I was watching an episode of "Severance" tonight and I started crying because it featured a Billy Holiday recording of "I'll Be Seeing You."
I sang that song at my senior recital in 1999 at Trinity United Methodist Church in Modesto, CA, and a few weeks ago I had the absolute privilege to travel back in time with several people I sang in choir with in high school, and I sang at that church again. We had a choir reunion, and a bunch of us who had sung under the same choir director had a reunion in our choir director's honor, and under her direction.
Afterwards, though, I ended up having my first panic attack in about 7 year because my dad, who had been my ride to the reunion event that brought me back to Trinity Church, had left my mom and me there (with notice to my mom) because he wanted to run the 20 minutes back to the house to let the gardener in for an appointment he thought he had. My dad had this bad habit while I was growing up, of waking up on the wrong side of the bed, and having snits that turned emotionally, and sometimes physically, abusive. He used to get in a snit and take off in the car to go for a drive. But after about 20-30 minutes of driving, he'd come back to the house to yell at us some more. He'd do this 2-3 times, until he got tired. Then he'd come home and lie down. Once, though, he did it while we were on vacation in Oregon. He left us for about 45 minutes. He just got mad, screamed obscenities at us, and left with the car. We were about 600 miles from home, and my mom was just...scrambling for what to do if he didn't come back. She was trying to stay calm, but she was, as she usually did, and as she did on the day of my return to Trinity Church, behaving as if nothing was wrong.
When I first sang "I'll be Seeing You" at that church, I had no idea what the future held. I had accepted a space at UC San Diego for college, and all I knew was that I was headed down for school and to study music. It felt...so, so strange.
And I'm sitting here tonight, in my house in San Diego, which I rent, with my 5 year old talking to her Roblox character on my phone while I watch "Severace" on Apple TV. My, my how times have changed.
When I was back at Trinity a few weeks ago, I ended up having a panic attack as soon as I got back to my parents' house, in my childhood bedroom, because my dad left me, once again, in a bad position. Even though he had give my mom notice and information about what he was doing and when he'd be back, his leaving in the first place and my waving so many high school classmates on as they left, and my teacher left, with my mom standing uselessly, and awkwardly, at the curb holding her stupid purse, waiting for my dad to return (as planned), brought back so many bad high school memories of my dad having a snit and leaving us to fend for ourselves. It was embarassing. And when I tried to address it with my dad after he came back, I was told to get over it. It was nothing. My feelings were, as they had always been, and as my husband had done, ignored, and belittled. And as soon as I was able to get back into my room, that's why I ended up gasping for air, screaming, and crying, on the floor of my childhood bedroom. I finally realized, for the first time, that all of the men who I had let be closest to me in my life, never kept me safe. I was abused. They abused me. And...they weren't really sorry.
I was also brought back to my first Christmas as a married woman, married to an extremely horrible and abusive man, who left me at my parents' house, 400 miles from where we lived, because he had a bad reaction to a (horrible) meal my dad had cooked, and I refused to cut the trip short because I wanted to see the friends I hadn't seen in months because we'd been traveling to see my then-husband's friends instead. So my then-husband had left me with my parents, and driven the 400 miles home by himself. After I flew home, on my parents' dime, and I had asked him for a ride home from the airport, he told me to "go fuck [myself]." So...it's no wonder I had a panic attack when my dad had abandoned my mom and me at a high school reunion event because he found it necessary to run home to let the gardener in the back yard, even though he didn't have a hard appointment.
When I got to sing at that church, surrounded by people I had known pre-husband, pre-college, pre-all of those experiences, it was magical. It was a portal back to my innocence. After a significant amount of trauma had set in, but before worse trauma had set in. I remember singing my solo, with my choir director, who only held slight disdain for me, playing my accompaniment, there at the piano. I didn't know what the years held before me.
Now I look back, and my college experience was nothing less of awesomely transformative. I was on my own near the ocean for the first time in my life (and I have always been drawn to the ocean as if it is something magical and powerful). I studied music in a form that I didn't know was possible. I joined the pep band, which was an amazing experience in leadership and camaraderie. I went to two foreign countries -- one for love, and one to study. I later worked in the arts, to find that it's full of well-meaning wonderful people, and equally full of well-meaning incompetents. I got married. I raised stepkids for a decade and got the chance to be a mom, with all of the homework checks, fieldtrip rides, parent-teacher conferences, board memberships, play dates, birthday parties, and team mom experiences that came along with it. I had my own kid. I got divorced, thank fucking God. I survived abuse. And...I'm still standing (and these days, "I'm Still Standing" by Elton John is one of my 5-almost-6-year-old's favorite songs).
It's been a mind-blowing ride since I first stood in Trinity United Methodist Church and sang my senior solo, thinking about how much I'd miss my friends, and how much I loved my still-living grandparents. And now I'm typing this on a Sunday night, in my San Diego home, which I used to share with my now-ex husband and my stepkids, as well as my own daughter, who will be 6 in a month and is currently making up her own narrative as she talks to a kids' game she's playing on my phone.
What a very wonderful, frustrating, painful, trip it has been. I'm angry at my abusers. Thankful for my friends. And even more thankful that some of those people, who I was looking at and thinking of when I first sang "I'll be seeing you" the first time at Trinity Church, were there when I got to sing there again, with them, just a few weeks ago.
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