Y manu de tulu

I didn't know what to write.  Or, I should say, how to write what has happened.  What is happening.  What is yet to come.

I thought about it as I lay on the white table, listening to the midwife explain to me what is normal for a woman, what is not, and where I lay in that spectrum.  She had to ask about my "experience", and I had to be honest in telling her it was a rather recent event.  Then she asked me to tell her about him.  I didn't know what to say.  The scorned woman in me wanted to scoff and say the heir to the Goran throne "wham-bam-thankyou-maam'd" me without a second thought.  The rest of me that knew the truth didn't know how to explain what I could not understand myself.  That the one I was eternally bound to became so through promising me love, promising me endurance and safety, and then taking from me the one sacred thing I had left that made me different from others like me.  We loved, we cherished, we laughed, we lived, I left for a week on a trip for a dear friend, and came back to be abandoned?

The questions, and semi-answers, rolled through my head as I lay under the bright light at the dentist.  It didn't help that Tristan was outside waiting for my cleaning and initial check-up to finish.  I was just glad the hygenist didn't ask me who the guy with me was, especially with a pick probing inside my mouth.  I didn't know what I could say, or how with someone fishing around my teeth.

For a while, though, the confusion was set aside to make room for the worry.  At each appointment, now available after living 22 years without health insurance, I prayed for things to be good but not too good.  I wanted to be healthy, just not a freak.  Nothing to grab attention.

Somehow I'd forgotten that I am a half-breed.  There were problems, but my body was discovered to be naturally fighting these problems like a warrior.  Over 10 years without seeing a dentist, and before that only one visit ever, and I had only one tiny, barely registered cavity.  My mouth had shifted my teeth just far enough apart that it was easy to clean with basic brushing.  My other appointment showed a very light, hardly-there issue that was fixed in 24 hours.  The scar tissue from Tristan and I "progressing further" was almost completely, 100% healed over, and even the aging midwife was impressed.  Even now, after finding an organic vitamin to help things grow stronger in my systems, I wake up firmer and stronger each day.  My stomach is flatter every morning, and I feel muscles hardening without much effort on my part.  Friends at work commented on this the other day, and while I am thrilled to finally have a beneficial "change" occur, I know my body is adjusting in preparation for something.

My room was a mess because my mind was a mess.  I have to have one clean and one cluttered.  If my mind is cluttered, I have to clean my room.  If I want a cleared mind, I have to let the mess out in a physical representation through leaving clothes on the floor, etc so my mind can focus better.

I try not to think about Tristan.  I don't call him.  I don't text him.  The thing is, I'm not even mad.  Sure, I was screaming to God for justice, for something to be done because in no way was any of this right, justified, or even logical.  But even though my mind flashed an image of smacking that man from here to kingdom come, my heart was far too strong.  I couldn't even lift a finger against him.  All I felt, all I feel, is pain.

My heart mourns, it sobs to him that what he has done to me is despicable.  Treacherous.  And I hear him, somehow I hear him, quietly reasserting that "that's not what happened".  So I beg to know what did happened, and I am met with the same "I don't know".  Face to face, he told me it was his health.  Then it was that he loves me, but at the same time wants to keep a great distance from me.  Then it was that he was bored because we weren't progressing.  Then it was that he had trouble with wanting to be with other people, men actually.  And then it was just...."I don't know".

The pain, that constant numbing pain in my heart, comes from knowing he did not find me worth putting in an ounce of effort for once he felt a twinge of discomfort.  Tristan lured me, promised me we would work through the difficult times together, promised me that I could trust him, even acted very hurt during a moment when I doubted who he was.  I didn't want to trust him, but he was so reassuring.  For the first time since meeting the true Goran prince, I saw in his eyes the man I'd always believed him to be: strong, resilient, passionate, and good.  Our time was finally approaching.  We were happy.  We were at peace.  While at my friend's wedding, I missed him, but our story became a beacon of hope to the women who felt like men were not worth fighting for.  With passion in my voice I held a (now) dear friend's hand and begged her to be the light of God into the darkened world of the man she loves.  I told her how I'd wanted to give up, to just move on, and how hard I tried to, but God always dragged me back to where I needed to be: at Tristan's side.  She started crying as the hope welled up in her, and we hugged each other, and I realized that God had blessed me with an incredible life alongside an incredible man.

But something was wrong.  A mutual friend I talked with a few days before returning home let something slip, and immediately I felt that sinking feeling in my stomach.  But my immediate thoughts were ridiculous, because Tristan told me I should trust him as he trusted me.  He told me that we would work together through the difficult times.  He promised.  So everything was fine and I was just being paranoid, right?

Wrong.

He waited.  He took his time and waited.  Waited until after a few days had passed since my return.  Waited until I asked him if he wanted to join me as I watched my niece for the afternoon.  He waited until after lunch, after I was reassured in my mind that everything was okay.  He waited until we were on our way to his family's home, cooing baby in the back of my car, to tell me "I want to just be friends for now".

A part of me wanted to fight.  The rest of me just shut down.  What small part of me still held hope for better days died.  I felt it all die.

I didn't cry until after I left his home, my niece also crying in her carrier.  She stopped the moment she heard me sob, and I reached out with what remained alive within me to comfort her, and I felt her reach back to comfort me as well.  I did not want to speak of it with anyone outside of my parents and sister, but coworkers asked if I was okay.  I wasn't eating, barely sleeping, and I couldn't find the willpower to fake a smile to customers.  Finally, I mentioned to a friend there who also knew Tristan that he decided to end our relationship.

"You. Are. Kidding. Me."

I lifted my head and was surprised to see a flash of anger in her eyes, replaced with incredible disappointment.  Even more shocking was how a mutual friend who I'd figured was the inspiration for this sudden change had actually advocated on my behalf to Tristan.  Even God Himself made it plain as daylight that this would be a very wrong move for Tristan to make.  And yet he did.  And when I gently pointed out exactly how this was all oh so wrong, and he saw and agreed, he did nothing to fix it.  I would have taken him back, since hiccups like these happen.  People get scared, but that's why we stick through good and bad for each other.  Even as we talked, even as I saw the light in his eyes fade into that cloudiness that makes me feel like I'm talking to a marionette, I prayed that this would just be a hiccup.  That we would work through it together, just like he promised the day before we gave each other something we'll never, ever get back.

It's been two weeks.  Either this is the world's longest hiccup, or he really did abandon me.

The world is changing.  The earth is trembling, rolling, struggling under the growing weight of man's demands on its resources.  People are growing unsettled within our borders and it spreads like a virus to the other nations.  Crime is skyrocketing, the value of the American dollar is plummeting, and the general public is becoming far more aware of the possibilities that we are not "it" in the universe.  The rise of the Goran Prince is fast approaching, and where is he?

I know that my focus on guiding Tristan to his destiny has and sometimes can still cloud my vision of who he is to me, one on one, love to love.  I know this.  I prayed, asked God to help me, and I immediately saw two men standing in front of me several feet away.  The one on the left was glowing, golden, strong and steady, armed and prepared for anything.  His face was stern but loving, his stance prepared for battle but ready to hold the ones he loves.  "This is who I made him to be," I heard a voice say.  I knew that voice so well, that of my Father.  To the right of the warrior was a man who shared the same face, but was pale, almost gray.  His eyes were dark and cold, his lips almost blue with some form of illness.  He was weak, unable to stand up straight, and he seethed at the warrior with hatred.  "This is who he has made himself to be," said the voice again.

I told Tristan this vision.  I didn't tell him what happened next.

I felt, I saw, God standing next to me and His hand gently nudged my back forward.  "You must choose."

What surprised me most was that I did not even stop to think it over.  I walked up to the sick and angry man and held him close.  "Please remember...." I whispered along his ear, and for a moment, the light of recognition lit in his eyes.  An arm, shaking in its weakness, started to wrap around me as I held him.  When God asked me why I chose this one over the warrior, I didn't even hesitate.

"Because I want him for who he is, regardless of his condition.  If he will live like this the rest of his life, so be it.  I love him.  That will never change."

And I know, against every fiber of reasoning, that it will be true the rest of my days.  I will always love Tristan, server of food, seer of the invisible, tortured soul of a righteous man.  Whether he rises to the throne of Gora or lives the rest of his days serving chicken and dumpling soup, I will love him.