Page 11 of All the Way to the River

W hat happened next is that I gave Rayya Elias a home.

Actually, I gave her a church —a beautiful eighteenth-century chapel located in a tiny village in rural New Jersey. A small box of light surrounded by dogwoods, willows, and a tall stand of bamboo that sways all day through the breeze like an undersea kelp forest.

A few years earlier, I’d found a listing for this church on Craigslist and had bought it sight unseen, all the way from an internet café in Luang Prabang, Laos.

In a life full of impulsive actions, this was one of my wilder leaps of faith—and, as it turns out, one of my better ones.

But really, I’d had no choice. When I’d first seen a tiny, grainy image of the church pop up on the computer screen, my soul had emphatically said: You must buy this place. This will be your forever home .

My church was—and still is—a place of quiet magic.

The previous owners had done the hard work of repurposing it into a house, so all I needed to do was move some art and furniture into the place and then sit in the great chamber at the center of the building, gazing in awe at the original soaring windows of wavy glass that perpetually drench the place with dancing light.

When I got quiet enough, I could almost hear the prayers and hymns contained within these walls—the voices of the faithful and the yearning who had worshipped here for over two hundred years.

But I ended up living in the church for only a few months before my husband and I decided that we needed to find a more practical living arrangement.

Lovely as it was, this little chapel was not an ideal space for two people to share—especially not two people who were both working from home.

There was no privacy in that big, empty box, and not much heat—and the colonial-era acoustics meant that if you so much as sniffled in one corner, it would echo through the entire building and disturb your partner.

So we moved to a sturdy Victorian one town over.

But I kept the church because I had gotten the idea to turn it into an artist’s residence and spiritual sanctuary.

I had a dream of creating a space where friends and strangers could come and stay whenever they needed to write books, make art, record music, meditate, pray, or recover from their various crises, catastrophes, and heartbreaks.

In other words, despite the fact that I’d been given very clear instructions by my soul that this church was meant to be my forever home, I almost immediately started giving the place away to other people—so I could save their lives and make their dreams come true.

“Why are you giving this to me?” Rayya asked in bewilderment the first day she drove out from the city to see the place, which I had offered to her, rent free, for the entire summer after her divorce.

“Because someone told me you were having a tough time,” I said. “I thought it might be nice for you to get out of the city this summer and have some peace. Because you deserve it. Because you need it.”

She stood in the center of the church and wept.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said. “This is the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen. Nobody’s ever given me anything like this. I don’t know why I can’t stop crying. I never cry like this!”

The truth is, I never paused back then to consider why indeed I was giving my sacred sanctuary over to Rayya—a person whom, in fact, I did not know very well.

The simple and spiritual answer, I suppose, is that it was our destiny, and I certainly will never argue against destiny.

But the more complex psychological answer is that it was a codependency reflex on my part—an impulse born from my own deep-rooted sense of anxiety and unease.

I have a long personal history of not always knowing where home and security can be found.

My parents—who prized self-reliance above any other virtue—made it clear to me growing up that I was expected to leave the house right after high school and never live there again.

And I get it, I really do get it; after all, that’s exactly what they had done when they were young. So that’s what I did, too.

I went out into the world and tried to find places of my own to live.

I was always anxious about it. In some ways, this anxiety was a terrific motivator.

Fear made me resourceful, and I had some extraordinary adventures as a result—like working on a ranch in the Wyoming Rockies, and studying birds of prey at a wild game preserve in Kenya, and babysitting children in Mexico.

I will cherish the memories of those escapades forever.

In other ways, though, I became more codependent than ever.

On the surface, I appeared to be a confident young go-getter.

But my inner life was, as it had always been, a tremulous fear-scape.

I was neither mature nor emotionally secure, and I wasn’t yet ready for the demands of adulthood.

Hidden beneath all my apparent ingenuity was a terrified child constantly asking, “Who’s got me?

Who will keep me safe? Where do I belong? ”

And thus I began my lifelong quest to make other people into my home.

When I was nineteen years old and working as a diner waitress in Philadelphia, I met a jazz musician who was old enough to be my father.

He was a good man. He didn’t have much, but he generously shared with me everything he had.

With gratitude, I exchanged my body and attention for his apartment, his care, and the lessons he taught me about life.

I tried to give him money for rent, but he would never take it.

“I want you to save your money,” he always told me.

“I know someday you’re going to leave me, and when you go, I don’t want to be worried about you out there. ”

And he was right: I did leave him.

That relationship blew up because all my relationships blow up.

Like a thief in the night, I left that good man behind, running off to California with somebody who didn’t belong to me.

And for sure someone should’ve been worried about me out there, because that relationship swiftly blew up, too.

I remember making desperate calls from pay phones in San Francisco, reaching out to all my friends, looking for places to stay.

Back to New York City I came. I slept on my friend Susan’s couch on Fourteenth Street for six weeks, sobbing in silence and shame, night after night.

And then I ran straight into the next relationship and the next living situation. And then the next, and the next …

I once estimated that between the ages of twenty and forty-eight, I lived in approximately twenty different homes.

That’s not everywhere I stayed (that number would be incalculable); it’s merely everywhere I lived —everywhere that had my actual name on the lease or the mortgage.

And I never lived alone. I couldn’t bear to live alone.

I couldn’t bear being alone with the open wound that was my own mind.

But I also couldn’t bear the chafe and strain of intimacy.

I couldn’t last anywhere, and I couldn’t last with anyone.

So I came and went, colliding and separating, roaming the planet, constantly looking for places to land and people to merge with.

I sometimes used to call this behavior “being a free spirit,” but my wild instability was quite the opposite of freedom, because I had no agency in the matter—only urgency .

Also, if I was so “free,” why did I always end up feeling trapped?

It’s because my moves were motivated by desperate situations in which I was running either toward somebody or away from somebody else.

I constantly found myself in stories that started out with passion but ended up with shame.

So much shame, in fact, that during those years there were entire geographic regions that I had to flee at top speed, because my behavior had created dramas that made it impossible to remain there for another day.

Goodbye, Philadelphia!

Adios, Oaxaca!

Well, I guess I can never go back to Wyoming again!

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous describes how addicts always end up “puzzled and humiliated,” no matter how hard they try to get their lives straight.

That’s how I have always felt at the end of my relationships: puzzled and humiliated.

And because I have a lifelong tendency to fall in love with people who are either alcoholics or addicts themselves or the adult children of alcoholic or dysfunctional families, my partners were always in a state of disarray, as well.

They brought their own disorder to my already disordered life, which added exponentially to my upheavals.

One of my most chaotic relationships, for instance, was with a man who, at the time we met, was being fired from his job, breaking up with his girlfriend, and getting evicted from his apartment—all at the same time.

“Move in with me!” I said, naturally enough.

And so I welcomed him—this heartbroken, unemployed stranger (who, like me, was clearly struggling to find his way in the world)—into an apartment I’d rented for myself only a week earlier.

Why would I do such a thing?

Why would anybody do such a thing?

The answer is that I was getting something essential out of that relationship: I was getting his need . I was getting his gratitude . I was getting the warmth, power, and utter security of his complete dependence upon me.

I can still remember how good it felt, watching him fold his T-shirts and jeans into the dresser drawers that I had emptied out for him.

I got a contact high from his sheer, palpable relief at having a roof over his head at last—and a woman who was being nice to him.

And then, once he had settled in, I started pouring myself into this man in every way I could imagine—trying with formidable determination to bestow upon this near stranger all the things that I myself most desperately craved in life.

And what did I crave, exactly?

Belonging, reassurance, support, devotion, connection, worth, home .

And what did I expect in return for showering these exact offerings upon a man I barely knew?

Why, his love, of course!

I’d basically given him no choice but to love me—and obviously he could never leave me, right?

I mean—where could he even go ?

Now, was I honest about any of this? Did I tell this man in all frankness, “Okay, so here’s the deal: I will pour the entirety of my life force into you.

I will support you and nurture you. I will sacrifice my own welfare in order to take care of your every need.

I will uplift you in every imaginable realm of your existence, and I will make sure you never have an unmet desire.

But in return, you must love me—which, in my definition, means that you must give me an unshakable sense of inner security.

You must do this for me because I cannot do this for myself .

I actually have no idea how to love myself—so that’s gonna be your job, my man.

And you better not fail at it, because I’ve got a whole flotilla of fears and insecurities that I simply cannot handle.

And if you do not adequately handle those feelings for me, I swear to God, I will rip the rug right out from under this relationship, and I will go out there and find someone else who can —while simultaneously blaming you for letting me down.

You cool with these terms, bro? You still wanna do this thing? ”

Did I ever say that, to any of my partners?

No, I did not.

But when the emotional bill came due for my goods and services, and that bill was not paid to my exact liking?

That’s when things got ugly.

That’s when things always got ugly.

But now let us return to Rayya.

Let us return to the year 2008—when Rayya’s relationship had just broken up, and her body was in pain, and her finances were strained, and her heart was aching, and her friends were starting to get worried about her.

Let us return to that first moment when my soul essentially said to Rayya’s soul: I will take care of you now .

I remember bringing her tea with honey on that bright, sunny day when she first drove out to New Jersey to visit the church I had offered her for free for the entire summer.

I also remember bringing her a bowl of homemade chicken soup and a blanket to snuggle in.

It was a chilly spring morning, and I’d built a fire in the woodstove.

We sat on the couch together and played with the two new kittens (strays, twins) I had recently adopted from a nearby farm.

Rayya tucked a kitten under her chin and cried all over its orange fur while it purred and purred.

Today as I write these words, I am sitting in the same old church, where I am currently living contentedly and peacefully all alone.

I look back at those two women now—as though from above, as though from the choir loft—with a tenderness that nearly crumples my heart.

I watch them drink tea and play with the orange kittens.

I watch a living version of Rayya weep in undefended sadness about her divorce while sharing her fears and insecurities about her future.

I watch a younger version of Liz reassure Rayya that she has a safe place to stay now, to get out of the city, to take some time for rest and healing.

I watch Liz say, “You can stay here for as long as you want, until you feel better.”

How earnest they both are, in their openness and trust!

How ignorant they are, of the love and drama they are about to set into play.

Our original agreement was that Rayya would stay at my church for three months.

She ended up staying for almost nine years—right till the end of her life.

Nobody could have seen it at the time, but what Rayya and Liz were unwittingly setting into motion that day—with their warm tea and stray kittens and honest tears—was something you might call “till death do us part.”