When I was younger, in my early teens, I had a friend. I will call her Rebekah, which makes sense because that was her name. Rebekah grew up in a cult. I spent many months, years, in fact, at the compound with Rebekah. My parents were cool with that for a variety of reasons. Number one, they never paid attention to where I was. Number two, we led a very cult-like existence. Number three, well, if I went to three I would go to four and then five and then I would be talking about something other than what I am talking about. The point is that I spent a ridiculous amount of my formative years at this compound, this camp, with Rebekah. The story of the relationship between Rebekah and Cordelia is fascinating, but ultimately it is not a nice story. You don't realize until later that it is not a nice story, but I know it, and now you know it. It is a terrible story, but on the way there were great stories and amazing experiences and a really, really good friend that I will probably miss until the day I die. Today is one piece of that, this story, right now. It was a camp.

It was a camp, see. In Jamacha. If you go out to Jamacha and leave your car you can feasibly walk in to Mexico. It is done, and it is done often. It is in the middle of nowhere. It was a great camp. It was a great place to be a young adolescent, provided you were unaware of what was going on around you. Rebekah and I were too focused on what was going on in our heads to pay much attention to what was going on around us. I would go to the camp, I would go there and since there were no phones I would assume that my parents knew where I was. It was miles, miles from them. Miles measured in more than distance. It was a world away, a different life, but still one that I knew. And Rebekah's family, her family, there were so many of them. You do not know who is who in these places. Her mother loved me. And her other mother, and her brother's mother, and they were good to me. And we helped a lot, sometimes. Sometimes we would wander off into the woods and not come back until the frost came, because, why not? What were we missing? But when we were around, which was not often, we would help.

Once we were helping in the freezer. It was this giant, mind boggling freezer. It had to be, because there had to be enough food to feed the entire family for however long a standoff might take. When you think 'family', I do not think that you imagine the amount of people there were. So it was a big freezer. And we got our winter clothes on, and went. Until now it did not occur to me to wonder why we had winter clothes in San Diego, but then hundreds of people freeze to death in Tijuana every year. So we had winter clothes. And we were in the freezer, going through each item, tossing whatever was expired. Reading, tossing. Singing. Reciting poetry that we had in our head, whatever it may be. With Rebekah it was always about exile, redemption, vengeance. With me it was always Dylan Thomas, and always And Death Shall Have No Dominion. I don't remember the first time I read it, I remember only that it became a mantra. Useless situations, reciting it over and over, huddled somewhere. And death shall have no dominion. It made no sense to me, but I ate it, I became that line.

So we were in the freezer, tossing, tossing, counting breaths and checking dates. And I came on a vat of something that said November 19. And I said Oh hey, November 19, that is my birthday. And Rebekah said Toss it, that was two days ago.

Toss it, that was two days ago. So I did. And I had a vague understanding that throwing out that vat meant that I was now seventeen years old. And it meant nothing. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen stop. They are numbers. We are girls, and we are in a freezer, and that is a number. And we were no younger or older than we had been at that time last week, or last month, or last year. And when Rebekah got pregnant with the twins and married the boy from the compound and became that thing that we hated, I remembered her in that freezer. A girl, no older than myself. I know that she was older than I was, and is still older than me today, and maybe, possibly will always be older than I am. But in that moment, in the freezer, and in many moments in the following years, through the things we saw and the places we went and the people we ran from, Rebekah was youth, Rebekah was immortal, and Rebekah was happy.

Tonight I had dinner with a friend. If I wanted to, I could not express to her how important she is. To me, to our friends, to the world around her. Tonight she hosted an astounding assortment of people, and they all love her. Every one of them, and that right there says something about her that I could not capture. The people at her table, the people in her home, the people that will come out and eat and laugh and be vulnerable in her name. It is her birthday. It is your birthday, you. You, today was for you and tonight was for you and the laughter and the happiness and the family that grew from your table, that is not something that you walk into. Or out of. Go around the room and try to figure out where these people meet, in their own lives. The physicist and the cutter and the photographer and the gardener and the torch, the geek and that beautiful little girl. Where do they meet, except in your home? And look at the lives, the stories that they bring. Amazing people, and these are your friends, these are the people that love you. I sat with strangers and talked and listened and called them by their names, because they are your friends and that makes all the difference in the world. I forgot that they were strangers and quickly they stopped being so. Tonight, and tomorrow, and as long as we have this and protect it and appreciate it, tonight we are youth, and we are immortal, and we are happy. Tonight we were happy, Lori, and tomorrow we will be happy and even when we are not at our brightest, shining best, we, and you, can be happy in the knowledge that there is always this, there is always this community, there is always this family that loves you. Happy birthday.

now and at the time of our deaths

mer·cy P Pronunciation Key (mûrs)
n. pl. mer·cies
Compassionate treatment, especially of those under one's power; clemency.


com·pas·sion P Pronunciation Key (km-pshn)
n.
Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it


So mercy is an awareness of the suffering of those under your power, and your wish to relieve it. I get that. I mean, I understand that. What I do not get is where it has gone, anymore.

I'm watching these things, these relationships, and I wonder where this is? We all learned it when we were kids, bendthefingers mercy. Make it stop. I can't take anymore. Mercy. Why is this not a floor model component of our personal relationships? It should come standard. When you see that someone has had enough, you know, alleviate.

We are under each other's power, all the time. I don't have to be your subservient to be under your power. It could be that you know what you do to me, and you run with it and you take it for all it's worth and maybe sometimes you abuse that power. When you see that it causes suffering, when it has gone beyond the fun and is now something more than that, hey, just stop, you know? One way or the other. Either stop it, or stop it. Don't do it cause you can. When you see that you are killing your wife, man, you are killing her. She's not beaten but she's just fucking dying, how is it that you can let that continue? You know it's happening, you can fix it, one way or another you can stop the bleeding. Cause you can wrap it or you can cut it off.

Maybe it doesn't always end well, either. Maybe the alleviation means the end of something, but that is merciful too. Maybe the mercy is that instead of cheating on her you leave her. Maybe instead of taking her home you take her home. Maybe, maybe it is not what you want to do, but that is not always what you need to do.

I used to ask my husband, who is not my husband any more, at what point he would decide that I had had enough. When is it going to stop? And he would say I don't know. And I would wonder why I did not just make that decision myself, that I had had enough, that I could not take any more. Why could I not make that decision myself? And this is where the definition includes Those under your power. Under your power. Powerless to stop it themselves, which is not a place that anyone wants to be and was not a place that I wanted to be and was not a position that I was proud to be in, or ever expected to find myself in, but there it was. I could not do it myself. I was powerless to stop my own suffering. At the mercy, the mercy, of my merciless spouse. And eventually, it came about. Not in the way I had expected, and not really due to his compassion, but he stopped it. He stopped it by cutting it off, and then he was gone. Sometimes that's the way to do it, then. Even though I thought it would kill me, he is not doing it any more. Not on that scale. And that, after it spins out a few years, is merciful. He did not continue it out until the end of our lives. I should thank him for that. If I see him again I most certainly will. I will thank him, as hard and fast as I can. Without mercy.

You are wandering around out there, you, all of you, and you know what you do to people. You know how they go for it, you know they would give you anything you want. Even things that you don't want, they're yours. This is because you are powerful, and you wear that power like a sword; you use it and you cut through defenses and you mow down judgement and who knows why you got this instead of the next guy, who knows, but you have it. It is not always fair. It is not always deserved. You do not always wear it well and sometimes you are the tyrant, you are the despot and the people under your power are reduced to begging silently, just make it stop. And their friends are telling them to save themselves but they can't, because they just can't. And this is when it falls to you to be merciful. Let her go. Stop what you are doing. Even if it hurts worse today, let it go for tomorrow, or the next day, or however long it takes for you to wear off. For the marks of your rule to fade. As long as it takes, until she is the queen of her own country again.