Jessica Shouts Out

{Hello All.}

Please humor OurHeroine as she experiments with Adding Pages.

Yesterday I was feeling blue, but today I feel better. Lots of sleep helped. Then I had a streak of blessing.

Here's the story:

Years ago, I had a girlfriend, my first real lover, Rebecca (a PseudoNYm). She was from SantaRosa, California but had lived since about second grade in a small one-bedroom apartment with her mom in Queens. Her mom was an old-skool hippie, still a pothead, and told long wonderful stories about CaLiFOrnia. She had these pictures of the beautiful ReDwOOds up all over the apartment and I remember standing there staring at them one Saturday morning while her mom blasted Janis Joplin and vacuumed the living room. I remember thinking, "I've got to go to CaLiFOrnia one day and see San Francisco and those trees."

Thus began my idealization of California, especially as I went through some hard times right after seeing those redwood pictures. I came out at my high school and was treated like shit for being a dyke: threatened, chased home, nearly run over in the street. (Real formative shit.) I leaned more and more on Rebecca and finally she bailed. We didn't speak for about a year this after speaking long-distance every day until I moved to NewYorkCity for college. We started hanging out again, talking again, ETC. We managed to be friends for a year or so, all told. Then I had some more hard times, and she bailed again.

(It occurs to me that she would probably tell the story differently. And yes, I have the privilege of hindsight. I was a mess back then, upset, wounded, wanting. I needed tending, maintenance. And she was the butch type who wouldn't ever take any help, so the equation got unbalanced real fast. It must have been hard for her. But... she shouldn't have bailed. She should have known me well enough and trusted me enough to see the light of shining wonderfulness inside the layers of emotion, trauma, need. And she didn't. I think that's the only thing I can't forgive her for.)

Anyway, she's gone. For a while I felt bad, brooding, preoccupied with that and with the stuff I was going through. I wrote about her for a while, ExOrciSed some demons, and put her out of my mind... most of the time. I drew supportive people around me. I learned to take care of myself. (These do not conflict; if anything, they feed and help each other.) I healed. I moved on. I got in touch with my own damn shining wonderfulness.

And I got to CaLiFOrnia, on my own, with my own money, by myself. Tomorrow I'm going to see the redwoods. It feels good.

So I'm sitting in a bookstore today and I look over at the chair next to me and there's an old friend of Rebecca's. Ginny (another PseudoNYm) and I never got along. We couldn't talk without sparring. But here we are.

"Hey, aren't you from New York?" I ask.

She turns. "Oh, I know you. You know Judith, don't you?" (a mutual friend, and yet another PseudoNYm). "What's your name again?"

"It's Jessica. And yours is Ginny, right?" (As if I don't know.) "Do you live here now? What's up?"

"Yeah, I've been here about two and a half years. I'm taking art classes, and teaching art to kids, too. I've got a nice setup."

We talk about her life (not mine), her art, the neighborhood, our friend Judith, San Francisco versus New York until finally I say,

"Hey, are you still in touch with Rebecca? How's she doing?"

"Well, I don't know. Seeing as she's in Zambia. She joined the Peace Corps and went out September 7^th. She won't be back until 2003."

We talk of other things briefly, and Ginny buys the book she was reading and turns to wave as she leaves, bumping into the doorframe. And I am left realizing that I never needed Rebecca to get to California, or even out of my hometown. That time really does heal wounds. That a chapter really has been closed.

I trip out of the bookstore and into the beautiful dusk....

I'd love to hear responses from people who read this, either on this page or to my mailbox at <mercy70 at hotmail.com>. It's been really good writing this out, and putting it up, and knowing some people might understand.

love, JessicaFromNewYork

I just finished reading. I'm not sure what I think at the moment. It's a beautiful story, or at least very well told... It's interesting to me to hear the stories of a different cultire (and New York is certainly that to me), how people react.

It strikes a chord, but I'm not sure how yet.

	--Ari