feng-shui-cafe

A Portrait in Anger

November 12th, 2006

Here’s a story I’m not proud of. I’m not going to write it & burn it in the fire as suggested by my spiritual guru but rather I’m going to write it & own it.

This story is of anger as a painting. All the tools were in place, the canvas was there. As I begun the painting several years ago, I thought I was painting a fruit bowl…

As I laid the first stroke, a fact was indelibly marked on the canvas. Each stroke was another fact until one day I looked at the painting and realized, with all of the facts in place, I wasn’t painting a fruit bowl at all. I was painting death. The painting had developed into something beyond my control. And I didn’t like what I saw.

This painting is of a young man I will call Joe. Joe was someone who worked for me. He was also an actor. He wasn’t a good friend and, in retrospect, he really wasn’t a friend to me at all. But sometimes we don’t realize these things until after a relationship is complete.

The details of my relationship with Joe are irrelevant. A painting is created from a single point of view. The details of my relationship with myself in regard to Joe, this is what I write of.

Joe was no one very special to me; he sent me the expected holiday cards, invited me to the plays he acted in, even invited me over to his house a few times. He was a perfectly pleasant fellow who did a decent job. No, he wasn’t my best employee, but he wasn’t my worst either. He was, however, close friends with my ‘best employee’ — who I’ll call Judas to clarify who she was to me. Being a friend of my employee and friend Judas, Joe became ‘one of the family.’ I have always said I don’t like to hire anyone I wouldn’t want to go to dinner with. Joe was a perfectly fine dinner companion.

In November of 2005, I was hit with a shocker: Judas decided to strike out on her own in business. It didn’t register at the time, but this was the point at which a bowl of fruit began to morph into something else entirely on my canvas. The facts surrounding Judas’ departure were vague to say the least. I didn’t quite know what was happening. And if you’d have asked me at that time, I would have told you I was painting a fruit bowl. I still truly believed I was…

November turned to December and then to January. My relationship with Judas had become non-existant in spite of several phone calls and emails to her, trying to learn WHY? Why did she leave? Where did I go wrong? What I had done? I needed to know: WAS IT ME?

Everyone else who worked for me said it was Judas’ own set of issues. That I hadn’t done anything wrong. They were all very supportive. Everyone except Joe — who I didn’t contact. Given that he was a friend of Judas’ I didn’t want to discuss what was happening. It would put him in an awkward position if he ever decided to work for me again, which I didn’t know if he would do anyway.

I tried to be philosophical about the Judas situation and my ambiguous relationship with Joe, but really what I felt was ANGRY. And hurt. Mostly by her, but somewhat by him. After all, Joe made no attempt to be in contact with me after her departure, either.
On January 10, my office phone rang. It was from an unexpected source. A friendly competitor was calling with unexpected news: Joe had drowned in Puerto Rico moments ago. Joe and Judas and some other friends had been on a vacation and just before going to the airport to return home. They’d decided to have one last swim in the ocean…

I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say or do. So many thoughts swirled in my head:

“I can’t believe Joe is dead. That just cannot be.”

“I can’t believe Jane from Las Vegas knew before I did and that I got the news from HER.”

“Judas must be devastated.”

There were many other thoughts, but those were the top three.

The second thought, the one about the competitor knowing before me, was irrelevant but in some ways, that hurt the most. That part was about ME, not Joe.

As I hung up the phone after the news, I paced. What do I do? Do I call Judas on her cell phone? Do I just act as if I don’t know?

I wanted to do the latter. I didn’t want to call and have to talk to her. She hadn’t made any effort to contact me after my attempts. We so obviously were no longer friends.
The worst part from my perspective: I realized that I was still completely, utterly ANGRY with Judas. And, as the facts continued to fill the canvas, I grew angrier and angrier with Joe. How could I be angry at him when he’s DEAD? I wondered. I had to remind myself that I can control how I DEAL with the emotions, but I cannot control what the emotions are.

Within minutes, I was dialing Judas’ number. I got her voicemail and left a message. I thought: “She’ll never call me back.” And for a moment I felt at peace with myself, my anger, my hurt. I’d done the right thing and had been a bigger person than I wanted to be. My responsibility was lifted. Lifted for one full minute. That’s when my phone rang again. Judas was returning my call.

I honestly cannot remember how long she and I spoke for. Judas was in an obvious state of disarray. I had been angry with Judas – and with Joe – but I didn’t wish for THIS to happen. Joe was dead and rather than letting go of my anger, that damn anger kept growing stronger. I can’t explain WHY… it just did. And I was feeling very guilty about it.

It took three days for the funeral to be arranged. I thought that perhaps if I was helpful, helped to coordinate something, DID something, maybe – just maybe – I’d release the anger.

Judas asked me to keep the work community (i.e. - my competitors who Joe had freelanced for) in the loop on funeral arrangements. For reasons not worth going into, the coordination of Joe’s final viewing was very complicated and fluid. His parents were flying in from Southeast Asia (where they lived) and the details changed often on Wednesday and Thursday as the parents arrived. They worked very hard to figure out how best to adhere to their religious beliefs and yet also give Joe’s friends an opportunity to say goodbye in the ‘American’ way.
I was in touch with Judas and others to coordinate funeral information and disseminate information to my competitors and other freelancers in the work community. I emailed everyone to confirm what was happening when, etc. This was a challenge and took me several hours since everything kept changing and there were a lot of people to keep informed.
As I spoke with others in my business, pieces of the confused puzzle of Judas’ departure started to fit together.

The biggest shock at this time: Joe and Judas had gotten married for a variety of reasons in October. Ironically, both Judas and Joe are gay and she has a long-time girlfriend while he had a short-term boyfriend.

Of course, Joe was living with Judas (with her girlfriend and his boyfriend). They were going to make themselves a family and a business.

There was much, much more that I learned. I felt at the time (as I still do) that I shouldn’t have received all of the information piecemeal in a variety of phone calls from people I hardly knew. I never faulted Judas and Joe on starting their own business. I understood that people move on for their own reasons. I just felt that after after so many years of working with Judas and Joe, I was owed a real explanation. Not bullshit, not lies. Truth.
As the facts smeared across the canvas and picture became clearer, the hurt, the anger welled up inside me and grew like a cancer. I was doing something good. I was helping ‘coordinate’ the funeral. I was being the best person I could be. I should have been releasing the anger but instead it was getting stirred up and expanding. WHY??
Finally Friday, the day of the service, arrived. It was a 10:30am viewing in Queens. I purposefully took a job in Manhattan that day. But as it turned out, the job ended before the service was to begin.

I took a taxi to Queens. I went. I saw Joe one last time. A corpse hiding behind too much makeup. His soul was so clearly not in this room.

Judas was crying, grieving like the widow she was. Her girlfriend, as usual didn’t ‘show up.’ I knew her girlfriend was ‘devastated’ and judgment was unfair, but the truth of the matter was: ‘the girlfriend’ NEVER showed up in the relationship in all the time I knew her. Judas was always anxious, depressed, upset, unhappy because her girlfriend was doing something she shouldn’t be doing.

So there was Judas, a mess, and there was me… angry. I hugged Judas with great strength and she hugged me back the same way. I truly did feel sorry for her. And a part of me felt as though the slate COULD be wiped clean. That we could start over. She with her business and me with mine. She with her messed up life, me with mine. No one of us is perfect.
The painting developed, stroke by stroke. In January, the fruit bowl became an obvious portrait of death. Things were clearer and clearer, as fact after fact mounted up.

It’s been almost a year. I haven’t seen Judas since that time. I haven’t really spoken with her, although I did try one more time to reach out. As hard as I try to let it go, it still hurts in my gut. I still feel betrayed. Not because of work, but because I gave Judas and Joe something of myself and they took it and stomped on it without the care you give to a friend.

There is little wall in my mind with the framed painting made especially for Joe hanging on it. I was fooled yet again. It was not a fruit bowl. It was not even Death. It was, and remains, A Portrait in Anger.

Entry Filed under: Zen chaos