.  But I’ve had them, all along. 

(stands to reveal both shoes are now on her feet)

Now, remember- don’t believe everything you hear.  Goodnight.

Ghostly nights

Funny thing is, Lady Skipwith is a character I could have written myself. Thanks, stranger who stood outside the window to capture me as a bitterly angry ghost.

Haunted

The night smelled like trash.  Somehow, I always come back to that.  I was standing there outside the door, trying to get the courage to raise my fist those impossible few inches and knock.  The whole hallway smelled like trash and musty sweat.  Boys dormitories have a very particular musk.

I close my eyes and there I am, again.  I knock, three agonizing seconds, and there you are.  Your eyes are what drew me to you in the first place, but I don't know if I really saw them that night or if I'm just imagining being caught in their deadly blue gaze.  Somehow, I'm inside the room and on your bed.  You remember how you stole an extra twin XL frame and mattress from the closet down the hall?  You pushed them together, but with a deceptively large gap between.  I know I loved your body.  I know I loved your smell.  But somehow, it's the moments right before we touched that are forever etched in my mind.  The sweet anticipation, the hairs in my arms standing on end at the thought of your breath on my neck.

God.  Was it really all that cliche?

You taught me how to kiss, stopped once and looked down- I was terrified that you had noticed my lack of experience, but you simply said "I like the way you kiss." I know it happened months before, but somehow that feeling is tied to that night.

I was wearing slippery pink underwear printed with stars, they wouldn't stay where I wanted them- though I wasn't even sure I wanted them there anymore.

Damn you.  Damn you to hell.  I wonder if the conclusion had been as thoughtful as the crescendo, if that might have made a difference.  Maybe, if you could have been sweet and gentle, I would have been able to box the whole thing up and remember it (and you) fondly.  But not so.  Now, you are my Mr. Wickham.  You are my heartbreak.  Other people hit me, raped me, isolated me- but you are the one I'm still mad at.  Why?

Maybe, if it had been good and kind I would have stood up to him later on.  Maybe I would have been able to let go.

But time is marching relentlessly forward and I'm not 19 anymore.  And yet, somehow I can still close my eyes and feel your almost-kisses on my neck and smell the trash.

God damn it Tim.  God fucking damn it.

The night I lived

There was a time that I wanted everything to just stop.  It was fall, just as things were starting to get cold again- one of the first snows on the ground.  It was the semester that I didn't go back to school- for the first time I saw friends continue on and simply leave me behind.  No one seemed to notice the absence, but stuck in a tiny town in Maine I was screaming-
"I'm here, I matter, I'm important and I'm missing! Doesn't anyone notice?"
But no one did notice, really.  Six months before I had three, four, five young men courting me- and now that I was *absent* all had forgotten except for one, my boyfriend.  That word still seemed strange on my tongue, never having had one in all my 19 years of life.  But now things had changed.
Six months before I was pure and innocent and seemed perhaps desirable; my little girl perspective of the world managed to turn young men's lust into worth.  But even there, at school, I had my moments.  One by one people turned their backs on me.  Mostly girls first, as they tend to do at the first sign of a social pariah.  There were nights, long ones, when I felt so utterly alone.  I walked out to the middle of the rustic bridge one, two, twenty times or more; wondering if one small jump would end it or simply leave me in a mangled unlovable mess.
Finally, in a fit of despair I gave up my innocence and with it went my fight.  The night that I slept with him, I knew that he didn't love me.  I knew that it was all in my head, that he probably never would-but some part of me went to bed still believing in fairy tales.  When I woke up, Hansel and Gretel were dead and Cinderella's glass slipper had shattered.
After that I believed what people said about me.  I was a whore, slut, worthy of shame and ridicule, not worthy of happiness or the air that I was so greedily filling my lungs with.  I lied to everyone, said it had never happened, lied to myself until I couldn't even remember the details, much as I wanted to hold on to them.
There was one person who still told me I had worth, though that worth was built on the lies I was telling, completely dependent on my status as a Truly Pure Girl.  I should have seen, right from the start, that he was beginning to control me, using his role as the Experienced Man to show me that the only time I had worth was through him, but I was so genuinely ashamed of my own actions that I made a house out of lies and hoped that it didn't fall down.
To be honest, I didn't think it would last.  I knew by that point that I was going to have to leave, knew that everything would be changing, so I thought that perhaps with distance he would become disinterested, break my heart, and let me go.  Heartbreak would truly have been kinder.
But he thought, through my own deception, that he was the First, and that made me a prized possession. And so when I left he didn't break it off, instead he let me linger somewhere on a shelf in his life.  I wasn't truly there but I wasn't truly gone either.
And so, summer came- normal summer, almost happy summer.  Work sucked but I was 19 and summer jobs were supposed to suck.  I made friends, made flirtations, and had I not been tied to my shelf I probably could have found summer romance.  It almost happened, once.  We were sitting at the top of Cadillac mountain, and he started talking about love.  He looked at me and I looked at him and we almost kissed.  It was the most intimate moment I had ever experienced.  Nothing happened, but somehow I understood that this was different, this was what it was to be valued.
But I had a boyfriend, and he told me that he wanted me forever, asked me to marry him at least three times a day, and played games of truth or dare for hours on the phone.  And that, I thought, was what a *Mature Long Distance Relationship* was supposed to be.
And then fall came.
And people went back to school.
And I stayed in frigid Maine.
The tourist season ended and with it, my job.  The end was horrible beyond words but it was over.  I had nothing to show from my summer, I had earned more than ten thousand dollars and spent it all on weekend road-trips to Pennsylvania and thai food and an online game that I didn't play.
He stopped talking on the phone. Started asking why we had to talk, what new things we could possibly have to say to one another- but still he could not let me go and now I needed him because he was the *only one* left.  Well, not quite the only one.
That man, the innocence stealer, he was asking me why I was throwing my life away.  Why I wanted to be with someone so cruel.  But, I wondered, what could be more cruel that plucking something fresh and sweet and then throwing it away?  And so I ran from him, straight into the arms of the only person I had left, someone who had not yet shown their full capability of cruelty.
And so, one night in early fall, I went for a walk.
There was frost on the grass but I purposefully left my jacket behind, wearing flip flops over the crusty ground of the summer estate long since abandoned for a warmer home somewhere to the south.  There was a little bay, private, just beyond the long driveway, maybe a mile and a half from my house.  I walked, phone to my ear, talking to someone who had stopped listening months before.  Finally, looking at the bay I said something that made him listen.
"How cold do you think the water is?"
"What?"
"How cold do you think it is, now?"  I dipped my pinky toe in, and immediately I could feel the shock of hundreds of tiny pins spreading up from the icy water.  Silence, and then
"You're scaring me, stop it."
"I could just go for a swim."
"Don't do that, stop it.  Go home, ok?"
For a moment, standing there, I could see it happening before my eyes.  Pulling off my shoes and wandering into the water, pushing my head under to quicken the numbing effects, and just floating until unconsciousness and the tide carried me away.  Gone.  I wondered if he would call anyone, or if it would take weeks for them to find me washed up on some forgotten shore.  Maybe I wouldn't be found.
I don't know what it was that stopped me.  Maybe it was love for my little brother, he had saved me so many times in the past.  Maybe it was fear of pain; I don't like uncomfortable situations.  Whatever the reason I put the phone back to my ear and slipped my numbing toe back into the sandal.
"Only kidding."
"Good, now go home where you'll be safe."
Only when I got home I was more disappointed in myself than ever.  Because I was a cowered, because even in this I had failed.
I wonder if I would have done it, if I had known what the next three years would bring.  If I had known that they would come with physical, sexual, and worst of all emotional abuse.  If I knew I would be scared to talk, scared to eat, have to ask permission to dress and undress, to go to bed and go to work.  If I would have know how much it would have hurt when everything finally, inevitably crumbled.
All I know is that somehow I survived.  But not everyone survives.
Gwen, I wonder if you were feeling the same way at the same time, if maybe we had talked or noticed each other things could have been different.  Your death brought me a little closer back to life, but I often wonder what would have happened if I had stepped out into the bay- maybe you wouldn't have made that choice just one year later.
And then, finally after years of abuse and torment someone else took a step into the bay.  Someone I had never met, that I know of, though I'm sure we passed each other dozens of times on our tiny college campus.  I was in yet another horribly abusive relationship, firmly anchored in what psychiatrists would I'm sure call a *pattern,* but somehow what he did woke me up.  Once again it was real, I was standing there looking at a reflection of my own past, only this time I wasn't helpless.  I could hold hands, could listen and wipe away tears.  Without that, I wouldn't have every truly lived, without that, I wouldn't have ever truly loved.
I wish you hadn't I sincerely do; but I also wish that you could know the love and joy that you unknowingly brought back into this world.
I am not that terrified girl anymore, I don't think I will ever feel that amount of despair again, but I will never as long as I live forget how it feels to stand alone looking out over the icy black water.

Forever and a day

For the first time in five years, I feel safe.  Here I am, curled happily on the couch and there you are in the computer chair; I can easily make out your strong profile in the glow from the tv.  I don't need to hide behind pseudonyms and distinctive eye colors anymore, I can easily say that I love you, Matthew, and that is my talisman against anything and everything the world can throw at me.  

This love is more than a passing infatuation and it's more than fear of being alone.  The only other "love" I have known was born out of fear and guilt; there is not a day that goes by that I don't thank my guardian angel for opening my eyes and allowing me a way out of that.  Out of the abuse, the hatred, the feeling of despair.  Two years ago I didn't care if I lived or died, I thought that I was disposable, furniture, worthless.  Some would say that I needed to have someone give me love to show me that I was worth it, but my dearest Matthew you have done more than that- you insisted that I start to love myself again for me  and no one else.  That truly saved my life.  

And now I know that if I die tomorrow, I have known true happiness and true love.  There are so many who never have that privilege and so for that I am beyond lucky.  I love you, Matthew, now and forever. 

What goes around...

It's been a long long time since you've heard from me, but this is just too good.  Oh sweetie, to think that a few months ago I wanted to remember the good things and move on- with each passing day I realize more and more what an absolute shithead you are and how horribly you treated me and everyone else in your life.  And now the icing on the cake.
Does she know?  I can't imagine you wouldn't have told her, but then you never really did have the guts to confess your wrongs.  And your mother, did you tell her?  One day, sitting around the table were you just casually like,
"Oh so I cheated on my girlfriend last spring (again) and now I'm going to be a baby daddy."
I can imagine the scene.
More likely, you didn't tell them-couldn't muster the courage.  It won't take that long for everyone to figure out, what with child support and another human's life irrecoverably tied to yours. I would almost feel bad for the woman in your life, if she hadn't proven herself to be a controlling brat.  (#notsorry)  Truly, the people I feel the worst for are your family.  They have supported you and loved you through all the shit you've pulled, and they don't deserve this. 
The only thing I can think is "that could have been me."  So easily.  And yet, here I am with an honest to goodness nice guy, a man who treats me with respect and love and gives me all the things that I didn't realize I deserve.  And there you are, with a trainwreck life and no future.  I know you thought I was a bitch, but I think karma's got me beat.

Mirror mirror on the wall

I wish I could tell you that it all gets easier from here.  To "move on and learn," or even only to move on.  It doesn't stop though, this isn't the end of the sore raw feeling in your chest.  You were young and full of hope, I know.  Beautiful eyes and a quick smile, happy to daydream away your monochromatic life.  I know you because I am you-past present and future.  In the beginning, I was disdainful.  How could you fall for the simplest, oldest tricks in the book.  And then I look back, through the mirror of you to this:

So I'm a romantic, or supposed to be I guess.  But some days, sometimes I'm really ready to take my Austen and throw it out the window.  Setting people up to believe in simple things like "love..."  nothing simple about it.  But I know that I would plod outside, dust it off and try to put the gold-leafed pages back to order.

I'm sorry, for what it's worth.  I wonder now if I was truly saving you or if I was simply ending your fairytale sooner than it would have organically.  Write, or sing, or paint or play- I don't know what it is that you need to do to move beyond this.  But try to.

Forget what you can and bury the rest.  In a few years you can dust it off and somehow it will be a little duller and a little easier to understand.  Use your hate, use your tears, don't waste them on social media. 

You are strong.  
I am strong.
We are strong.

Promise me one thing: in two years, or five years, or ten- when you finally meet your mirror don't be too quick to laugh and dismiss her.  Try to help, try to teach, and hesitate for a moment before you jump to end their fairy tale.