A Bit of Going Back Before I Go Forward (or Nice Is Different Than Good...)

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When one makes a mistake one is allowed to fix it.

Usually.

There is a reason there are erasers on pencils.

That there is a delete key on keyboards.

Command Z (undo) on Macs'.

White out for paper.

But if one makes a mistake in getting married? If one hadn't a CLUE what one was getting into?

Tough.

You made your bed; now lie in it.

*********************************

I was almost 18 years old when I met K___.

Almost 18 years old is very not old.

I was one of the more messed up and confused almost 18 year olds you would've ever met.

Looking back on myself then, from where and who I am now, is surreal. Other than my general rotundity and clumsiness I'm a very different person.

Myself at almost 18 was a hurting, scared, tired, self-medicating, work-a-holic. One of my defense mechanisms was lying. It gave me a sense of control. I couldn't control the situations around me but I could control, I thought, what people could do to me. It was a sad, scary time in my life. My mother's death when I was 13 shook my world so much that I never got a handle on life for a long time after it.

Looking back now my siblings and I needed some serious counseling and deep, deep love. Instead we were sort of left to our own devices. Our father was severely depressed, losing his wife and best friend at the age of 35 (my mom was 36 when she died), with four children from ages 13 to 4 years old to care for, one with Downs Syndrome, left him utterly incapable of giving us the love and assurance we so desperately needed. This is not a slight towards my father. He did the best he could. Now, as an adult, I can look back on that time with so much more grace and understanding but, at the time, I was not so forgiving. There were times he was so hurting and depressed he couldn't keep a job and so it was the money I made working at various restaurants (First job was at McDonald's inside a Wal-Mart. Gag.) and my sister, Erin's, money made from babysitting jobs, that kept us afloat. The church that my family had been a part of for years growing up did a great job helping us out for the first few months after my mom's death but then, after a while, life took hold, and people began to forget and move on. Again, as an adult I get that. But oh lawd did we ever feel abandoned. There was no one to help us kids and, dare I say my father, walk through the grief and shock of losing the most wonderful woman ever so so quickly.

Wow. Even typing this out is hard. The swirl of emotions and hurt that begin to surface...

It was a dark, dark time.

There is so much more to this part of my life that I could write about (Maybe one day I'll have the courage to write it all out fully) but the reason I've shared this much is to help you get somewhat of an understanding of why I grew into such a confused and depressed teenager.

And why K___ was so attractive.

K___ grew up in a suburb of Atlanta with two very nice parents who had very nice jobs and lived in a very nice house with 3 or 4 nice cars and he and his siblings each had their own very nice rooms and went to very nice schools and generally everything was very, very nice. He was, in a way, the black sheep of the family in that he was a musician, a bass player, and had grown his hair long and wore odd clothes and was deeply immersed in the Christian music scene when I met him. He was going to college, but failing, and didn't really have a job and was living with his parents. This would prove to be a pattern later but there was no way I could know it then.

He was 23 when I met him in a band he was in that was looking for a lead singer. I showed up for the audition, they liked me and asked me to join. Then I found out they were a Christian band. Not only were they a Christian band they were a Christian RAP band. Not only were they a Christian rap band they were a Christian rap band I had seen once and made FUN of.

Wha?

I liked Christians. I considered myself to be one. I did not, however, like the music they made. I joined anyway, flattered that they liked my voice and song writing style and drawn to the sense of community that I so desperately longed for.

It would be a short lived band. Five months later we would go our separate ways except that K___ and I had developed a budding romance. A budding romance that turned into love. He was my first kiss and made me feel good about myself. Me, the bungling, depressed, goofy girl that I was. K___ was a very handsome man and very nice. He walked with me through a mental breakdown and put up with the slow dismantling of the lies I had built around me. When he proposed to me a little before my 20th birthday I said yes. Because that's what one is supposed to do when someone so kind and nice proposes.

You love me enough to want to marry me? REALLY? No one has loved me in a long time. Very well, I'll take that, thank you.

Eight months later, two weeks before our wedding, as we were sitting in the car in a TGIFriday's parking lot, I told him that I couldn't marry him.

It was while inside the restaurant, an hour earlier, that the realization hit me. I remember I had been doing a little puppet show for him with the salt and pepper shakers.

"Hey there Salty, I think you make food taste better sometimes. But not on cookies. On cookies you're gross!"

"Oh yeah? Well you're gross on cookies, TOO."

I looked up at him and thought,

This man is not my friend.

He's nice. He's kind. But we're not friends.

I don't find him remotely interesting at all.

I feel like I'm just entertainment for him.

But he's been through so much with me.

He loves me.

This all went through my head in a split second and I tried to dismiss it. Pushed my meal around my plate, made jokes about the decor, excused myself to the restroom where I stared in the mirror panicked at my realization, came back and sat down, sang the praises of the ice cream in the dessert...

Just don't think about it, Meghan. Just don't think about it and it will go away. Just be very still.

As though I was trying not to throw up.

In the car, though, out it came.

"I can't marry you!"

He was shocked. He was hurt. He cried. He pleaded with me. Said that I just had cold feet. Said that he loved me. Reminded me of all the people who were coming, all of the preparations that had been made, the dress that I had had made to resemble my mother's wedding gown, the cake we picked out, again all the PEOPLE. All the people who were coming.

I felt terrible then.

I acquiesced.

That was when I made my mistake. That was when I let my fear of what other people would think of me dictate my decision. I tell you now that every decision I look back on with regret have been the ones I have made when I was worried about what people would think.

I told myself I was being ungrateful, that women would love to be in my shoes, about to get married to a nice, handsome, kind man. That finally I was going to be taken care of. Someone was going to take care of me. The fact that he loved me would be enough.

And so, in March of 1999, I got married. It was a lovely day. A lovely wedding.

Six months later I would write in my journal,

"I made the biggest mistake of my life and I don't know what to do. There's no one I can tell."

Six months after that, two weeks before my one year anniversary, I found out that I was pregnant. I was ecstatic. I wrapped myself up in the coming arrival of a whole new person and dug in my heels.

In October of 2000, a month after my 22nd birthday, Phoenix Dorian was born and my life exploded with joy. I would endure anything for this child. I would die for this child. Any misgivings about his father were pale in comparison to what I would do for Phoenix.

There was no going back now. My bed was well and truly made, and slept in, and the sheets rumpled.

{to be continued...}

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Supernovas (the 5th installment of craziness...)

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"I was listening for your feet

With my ear, pressed hard upon the ground.

I was waiting for your thunder and quake

And love you finally came.

Alleluia."

I Was Listening, I Was Waiting ~ Songs To Sail By ~ M. Coffee & C. Quinn

***********

I really left on quite a cliffhanger, didn't I?

It wasn't my intention to do so.

Yes it was -- it totally was.

What I meant to say was that I didn't mean to make it sound so dramatic because, now that I think about it, the circumstances that brought Zack and I back together weren't that bizarre or disturbing. Well, hang on. They were bizarre and disturbing to me. And to Zack. And to the rest of my friends and family. But in the grand scheme of oh -- life -- perhaps not so much.

I was at my Father's house one very very average day around the end of April 2007. He and my step-mom, Carey Lynn, lived about a mile and half away from my place and I would drop by quite a lot to see them.

I think I was sitting at the kitchen table when my phone rang. I remember that it was Carey Lynn who, in mid-sentence, looked down at my phone there on the table, picked it up, looked at the caller ID and said,

"It's Zack." Then again kind of yelling it this time, "It's ZACK!"

"Zack?"

The hairs on the back of my neck all decided to stand up at once. And then they all stretched.

Carey Lynn sort of threw the phone in my direction and I sort of caught it and there was this crazy sort of hot potato game moment where I couldntquitegetmyhandsonthephoneohmigoshohmigoshohmigosh...

"Hello?" I attempted to sound as demure and collected and nonchalant as possible.

"Hey. Where are you?" Zack's voice jumped through the phone, ran around to the back of my neck and woke up all the hairs again.

I was so stupid over the fact that I was on the phone with him that it took me a second to realize that he had asked me a question.

"Huh? Oh. I'm at my dad's house, why?"

"I'll be there in five minutes and tell you all about it."

"Well, okay then! See you in five!"

I hung up the phone with Carey Lynn looking at me expectantly,

"He's gonna be here in five minutes! I look like HELL. Carey Lynn I need to borrow some make-up or something!"

"Yes, of course, use whatever you need!" She gestured towards the bathroom and I ran in there and went from death warmed over to not going to scare anyone just in time to walk out onto my parent's back porch and see Zack walking up the driveway.

What is it that causes that glowing feeling when one sees the person one loves? I'm trying to pinpoint where it starts exactly. For me it feels like it's in my chest -- my sternum -- and, at the risk of sounding completely cheesy and corny -- without sounding completely nachos -- it's like a supernova* of LOVE.

When I saw Zack Arias I was so happy to see him I about fell over. Which isn't hard for me in the first place much less when my sternum, nay, my very HEART, is love supernova-ing and stuff.

He was carrying a stack of paper about an inch thick that he set down on the bench there on the deck.

"Last night I came back to the house and noticed that G______ was acting a bit squirrelly; a bit strange. Something was off. So, this morning, after she left for school, I started looking through some of her things and I found this in one of her backpacks," and he indicated towards the paper. "When I saw what they were I knew that I needed to tell you."

(Zack was still living in "the house" as he called it. He didn't even call it "home" just "the house". To give you an idea of the kind of man he is, he agreed to stay in the house until G______ finished a certification training she had started. He didn't have to, he didn't want to but, as he saw it, it was what he felt he should do to help the mother of his children.)

I picked up the papers and started to flip through them.

Then I realized what they were.

They were print outs of emails and messages from Myspace. (remember Myspace?)

She had broken into my personal email accounts and my Myspace account and had been reading them and printing them out.

I was flabbergasted. They ranged in date from December of the year before to just a couple of days prior. At first I thought that perhaps she was trying to get some dirt on Zack and me, that maybe she had been looking for evidence of us still seeing each other but, no. There were very personal emails in there, ones where I shared with good friends how life was going, song lyrics that I had emailed to myself to remember them, etc.

"How in the world did she get into my email?"

"She must've been snooping through my computer and found old saved iChats between you and I and found where you shared your iTunes password with me and started plugging that password into anything she could think of."

Whoa.

He went on, "I thought you should know because this is a criminal offense, no different than opening someone's mail with wrongful intent."

"This is very wrongful. This is weird. You know she told me how she had been spying on me in my house, right?"

I was shaking. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up again but this time not with excitement but in anger and this time they were joined with goosebumps. I could hear them all muttering and tut tutting and cracking their knuckles.

(Geez. No they weren't. Neck hairs and goosebumps don't have knuckles!)

Zack was giving me a knowing look.

"Well, Meg, you were in my front yard when she told you, remember? In the middle of the night?"

Ah she had told him about that then. Of course. Shit.

I bit my lip, "Yeah, well...I wasn't looking in the freakin' windows!"

He smiled at me and shook his head,

"You need to decide what you're going to do. You could press charges. I'm going to tell her I found this stuff and that you have it now and that you know about it. Immediately change your passwords to everything. I'm sorry that this happened."

We hugged each other then and then sat there for a little bit just enjoying the presence of the other. His hand was resting on his lap and I can remember the sight of his fingers slightly splayed across his leg.

Funny the things one remembers, hmmm?

*********

Zack and I sort of never stopped seeing each other after that day. We eased into it slowly, and by the time he had finally moved out of "the house" and into his own little place in July of 2007 I had actually furnished his entire house, at his request, while he was traveling. He threw a Fourth of July BBQ Party in his front yard, invited his entire family and introduced me as, "his friend, Meghan." Which I was, and, in case you were wondering, I still am.

In September, for my 29th birthday, he threw me the most amazing birthday party I have ever had. It was so lovely it's worth its own telling, but not now. It's incredible to me to think back on that time. To think about how, just the year before, I had been singing my heart out to Zack on the Eddie's Attic stage not knowing he could hear me in the parking lot, and then to have him so fully present in my life.

It was the beginning of October, shortly after his divorce was final, that he asked me out on a date. An honest to goodness real date. He found a lovely wine bar in Oakhurst called Palate and we sat outside on the patio, under a gorgeous old tree hung with candle lanterns. We couldn't deny anymore that we loved each other. We didn't have to deny anymore that we loved each other.

Zack picked up his wine glass, raised it a bit and said,

"Begin Transmission."

{to be continued...}

Click here for the next part...

*A supernova (plural supernovae) is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this short interval a supernova can radiate as much energy as the Sun is expected to emit over its entire life span.[1] The explosion expels much or all of a star's material[2] at a velocity of up to 30,000 km/s (10% of the speed of light), driving a shock wave[3] into the surrounding interstellar medium. This shock wave sweeps up an expanding shell of gas and dust called a supernova remnant. ~Wikipedia

Romans 7:15 (Look it up, it'll make sense...)

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For Part Two Click Here

For Part Three Click Here

Chapter Part Installment 4 (I've not been consistent with my sequencing and so now it's all muddled)

"I'm running scared from a ghost, The ghost of myself. I've no hope left in what I want, Just the memory of your direction.

I need real, I need truth I need promises to stay my long long nights. And where is the meaning? And all of the healing? That all of us prayed for? When I tried to pray what was right?

I'm reaching up and I'm hoping That you are still there. I need to know you still hear me That I am not lost in what I bear. That I am not lost in what I bear..."

Psalm Two ~ Songs To Sail By ~ M. Coffee

**********

I started this at 1 a.m. though now it's closer to 2 a.m. and this is my third attempt at writing this fourth installment although I've written it five or six times out in my head.

This isn't the easy part to write. Not because of anything horrid but because it was the hardest part. Shall I just launch into it then?

The clean and lovely version would be that I left Steve's bookstore basement toy store/art studio blissful in the knowledge that Zack loved me. That I spent the next -- why, the next year --working and being an amazing mommy and volunteering at soup kitchens and baking homemade pies for the elderly neighbours I didn't have and smiling wistfully to myself, feeling lucky at this amazing time in my life to grow and become a better human being.

Instead I think I ended up drinking way too much that night on the bus and, Brent, Edwin's monitor guy, had to help me into my bunk. I woke up with a ridiculous hangover in Boston and let the wife of the sound guy convince me I needed to go shopping where I ended up buying a shirt that said, "No Photos Please" in bright pink letters across the mammary area of my body. (In my defense I didn't try it on and didn't know that it would feature that area of my body so prominently. I'm a real prude...)

Instead, the next day, I called Zack on the phone, knowing that he would answer.

Instead.

Instead.

Instead.

Oh, yes. It was hard not to want to see each other after the high of that bright November. I tried to convince myself, actually, I DID convince myself that love like ours couldn't be kept down by anyone or anything and that was that.

But that wasn't that.

"That" was just my piss poor excuse for not dealing with the fact that as much as Zack and I wanted to do the right thing we were failing miserably at it. We would speak on the phone, or email, or steal quick moments together. "That" was the very sad month of December where everything was stolen. (Except for Christmas Day when my father and I took Phoenix to see the movie Night At The Museum and who should be sitting 4 rows in front of us but Zack and Caleb? That was weird. And not stolen.)

It would be a mutual friend of ours, J___, (I'll leave her name blank for now until I find out if she wants to be known) graciously, and with that fantastic no nonsense way she has, stepped in and gave us a proverbial spanking.

This is my attempt at paraphrasing what she said,

"You guys are using each other to fill a void and so subsequently are not dealing with the very real issues at hand and so therefore you need to stop using each other and both go down with your "ships" as it were and stop clinging to the other. If you continue in this way, without addressing how you got here in the first place, you will fall apart all over again."

Ouch.

In looking back at the volley of emails that were going back and forth I want to reach back through time, grab myself by my shirt front and yell,

"SHUT UP."

'Cause good LAWD was I full of excuses. I was so scared to have be alone and deal with my shit I was throwing out all kinds of stuff just to validate anything.

I can't speak for where Zack was at this time, really. I know that he was horribly depressed and dialed my number dozens of times only to hang up at the last second.

Finally, at the beginning of 2007, it was done. The contact ceased. It really and truly did. And that was when I plunged into the scariest place and yet the most healing...ist place I had ever been.

**********

I was pathetic at first.

I was alone.

Yes, yes, I had Phoenix and roommates but I had no one to "check in" with but myself. Which meant that I had to actually look at myself.

It was awful. The worse part? Realising that a lot of the things that I thought were so horrible in my marriage, a lot of the things about myself that I had attributed to my woefully wretched marriage, were still present. That my issues were still my issues. That I had more issues than National Geographic. (I feel that I have gotten my issues down to a much more manageable indie magazine size. You know, a one issue every 3 months kinda magazine...)

I'm making light of this precisely because it was so painful. I grew very small and still on the inside. And then I let go. Then I started dealing with it all. That is when the healing began. I stopped looking to everyone else, anything else, literally got down on my knees, sometimes face down on the floor, and made myself face up to all of my stuff.

"That is very very ugly and awful and I am not like that AT ALL."

When, in truth, I was. Being faced with one's own brokenness is down right 'effin gross.

I used to say that my decision to get divorced was just like the decision to cut off a limb because of gangrene. There was so much infection that if it hadn't been cut off the whole body would die. I still believe that. The only thing was, now, I was having to face the fact that most of that gangrene had set in because of me.

So. Much to my surprise -- I grew up. I began to heal. I walked with a limp. But I was healing.

I was doing GREAT.

Until the night I allowed a friend of mine to buy me a couple of drinks at a Friday night fundraising event, (Extra dirty vodka martinis) and I ended up in front of Zack's house around midnight with the notion that I needed to pray for him.

*facepalm*

I want you to know that I was going to leave this part out. But, I figure I've shared everything with you thus far, why stop now? I mean, HECK. If I'm going to mortify the snot out of myself I might as well do it properly.

So.

There I was, in the dark, mooning over his, "hoooouuusssee....sob sob sob....and his caaahhhhhaaaaarrrrrr!!!!! snort snort blubber blubber...," when I saw someone moving down the front walk and who should it be but?

G_______.

We both gasped.

She spoke first, I remember that.

"What are you doing here?"

I think I launched into some crazy account about the fundraising party and the martinis and that I felt like I just had to come over here and pray...It was so lame I started to sober up a bit because of the lameness.

G______ knew all about Zack and me. He had been very up front with her about it and, according to him, she had said,

"If you feel like you have a chance at love with Meghan Coffee, you should go for it."

Wha-huh?

(Come to find out later she was trying to trap him...)

So there we were, standing in her front yard somewhere close to midnight. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to me.

I took it, gratefully. I sucked on that cigarette as if it was the only thing in the world worth paying attention to. Trying to act normal, you know. Just hanging out in the front yard of the man I loved but wasn't supposed to love having a cigarette with his wife in the dark of midnight.

I know we talked a bit but the only part I remember is the following:

"Zack and I have a history together."

"If you have a history together then why don't you want to keep it that way?"

"Because I don't love him and I don't want him."

"You don't want him. You don't want him, but you don't want anyone else wanting him either."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"I'm sorry about coming over and disturbing you like this. I've had a little too much to drink."

"I came over to your house one night, too. I stood on your front porch. I could see you through the window."

Cue the record scratching noise.

Er.

Whoa.

That gave me the heebeejeebees.

I got out of there pretty quickly after that.

The next morning when I woke up I laid there in bed moaning audibly. Phoenix came in to see what was the matter.

"Mommy? You okay?"

"No. Yes. Yo."

"It's 8 o'clock and my tummy is hungry."

"Okay, I'll get you some breakfast." I swung my legs over the side of the bed and onto the floor. I sat there and moaned again.

"OOOOHHHHHMIIIIIIIGAAAAAWWWWWD."

"What? What happened, Mommy? Do you have a migraine?"

"No, bud, Mommy had something happen that she feels really embarrassed about."

"Oh. Like the time I assidentally sneezed chicken nuggets all in Eden's hair at school?"

"Yes. But a million times more embarrassing."

"Oh," and in that darling Phoenix way, "That's horrific."

Four months would pass before I would hear from Zack again. And when I did it would be because of a most bizarre and disturbing reason.

That I shall write about later. 'Cause right now it's 5 a.m. and I need some sleep. ;-)

{to be continued...}

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New York (Things were looking up but we didn't know it yet...)

(Part 3)

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For Part Two Click Here

If you happened to be in a park known as Central Park and it happened to be the one that is located on an island made out of buildings and people, known to most as Manhattan, and you were near the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 5th Avenue, and you decided to head east down 81st Street and then take a left on Madison Avenue, a little ways down on the left you would find a bookstore that has a toy store in its basement.

Crawford and Doyle is the name of the bookstore and it was into this bookstore that my friends Jessica, Billy, and I wandered one November day the year before the miracle of the rescue of my heart took place. In other words it was November of 2005. ;-) Jessica, I remember, picked up a book by Joan Didion called The Year Of Magical Thinking. She bought it, too. (You should read it, it's wonderful. That is, if you like to read, or can read tolerably well. I figure you're here, reading this, you might enjoy Joan. I digress...) While Jessica was roaming the titles, I wandered towards the back of the bookstore and came upon a narrow set of stairs going downwards. And, because I was curious, I went down those stairs, went through the little door at the bottom on the right that I found there and walked into a tiny room full of miniature figurines, paintings, the smell of turpentine, the smell of pipe smoke and, not least of all, in fact the room was more full of him than anything else, Steve Balkin.

Here is a picture I found of him...

Jessica and Billy found me down there talking to Steve, for talking with Steve is one of the great joys in life. He is an ineffable character, full of stories and notions and motions all while puffing away on his pipe. Using the restroom in his little space one finds stacks of empty pipe tobacco cans. When I met him he was in his Adam and Eve stage of painting. They were in everything he created. He was especially taken with Jessica, and how could you not be? She is tall and lithe and lovely and has a way of being that reminds me of a 1920's ingenue lounging languidly in doorways. It makes men get all melty and swoony. Steve called me, "darling Hobbit". I still refer to myself as a hobbit to this day. I left Steve's space after a couple of hours (a couple of days?) feeling a little braver, a little happier, and a little curiouser as to what else might be lying in wait in places I wouldn't have expected.

It was to Steve and his bookstore basement that I went the second day I was in New York. I needed him to keep something safe for me.

You see -- Zack's email had left me bereft and crushed. Not because of what he said, but because I knew he was right and I knew what we had to do. Or not do. Rumors were starting to fly around the church at this point and I was getting phone calls from people who were saying everything from,

"You must not love Jesus because your actions say so."

"You are suffering from delusions of grandeur. You just want to be a rockstar."

"You disdain motherhood."

"How can you call yourself a Christian?"

The first night in New York I couldn't sleep and so I got up and walked to a diner on 9th between 43rd and 44th. I sat in a booth facing the door and wrote Zack a five page letter. I poured out my heart to him and ended it by writing,

"I never saw you coming. Never in a million years would I have ever known that you would be the one to show me what love could be. But I want you to know that you have my heart and I will wait for you as long as I have to. Even if I'm old and gray and tottering about I will still wait for you."

So to Steve I went with my book of a letter. I told him everything that had taken place since I last saw him. He took my letter and thumb tacked it to the wall by the door.

"That's where it will stay until you tell me otherwise," he said, his pipe dangling precariously off of his bottom lip. "You walk in the door and there it will be, on the left, safely tacked to the wall."

I thanked him profusely and he smiled at me,

"I have one word for you, Meghan, and it's this: Patience. Patience, child. Everything will work itself out, you'll see. If things are as you say they are then it will only be a little bit of time."

"Just please do me a favour, Steve? If no one comes to get it by November 6th, will you please destroy it? I don't want any ol' person coming along and reading it."

I knew that Zack was going to be in New York for the first part of November to teach a workshop he had started on the side; he was calling it the OneLight Workshop. In response to his heartbreaking email to me all I responded with was this:

"If you want to know my response to this email, and how I feel about you and this whole situation, I have left something for you in a toy store in the basement of the Crawford and Doyle bookstore on Madison Avenue between 81st and 82nd Streets.

{end transmission}"

I went onto Boston to finish out the tour and then home. Songs began to pour out of me then.

"Keep an open hand hold

No one will ever be yours and yours alone

You've got some diving to do

Find all the places where you've been run through

And then the sight of his face when he comes into view

There he is right in front of you

Murmuring lips in your hair, feels like home

Your Jericho comes down when he's around

Your Jericho comes down when he's around..."

Jericho ~ Songs To Sail By ~ M. Coffee

November 3, 2006 was the day I opened up my email and there saw an email from Zack and when I opened it up there was a picture of my letter, thumb tacked to the wall.

Another email came through, this time with a picture of the letter lying open on the leaves somewhere in Central Park. And then yet another email with a picture of a reply from him tacked to the same wall.

I started weeping. He still cared for me then. He cared for me enough to go and get my response. I thought I would burst open with joy.

That was a very bright day.

Later on that bright month in November I was back on the road, this time with Edwin McCain on his northeast tour. As the bus inched its way through Times Square, and pulled to a stop in front of the BB King Blues Club, I was already out the door and making my way down the subway steps before Edwin and the guys knew what had happened. I knew I only had a couple of hours before sound check to get to Steve's.

I bounded down the  bookstore's back stairs and burst through the door breathless. Steve stood up from where he had been hunched over a canvas, smiled and pointed to the wall where I had left my letter. There, tacked to the wall, was a little note. On one side it read, "SHMILY" (which stands for See How Much I Love You) and on the other side it said, "From a car to flight #374 to a car to the #2 to the Q to the #4 to you..."

I looked up at Steve, tears rolling down my face,

"He loves me! He still loves me!"

Steve relit his pipe, blowing a cloud of smoke up towards the ceiling,

"Of course, why wouldn't he? Now, tell me what in the world has happened! I've been dying to know. And how is that glorious Jessica of yours?"

{to be continued...}

Click here for the next part...

The Middle Part Is Where It Fell Apart (Chapter's 2 & 3 & 4...)

...maybe Chapters 5, 6 & 7. I've really no idea. Time for more soul bearing, vulnerability, and bad writing. Here goes...

**********

There are moments in a woman's life where she feels invisible; moments where she looks in the mirror and cannot truly see herself at all. Maybe this invisibility isn't merely relegated to women. Perhaps you fine gentlemen out there struggle with this, too. ( I suppose men want to be seen as strong and respected and, I suppose, badass. Women, really, want to be seen as lovely and want to be cherished and desired.) One forgets that there is any loveliness in oneself at all. Especially when one is proverbially drowning. When drowning the last thing on one's mind is, "Yes, but, am I desirable? Would anyone love me? Would anyone ever want me again?"

Ergo, when the words,

"I really want to make out with Meghan Coffee," tumbled out from Zack Arias' lips I about fell off of the porch swing.

I think I laughed. I think I said,

"Really?"

Honestly this part is a bit jumbled up for me.

I remember he was talking to me about a movie he loved called, "Human Traffic". He was trying to explain to me why he loved it so much. Something about a guy who's looking for love and it was right there in front of him the whole time. I wasn't much hearing what he was saying at this point. At this point my mind was racing a million miles a second.

My thoughts went something like this:

Look at this amazing man, such a good friend. He's handsome (look at those lips....stop looking at his lips, Meghan. Stop looking at his lips, Meghan!!!) and smart and talented and funny and strong. I've watched him go through hell in his marriage. We've both been crawling through the trenches, fighting side by side in our marriages, trying to help each other out. He's encouraged me, I've encouraged him. I respect him so much. He's been here all along....

Sounds familiar, no?

He brought me out of me reverie by saying,

"There's this song that you have to hear, I have it in my car. C'mon, let's go listen to it."

His car was a godawful ugly ol' minivan that was the colour of gold and bronze. It was glonze. It was brold. It was ugly. There weren't any back seats that I remember. He hit play on the CD player and "Belfast" by Orbital started to play. A woman's voice, plaintive, filled with longing (or was that me?) poured out of the speakers.

He rested his head against the drivers seat headrest and closed his eyes and for a couple of minutes we just sat and listened to the music.

And then, before I had time to think, I kissed him.

And he kissed me back.

And it was the best kiss of my entire life.

Everything fell away. I was drowning again but a different kind of drowning. This was drowning into breathing. Drowning into living. I dunno, drowning into sweetness. Drowning into what hallelujah feels like.

We ended up back on my porch sitting across from each other and looking at one another shyly and not without a little wonder and a little fear.

It was now near dawn and so we said goodbye with bleary-eyed smiles and a hug. I watched him drive away as I stood looking out of my living room window. I tried to think about what had just happened but every time I tried to my brain would wave a white flag.

"Not right now, please and thank you. I am very very worn out."

***********

Later on that day what had happened the night before began to sink in.

Oh shit.

What did I do?

I made out with Zack Arias.

It was awesome.

No, Meghan. No, it was not awesome.

Well, yes -- yes it was.

The making out part was awesome. The fact that I shoudn't have, that part is not awesome.

(It would be 6 months later that I would write the line for the song December 1st which says, "I regret the moment, but you I don't regret. I regret the falling, but you I don't regret...")

Zack called me to discuss what went down.

"Meghan, I don't know what happened last night. I'm overwhelmed. All I know is you're fire and I'm gasoline and if the two of us are put together shit is bound to blow up."

He would later say that he was feeling a nice cocktail of excitement and guilt with a garnishment of shame.

Which was exactly what I was feeling.

"I'm so so sorry."

"Yeah, me too."

"You're a really good kisser, though."

"Yeah, so are you."

We decided it was just a random thing; two broken people. It was something that shouldn't have happened. We left it at that.

**********

Neither one of us could stop thinking about the other.

For me, it was as if a light had been turned on in my heart and everything was clear and made sense. It was my mind, though, that was having a hard time.

I packed up all of my stuff and moved Phoenix and I across town to a darling apartment right near Decatur Square. My little sister, Caitlin, and one of my best friends, Jessica Tilley (now Hodgman) came along for the ride as roommates. I wanted to be close to my family and wanted Phoenix to go to Clairemont for school. I renewed my contract with the private music instruction company that I worked for and tried to get Zack out of my mind. But I was having a hard time. One night I sat down at the piano and a song came out that I knew was for him. I quickly recorded the piano and recorded the vocals sitting in my bathtub and sent it to him in an email. That song was "Song Without A Name". (Aren't I clever with song titles? No. No, I am not.)

Zack's car broke down. He lived in Decatur. His studio was on the other side of town. Where I had just moved from. Would I be able to give him a ride every now and again?

It was futile.

We were hanging out. We tried to convince ourselves that we were being very professional but in truth we just wanted to see the other. Our hearts were being drawn together. Every time we'd say, "this is the last time we can hang out. We really need to be careful."

He told me how he felt as though he was sailing a beat up old rusty ship, lost at sea. I told him how I felt that I had been drowning, trying to stay above water.

"Well then'" he said, "I'm throwing you a rope and bringing you on board."

I went to my family and my best friends again. Told them, "I think I'm falling in love with Zack Arias."

My dad said, "Well, your timing is horrible -- but I really like him."

**********

September of 2006 marked the beginning of a month long tour with Jay Clifford. Just me and my piano traveling up the eastern seaboard and some southern states as his opening act.

While I was on the road Zack was planning on throwing me a birthday party as I was turning twenty-eight. In fact I turned twenty-eight while I was in Winston-Salem. I was going to be back in town to play a show at Eddie's Attic in Decatur a couple of days after my birthday and then head back up the coast with Jay again.

Zack called me while I was in Winston-Salem to tell me that he wasn't going to throw me a party anymore and that he wasn't going to come to my show. He told me how he had had dinner with a friend who also knew K___ and had told his friend everything that had been happening. His friend was upset, and said that if Zack went to my show that he was going to tell K___ what was going on.

"I've been wanting to tell K___ about this anyway," Zack said, "but I don't want it going down like this."

The next night I was at Eddie's Attic and hoping against hope that Zack would show up but I didn't see him and so, the last song I played was a song called, "Not Easy To Love", that I knew that Zack loved. During the bridge I began singing,

"I'm sorry, my love. I'm so so sorry."

When I walked out to my car I found his UsedFilm card on my windshield and when I got home I found flowers on my front porch along with a card and a framed picture of a train. It was a shot that he had taken while describing it to me on the phone and faintly, barely perceptible, he had photoshopped along the train cars the words, "Easy To Love".

Here is a bit of the email he sent me that night:

"Dear Meghan,

As you are aware, I could not join you at your party. But that doesn't mean I didn't show up. :) "I might not make it to the party," I thought, "but I'm still going to get there."

Fantastic movie moment of the night.....

I was hauling ass around town getting a few things ready to drop by your place. My plan was to swing through the parking lot next to Eddie's, call you on the phone, have you come to the deck and I was going to serenade you with your own music from the parking lot. It was going to be my "Say Anything" moment with John Cusack holding the boom box while playing Peter Gabriel.

That didn't happen. I suppose your set started later than I was expecting or it went longer. I pull through the parking lot, park illegally, and I mute my stereo. Mind you, I was playing track 12 (Not Easy To Love) all day as I had the opportunity to do so. I hit mute and I was stopped dead in my tracks by hearing you already singing Not Easy To Love to me through the speakers from the back deck of Eddies. I pulled up within 10 seconds of being synched to what I had playing in the car.

I sat and I listened to you. My love, you have nothing to be sorry for.

Oh how I was warmed by making it for the last song and it was wonderful to hear the applause. I was clapping too and looking like a fool to those sitting on the deck. :)

I left my signature on your car as best I could since I could not find a pen.

AS for the items at your house. I had arranged everything on the front porch and as I was leaving it seemed as though the front door was slightly cracked. I checked it and it was open. I had called Jessica to leave the front porch door open and I wonder if she thought I meant the door to the house.

I stepped inside and missed you so much. I'm so head over heels for you. As much as I'm pulling the emergency brakes and cutting the fuel lines at the moment, know that I'm no where even remotely "done with you." That's why you got the card that you got.

Another year being beautiful. Another year being bold. Another year being brave.

Jacob had to work for years for his. Another year ain't so bad.

I'm sorry I couldn't be at your party. I'm walking a fine line at the moment but I so needed you to understand that while I wasn't there, I was there. And you can't even imagine how breathtaking it was for me to pull through that parking lot to hear the one song I so wanted to hear tonight. And Meghan, I heard you. I mean, I HEARD you. I heard your heart.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are so easy to L word."

It wasn't long after I received that email that Zack went to K___ and told him that he had kissed me. Told him that he was falling for me. And he apologized. It was hard on him. He had tried to, back in the day, be a friend to K___. Remember?

"I'm David. You're Bathsheba. He's Urriah."

He and I both were wanting to talk to our pastor about the whole thing but, since I was on the road still, Zack went first. We both were trying so hard to be good. We were trying to keep things open. We didn't spend time alone together. We didn't touch each other. We truly wanted to be people of integrity. People of integrity who were falling in love with each other while still technically married to other people.

Right.

I know.

During this time I was a constant whirlwind of guilt and happiness. It was the strangest thing. I both loved hearing Zack's voice and felt guilty at the same time. We would say we weren't going to spend any more time together but then cave in a couple of days later and one of us would call the other on the phone.

I would listen to Cat Power's song "Good Woman" over and over and over.

"I want to be a good woman And I want, for you to be a good man. This is why I will be leaving And this is why, I can see you no more. I will miss your heart so tender And I will love This love forever

I don’t want to be a bad woman And I can’t stand to see you be a bad man I will miss your heart so tender And I will love This love forever And this is why I am leaving And this is why I can see you no more This is why I am lying when I say That I don’t love you no more

Cause I want to be a good woman And I want for you to be a good man."

I sent this email to the pastor:

"Hello [Pastor].

I'm on the road until next week. I get back into town late sometime Monday night.

Currently I'm in Charlotte, NC. I've been on the phone what seems to be non-stop since I left town and I have a few questions for you as, I'm sure, you do for me. I am an open book. Ask me whatever you want. I've been in a blender for a few months and have grown accustomed to the feeling of being pureed, as it were. I figure I'm not dead yet, none of this has killed me physically (although I'm definitely experiencing what it means to die daily) and so shall keep walking around, doing my best, sometimes succeeding, mostly failing.

I will not try to put words to any of this via email, unless that's how you want to go about it.

I have always respected you, [Pastor]. I know you must be beyond disgusted with all of this. I suppose you'll want to box me about the ears. I deserve it, to be sure, although I've done quite a lot of it myself already.

I'm being called to sound check. Must go.

Until then,

Meghan"

I was on my way to New York for the last two shows of the tour when I got the following email:

From: zack@usedfilm.com

Subject: To all ships at sea...

Date: September 21, 2006 12:17:19 PM EDT

To: meghan@meghancoffee.com

Hey Meg, Well, I had my meeting with [the pastor] as you know. I once told you that no one was able to stand in the gap between you and I. Well, [the pastor] successfully proved me wrong. He came with God and I didn't. It was a real "Nathan" moment. A few things he said could have been summed up easily with, "You are that man."

When the truth is? We messed up my friend. There are a ton of explanations but there really are no excuses. I'm owning my part and taking responsibility for what has happened. The number one thing I have come to realize is there is nothing I can do to make it better except to do my part to not make it worse.

You won't be hearing from me beyond this email for quite some time to come. You want to be a good woman, and you want me to be a good man... well, we have to enter radio silence for that to happen. And cell silence. And email silence. And chat silence.

I'm truly sorry about all of this. I have already lost three friends (you, K___, and [friend]) and others are still on the fence. The price has gotten high, as it should, for what I have done.

I can tell you that nothing else came up in the meeting. I'm at peace with my confession of our time together, our kissing, and how close our hearts were drawn together. All things I'm having to give up and walk in humility about. I've been knocked from my horse and beat about the head. Again, as I should. I know why and how it happened but it just should not have happened. Not like this and now, if we are to maintain integrity, honesty, and seek reconciliation to those we have hurt, we must own it and end it.

So, to all ships at sea, maintain radio silence until this storm's fury has ended.... It's going to be a long lasting storm.

Cheers,

Zack

PS - When the truth is... it is freeing to not live in lies, deception, and shadows. I'm gonna miss you Meg.

{end transmission}"

{to be continued...} Click here for the next part...

How This All Started (Chapter One)

Had you told me five years ago that I would one day be married to Zack Arias, have made a gorgeous human being with him (AKA Hawke) and be the happiest I've ever been in my life I most likely would've have smiled at you, excused myself for a minute, and called the cops. Beepboopboop...ring, ring...

"What is your emergency?"

"I need you to come rescue me from the crazy person I'm with right now. I fear for my life."

Zack and I, to some people, weren't supposed to happen. Zack and I, to some folks, are an aberration. Whatever you do, don't fall in love with someone you go to church with, especially when you're married to other people.

But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Where to start? Because start I shall. I'm going to write out this whole crazy story, bit by bit.

This may shock you. It may not. Either way, I'm going to lay it all out there.

***********

Zack and I met, interestingly enough, online. The internetz. The church that I was a part of (Trinity Vineyard, my home, my family) had just planted a church of our own in Atlanta and all of us on the leadership team were buzzing with the possibilities and the thrill of starting an amazing place for community and worship. We had a church forum on our website where everything from "Is Time Travel Possible?" to "I have a couch for sale..." was discussed.

It was here that Zack showed up.

I knew him only as "usedfilm".

He only knew me as "mcoffee".

My friends and I would wonder aloud sometimes, "I wonder who this usedfilm guy is? The stuff he says is really interesting!"

Zack had started coming to Trinity a few months prior to joining the forum and had immediately felt at home. He was still trying to recover from his wife leaving him and his (at the time) three year old son, Caleb, when they lived in Texas. When I met him he was working at Kinko's and his wife, G______ had recently come back and they were living in a crappy apartment somewhere in Roswell.

We eventually met in person one night at church. I don't remember much about that meeting but that he wore a beret backwards and had that beard he's so known for and that he was pleasant. Over the course of a few months, in various conversations, he learned that my husband, K___ and I, had been separated for a few months but that we were back together and trying to work things out. Zack filled us in on what had happened to him and how he was trying to work on his marriage, too. He asked if I would consider trying to reach out to his wife,

"She'll think you're cool and I think she'd listen to you."

I told him I'd try. I did try. I hand picked G_____ to be a part of a small group I was leading at my house. It proved to be futile though, as she wasn't the easiest person to communicate with. She did not love him, she hated him and the only reason she was with him was because she couldn't handle the guilt of leaving again. Those were her basic thoughts. One couldn't really sway her from them.

(I must stop this to mention that I am currently in a coffee shop and directly in front of me is a man having a rather animated conversation with what appears to be an invisible person all whilst he covers himself in hand sanitizer. "I do love a good sponge," he is saying, "and listen to that jazz!" Now he is rearranging the parts of a sandwich he has just procured from a pocket somewhere. "I should be allowed to...mumble mumble...but it ain't gonna happen. UH OH!" he claps his hands loudly, "I have no idea! I'm going to open a non-profit with free services...mumble mumble...")

I must say I find it interesting that right when I began to write about a difficult person to communicate with, a person who obviously has issues communicating has chosen to sit here. Huh.

I'm worried that I am not making sense. I'm not trying to write anything great here. Just trying to...get it out, you know?

Plow on, Meg. Plow on.

Life continued. I tried to not drown in the despair that was my marriage. There were times where I felt as though I had a few moments of floating but mostly it was a constant struggle to stay above water.

I was in the foyer of the little church that Trinity rented on 14th Street, right after church one night, when Zack walked up and said,

"I think God has told me to quit Kinko's and go back to photography."

"Really? Wow. Well, you absolutely should. If you don't you'll always wonder, what if? You know? You're too good not to."

I watched as he began to shoot more and more and even hired him myself to shoot my press kit photos. That was February of 2004. I was going to make a real go at my music again. In December of 2004 my marriage to K___, already so flimsy, crumbled again. K____ moved out and we separated again. I remember meeting with Zack and my friend, Kara Pecknold, at EATS on Ponce around that time. Zack was trying to encourage me to stick it out. He was sermonizing about how we had to stick it out in our marriages no matter how beat up we became. We had to keep pushing up the hill.

"Yes, but how long can you take a hill? How long before it kills you?"

He didn't have an answer. He was in pain, too, in his marriage, and trying to convince himself of the very things he was preaching.

"You know what, Meg? I'm better friends with you than I am with K___. I'm going to reach out to him and try to help."

He did try and help. He did befriend K____. He did a better job of befriending K___ than I had G______, that's for sure. This would come to haunt him later.

I was in a lot of emotional pain, my heart was broken, but I pulled myself up by my bootstraps again and gave it another go. I decided that I wasn't allowed to be a musician and a wife, and  so I focused on working full-time teaching music, and being Phoenix's mommy, and resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to play music for myself ever again.

The new year of 2005 I made the following declaration:

"My music is dead."

"That's stupid," Zack said, upon hearing my declaration. "You're too talented and you have music the world needs to hear."

"Whatever. It's dead."

"Whatever, you're wrong. Give me some of your EP's. I want to pass them around to some people I know."

"Ugh. Okay. But it's stupid!"

He and I would talk every now and again. He was a buddy, a guy I saw at church, and I admired how hard he was working at his photography. His name was spreading around Atlanta at this point. Everyone knew Zack as the music photographer and he was a regular fixture at Octane, the coffee shop down the street from my neighbourhood. He was hopeful for his marriage as G______ was expecting another baby In July, a fact that shocked him to no end as G_______ made it very clear she wanted nothing to do with him.

"It was a Halloween Party," he said, "She had a bottle of wine."

"Oh. Well...wow! Congratulations anyway!"

"I know! It's crazy!"

It was August of 2005 that Zack called me up.

"Hey. I think I want to be your manager."

"My manager? Why? I don't play anymore, Zack, you know this."

"Well, I think you should. You see...," and here he paused for a beat, "...I kinda already booked you a show."

"WHHHHHHHHAAAATTT?"

"Yeah, it's at the 10 High on September 12th. 11pm."

"That's two days before my birthday!"

"Then consider it a birthday present."

"You're a dork."

I couldn't believe how happy I was.

"Okay. I'll do it."

And I did. And it was great. A good number of people showed up that night. That show led to my being asked to perform at Eddie's Attic with Edwin McCain for a Holiday Special being filmed by Turner South. That led to Edwin loving my music and asking me to go on tour with him.

Zack was ecstatic.

"See! I told you!"

He called himself my quarterback because shortly after that he passed me off to Edwin's manager who took me on her roster of artists. Just Edwin and myself. I was amazed. Here I thought music was dead and Zack just proved me wrong.

The beginning of 2006 was a blur.

Zack was busy shooting, and I was busy touring and writing music for a new album. Every once in awhile we'd check in with each other.

Sometimes he would stop by my house when the christmas lights were on to chat and have a beer. It was known in the neighbourhood that when the "fairy lights" as I called them were on on my front porch that you could just drop by. Anytime.

I miss those days.

It was the beginning of June of 2006 that my marriage officially died. Or I finally drowned in that despair I mentioned. The nail in the coffin, the last breath as it were, came in the form of a City of Atlanta sheriff who knocked on my front door and presented me with papers stating that my house was being foreclosed on. Again. For the 3rd time. The mortgage hadn't been paid in 6 months. I had been promised that this would never happen again; that I was going to be taken care of; that I didn't need to work anymore; that it was going to be fine.

It wasn't fine. I went to my family and told them what had happened, the same old same old. The same scenery.

They understood.

I asked K___ for a divorce and waited for the lightening to strike me dead. It didn't.

**********

One night, right while all of this was going on, I got a phone call from Zack.

"Hey, I'm in your neighbourhood, I just dropped an intern off at her brother's house and saw that the christmas lights are on. Can I drop by?"

"Of course you can! I'm in my pj's but I have beer -- c'mon by."

Zack had just finished shooting a wedding and we sat on my front porch with Newcastles on a lovely June evening and he asked me what I had been up to. It had been a while since we had chatted.

I was swinging on my porch swing, looking at my toes when I said,

"I've asked K____ for a divorce."

There was silence and I braced myself for the inevitable sermon that I knew was coming. Zack never held back what he thought. We had both been raised that divorce is not an option. That you hang in there until you die or it kills you.

The silence continued and I looked up surprised.

"Go on," he said, "tell me why. What happened?"

So for the next 20 minutes I poured out everything that had happened, or in some ways, didn't happen.

He was surprised. He and K____ and a few other men were in a small group together.

"I had no idea this was happening. K___ gave no indication of this. Man. He's about as sharp as a bowling ball, hmmm?"

"So...give it to me," I said. "I know you have stuff to say."

"Actually, no I really don't. You see, I was going to share with you that I'm asking G______ for a divorce. I can't do it anymore. I can't live like this anymore."

And then he shared where he was.

There we were, two broken people, sitting on my front porch, feeling like our lives were about to fall apart.

We had another beer or two and then, at some point around 2 am I said,

"What are you thinking about?"

Zack would later tell me that right then he had been sitting there, looking at me swinging under the christmas lights, thinking:

Here is this amazing woman, such a good friend. She's beautiful and smart and talented and funny and strong. I've watched her go through hell in her marriage. We've both been crawling through the trenches, fighting side by side in our marriages, trying to help each other out. She's encouraged me, I've encouraged her. She's been here all along....

When I asked him what he was thinking, he started to laugh,

"I need another beer first."

"Okay." I got him another beer and when I came back and sat down he said,

"Meghan, we're buddies right? I can be straight with you?"

"Of course."

"Okay, well, what I was thinking when you asked me what I was thinking was.... I really want to make out with Meghan Coffee."

{....to be continued....} Click here for the next part...