The List
or that time I shared the MTC chapter of Crushed
Last week I (along with so many others) found out news about the incredible and wonderful place that is Maine Teen Camp. As devastating as the news is for so many of us, it is only because of how much love and devotion Matt and Monique have put into that little place off Stanley Pond for so many years.
So as a chapter in so many of our lived closes, I could think of nothing more honoring than sharing a chapter from my memoir Crushed - all about that summer so many years that I came in with a broken heart and left with it not so broken…
JULY 2008
James and I had just gotten back from visiting New York together and having lunch with his dad when he asked if he could take my Little Sister, Ashley, and me out to celebrate three years of being matched through Big Brothers Big Sisters. [MOU1] [KL2] Pixar’s Wall-E had just been released, and James wanted to see about the famous El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard to see it.
Started in 1904 Big Brothers, Big Sisters is the largest mentoring network matching volunteers to kids with “the belief that inherent in every child is incredible potential.” In 2005 I began the process of applying to be a Big Sister and by July of that year, Ashley and I were matched. She called me Kiki and I began to call her every week to hang out.
The Disney El Capitan Theatre is right off Hollywood and Highland, right next to Jimmy Kimmel’s stage, across from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and its famous handprints, and just diagonally from the Dolby Theatre where they host the Oscars, and the whole thing is surrounded by streets filled with the Hollywood Walk of Fame stars. What I’m saying is: it’s the quintessential first thing anyone visiting LA wants to see (well, besides the restaurant from Vanderpump Rules). Also, what I’m saying is: these few square blocks were annoying to get to, crawling with tourists, and so expensive to park at, which made James asking to take Ashley and me there on a Friday even more touching.
Ashley and I had spent the last three years spending most Fridays (our day we’d hang out) grabbing fast food, window shopping, and maybe a cheap movie theater—I mean, I could barely afford the gas to pick her up in south LA, so movie theaters like Disney’s El Capitan (and its adjoining ice cream parlor) were out of the question. But this was James we’re talking about, and for the last four months, he’d been in full court press mode really trying to assure me he had changed.
Ashley liked James right away, and I honestly can’t remember if they had met before this, but this moment, this late afternoon, with the large deluxe snacks in her tiny lap, James and I on either side, I will never forget. It was the moment I chose to trust him again. He was making her laugh, selflessly rushing out of the theater to grab more napkins and looking at me with all the boyish charm a boy could throw at a girl, and well… I was done for. Which made not even a year later even that much more crushing…
JUNE 2009
“Hi, Ashley, it’s Kiki.”
“You okay? You sound different.”
“Yeah, um…”
If I thought I was shaking at the church…
“Ashley, James and I are not going to—”
I was so devastated to tell her. Her examples of men hadn’t always been great, and this was just one more to add to the list.
“You and James aren’t going to what?”
“James and I aren’t getting married. He really is struggling and um…I’m just so sorry, I know how much you love him.”
She paused, and then with all the wisdom of an eleven-year-old who’s shouldered way too many burdens that were not hers to carry, “Kiki, I liked James, but I love you.”
Aaaaand I lost it. I was trying my best to keep the tears silent, to make sure she knew it was okay for her to be the kid, and I would be the grown-up, but her words were too touching, too exactly what I needed to hear.
“Kiki, you okay?”
I assured her I would be (did I just lie to a kid?) and told her I was going to work at a camp in Maine for the summer. She told me she was going to the pool. We chatted about how boys can hurt our feelings sometimes, how James wasn’t a bad guy but had just made some bad choices, and then she had to go. You know, to the pool.
I had emailed Monique at Maine Teen Camp a few days before I called Ashley, days before James finally called me himself to tell me not to wait for him. Even though I was now safe at my childhood home in Maryland (you know, sans the dehydrated bike ride), I knew I couldn’t go back to LA any time soon—the town where it seemed like every other car was a black Audi and every other girl was someone James had hooked up with.
Maine Teen Camp (or MTC) was and is an incredibly special place. I had been a counselor there the summer before I moved to LA, the summer I decided to leave college and pursue my dreams. I had been all of twenty while most of the counselors were in their mid-to-late twenties and Australian. Now in my late twenties (although still American), I figured this would be a great way to distract my broken heart.
I wanted to go pour into others, to have routine, to be around people who would know nothing of James or weddings or “not being pretty enough” for TV shows (besides, I was in no place to audition, and summers were slow anyway). But it was such a long shot—I mean, it was weeks before staff training, and did they even remember me?
I later found out a staff member had emailed the day before letting them know she couldn’t make it that summer, and Mo (short for Monique) had thought they would be fine with the staff-to-teen numbers but woke up that morning realizing they needed to fill the position. Enter the email I had sent through tears the night before; it was the definition of perfect timing, and it wouldn’t be the last time God would hold me close as James let me go. But at this moment, I refused to believe God had anything other than hurt to cause.
It had only been a week since running into two engagement sessions in one day, people—I was unwell.
I arrived at camp only to realize that they now staffed through a new company. No longer were my fellow counselors late twenties, Australian, and tan, but early twenties, mostly British, and very pale.
“You’re twenty-eight?! What kind of moisturizer do you use?”
No, but seriously—that is what a fellow counselor, all of nineteen years old (and American) asked me the day I arrived, as we, the new staff, sat in the lodge during a rainstorm getting to know each other. I was grateful for the rain; it gave me a chance to race back to my cabin to grab a jacket (and grab a quick cry).
I had spent much of past few days before that arrival day in my childhood bedroom in the basement screaming from the depths of my soul, mostly just the F word over and over—it was the only thing that brought some relief. But now I was in public and had to have a less “hot mess” and more “yeah, I can definitely be responsible for the safety and well-being of a bunch of teens for a whole summer” kind of vibe. Although apparently, according to that nineteen-year-old, I was looking great (you know, for a twenty-eight-year-old hag).
Monique and her husband Matt knew my deal and let me “grab a jacket” a few times through that week of training.
On our last night of training before the first round of kids arrived, we circled around the large fireplace in the expansive wooden lodge. Matt and Mo were sharing about what a gift this summer would be for each of us, how the unique opportunity of getting to teach, support, and be a sounding board for these teens would change us, yes, but also how our relationships with each other would offer us change too. Matt and Mo had met as counselors at camp, and at this point, years later, were the directors (a few years after this summer they would become the owners, too). As Matt told the story of how they met, he looked over at Mo, his face illuminated by the camp fire, and I was struck with his immense love and respect for her. He spoke about her with such tenderness, but also honesty and humor, how he’d never met anyone who was so fully themself.
So fully herself…
And that’s when it hit me: the full realization of my shaking shoulders at church. Of exactly why not just my heart but my whole body ached.[KL1]
For the first time in my whole life, I had been fully myself, and James had fully rejected me.
DECEMBER 12, 2008
“I promise. Every hour I’ll call.”
I shrugged, honestly not even knowing if I wanted him to.
James and I had just gotten into a fight about his driving. Well, mine actually, but really very much his too. Which I’m now realizing almost everything in our relationship was this—him projecting, me taking it as if it was always my fault, always something I needed to fix. Except this Friday was different.
I had been driving us on Highland, had just passed Hollywood Blvd and the El Capitan Theatre, when something happened (maybe I switched lanes too quickly; I can’t remember), and James gasped, startling me, which he had every right to—passenger driving in LA Friday traffic isn’t for the faint of heart, and I had definitely made a mistake. Except that this is what I did to him often (because let’s not forget he was a terrible driver, which led to lots of gasps from me, no matter how many times I tried to hold it in). Each time I got scared, each time I winced or jumped, he would scowl and then yell at me, angry I didn’t trust him or his driving.
Yes, yes, I do see how poetic this all is.
The minute he gasped, I started crying, not soft, sad tears, but the angry ones, the ones filled with the exhaustion of almost a year and a half of walking around on eggshells because of him, of everything I was always doing wrong, and here he was doing the exact same thing. Something snapped, to which I said, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” He thought I meant driving, but I meant us.
It was a sweet and crisp gift of clarity (one I didn’t have this book yet to remind me to write it down, but you do now, so please do).
I told him how I am constantly doing everything I can to love him well and support him, and in the moments, I am human, he gets so deeply angry that I would offend him, hurt his feelings, or not be completely smitten with him that he yells. I couldn’t live like this anymore. As much as I wanted to love him like Christ (as we Christians love to say), I was not Christ. I was a human, and I had to be with someone who would let me be one.
“I don’t even know if you love me,” I said. “All you do is find fault with how I act, with who I am.”
The clarity of it all!
As I was dropping him off, he promised to call me every hour to tell me one thing he loved about me. I nodded my head, but honestly, I was in no place to hear it. I was not just feeling this clarity but also freedom on top of that. At that moment, I didn’t care if I said or did anything to make his little boy self have a temper tantrum; in that moment, I was done.
But he wasn’t.
A bit later I received an email. One that was contrite. Dare I say humble? He suggested that we start over, even acknowledged how much he’d messed up, how much I gave and how much he took, and he said all of this with the understanding that he didn’t even have a right to propose any of it. What I didn’t know is that he was proposing all of this because two days later he would propose.
***
“Number twenty-seven: I love your freckles.”
James was true to his word. Every hour on the hour since our fight in the car, James had called to tell me one thing he loved about me. Each one was detailed, sometimes covering childhood wounds I didn’t even know were there. One was about my nose, the nose some in casting had told me to change, the nose I was always insecure about. I tried to hold close that short burst of clarity, that feeling of freedom, but it was soon drenched in the sweetness he had been pouring for the last twenty-seven hours. It was so sweet that I began making a list.
Oh, that I decided to write down.
As much as I walked on eggshells during our relationship, I also somehow showed up completely myself. I didn’t hide or pretend I was anything but me. I was funny and loud, I didn’t shy away from my faith or my desire for greatness, I didn’t shy away from my weirdness, I communicated what I needed and wanted, and I loved him with everything I had. He looked at all of that, at all of me, and two nights (forty-seven hours and details) later, he got down on one knee on the balcony of the Chateau Marmont to whisper the forty-eighth.
I wrote each down, forty-eight tiny details that proved not only his love, (but as I realized much later) proved I was, in fact, lovable.
I treasured that list for the next five months, tucked away in my nightstand, kept safe when all my stuff went into storage, until we ended up on another balcony with me throwing the ring at him.
My once treasured list crumbled as I clung to it through those two weeks of purgatory as he called the wedding off and on and then finally off again. What once had proven his love, what once had been so precious, now haunted me. It followed me to Maine like the worst camp ghost story, each detail resting in me as proof of my lack of worth, proving everything, I always knew to be true: I didn’t matter.
JULY 21, 2009
The campfire flames flickered and popped, but we were no longer in the lodge, no longer in beginning of camp. It was now mid-season, and some of my favorite campers were about to perform a song on their last night. They shifted nervously as I winked in their direction, then crossed my eyes and pulled in my chin to create seventeen more chins, hoping the silliness would distract them from their nerves. It worked; they all giggled. One nudged me and I almost toppled over, which made them laugh harder. I noticed my arms as I pulled myself up, now covered in freckles from the summer sun.
My freckles…
Two nights before I had called James. A lot.
One might say I blew up his phone. I wouldn’t, but one might.
July 19. It was the date we were supposed to fly to New York for our wedding, and I was…having some feelings. He never picked up, and I woke up with a terrible hangover. Oh, not from alcohol—I had realized in college that alcohol can be a depressant for me (obviously I wasn’t listening in high school health class) and knew if I had any shot at being okay through this whole grief thing, I couldn’t drink. Like, at all. No, this hangover was of the vulnerability kind, because I didn’t just blow up his phone with calls; I left voicemails.
A lot of voicemails.
I looked like death the morning after. Monique gave me a look during breakfast that was all, “Hey, I’m getting my master’s to be a school counselor and…you good?” I just looked the other way. Embarrassment doesn’t even come close to a strong enough word for what I was feeling. So much shame. So, what did I do?
Wrote him an email, of course!
Please note right after he called off the wedding, I had emailed him then too—a goodbye, if you will. It was pages, and if I thought I was embarrassed after blowing up his phone, it is nothing to how I feel now reviewing these emails. *
* My research for this book has been thorough, none more exhaustive than combing through the emails I have saved from over that time—from sent to rambling drafts, they are filled with details and dates and so much pain. I saved them not for posterity, but for my little sisters, my possible future daughters for each one to know, in her own time of heartbreak, she can meet their sister or mom in real time of her own heartbreak and know she isn’t alone. It has been gut wrenching to read through them, perhaps this one more than the rest. Not because of how cold it was, or how incredibly hurtful his lack of accountability felt, but that I allowed someone to treat me like this, over and over.
My walk of shame email the morning after was raw, because on one hand, it apologized for blowing up his phone, and on the other, it begged for clarity. How could he so casually throw out the person he loved like a piece of trash?! [SA2] It was everything Taylor could want for a song, and I got back everything John Mayer could offer in a response.
James’s response was long winded as he explained that he knew he’d never understand how hurt I’d been, but he had his “own share of shit to deal with,” and before I got all defensive, he let me know he “was a part of this as well.” He went on to say, “Come up with whatever well-thought-out conclusion you can, but I just never took it as seriously as you did.” (I’m sorry—you never took it as seriously? You were the one who proposed!) Then he told me not to feel like a piece of trash just because “he realized it wasn’t right.”
Just because you realized it wasn’t right?! YOU CHEATED ON ME THE NIGHT AFTER-
If I had ever questioned my acting ability, I needn’t have, because here I was in a little area of the lodge, above dining, looking at an ancient computer screen as my whole life flashed before me, as the fifteen-year-old next to me typed out to their mom that they still hadn’t received their sunscreen. I was so chill as I printed out James’s email, like, Oh this? Just a casual print out of an email that’s definitely not written by a narcissist that I will pour over for the next three years.
What I’m saying is your girl deserves an Academy Award for that performance. With a smile on my face (because sunscreen kid), I began a response. A response that took a week.
Because just like we need to write down the moments of clarity, we also must write down all the questions swirling in our head, to acknowledge all the pain that’s longing to be seen. You must remind the guy who cheated on you,[MOU3] [KL4] over and over, that you held his head in your lap. That you wiped away his tears as he said over and over what a horrible person he was, how you don’t even know how bad a guy he is. You have to get it out that it was you who deserved to be comforted as you cried, not him. You have to ask him why, after he called off your wedding, he had the audacity to tell your sister, “If I ever want to be a part of your family, I have to figure myself out.” You have to ask him how the hell he could say that knowing it would give you hope when he had already realized such a simple thing like “it just wasn’t right.”
So here I was two days later, email still not finished (but don’t worry, that kid’s sunscreen had arrived). It was becoming a masterpiece of a letter, written in my journal, on the computer, and often in my head, as was the case when I sat at that campfire watching the flames pop and twist.
Number twenty-seven: I love your freckles. Were those forty-eight things just to get me to say yes? Some plot to make sure your proposal (because I’m now realizing it was never about me) that your proposal would—
I didn’t have time to finish the thought because my campers’ names were called, and just like that, they, the youngest ones there, were standing in front of the entire camp. Look, I don’t know if you’ve ever been a teenager before (my gut says you have), but being freshly out of seventh grade and getting up in front of rising seniors in high school to sing a song is scary and brave—and did I mention scary? And yet here were these girls, my campers, looking straight at me taking a deep breath to sing. I made the silly face once more. They smiled and then sang their hearts out.
I don’t remember the song. I don’t remember if they were off key or on. I just remember their faces and how much they knew I deeply believed in them.
I never sent James those pages of the response I had poured over, because the more I wrote, the more I realized he’d never be able to actually receive it—another bit of clarity. So, I emailed it to myself and sent him this instead:
I surrender, I don’t understand anything. I’ve got no defenses left. Because of your selfishness and lack of honesty, you have caused an overwhelming amount of damage and hurt, and I hope one day you can make amends to me.
I never heard back.
It would take me years to fully believe I mattered and that his engagement list didn’t, but on that night, with my campers singing their hearts out as the fire roared, I began to. Because as heartbroken I was, as defenseless as I felt, I was reminded of something I had lost sight of, I still had something to offer…
And I promise, without a shadow of a doubt, that you do too.
Because that’s the gift of heartbreak. And I know you may want to push me down a ravine right now for calling any of what you’re feeling a gift, but it is. Because once you’ve sat in the pain of rejection, the cruelty of abandonment, or the exhaustion of hopelessness, once you’ve known the depth of having no more defensives, then you can see it in another.
And I promise you, there is nothing more beautiful than seeing someone else, nothing more worthy than sitting next to them to remind them of their worth, because it is in seeing them that we just might see ourselves…
CRUSHED, both the book and audiobook (read by me and forward by Chris Carmack) is available here - lemme know if you grab one - I would love to send out a signed book plate for anyone who loves MTC like I do