Clandestine Confessions

“So, this is my new favorite chocolate. And Andrew Garfield loves it too.”
“Haha. Is that how you heard about it?”
“No, I learned that after the fact. I was just roaming the aisles of Harmons one day looking for something new. But it certainly helps my claim of being the best!”
It was one of a few Christmas gifts I gave him – trying to top that of last year’s but not sure I ever can.
A year’s difference and he was still equally surprised by me getting him anything.
Which made me chuckle…as if I do not just buy him things because it is a random Tuesday…
I had called my dad a bit before his arrival to wish him a happy new year.
And to tell him my notoriously frugal self was about to turn up the heat for company coming over (truthfully, the main reason for dialing his number).
My thermostat is an ongoing joke between him and I.
“You must really like this person,” he said with a shocked driven laughter. “You are breaking all your rules.”
A foreshadowing statement.
“Ha. Just forever indebted to him…”
–
I got him one gift to feed his passion.
A few to feed his stomach.
And one gift to feed his spirit – one that was very Jenna-esque – a journal.
(A past writing gives this more context.)
With a little note slipped in before the last page.
Strategically placed for him to not see it if he were to flip through it in front of me – a vision I had hours before he arrived.
I mimicked exactly what I saw to get the placement perfect – and sure enough, when he did indeed skim through it, he never found it.
It was a quote from his favorite author.
One I pray gives him peace when he reaches the end and reflects on the hard times he may have documented over the past year(s):

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

We will see how long it takes him to find it…
–
“Mind if I try some now?”
“Not at all! I wrote this in your card, but please know I will not be offended if you do not like it. We both know I eat bee pollen and cod liver oil so taste standards may be questionable.”
His signature smirk graced his face as he opened the package.
“Would you like a piece?”
“I am good, but thank you.”
He broke the bar into a quarter.
And then the quarter into half…or at least attempted to.
He handed me the bigger section.
The gesture induced an internal laugh…“I suppose we are having a piece after all…,” I thought to myself – sans fear or anxiety or anger.
“I am touched. You gave me the larger half.”
He gave no verbal response.
Just looked at me and smiled.
But some expressions speak louder than words ever could.
–
And it was in that moment I realized I was living in what I once deemed one of my greatest nightmares.
And became so overwhelmed at the fact it was anything but that.
It was a dream – one in which I was falling head over heels in love with being in the presence of people the disordered part of me would have hated.
The ones who would have been a threat to its existence.
The ones I would have actively avoided ever seeing to not have to endure life threatening moments such as this.
The ones who would have forced me to step out of the comfort that was my darkness and into the light.
Delighting in feeling safe to surrender, laying down my weapons, relinquishing a fight in which I no longer have a need to participate.
–
I stood there at my counter.
In my kitchen in Utah.
The snow falling out my window.
Laughing with a friend.
Living a life amidst all the beauty I led myself straight to death in an effort to achieve, to feel, to claim as my own.
The peace and sanctuary I leaned on the disorder to give – but never able to safely provide – now present in those with which I have chosen to surround myself.
Admittedly a choice that wasn’t always made.
A version of me having once existed that selected living embodiments of the disorder to be prominent fixtures in her life as a means to preserve the disorder.
But that fear driven desire having been left behind in 2021.
Now only allowing people into my world that exemplify the very opposite of all the disorder represents…life, bliss, passion, hope.
People who will give you the larger piece of chocolate…
–
All of it made even more impactful knowing the person actually helping to provide the privilege of it all didn’t even know.
Although, there was a moment I was close to exposing it all…