The Transformation Of Amy Lunaro: Chapter Twenty Four. {fiction}
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Amy hung up the phone in the kitchen and swirled around to look at Leanne.
“Danny said she doesn’t have the printouts. And none of the other girls do either.”
“That’s some hocus pocus,” Leanne said.
“Too weird,” Amy said. Then she shrugged. “They’ll show back up.”
“Everything we lose comes back around in some form,” Leanne said. “Rumi says somethin’ like that.”
Amy plopped down at the table and poked at her fettuccine.
“What?” Leanne said.
“Nothing,” Amy politely smiled back. She looked around the elegant little kitchen. It was nice to eat sitting up in a chair, at a table, in the glow of candlelight, but she was antsy. Out of bed had been one giant leap, into the kitchen another, but now she needed out of the house.
And she had plans, big ones, that had been stewing in the cauldron of her body all winter.
She could see the yellow yolk of the full moon bleeding over the water outside. She couldn’t wait to run down the beach again. If she closed her eyes, she could feel her feet sinking into the sand and the cool rush of salty air on her skin. She rubbed at her thin legs under her long white nightgown.
“It’s been agony to live by the water all this time and not be able to go in it,” Amy said.
“Most people live their whole lives that way,” Leanne said. “Life is right there but they never even dip a toe in. They just watch it from a window. Don’t realize the door’s wide open. Anyway, don’t dodge. I know you too well for it to be ‘nothing’,” Leanne said. “I sat you down on the toilet all winter for God’s sake. That’s what they call intimacy.”
Amy breathed deep through her nose, she had grown so impatient of being babied. “And for that I am grateful,” she told her, letting out a long stream of air from her mouth.
Leanne and Amy were in that all-too-familiar push-pull. Amy had needed Leanne all winter, and now that she didn’t, Amy was pulling away and Leanne was pushing her to stay in her old role. It felt unconscious on Leanne’s part, but Amy had noticed her relishing in the caretaker role, the… well… Mother Role, as much as she had denied it.
Amy recognized how good it must feel to take care of something outside of yourself, to be needed. Amy could see that, and Amy wanted to feel that, too.
“What’s going on with you?” Leanne pressed. “There’s a storm in your head. It’s filling the room.”
Amy dropped her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands.
“Are you lonely, Leanne? I mean, with no man?”
“Nah. How could I be? All my clients, you, that monster in a cat suit at home. Why?”
“Well, I’m thinking about… being celibate. Just calling the whole Love Search off. I just don’t want to do it anymore. The men thing. I’m scared it will derail me. I finally feel… centered. Like I might know a few things — myself, at least.”
“Well, as soon as you think you know something, life comes along to remind you you know jack shit.”
Amy sat back heavily in her chair and crossed her arms, like she wasn’t going to talk anymore if everything she said was naysayed.
Leanne sipped her tea, unfettered.
“Well, go on,” she said. “Tell me what’s up.”
Amy sighed and tried again. “Well, I do feel like I’m finally understanding life a little bit, like things make a little more sense, but I know nothing about men. I’m just giving up. On all of that. On them. I was crazy to leap back on the horse so fast with Jack. And even crazier to go back into it exactly the way I used to, which never, ever worked.”
“How so?”
“Ugh, it’s so… painful to think about. I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. We know all the answers to our own questions.”
“Okay. Fine. I was tiny. Needy. Weak. Like a fucking orphan who wanted desperately to be adopted. Ready to latch on and give up everything for them before I even knew them. To devote my whole life to them. Like a hitchhiker on Love’s Highway, instead of a grounded woman welcoming a man into her own loving space. Fantastical.
Obsessed with the image of them in my head. Trying to be whatever self they wanted instead of really me, because I didn’t even know who that was. Starving on tiny scraps of attention they threw me, calling it love in my delusional non-reality. Drawn to the ones who hurt or ignored me. Desperate to prove myself to them.
It’s so gross I want to throw up. I give up on all of it. Never doing it again.”
“Giving up on love. That sounds like just straight up giving up on ‘you’.”
“I don’t get it. You wouldn’t say that to an alcoholic, you wouldn’t say ‘oh, come on, have another, keep trying to drink’. Men and alcohol do the same thing to me, they kill me. I look back at my life, and every time I met a new man, it was a fucking catastrophe. Just like drinking.
It’s okay at first, and the next thing I knew I was in bed, mourning, bludgeoning myself over everything I did wrong. I don’t have time for that anymore. I can’t lose this good momentum. I don’t have time to die over a man anymore, to fall in that ditch. The last two quite nearly killed me. One broke my spirit, the other my body.”
Leanne looked around.
“What are you doing?” Amy asked.
“Lookin’ for the goddamn cameras. Are we filming a soap opera? I mean cue the fucking drama.”
”Leanne, stop making fun of me, please. It doesn’t feel good.”
“Oh, come on. So your first love went down in flames. Story of everyone’s life. Keep remembering, your story ain’t that different from anyone else’s. Things get bad when we think we’re so different, that we somehow got it worse than everyone else, and we think we’re separate. Then we isolate. Then we slowly die.
Life owes you nothin’, honey. You owe life somethin’.”
“Well, okay then. I’m only gonna date the ones that have no chance of breaking my heart… or legs.”
“Ha. I’ve tried that. We’ve all tried that. Can’t hide from heartbreak. Can’t hide from life.”
“Can’t a girl try?”
“Nope. Anyway, liking the ‘safe’ ones don’t work. It’s just like those cloudy days at the beach; you think you don’t need sunscreen, it won’t hurt, but then they end up burning you the worse than the hot sunny days. No such thing as being safe. Safety’s the great illusion. That, and that we’re promised a next moment.”
“Well, I’m serious. No more men.”
“I don’t feel like I can persuade you anymore. That fire in you is big. I gotta say. I’m impressed. Even a little in awe.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Amy said, straightening her back.
“It is one. I’m serious. You went from Maiden to Mother, Victim to Heroine, Princess to Queen. I sure like it. I told you no one does a makeover like the Goddess.”
“Thank you. Men aside, I feel good, Leanne. If I’m not focused on them, I have so much more energy for me. For my dreams. Like, I can feel spring within me. That rebirth. Like when a baby chicken hatches. Like when things hatch and can come outside of themselves. Break out of the dark enclosed tomb of themselves, out into the world.
I guess that’s the Maiden to Mother process. We’re in our lonely heads, then we open our hearts and break out into the world. And we’re… of service.”
“Yep. That’s the process. So what do you want to do in the world?”
“Well, I have a few ideas. You know, from my vision board. A picture came together, a dream.”
“Well, just look at you. Tell me,” Leanne said, as she forked a gigantic spool of pasta into her mouth.
“There’s this retreat center… it’s in Maine. It’s a healing place for people and animals… all rescue animals. Horses, cows, dogs, chickens, rabbits. The people and the animals sort of… heal each other. There’s Yoga , Reiki, gardening, all that stuff. And, even more wonderful, their charity also helps a girls’ school in Ghana.
The people who run the farm are all about nourishing the feminine. Women, creatures, the earth. I’ll learn to tend a garden, practice Reiki on the animals, and I can ride again, like I did when I was little.”
“That is wonderful,” Leanne said through a stuffed mouth. “Movin’ from the red carpet to the green. A real trade-up if you ask me. Which you shouldn’t,” she said, pointing a fork at Amy. “Don’t ask no one’s advice about your personal dreams. They might sway ya different. And you’ll regret it and resent them.
Just follow the voice in the heart. As scary as it fucking is.”
Amy nodded. “And… once a year they send the staff to volunteer teaching at the school. I always wanted to go to Africa, just somewhere along the way I got scared. It’s my dream, and it’s real, and I have to do it.”
“No resistance here. So… no going back to New York, is what you’re saying.”
“I think that life is over. I mean, it must be, because I’m not living it anymore. And I don’t have fire for journalism anymore. It feels dead within me. And this new life, it feels alive. Like it’s waking up inside of me. ‘We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us’, right?”
“Joseph Campbell. True. Well, you look just as about as happy as a hippie in a hand basket.”
“I am. It feels so good to be excited, I think this is what feeling alive feels like. Having a life you want to leap out of bed for. I want to do something outside of myself. For something much bigger than me. Maybe it’s all the Campbell I’ve been reading. And newspapers. Fuck, I had this awakening within my awakening.
A humanitarian awakening. When I finally looked outside of myself, I woke up and looked at the world. I couldn’t believe how much I had, yet how sorry for myself I’d been. It was like, ‘I can’t believe I thought I had it bad’. I felt like Goldie Hawn in ‘Protocol’. You know, I used to just read the newspaper for the horoscope. I was so insular.
I forgot this world’s story was my story, and that I had a say and that I could be of help.”
“Guess so. I prefer not to read the news.”
“Well, I think we should. I think we should be involved in our world. I think the feminine should stand up and shout. I think the world needs the feminine’s voice more than ever. I think the healing of the feminine, I think it’s the answer.
The end to war and suffering, pollution and extinction and depression, because we’re so fucking cut off from our true selves. The feminine teachings are about power being within, not without.”
“That’s your prerogative, to get involved. And you’re gonna be around a lot longer than me. Don’t know much about politics, but you’re signin’ up for a real Heroine’s Journey, is what I do know. Ain’t gonna be what it looks like in your head. Nothing is, well, if it’s real.”
“I know.”
“Ain’t gonna be all patchouli and roses.”
“I know.”
“I’m just sayin’ it ain’t gonna be easy.”
“Leanne, I know.”
“Worth it, but not easy. Fulfilling, but not easy. Life-changing, but not easy.”
“Got it, Leanne.”
“And… don’t come cryin’ to me when Love done hits you over the head again.”
“Well, what I’m telling you is that’s not happening. My heart is occupata. Closed up shop. There’s a sign on its door that says ‘Gone fishin’.”
“You think you can control the most powerful, mysterious force in the universe?”
“What?”
“Love.”
“I’m just saying I’m not there, anymore, in my life.”
“Child, you best lose that ego.”
“What ego?”
“Oh, please. The one that thinks it’s in control. Then you really will miss out on life. Let go, baby. Control stifles the soul.”
“Can I take your plate?” Amy asked, anxious to be anywhere else.
Leanne put her hand over her half-finished meal. She was clearly savoring their last dinner together.
“So, this farm. You goin’ in search of that real life you were talking about?”
“Yeah, I guess, I think I am.”
“So you have some idea of what one is.”
“Well, I know what it isn’t. What I used to think it was.”
“Which was what.”
“It’s… embarrassing,” Amy said.
“What good does embarrassment do ya?”
“What?”
“You gotta ask yourself how something you’re carrying around is serving you. Is embarrassment doing anything for you?”
Amy thought for a minute. “No,” she said, “it’s not.”
“Then let it go. Once we realize something isn’t serving us, it’s our job to let it go. So, tell me, what did you think real life was?”
“I thought it was… fame. I thought that people had made it in life when they got famous. I thought that was the goal. And I thought maybe Jimmy would want me back if I got… sort of famous again. I mean, he left me for someone famous, and he was always pressuring me to ‘become someone’. And I thought that meant ‘someone famous’.”
“I can see how you would think that,” Leanne said. “It’s not stupid to think that. Give yourself a break.”
“At the time, I thought that’s what he meant by ‘you didn’t come true’, you know, what he said when he left me. And then, after he left, I thought if I were famous like him, I wouldn’t be lonely. Even if I didn’t get him back, if I were famous, I wouldn’t feel so alone.
He always had this entourage of people who just adored him. Laughed at every joke, clamored for his attention. And people knew him wherever we went.”
“No, honey, that’s what people got all wrong. Fame doesn’t make you less lonely — it makes you more lonely. And it doesn’t make you real, more like an illusion. It’s a nightmare, really. People think they know you, but they don’t. And then, worse, you think you know you, but you realize you really don’t.
You forget who you really are, when you’re a star.”
Amy finished her plate and pushed it away.
“And when their audience moves on, because they’re fickle, and they will, you’re still left up there forever in the cage of this stage you can’t ever really get off. Even when no one’s left watching. You’re trapped up there in your lonely ivory tower of an ego. No one can get in and you can’t get the fuck out. Talk about death by isolation.”
“I know. It seems stupid now,” Amy said, shaking her head, “I thought if I had fans, I would, somehow have ‘made it’.”
“Well, honey, Hitler had fans. Anyone can be famous. Not everyone can be happy, can make a good difference in the world. You don’t want to become famous. You want to become fulfilled, of service, like you’ve been sayin’.”
“You sound like you know this intimately.”
“Remember, this island is full of people running from themselves, trying to pick up their pieces. I know more fallen stars than I can count. Ain’t their fault. Society teaches you that fame and fortune mean success. Nope. Then you get there and you find it was all a sham. All you want is peace and love, like every other person on the planet.
Self-love and service — that’s true success. Not fame, baby. One day they love you, the next day they leave you. Love you, hate you. The spotlight is no place for someone with abandonment issues.”
“I guess I know a thing or two about those.”
“Everyone’s wounds are the same. We’re scared of being frauds, not good enough, not worthy. And we’re scared of abandonment. Of never being loved. Of dying alone.”
Amy gulped. “Resonates,” she said.
“Honey, you never talk about your father, what happened?”
“He left right before mom got sick, and everything fell apart.”
“That’s some timing,” Leanne said. “How it works though, I guess.”
“I think that’s how I got programmed this way. To fall apart when love falls apart, to lose me when I lose him. For the world to end when love ends. For my self-esteem to be wrapped up in someone else’s approval of me. And I felt the same way about my mother and father as I do, or did, about me and Jimmy.
I didn’t think they should have broken up. I felt if she could have loved herself, she could have loved him. And I felt like if I had known how to love and care for myself, I could have loved and cared for Jimmy.”
“Probably could, babe. But knowing that ain’t gonna bring him back. You just have to make it right the next time it comes along. Which, I’m telling you it will.”
“If you say so. I’m just saying I’m not looking for it. Ever again,” Amy told her.
“And that’s when it finds you,” Leanne smiled. “Okay, we’re telling stories again,” she said, tossing her napkin over her plate. “And now we’re back in the past, like ghosts. That’s what happens, every time you tell a story. You’re back in the past. You ain’t alive. Let’s come back to the place where we’re breathing.”
“You’re right,” Amy said. She raised her mug of kava in a toast. “Thank you, Leanne. For everything. From the bottom of my healing heart.”
“You’re damn right welcome.” Leanne said, clanking her mug to Amy’s.
They chugged the last bits of tea.
“So,” Leanne slammed her mug down. “When you going off to save the world?”
“Soon as I get my sea legs back,” Amy said. “I can’t become real in isolation, like Stephen Cope says. Gotta go be in relationship, to be real.” She looked up at Leanne. “Oh, I’m sorry. I just meant, out of the house, in the world. No offense.”
“None taken,” Leanne said.
“And, Leanne?” Amy said softly.
“Yes, babe.”
“One more thing about Jimmy. Last thing, I swear.”
“Shoot.”
“I think I know now, what he meant by ‘you never came true’. I think he meant, I never came true to me. I never acted on my dreams. I never did what I said I would do. All talk, no walk. You know, how Carl Jung says, ‘You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.’ I was in a nest on the couch like something dying. I stopped… doing. Living.
Nothing I said became realized. All my promises, they were lies. So I wasn’t real, I wasn’t true. To me, or to him. We don’t just dream, we do. That’s how we become real.”
“Makes sense,” Leanne said. “And I know something you can do right now.”
“What?” Amy asked.
“These dishes. Time to start using those gams again.”
This is an ongoing series from a forthcoming fiction novel by Sarah Durham Wilson of DOITGIRL.
Tune in weekly for the next chapter in ‘The Transformation of Amy Lunaro’.
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