The feasibility of being Xena Warrior Princess when we grow up
Dannielle: What have you learned from our friendship?
Kristin: I know a couple of things I have learned from our friendship. I have learned to be so much more aware of my tendency to not understand something if I don’t experience it the same way. I think that you and I experience things so differently, and I feel like I understand not only about you but about other people that the way I interpret the world is not the way everyone interprets the world, and that’s a very important thing to understand.
Dannielle: Yeah, I feel like mine would be similar but the difference would be communicating around those things. I think I used to have a tendency to say, “I’m upset and you’re upset and until you figure out why I’m upset I’m going to talk to you in a way that is upsetting.” Now I understand that we’re upset for two different reasons so we have to address those two different things in two different ways. So it’s learning to navigate communication around that.
Kristin: Yeah. We’ve been really good wives to each other, I think.
There was a deep sharing of emotion and feelings and we planned the future and organized and then shared opinions about finger-fucking and chlorine you know, very loudly, next to some children.
Instead of leaving, I worried about the following things: forgetting some of the paperwork even though we’d both gone over it a dozen times; not waking up for the alarm; Shannon not being allowed into the building or up to the interview or into the interview with me; not being able to hear someone talking to me through a window in a crowded room; not being able to speak loud enough that someone could hear me through a window in a crowded room, because I get quiet when I am a certain type of nervous; the interviewer being homophobic; the interview being an asshole; not getting the visa for some other reason that I hadn’t thought of yet but would definitely somehow be my fault; not getting the visa and then not being allowed in the States for a certain time period; that time period being years.
One of the most painful – and important – parts of writing this work was realizing that for it to be a complete narrative (and a true reflection of this experience), I was going to have to revisit not only some of the most violent and difficult memories I have, but also the beautiful and intimate moments that were still happening in my life while I was in an abusive relationship.
This is a book you’ll probably want to read in your room with the door closed.