Hope

Just over a week ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and began praying fervently for God to lift my obsession with drinking (which has been hounding me lately), when suddenly I prayed for Takeshi to be sent back into my life.  I have no idea what made him come to mind at that moment--he hadn’t been in my thoughts recently.  During the two years I lived in Japan, we were very close and spent a lot of time together, gradually discovering what our feelings for each other were, without ever  expressing them verbally.  He's extremely discrete even by Japanese standards, and we had to be terribly discrete  because he's married and I was there with my ex, their desks faced each other at work, and most of the time we spent together was under the watchful eyes of colleagues.  We were discrete enough for our friendship to be accepted and respected by their colleagues, who always made sure that we were seated next to each other at office dinners, which were quite frequent.  (My ex, who didn't have as strong of a grasp of Japanese culture, blatantly chased after a Japanese woman in front of me, and got pulled aside and balled out by his colleagues, which infuriated him because he thought it wasn't any of their business, even though it was since it's a group culture.)  The last day that Takeshi and I spent together was in Tokyo, we were on our own, and when we met he was trembling visibly, I could feel his desire to reach out and touch me, and it was hard for me not to reach out to touch him.   It was a glorious sunny day and he took me for a long stroll through a park where lovers were lying on the grass entwined in each other's arms, we lingered a bit watching the lovers, then took a small path through a wooded area.  At one point we stopped to appreciate the sensuous beauty of entwined tree roots growing across a small path.  After a long dinner, we parted.  I was amazed that what hadn't been spoken for such a long time, had finally been expressed without words.  Where were we going with this friendship?  Shortly after, while I was in the States  for a visit, a catastrophic change of plans occurred.  My ex had packed all of our boxes for our move to Tokyo, and the movers were on their way when my ex got a call that his client had gone bankrupt, his job in Tokyo was off.  He gave me five minutes to decide whether to move back to France or the States.  The last thing I wanted was to leave Japan, and to make it worse I didn't even get to say good bye.  It was very recent that my ex had been violent for the first time, beating my head in so severely and for so long, that I thought he was going to kill me.  The only way that I knew to get out was to get to Tokyo, where I'd built up enough of a network to get my photography work going and get away.  I knew I would get little or no help from my family.  Tokyo meant freedom and independence, a chance to re-build my life.  Tokyo was also Takeshi's home.   I could build my career, get myself safely away from the violence of my ex, and Takeshi and I could spend the time that we needed to spend together.  In one short phone call all of that was gone, my life took another direction.  I was devastated.

I've spent years trying to track Takeshi down by internet, I even asked my ex for help tracking down his Japanese colleagues, and my karate master's translator tried to find a way to contact Takeshi from within Japan, without success.  Once I’d found an internet site that I was sure was for the office which Takeshi and his wife ran, clicked on “contact,” and sent a short message to which I received no reply.  So although our love ever remained present in my heart--as if it were yesterday that we’d seen each other--I was losing hope of ever finding him again.   In the middle of my prayers, I jumped out of bed and surfed the net once again looking for Takeshi, found the site for a colleague's office, got Takeshi’s number, and within a few minutes we were speaking on the phone together!  God had answered my prayers immediately!  Takeshi and I were stunned to hear each other's voices.  The first thing he said was that he missed me a lot, then he added that he was ten years older now, so I reminded him that I am too, actually it’s been almost twenty years, and then he said he gets to Singapore and Shanghai for his work, but can’t come here.  He’s extremely discrete and indirect when he communicates, so for him that sounds like a quite direct way of wondering aloud if there's a way we could see each other.  Immediately after we spoke, he sent a short email, so I'd have his email address.  I replied with an email that was for his eyes only, and after a few days had gone by without a reply, became frantic that his wife had seen it, since it was an office address.  Had I created a horrible mess after all of these years of being discrete and patient?  Did he simply not know what to reply?  Finally I sent a quick email asking if he'd received my first email.  And then I called but got his wife on the phone, so I can call again without raising suspicions, if I haven't already done so.  It's been more than a week now with no reply, so I'm no longer hoping for one.  It would be difficult and complicated for us to get together, but perhaps not entirely impossible.  First we would need to see each other, spend some time together before we could know what we want now.  I have no way of knowing what's going on in his life today, how he's feeling about his marriage, and if he would want to get out of it and be with me, and what professional hurdles he would have face if that were his choice.  A few years after my return to Paris, Takeshi was here on business.  He ran from the elevator to the front door and kissed me on the lips when my ex couldn't see.  I knew then that our feelings were still the same, but what about now, so many years later? 

The first days after we spoke, I was on a pink cloud, filled with joy and an overwhelming sense of gratitude.  I was filled with joy at the prospect of communicating regularly with Takeshi, and a great sense hope about getting my art photography going again.  The conversation with Takeshi filled me with a tremendous sense of hope, hope of being together with him, hope of doing my photography in Tokyo, hope of being the woman he knew and admired (along with some scars and maturity of course).  I felt that I could finally pick my camera back up, and start creating my artwork once again.  Once I've created the images which are already in my mind, I can make an internet site, get in touch with clients in Tokyo, go back, work, and get to spend the time with Takeshi.  Knowing the market here, I have no feeling of hope for a second chance, but the Japanese have a different sensitivity and openness to my work.  If I stay sober and do the footwork, I could be there in as soon as two year's time.  I've been feeling condemned to a life hemmed in by mental illness and poverty, a life in a tiny room, with minimal financial means, and just the hope of doing a bit of creative work which I might not even have the strength to share.  Since I spoke with Takeshi, I no longer feel condemned to bare survival.  I never would have guessed that the hope of seeing Takeshi once again would also give me this sense of hope in myself again.  Can I maintain that sense of hope, even if I can never see him again?  Why is that sense of hope linked to a person?  I'll have to do the footwork for getting together without knowing what he's feeling now.  Can I maintain a sense of hope?  About a year ago, while I was in Spain on vacation at my brother's, one night I suddenly got a strong sense of hope that I could get back to my photography and exhibiting.  I spent the night awake, imagining photos that I would take, new series that I would create.  Upon my return, I realized that my plans were manic and grandiose--I wanted to catch up for all of those years lost to drinking and bipolar disorder, to create the work that I would've been able to create had I not been ill.  I reduced my goal to completing just one series of images, only to discover that I still couldn't get past my photographer's block.  

When my ex beat me up so badly, I felt like something profound had broken in me.  When the state of shock wore off, I plunged into a deep depression, and began drinking as if there were no tomorrow.  And yet somehow I managed to continue to do my creative work, sometimes sporadically, but I was doing great work.  Later, while living in the room I renovated, a series of events led to my feeling broken again.  Actually, that feeling of being broken had never left.  The beating altered me permanently.  (Those feelings of being broken will be the subjects of other posts.)  The second time I felt broken, was when I lost all hope of getting back into galleries and doing my artwork again.  Humpty dumpty?  All of this reminds me of the process of getting sober.  You can pray all you want to get sober, but if you don't do the footwork, it won't happen.  You have to go to meetings, work with your sponsor, do the steps, take action.  When you first get sober, you start seeing how insane your thinking and actions were when you were drinking, when you remove alcohol from the equation, the insanity is still there, which is what working the steps helps lift.  I still have a lot of insane thinking and behaviours.  It's okay with me that it'll take a few years for me to try to get to Tokyo, because I'm in the middle of working the steps more in depth than ever before--I won't feel ready to be with someone until my insanity has been lifted.

In meetings, I've heard people refer to god shots.  I was never really sure what they meant until yesterday morning.  I checked my email and then called a friend from the program, we talked about my difficulty with accepting this new situation with Takeshi.  It's a Third Step situation, one that I have to turn over to God (or to the Universe if you're more comfortable with that term), because it's completely out of my control.  I don't know why the Universe put us back in touch with each other now, only that it did.  At the end of the conversation, my friend asked if there was anyone in Japan who could get in touch with Takeshi discretely in order to find out if he'd received my email.  "No," I replied: "There's no one."  Right after we hung up, I checked my email again, and a message had just arrived from my karate master's translator.  We hadn't been in touch with each other since he'd tried to track Takeshi down.  God shot.  God winked at me with a message of hope, just when I thought there was no way to get back in touch with Takeshi discretely, I got a message from a man who could do it for me.  I won't ask him for help now.  First I'll take the actions I need to take in order to get my life pulled together, to get out of  the ruts of my insane thinking and behaviour, to do my creative work again.  That is to say, to re-become the woman Takeshi knew, and the woman that I would like to become today, which I must do for myself.