Even Angels Fall

I'm walking down the streets of Park Güell, helmet in hand. I hear laughter behind me. It's from him. At last, live laughter. None of that through-the-phone bullshit.

I'm wearing a shirt with the back open, my cute attempt to survive the Spanish summer heat.

Mr International's behind me, looking at my back, when he says, "You look like you have broken wings. You really are an angel."

My broken wings are a fucked-up shoulder from pretending to be a jiu-jitsu fighter instead of a ballerina for the week. The pretty pain of following your boyfriend's schedule while he's working and you're on vacation.

On the plane, before any of this, I put a line in my notes app.

"Even angels fall."

…

The morning before, I did the illegal scroll. You know the one. Before your feet touch the floor, before you're a person yet, thumb already moving.

A video held me past the usual two seconds. Manifestation was the topic, and I know, heard that one before. But this speaker said the part the pretty version leaves out: before you get the good thing, you walk through a lot of hell. Jung said, "No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell." There are few sentences I believe more.

That week I got my first offer ever for a full-time, big-girl job. I heard a six-figure number and changed my personality. Not really. I just dreamed a little bigger than normal, which for me is tough to beat. Australia, cherry blossoms, islands I can't pronounce yet. And someone who loves me, aka Dad/Mr. Universe, said, "Cool, and what's your income going to be to fund all that?"

Snap back to reality. So I did what I always do. I snapped right back into delusion, evangelizing about the manifestation revolution, about how the bad has to come before the good.

I did not notice I was welcoming my own. I said the wish out loud, the whole lavish life, and the gates opened. I didn't think they'd come so quickly. I didn't know they weren't the gates to heaven.

A day before that, my best friend and a room full of people who came to my first column event (AHH!) told me I handle the hard parts of life so effectively. I held that compliment for about twenty-four hours.

Then I lost control.

…

Someone once told me that if you think we aren't all capable of evil, you just haven't met your full humanity yet. I used to hear that as a metaphor.

Then the devil and the angel on the shoulder stopped being a cartoon. I made it twenty-one years without handing that devil full control. Sure, I've let it take the driver's seat a couple of times. But I was always still holding the wheel.

That day, the devil took it. A trigger didn't just tick me; it consumed me. What came next isn't only mine to tell.

The half-second after is the part I keep returning to. Looking at myself and not recognizing the person doing the looking. The horror isn't losing control. It's the recognition. That the thing I swore I was above was never above me; it was just waiting for a bad enough day.

And then the disloyal thought. That I now understand the person who once hurt me. Not forgiveness, no. But I understand. And I hate that I understand it, because it feels like handing them an excuse I was never handed myself.

I thought what devastated me was that someone who loved me was capable of hurting me, and that I was above being capable of it back. That never bringing it into my own hands was the thing that made me different.

A loved one trying to calm me down said there's no excuse, but, amazingly, I made it this far without being overcome. That under enough pressure, we're all built to crack.

So which is the unforgivable one? Losing it? Or not admitting how hard you're fighting to get it back, that you can't do it alone?

I don't know.

Here's the only thing. When I was on the other side of a moment like this, the receiving side, I never wanted the person to have been perfect. I wanted them to turn around and see it. To not call it stress. To not make it smaller than it was. To not narrate it into a lesson before they'd sat in what they'd done. I didn't always get that.

…

He said I looked like an angel with broken wings. He meant my shoulder.

I'm still on the ground. I haven't figured out what you're supposed to do down here.