And so it begins... week 1/ 52 January 7, 2017

Where does one put pain? Physical pain or psychic pain, it doesn’t matter: our bodies preserve it, in the interstices of our nerve synapses, among the weaving  fibers of our flesh. Our minds spirit it away into dark corners. How do you chase the pain away? There are metaphors that can be used: put it on a shelf, set it aside, table it. Postpone the pain until it isn’t so raw… and there are so many trite platitudes like “no pain, no gain” or worse, “something better is waiting for you” or even, “it gets better” or the Mexican one I love, “no hay pena que dure cien años ni cuerpo que lo aguante” (there is no sadness that lasts 100 years, nor a body that can last that long) and in some cases, in certain company, the ever-unhelpful “God has a plan for you.” And while it is true, we aren’t capable of bearing the pain of disappointment, abandonment, failure, or just plain loss interminably, it is simply the not knowing when you will feel better that adds to the weight of grief. So, where do you put pain? I tend to put it into writing, and though this wasn’t my intended starting point for a new writing project, here I am, facing a blank page, and facing my own demons. Again.

The idea: a personal essay once a week for the entirety of 2017. I have misplaced my joy, it seems, and when that happens, I recognize my need to create. Sometimes cooking is an outlet for this creativity, and sharing food with friends brings the added joy of bringing happiness to others, but, in the spirit of honesty, I have lost my appetite for food. Of any kind. That’s when you know the joy has been sequestered and the pain has taken hold, and maybe, just maybe, it is time to do something about it. In years past I have undertaken photo projects, a daily self portrait (to try and be kinder and more loving to my physical likeness, and thereby, my physical embodiment), then a weekly one, then a daily portrait outside myself. This is to say, there is a theme. If it is the renovation of the imposed Gregorian calendar, or the lunar/ solar universal laws, the winter season often finds me in the doldrums, full of fear and pain that are, perhaps explicable, but certainly not often acknowledged. And the only cure is to write. Or to travel, but sometimes the pain travels with you… with writing, it always just pours out onto the page.

So here goes, a 52-week love letter to myself, to my friends,  to  future love, or to my child, or to you, dear reader, who may not yet exist, a window to my soul (thus, after all, Paul Simon reminded us, is akin to losing love).

A week before Christmas, 1994.

Miramar, Argentina: Province of Buenos Aires and as the name suggests, a balmy beach town in the summer.

For months Leo and I had met, clandestinely, at the Petit café and then under the boardwalk, among the wild dunes. His kisses tasted of tobacco and his skin of salt, his hair a bit shaggy, and salt burned in the style of the young men in this country not my own. I was afraid. Always afraid. What if Freddi found out? What if they sent me home? What if I lost the school year because of carelessness? What if? What if? What if?  But never “What if he stops loving me?” Never “What happens when I inevitably have to leave?” I am 16 and nervous, sensual, he is tired of kissing and grinding me to orgasm through his thick jeans, he is ready. Insistent, We are in the dunes among the trees of the forest where later I will find myself screaming to fend of a would-be date rape, but here it is all the heady drunkenness of teenage love. Or so I thought. He pulls out a condom. I say no, fully aware of the consequences of an accidental pregnancy on my future, in a place I don’t know, where I trust no one, where I cannot fully navigate the social mores nor the knowing looks, nor the expectations, nor the scolding tongues.  I am alone. Leo is with me. I think. I push his hands away: “I’m not ready,” I say, believing fully that he will understand, must understand, that I am simply afraid of the unknown. I knock his hand and the bright pink plastic falls to the side, on sandy ground. He grows angry and it is in this anger, and subsequent withdrawal that I understand that I might lose this man-boy that I love, that is my lifeline, my only friend. But I’ve gone and done it, and I can’t take it all back. So, I do the next best thing, for which I am, apparently, already known, the slutty yanqui, though only because I have a big mouth and talk a big game. He finishes and I gag, and spit. The blue sky spins around pine trees and I know, like a prescient pit in my stomach, that I didn’t fix anything, that maybe there was nothing I could have fixed. We walk the flat city grid back to my temporary home on the central plaza in stony silence.

He doesn’t call me all week. On Christmas Eve day, on the hot street, filled with throngs of summer beach vacationers from the capital, we meet. He asks if I plan to go out that night to a club. I have been moved to a new house, where the mother tells me she will protect me from the clucking tongues, and the eagle-eyed gaze of my German guardian. I feel scared and I know something is wrong. He doesn’t hold me the way he usually does. Doesn’t stop to play on the swings at the diagonal corner to discuss the linguistic nuances of querer and amar, 

We have a midnight dinner on the esplanade, drink sparkling sidra, champagne’s sychophantic cousin, and the young folk teeter our way to the coastal clubs at the far end of the beach, at the edge of the vivero. The music pulses and throbs, and I feel nauseous and disoriented, and utterly alone. I try to dance, which I find slightly easier while tipsy, but I am overheated and frustrated because Leo is nowhere to be found, and cell phones were not a pervasive nor portable technology at the time. So I stood on the rooftop terrace, overlooking the lapping of the black-night sea, when I feel a tap on my shoulder. It is Leo. He has a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, “Che, Ilana…” he says, and the lilting tone in his voice is a tell. My heart jumps to my throat, but before I can be engulfed in dread, a girl, whose factions cannot reassemble themselves in my mind, comes bounding up behind him  and demands to know, “Have you done it already?” and then I am fully engulfed in dread, shock, terror, humiliation. I feel the floor move, but there is no earthquake. He tells me it is over, though I don’t even know if he says the words. I ask him how long, and he says, “a week.” Of course I know now that this was a pious lie, meant to shield me from additional pain., but then, all I could think about was, what if I had just offered up my virginity to him? What if? What if?

All out of the fear of consequences, I grabbed the first blond-headed, long-haired boy that crossed my path (to whom I had been introduced earlier that evening) and promptly made out with him very publicly in the middle of the dance hall. It was a mild version of revenge sex. I don’t remember how he tasted, but I think it was of mint gum and smugness.

Weeks later, after I had made out in an alley behind the clubs with Leo’s best friend the following week, just for an extra dose of spite, I found myself desperately ill, and under the care of the family that was meant to “protect” me.  That’s not what happened in the throes of my fever, but that’s a story for another day.

There is no moral. There is only pain. But it can go, I don’t want to hold it anymore. I learned my first lesson in mistrust, having previously never experienced neither deep love nor deep betrayal… nor violation of the sanctity of my sleeping body. I want to reverse this miseducation. I want to heal my fear. I want.