I’m only going to say this once. I don’t know how it will come out. I know it will be extremely long and detailed, but I promise it’s worth it. At least to me. I have to hold onto this weekend and remember it in detail.

So. Okay. To recap some facts in my recent days, Max is completely avoiding me and I don’t know why. He needs some “space.” Tuesday night I hint (largely) at him that I needed to talk, and he’s like, “oh, well, call me.” So I said fuck it. So I spend Wednesday evening bored out of my mind, and Thursday I go to work. I e-mail Melissa to see how her evening was, and then went to lunch. After a relatively stress-free lunch, I sit back down at my computer and check my mail. There’s a response from Mel. Cool. So I read it, and everything fades into black, then comes back, then goes furiously red. She wrote that she and Max hung out at the loft all night the night before, and oh she was so tired blah blah blah and they decorated and talked.

I swear to God, I couldn’t begin to say what the overriding emotion was. Fury? Jealousy? Hurt? It was a healthy helping of each, I’m afraid. Blindly I grope for my e-mail from Tori where I’d seen her phone number on a signature she forgot to leave off. And I call her. Poor girl - I’ve never spoken to her once and I go into meltdown the first time. She tries to chide me back to reality - usually it works - but this time I was too far gone.

I call Mel and we talk about it - kinda. I tell her how upset I am and she has no answers. Why should she? So I called Max, after thinking about it for an hour, crying off and on. I told him to call me as soon as he got my message. He called at 4pm. I told him I needed to talk to him asap, and he said the soonest his schedule would allow was tomorrow (Friday) evening - will that work? You know, I could just call him tomorrow afternoon and we’d figure something out. FUCK! I was fucking livid - this is the guy who constantly expected me to drop every single fucking thing I was doing every evening for like a month in a row to listen to his issues and his problems with his girlfriend, his family, the church, the leadership, etc, but I’m fucking melting down and he’s too fucking busy? I basically hung up on him.

I called him back five minutes later, and he let my call go to voicemail. That pissed me off. I left him a furious voicemail, telling him what a shitty friend he was being, and how it amazed me that he didn’t have time for one single five-minute phone call in a week for me, but he had eight hours to fucking hang out with my best friend? I told him I might call him, and then again I might not. Whatever.

At this point, I generally lost it, and it was a long time before I found it again.

I went into survival mode. I shut everything down, except for the few occasions I cried into my hands in front of my monitor. I managed to make it through the end of the day, and all I kept hearing in my head was, “You’re not worth it to Max. You’re not worth it to Mel. They are going to get together, see what a big pain in the ass you are, and drop you like a hot potato. You’ll be alone. You already are. You are worthless to everyone.”

I went home and changed clothes. Then I left. I hid at Borders for an hour, but my brain wouldn’t give me any quarter. I left there, gassed up the car, and drove 75 miles west of St. Louis, to the small truckstop town of Danville, MO. I had the Foo Fighters’ “The Colour and the Shape” playing just about as loud as my ears could take it without bleeding. I played, “Doll,” “Monkey Wrench,” “Hey, Johnny Park!”, “My Poor Brain,” and “Wind Up” over and over again. I was angry, and so was Dave. He was pissed. It felt good to be so angry again.

In Danville, I flirted with the guy behind the counter at McDonalds to try for a free soda. Almost worked, but his manager showed up. So I turned my car around, and, listening to the same five songs for another hour and a half, drove home eating an apple pie, smoking a pack of cigarettes, and screaming along with Dave.

I had made the decision. I was all done with this.

I went home and took 2 sleeping pills and went to bed after erasing my answering machine messages without listening to them. I woke up with ringing ears, a phlegmy throat, and a deep resolve to remain divorced from my emotions until I could get finished with the workday, talk to Melissa and Max one last time, and get everything in order.

Before I get 50 e-mails about this, please continue reading.

I made it through the day with Melissa hounding me to talk to me around lunchtime. I just didn’t really care anymore. At all. I was tired of being disappointed, tired of God not listening, tired of being hurt and hurting and hurting other people, tired of overreacting, tired of everything. After work I went home and called Mel to tell her that I was too angry to hang out. She told me that’s good, because she didn’t feel like being raged at or depressed that night. That pissed me off.

So, I got in my car and started driving. I ended up in the parking lot of my church. And, at 6:05pm, I call Max. I get voicemail. I refuse to leave one. I call back at 6:10pm. Voicemail. At 6:15pm I call Melissa. Oh, everything’s fine, I say. I’m just trying to reach Max. Oh, well, she says, she doesn’t know if she’ll talk to him again tonight. Oh, okay. I’m crumbling. We end the call. At 6:40pm I’m driving down highway 40 to the loft, and I call Mel. I was all done with it all. I fucked it up again, didn’t I, I asked her. Always my fault. Always my problems, always my issues, always screwed up. She is careful in her wording, and hears me but refuses to play into it. I take it as yet another rejection in my rejection-filled life.

I call Max. again. No answer. I think I left a voicemail. 7:10pm I call him as I’m manuevering down the rutted-out street to park. Voicemail. I walk up to the building and go inside. The elevator to the third floor is locked. He’s not here. Figures. I am in constant tears and stumble back to the car. I sit in there and cry for a little while, and just figure it wasn’t meant to be. He’ll understand.

Back on highway 40, westbound this time. Time to go home. At 7:15pm my phone rings. Max. He wants to meet me at the loft at 7:30pm, as he has a “window of opportunity between 7:30pm and 9pm.” Oh, good, now I’m on the fucking schedule. Sure, what the hell, I say. I turn around and head back to the loft.

I arrive and he’s late. As usual. He keeps no one’s time but his own. I wait patiently, as really I have nothing but time at that moment. And even that is closing in. He arrives laden with recording junk and we head upstairs.

We go into the loft and I sit in a chair at the end of the coffee table. He goes around, flipping on all these weird lights and lava lamps and cool recording gear. He looks at home behind the computers, mixers, amps, pods and other digital equipment. Like he was built for it.

We start with some idle conversation, about how I feel “abandoned” (from my lips to Melissa’s ears to her lips to Max’s ears). He tries to convince me that he’s just busy - he has a life, goddamnit. I’m not his life. And I say, okay, I understand, I’m sorry, you’re busy and I should understand that. And he looks at me and says, knock off the bullshit martyr act, because you don’t do it very well. And I’m ready to throw something at him.

He gets quiet, and I sit, waiting, bracing. T-5 til my ass-chewing. 4 - 3 - 2 - 1… He grabs his sub sandwich and heads for the chair on the other side of the coffee table. I’m ready to meet anger with anger, frustration with frustration. I so completely just don’t care anymore. I’m impervious to pain of any kind. He sits down and says, “Welcome to your intervention, Michelle.”

Not to quote him, since I wasn’t altogether coherent at the time, but he basically opened everything up with I’m the most “fucking unhappy” person he’s ever met, and that I am fucked up and need to get help or just fuck it all. He also said he’s gonna be straight up honest with me, and if I get pissed, so be it. But he’d reached the end of the line with me, and he was going to tell me whether I liked it or not.

I was like, okay big man, bring it on. You can’t hurt me. I’m already dead.

So we sit, in this hideously royal-purple-and-sky-blue room on furniture circa 1950, facing each other like adversaries ready to do battle. He starts in on me, and doesn’t let up. He is talking with his hands, in broad movements to punctuate his points. He is frustrated, he says, because I’m a fucking mirror image of him a few years ago. And he wants to cut open his insides and hand them to me and say, “Look what I’ve learned. I’ve been there. I know better now.” But he can’t, because he talks and I don’t listen. I tell him it’s hard to hear through all the negativity in my head. He paces back and forth, angry, alternately slouching in the chair he drops into across from me.

At one point he says that I need to get rid of my baggage, because I have everything and all I can see is the shit. I get this yelled at me - “You want what you want when you want it!” And I’m growing ashamed, which is triggering the anger, and I’m yelling back. What the hell? Where is God? Why doesn’t he listen? Why does he turn his back on me? Why doesn’t he listen? Why don’t I ever get anything? Why doesn’t he take away the baggage?

So Max predictably says I need to pray, and I’m off again. I pray 50 times a day! I pray all the time! I get naked in front of God and beg - beg - him to remove all this shit from me. And what happens? Nothing!

Can’t you wait? he asks. NO DAMMIT! I shout. I’ve waited long enough, and God’s just run out of time. Max looks at me. I tell him I just about did it last night, but didn’t. He asks why the hell not. Why didn’t I just go ahead and do it? I looked him straight in the face, and for the very first time in any conversation I’ve ever had, told him to fuck off and absolutely meant it.

He asks why I didn’t do it last night, and I tell him, I had things to get in order first. What a copout, he says. He says that suicide is the biggest “FUCK YOU” you can hand to God.

At some point, Max, an alum of AA, says to me, do you remember the inventory you were supposed to make? Writing out everyone who hurt you, and everyone you hurt? There’s a reason for that, Michelle. Either do the inventory or get the fuck out of my loft, right now. Deal with your shit or get out.

I panic. Okay, I’ll do it, I say. I will.

Somehow the conversation gets turned around. At some point he says to me, either Jesus Christ died for all the sins of all the world, or it’s all just a big fucking lie and I need to make up my mind. At this point I ask him how he’s managed to make it 31 years without someone shooting him.

Knowing what I know about Max, that was one of the most horrible things I could have said.

This conversation goes on until I burst into tears and yell at him for having Melissa over. I’m so fucking upset about that, I can’t even see straight. And then he shoots the final arrow into my heart. He said, they just hung out and listened to music and had fun. Do I know how long it’s been since he had fun? And I’ve got tears streaming down my face. I ask him quietly, when is the last time we’ve had fun? Can he name a time? Ever? No. And I tell him, I haven’t always been like this. Quietly I tell him, in high school, I was a lot of fun. Lots of friends - good, down to earth people. They would all call me to see what was going on. I could laugh with the best of ‘em. And now, where is she? And my heart is breaking, breaking into a million different pieces and I’m just all done. She’s gone. And I hate who she left in her place.

The tenor of the conversation changed. Max asks if I know the story of Eustace in the Chronicles of Narnia? I say, no. And he begins to tell me the story. Eustace is one of the characters who travel to Narnia, and he is a pain in the ass. Hates everyone, everything. Eustace had wandered away and found a bracelet in a pool and put it on. He fell asleep, and woke up with searing pain in his arm. He looked at his arm in horror and realizes he’s become a dragon. He ran to his friends, and they were afraid of him - after all, he was a dragon. He had nowhere to turn in this state. He wanted desperately to become a boy again. Here is the rest, from C.S. Lewis:

“Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it - if you can understand. Well, it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it.”

“You mean it spoke?”

“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I don’t think it did. But it told me all the same. And I knew I’d have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains. And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever we went. So at last we came to the top of a mountain I’d never seen before and on top of this mountain there was a garden - trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well.

“I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells - like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it…the lion told me I must undress first.”

“I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sorts of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully…”

Eustace then leaves his skin behind, yet suddenly he has another layer he has to peel off. He does this three times and gets very frustrated that he has so many layers.

“Then the lion said - but I don’t know if it spoke - ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off…”

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off - just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt - and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been… Then he caught hold of me - I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on - and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment…”

Aslan, the lion, had turned Eustace into a little boy again. As Max was telling the story, I sat thinking about how Aslan is the figure of Jesus Christ in the Chronicles of Narnia. And how much I love lions. And how beautiful he must have been. And I suddenly, surprisingly, felt something warm and soft against my chin. And I started, looking carefully at M., who continued the story without hesitation. I had comfort from that feeling, and a picture of a huge lion with me, white and glowing and beautiful, and he loved and protected me without hesitation, but he also made me walk through this world.

And I was safe. And I was ready. I had to shed this skin, this baggage. I’d only made half-hearted attempts in the past, because baggage isn’t something you carry, it’s actually connected to you, and it hurts like a bitch to have removed. And I’ve always tried to do it myself. And that’s just not possible.

Everything quiets down, and Max gets up and goes to his equipment, sensing I was too tired to continue. He asks if I want to hear any of his new stuff. He knows how much I adore music, and how my secret dreams include being around recording artists, watching them perform, watching them write and record. And this was a huge gift he could give me. So I listen to his new stuff, and then watched as I faded into the background and he started to work.

For two hours I sat and watched him work. Recording is “moments of brilliance in hours of madness.” Thirty minutes at a time listening to a 32-count loop of a song over and over and over until the riff was just right, or the bass line was perfect.

I sat in the near-darkness and watched him stand up in front of his gear and play his guitar. He was playing it for God. It was beautiful, mesmerizing. And I found myself thinking of the inventory he’d just done a few weeks ago. How he was angry for four straight days, and how he’d read it to me. How shocked to the core I’d been to hear about his life. And how, somehow, God took him - a guy with a myriad of problems and a horrendous life - and turned him around. He is incredibly talented, gifted in a way I’ve never seen before. Music flows out of him constantly. He’s written about seven new songs in just as many days. Completed, recorded, done. And I watched him, and I felt something I haven’t felt in the longest time - years and years, maybe decades. I felt hope. And I realized that God left it for me, right at my feet, as always. And I’ve been kicking it out of the way forever.

Max is looping through a song with lyrics that took ahold of my heart and clamped down. I don’t know when he’d written the song, but it was real. I scrambed through my purse to find a pen and wrote down the lyrics for all time:

“Why do we hold onto yesterday when that’s what hurts us today?

Promises of our yesterdays broken inside of today

Remember a time when you dreamed in fresh paint…”

When was the last time I dreamed in fresh paint? So long ago, I couldn’t remember. What does that look like? What does that feel like? What kind of freedom is that? And I listened to the song looping over and over again, and I realized that Max is a pure testament to God’s love and his grace. And that hope was watered with my tears, and grew a tiny bit more.

At 1:00am, feeling as content as they get, I left the loft. I went home and slept. I woke up excited about my counseling session - my first in months. The sky was the most exquisite shade of blue, and for the first time in over a month I didn’t have to warm my car up. Nothing was different, but everything was different. The world tilted, almost imperceptibly. Nothing in my circumstances had changed except the date on the calendar.

I went to my counselor and told her the entire story. She said I’ve finally begun to live. I thought, yes, that’s true. I’ve been cheating everyone of who I really am for so long. I’m ready to do what it takes to live again.

I called Melissa and we met for lunch. On my way, I called Maxter and left him a voicemail, knowing he’d be asleep. I told him that the sky was so beautiful I could hardly believe it. That I wanted to send him flowers but instead I would feed him - that Mel and I would take him to dinner and there was no getting out of it. That it would be my way to thank him, since he gave me such a gift the night before. That I was so thankful he was my big brother.

Melissa met me for lunch because she was concerned that yet again this would be another false start for Michelle. Another euphoria, a manic high that was not built in substance, but something else. I don’t blame her. But after telling her what happened for an hour or more, and telling her how I was willing to have God do the radical surgery, how I was willing to write out the damned inventory (which I’d already started while waiting for her at the restaurant), that it was not going to be easy but a process that would take time, she said she was no longer concerned. She was happy. She said she’d come to the end of the line with me as well. She would no longer enable me to spend months in my head.

When we left there four hours later, she made me go to her house instead of mine. She told me, I’d have to work on the inventory then. *sigh*

As I drove to her house, I called Max. We’d been talking about how he needed some space, and Mel theorized (or so she said it was just theory) that Max looks everywhere in his life and sees me. Finances, personal business, realityFuel, friendships, counseling, his music career. And that he’s feeling stifled. I reminded her that he brought this on himself, by suggesting I take over all this business stuff. She says he doesn’t remember it that way. So I stewed about it for a while, but in the end I called him anyway. I left him another message, telling him that I could understand if he needed space. I never meant to become involved in every facet of his life, and I could understand if he felt suffocated. I told him that he was more important to me - his friendship - than any business deal or money. I told him that whatever he wanted to take back, I would willingly give him. I told him it didn’t matter if he was in the music business or not, or if he were short or tall or skinny or fat, I cherish our friendship and that’s the most important thing. I said all I could say, and I hung up.

Saturday afternoon was spent dredging up my childhood and preadolescent shit. I was tired and irritable by evening, so I went home and got a shower. Returned to Mel’s and she called Max. He begged off dinner, but said that with his new overnight schedule he’s usually hungry around midnight. Then he asked to speak with me.

We ended up talking for 40 minutes. He told me that my messages made him cry. I was concerned. He said he’s been praying for this day. I told him about feeling Aslan, and he laughed, hard and loud and long. He played me (as best he could through two cell phones) the song he wrote after I left. It was great. He told me he was in the best mood. He wanted us to come down to the loft later if we wanted.

After Mel and I ate dinner, we ordered Max a steak and baked potato and headed to the loft, laden with Mountain Dew, new bottled water, cigarettes, cookies and Starburst (his favorite). We got to the loft, and it took everything we had in us and twenty-five minutes of cajoling to get Max away from the recording equipment and to the sofa to eat. I was happy, we were laughing. It was my first taste of freedom in a long time.

Time went on and Max went back to work. Melissa kept herself busy cleaning the perpetually-pigsty loft and they both made me work on my inventory. I would try to stall and Mel would just shoot me a look. So I started high school. I swear, nearly every five minutes I would say, “fuck this” and throw down the notepad and pen. It all felt as if it were yesterday: anger, betrayal, hurt. At one point I got up, went into the hallway, slammed the door and sobbed. As I came back in, Max encouraged me to let it all out. I would have been angry if I hadn’t known that he’s the world’s best and biggest softie who cries all the time. It’s healing, he says. And I agree.

Nearly 4am and Melissa hands me a sheet of paper. It’s song lyrics she just wrote. I asked her where they came from. She got indignant. I can be creative, she says. Max reads them and loves them. He says, “welcome to the magic.” And a large part of me is jealous as hell.

So I decide it’s time to leave, and Melissa says, I’m staying here all night. And I’m like, um, WHAT? I have church in the morning, Justin to pick up and enjoy, a house to clean and an inventory to finish, and you’re stranding me in downtown because you’re not tired? My brain immediately flew into overdrive. What’s the reason? Why does she want to stay? Is she doing this to me? Is she trying to hurt me? And I get pissed. She cavalierly offers to let me take her car home, and then has the audacity to ask me if I am going to take it to her house and get my car tonight. At this point, ingrained manners were the only thing keeping me from completely losing my temper. That, and I’ve inflicted enough damage lately. I announce, no, but I’m leaving because I have a life outside of this.

This morning I woke up angry and frustrated again. Angry that I have such a difficult time sharing my friends. Angry that I feel so persecuted. Angry that I’m so jealous and insecure.

After picking up Justin we headed to Mel’s to switch the cars. I was still so furious with her. Max had dropped her off at 9am and she decided to stay up. He used her lyrics for his song, which made me want to punch something. Then he put his songs on tape for her - that was implied, not spoken, but it had the same effect. By the time I pulled away from her house, I was enraged again.

So, ten minutes later, I called her. I apologized for being a big pain in the ass. She admitted she acted completely inconsiderate and I had every right to be mad. She apologized. I asked her to please be patient with me. I told her I’m trying to work past it. She is kind enough and loves me enough to stick it out. I’m lucky.

I spent the rest of the day completing my inventory. It was hard, it hurt, I hated every minute of it. It’s pages and pages and pages and stupid and horrible. I called Max, ready to read it to him and get rid of it, and he tells me the next step is to put it away for a few days and spend the time with God, asking him to show me anything I’d forgotten. I was shocked. Here I am, walking around with all my insides hanging out, and now I have to sit on it for two days? Shit. He said we’d get together Tuesday to go over it. Um, okay. Then he tells me he’s proud of me, because this is hard stuff and I’m willing to do it. That meant a lot.

Like Mel said today, I’m just starting, but I’m a lifetime away from Friday already. That’s enough to give anyone hope. My goal is to spend nights cuddled with Aslan, secure in his love and protection, knowing that he was going to prod, poke and shove me into the future whether I liked it or not, and that I had to leave the past behind. And, no matter what the cost, I’m ready.

Hopeful,


mich