Robot

I had a repeat guest in one of my knitting classes recently, who had previously learned knitting from me and dropped in again. She asked me how I'm doing, surprised me by remembering specific details about my family and whatever other bullshit I talked about with her last time. I asked about her two grown daughters, and she told me that her older daughter, who is twenty-four, had a bad Christmas. "She told her boyfriend he had until Christmas to propose to her," she told me, "and he didn't get her a ring. He got her two ugly sweaters. From Marshall's!"

I don't know what was funnier about this: the fact that she was so appalled that her daughter's boyfriend had given her sweaters in lieu of an engagement ring, or how appalled she was that said sweaters were purchased from Marshall's. To be fair, I would be a little (lot) miffed if my significant other only gave me two sweaters for Christmas, and I have been the recipient of a used DVD of season one of Mr. Show that was not even wrapped. Even so, I had to take a tiny amount of issue with the attitude she had towards her daughter's boyfriend not hopping to it when it came to something as immature as an ultimatum. "I understand your daughter having hurt feelings over this," I said, "but speaking from experience, I would never want to be married to someone who was, you know, pushed into it."

I had to explain the history of it, realizing that she did not know I had been married, that I had gotten married right around the age her daughter is now, and to a boy around the age her daughter's boyfriend is. My ex-husband claimed, around the time we separated, that he never wanted to get married and that it was the fact that I had wanted it and he had not that drove a wedge between us. I now know that wasn't really the whole story, that his percolating mental illness was what separated us, and that enough time has passed for me to be content with it. I've settled into divorce the way he was never able to settle into being married. I do have to give him credit, however, for teaching me such an important lesson. People assume, when I tell them that I am happily divorced, that I never want to get married again. I immediately disagree on that point, and explain that of course I would get married again, but that I would only want to marry someone who didn't need convincing. Just like dating someone who didn't really want to date me showed me not to do that. I don't ever want someone to accuse me of pushing them into something and having even a shred of doubt that I'm completely innocent. This isn't so much an aha moment as it is a no duh moment: don't marry someone who doesn't really want to be married. No duh. Don't date someone who will barely admit that they actually are dating you. No duh.

My viewpoint on this is ambivalent, in the truest sense of the word: I am split between contradicting opinions. Marriage seems like such a huge thing to people because we convince ourselves that we are going to sacrifice our autonomy completely, that we will never have any input on another decision, and, oh horror of horrors, that we will NEVER FUCK ANYONE ELSE AGAIN! My answer to any of those fears is: whoopy-flipping ding. On the one hand, just find someone you like having sex with at least 75% of the time and who agrees with you at least 25% of the time and stop being a fucking baby about it. On the other hand, no one should agree to something that will make them miserable just because it will make someone else happy. On the one hand, he's a dink for getting her two ugly sweaters (from Marshall's!) and on the other hand, she's a dink for trying to force his hand like that.

Explaining how I felt about this to a woman who is twenty years my senior and who has been married since she was younger than I was felt like a very odd role-reversal: I had some insight to pass on to her because I could see both sides of the argument, while her situation only left her with one view of it. Divorce endows a person with a very specific type of wisdom, and it's the wisdom no one really wants. It's similar, I imagine, to knowing what it feels like to get shot in the kneecap. Given the choice, just about anyone would say, "No, thanks, I'd rather not know what that feels like."

Struggling to explain how I feel about marriage to someone with such a narrow view on it is similar to the way certain friends of mine just don't understand what I'm talking about when it comes to money because they have never been poor. Or the same friends, when I try to explain my perspective on death to them, because they have never lost a parent and they literally can't see my point of view. A loss that great levels everything, makes your focus shift. To me, death is a part of life, and it needs to be dealt with, but I have seen proof that while the hurt is immeasurable at the time, it fades, and keeps fading, and there actually comes a point where it's faded so much, you kind of wish for it back because you almost feel numb to the loss. To me, I feel as though my perspective is healthy, because it's the only one I have and I have to live inside of it, but I worry that I just sound like a cold, practical robot to them. The same way that I fear sounding like a cold, practical robot when it comes to marriage and divorce. Still, like I said, it's just my opinion, and I wouldn't try to force it on anyone. And besides, what do I know? My guest realized that I'm not an expert, I'm just a cold, practical robot who teaches knitting. The only expert opinion I could give her was on the exact level of ugliness of the sweaters. And yes, she showed me a picture, and they were pretty ugly.

Shitty Gardener

Something ended recently, and I wasn't even going to write about it, I was trying so hard to make it not be a thing. And I've come to the conclusion that everything is a thing with me. This is a smaller thing, but it's still some...thing I need to deal with. It was not unexpected. I saw it coming from really far away, actually, and that cushioned the blow a little. I met someone during the Word X Word Festival last summer, and we were kind of seeing each other, until he met someone he wants to get serious with, and now it's just not happening anymore. It's not what I want, obviously, but like I told him when he let me know, it's not up to me.
I am a worse actress than even I thought I was. Two days after I had this exchange with him, I was talking to my friend Carrie about it, trying, as always, to explain my way out of it so that I didn't look ridiculous. I failed. Carrie interrupted me and said, "Oh, you're heart-broken!"
After that, I think I might have tried to laugh and walked away. I will get emotional if no one can see it, but only then. He was back in town this week, for this year's Word X Word, and I felt like a glass of water that was about to spill half the time. And I did spill. I spilled like five buckets of water being upended at the same time. I made my friends form a human screen around me while very quietly breaking down in the middle of a crowded room. I did finally have to tell him, on the second-to-last night, that this week was harder for me than I thought it would be, and then waited while he figured out what that meant. When he finally did, he offered to go throw himself in traffic if that would make me feel better. I told him, no thanks, that's not what I want, you dingus. Then, trying to make me feel better, he told me I smelled good and looked nice. "Thanks, I know, " I said, thinking, are we just listing obviously true things now?
What made it even stickier was that I still looked forward to seeing him, even after he told me that this was the way it was going to be. In the midst of the educational, athletic sex in hotel rooms and, occasionally, my apartment, we became good friends. A friendship that grows around a hook-up is like that tree that grew around a bicycle-eventually, the tree got so much bigger that it picked up the bicycle into it. I can't tell, with this metaphor, if the friendship is the tree or the bicycle. I've always been a shitty gardener.
The only reason that we were even seeing each other, albeit casually as fuck and despite him living in New York, for nearly a year is because I made it happen. I'm flexible, and I don't think of it as being a huge inconvenience to travel to see someone. It worked out pretty great, actually. I would visit my friend Gill, who also lived in Queens, and squeeze in a visit with my brother, then wait until the end of the day to make him meet me for dinner. It was easy for me. My pussy is fucking magical. Not Move-To-Another-State-Magical, not even Come-Visit-Me-Magical, but it is Walk-Through-Two-Feet-Of-Snow-Several-Blocks-Magical. We were friends. It was affectionate, it was supportive, and aside from text messages, it was completely contained in twelve-hour periods every few months.
I didn't try to change it because it was amorphous-it had no framework, no shape. I never found the right motive for asking him where it was going. I knew he was dating other people, or at least trying to, and honestly, despite the fact that I know that my pussy is fucking magic, I never thought it was enough when held up against someone he could see more than once a month at most. I'm not even sure what, if anything, I wanted it to be, but I tried to grow it like a seed in a cup, forgetting, again, that I'm a shitty gardener.

Wild Card

I was at the playground the other day with my favorite people: best friend, her husband, her daughter, and her brother. I was talking to Gabriel about Winnie the Pooh, and who would be what characters in our group of friends. "Well, I told Najwa she would be Pooh. She didn't like that."
I agreed even though I had originally thought she would be Kanga, being so maternal and loving. Her brother took no thought as he is very clearly an Eeyore, and Gabriel is definitely a Tigger. In fact, I think Gabriel may have time-traveled at some point and inspired the character of Tigger. "Who would I be?" I asked, and Gabriel thought about it for a few seconds before saying, "None of them. There's no sarcastic, you-like character in the entire Winnie the Pooh universe."
I wanted to object, but I didn't even though I only felt I should half-give it to him. Yeah, I'm sarcastic, I wanted to say, but I'm also a few other things (I think). I thought about what this signifies, because this exact same thing has happened to me twice before with different groups of people, none of whom I am close with any longer.
The most recent time was when I was crashing with my friends Tony and Colin. Tony, Colin, and our friend Shauna were talking about whom would be whom on Bob's Burgers. It was very quickly decided that Tony would be Louise, Colin would be Bob, our friend Jesse would be Gene, and Shauna would be Linda. "So, I would be Tina," I said, and no one agreed.
It was decided that I could not be Tina Belcher because I am not, in fact, a strong, sensual woman. And to be fair, they really wanted me to move out so they could have their space back, so it felt as though they wouldn't give me a character because they didn't want me there. I can understand that.
The other time was with my former in-laws, and it was Family Guy. Even though I am very, very clearly (to myself, at least) a Brian, no one would quite all the way agree with me. The argument was mostly from my ex, and I think it boiled down to, "No way, Brian's awesome," so there's that. It didn't bother me at that time, it just annoyed me that I could never quite get my opinion all the way on the table with them. I was the oddball because I was never quite one of them. They had a character for everyone but me.
It's happened other times, also, when discussing who would be who out of the cast of Scrubs, Friends, The Wire, and Community. I do realize that I shouldn't be reading so far into what it means that my personality doesn't fit into any of these very specific boxes, but it makes me wonder just a little bit if this is an indicator of something else. Characters are based on archetypes, and every cast of characters, whether it is in a children's program or a heavy drama, has those archetypes represented. I have few close friends, and I think that is because I have tried so hard to break myself of my old habit of trying too hard, so now that earnestness that used to put people off has been replaced by an aloofness that people kind of don't know what to do with. I disappear from people's lives because I don't want to be annoying, and then I don't like it when they forget me. And with any group of friends I end up in, I'm still not sure what I even contribute, or what my place is. And I don't know if it is a good or a bad thing that my friends, who know me the best, can't clearly peg me as any character when they play these games. Maybe I'm just kind of hard to figure out, and I guess that's okay, but at the same time, if I knew what part I was playing, it might be easier to figure out what my purpose is. Or maybe I'm just meant to be the wild card in every deck, and that's my purpose.

Survivor Guilt

As I was driving away from the house following the conversation that resulted in my divorce, crying that hysterical, panicked, painful kind of crying, the type of crying that can bruise your ribs if you don't control your breathing, the thought that kept going through my head was, "Who is going to love me?"
I was 29, fifteen pounds overweight, and I had been in love with the same man since I was 22. In my estimation, at that moment, I didn't know what I could offer anyone else.
Nearly two years later, as I stood in the courthouse, waiting for my case to be called in and listening to my ex-husband spout a string of nonsense about how he is going to become a civil engineer and design septic tanks for the Mars space colony, I looked at him and thought, "Who is going to love him?"
It was not a malicious thought. In fact, it made me feel absolutely helpless-like I had failed. I loved him the most in the whole world at one point. I loved him at an unhealthy level. I know I loved him more than I loved myself, and I can't picture myself being able to deal with him in his current state. Even I am not strong enough to sit and listen to him paint a delusional picture of 3-D printed houses and how the NSA might be investigating him. I could humor his grandiosity at one point, but this is too much even for me.
I have only gotten more healthy since he cut me loose, and I feel like he has gotten progressively sicker. Our relationship was parasitic, and now that he has half the blood supply to work with, he can't take care of himself. I know that I carried him, but I had no idea how much I was carrying him.Whatever mental issues he has have either just now presented, or they have accelerated since we separated. He looks thinner, and grayer, like he has aged ten years.
The person in front of me in court was not the man I fought with, the man who kissed me first, who brought me flat ginger ale when I was sick. He was barely a shadow of that person. The way he was talking to me felt detached, like there had never been anyone in there who loved me. He talked to me like an old friend, but there was a remove, like we were old work friends, not old best friends.
An overwhelming feeling of guilt came over me, that I was not anticipating. I thought I would feel relief when the judge pronounced that our divorce would become official in 120 days. I thought I would feel closure. I felt nothing approaching resolution-all I felt was guilt that I didn't fix him. I know that the guilt is irrational, and that I am not responsible for him, but knowing that doesn't make it go away. I keep thinking that if I had fought back, if I had not so quickly acquiesced to his need to get a divorce, he might still be mentally sound, and yeah, I might not be as happy, but maybe I was the thing that tied him to the ground, and my happiness was what needed to be sacrificed to keep him well. Or maybe this would have been bigger than both of us. There is a very specific God complex that arises as a result of a former partner losing touch with reality after a break-up.
I know that the guilt I am feeling is survivor's guilt-I got out of the wreckage, but I left some people behind. My ex's family are the ones who are taking care of him, and will continue to do so until he stabilizes and can actually take care of himself. I feel like I broke my promise to them as well, my promise to keep him safe. Of all the things I was expecting to feel leading up to my divorce, this came as the most surprising, and the one thing I can do the least about. It is not my job, or even my hobby, to fix him, and I have to tell myself that every time I feel the guilt try to fish hook me back to that place.

Nice

I was driving home from the grocery store the other day, thinking about the fact that after nearly two years of stasis, my divorce is actually filed with the Berkshire Probate and Family Court and I have an upcoming court date to look forward to. On April 11, just 4 days after I turn 31, I will be testifying before a judge to the fact that my marriage is irretrievably broken, and hopefully the whole process will be finalized by Bastille Day. The fact that a marriage can still be legal, can still exist at all, after this much time apart, and this much hurt, seems crazy, but it is a fact. It's something I have learned about divorce since I started working for a lawyer: sometimes they take forever simply because people are lazy and just don't feel like filing the necessary paperwork. Or, in my case, because they want it to be over but don't want to fork over the $215.00 for filing fees and sheriff's service. Divorce is expensive, and I waited Gino out because I'm stubborn and I thought the onus should be on him to pay the fees. It's juvenile, but I don't really care that much about doing the mature thing when at certain points in the past year, I had to live on 5 dollars a day for weeks at a time just so my bills were paid. I was not dragging my feet or stalling-I just didn't have the funds to cut these ties for good.
I was thinking about all of this, and flipping through songs on my iPod, not really paying attention more than I had to, and I thought about the fact that Gino only has one suit, and it is the same suit that he wore in our wedding, and that suit is currently hanging in my closet because it just kind of ended up there. I had the thought, "I should bring the suit to him so he has something nice to wear for court," and then I had to stop and wonder why I still care about him having something nice to wear at all, let alone something nice to wear to divorce me in.
During this whole ordeal, the popular opinion has been, from a few people, that I am too nice. I accommodated my ex at every turn for no reason other than the fact that I wanted to have a big banner over my head that read LOOK AT HOW WELL I'M HANDLING THIS! I know that some of my need to handle it well was to take some of the responsibility away from him. If I was handling it this well, he didn't hurt me that much, and therefore, no one could hate him. I have tried to find ways to make him look good, to work out my feelings over this while trying to avoid placing the blame completely on him. I wanted to make the fact that he wanted this divorce not his fault, or as if he had no choice even though I know I was a good wife. I am still trying to figure out if trying to remain friends with him was due to actually wanting him in my life because I still needed him, or if I was just trying another way to make him look better. It doesn't matter now since we aren't friends any more.
This moment where I thought about how I can continue to make my ex-husband look good (sartorially, this time at least) came on the heels of feeling guilty all day over my shitty attitude just the night before. I went out to a party and even though I had been looking forward to it, and was enjoying myself at first, I gradually sank into a bad mood. I had a busy day without enough sleep the night before, my feet hurt, I didn't feel fuckable, the room was crowded, and I just started being kind of a bitch. A guy was there who I know, and he always catches me right at a moment when I'm not smiling and then tells me that I should smile. I get self-conscious when he is around me because I am just waiting for him to point out the fact that I'm not smiling. And then I overcompensate, and smile too much, and I feel like my smile is empty and doesn't quite reach my eyes. I don't smile all the time because the truth is, sometimes I don't feel like it. Especially if I'm concentrating or just trying not to trip over my feet or, as was the case the other night, just really tired.
I could not have even forced myself to smile that night because it just felt like everyone was more alert and having a better time than me, and when this guy asked me what was wrong, I was kind of snappy. "I'm tired," I said, refusing to engage because I just wanted to sit, and wait for the night to wind down so I could get a ride home. I felt guilty the next day because of the fact that sometimes, I'm grumpy. And then guilty over the fact that when I'm grumpy, I'm not always nice to people. And then guilty about the fact that I am still trying to do nice things for my ex when he really doesn't deserve them. And then guilty over the fact that I couldn't be nice and pretend I was having a great time the night before. There is a chance I am reading too far into being in a bad mood on one occasion, and my conflicting feelings about my ex are coming about naturally because after nearly two years of waiting, this could be coming to an end very quickly.  The one probably has nothing to do with the other, and I should maybe be a little nicer to myself, at least as nice as I am trying to be to the man who is divorcing me.

What It Looks Like

This week was the anniversary of my mother's death and unlike the rest of that side of my family, I did not post anything about it or acknowledge it until now because, after this amount of time, I didn't want to. I am allowed to miss my mother by myself, without involving anyone else. I didn't even remember on the day of, truthfully, until I was home, on my couch at the end of the day. It occurred to me almost as an afterthought, something in the back of my mind getting pushed up to the front. The fact that most of the day went by without incident and then the memory that I still miss her came back to me at a convenient hour, after I was done attending to my responsibilities, when I didn't have to put on a show for anyone, frankly, was kind of a relief. For years, I would be inconsolable for the entire day, and in reality the week leading up to and following it. I would be despondent in the morning, flinty and anxious all day, crying on and off like it had just happened yesterday because it felt as if it had just happened yesterday. This year, I got through most of the day, and when it bothered me it was a less sharp pain. It has been eighteen years, and this gives some weight to the adage that time heals all wounds.
I grieve privately, and I am allowed to grieve privately. I don't need to plaster the fact that the hurt of losing my mom still aches all over a social networking site and I know this might make me a horrible person, but when my family starts posting things about it in a way that feels as though they are doing so on my behalf, I don't appreciate it. My sister posts a status update outlining her own sadness over it and tags me, roping me in with it as if she can just assume she knows how I feel, that my emotions must mirror hers. My cousin posts pictures of my mother from when she was in the hospital, at her worst, no longer the healthy, alive person I want to remember, but looking shrunken, like a husk of who she was, and tags me in the photos so they show up in my timeline without warning, and without my permission. They mean no harm by doing so, and I have no right to be annoyed by this but the thing that gets me is no one asked me. To make their grief public is their prerogative, but they still haven't absorbed by now that it is just not how I do things. I might work things out this way, by writing about it, and while this is public, this is me speaking for myself. This is not a photo of my mother in a hospital bed smiling despite the fact that she is fighting a fight she can't win, or my sister broadcasting her needs to all of her friends and, by extension, my friends. The fact that this makes me so angry is ridiculous, and I can never confront them, and of course I never will because it will only create more problems. I will talk about it, but trying to get my family to change would be like showing black horses, to use one of my mother's famous malapropisms.
My mother's family does this often, not just around the time of year when she died. Every once in a while, one of my aunts posts a picture of my mother on Facebook, and of course tags me even though I'm not in the photo. I know they mean well, and of course they are trying to keep her memory alive, but all it does is remind me that my mother is gone. I don't need to be reminded that my mother is gone. I do remember it, all the time, to the point where it almost seems like she was never even alive at all, and I have trouble remembering a time when I wasn't missing her. I had twelve years with my mother before she died, but sometimes those years seem like they never even happened. This is what my grief looks like. It looks like me struggling to remember what it felt like to actually have a mom. It looks like feeling guilty over being unable to form a bond that is more than just a friendship with my stepmother because I don't know how to be a grown woman with a mother. It looks like that disconnect extending all the way to my relationship with my father, how I feel like I try to be more of a friend than a daughter to him. It looks like keeping my family at arm's length because I know they could be gone at any moment and maybe if we aren't so close, it won't hurt as much. It looks like something I don't want everyone to look at because I am not proud of it, so I keep it to myself. It does not look like a status update written by someone else.

Blog Therapy

I was texting back and forth with my friend Gabriel this past week, giving him some advice as he has started his own blogging project, and it wasn't until after I texted him that, "If I hadn't been blogging over that whole year and change after my breakup I wouldn't have known what to do," that I realized I had not posted anything new since the day after Christmas, and before that, the last new blog post was from three months before. In the thickest, murkiest part of my post-breakup depression, I was posting twice a week, and then three times a week when I faced my first romantic let-down. I blogged every single detail of my stupid broken heart and my disappointed vagina to such an extent that I got into trouble. I lost one friend, who I thought was my best friend, and I kind of pissed off another friend who eventually got over it. I shared too much, but I still regret nothing. I did make my ex not want to be friends any longer, and I can't say I wasn't expecting that to happen eventually. We were only going to be friends until I started saying no to him.
I know the fact that I haven't been blogging my fingers down to the bone lately is a good sign. Blogging was what I did instead of therapy, and it paid dividends I can't imagine therapy ever would have. I can actually go back and read through how painful it was, and even though some of the really melodramatic things I said make me roll my eyes now, I got them out. I can visually chart my progress because I recorded everything, every high and low moment, and I am glad that I listened to the friend who told me that starting a blog might be a good idea. It was a useful outlet, albeit an outlet that has closed itself off a little recently.
The truth of why I haven't posted much lately is because of how mundane being single is once you are settled into it. There aren't a ton of big, crazy revelations about it: it's lonely, but not all the time, and every once in a while I get to spend time with someone I really like, and even though I miss him when I don't get to see him, it's fine. I have the typical problems most people have with being alone. Every good thing comes with something I don't particularly like stuck to the back of it like a security tag the store forgot to remove. I like not having to ask anyone's permission to do whatever the actual fuck I want, but I hate having to sleep alone at the end of the day. I still wake up at least once a night and the loneliness of that moment where I realize I am by myself still hurts, more than it should. I like that I can cook what I want, without having to check what anyone else feels like having, but I hate having to portion everything down to just make enough for one person. Being single feels wonderful when you go to a party and don't have to make sure someone else is enjoying it as much as you are every thirty minutes, or when you can take a day trip to New York without notifying anyone, but feels a little horrible when you get home and have no one to talk to.
These are not new things, so I haven't felt the need to catalog every single one of them. The point of therapy is to treat something that isn't working. By making writing my therapy, I treated what was disordered, and now that I don't feel disordered, I'm no longer treating. I know I can always turn to blog therapy again, but right now, I don't feel I have that much to say. It's almost, in its own way, a little bit sad. Realizing that I haven't blogged much of anything felt like realizing that I haven't called a friend I saw almost every day for over a year, and that I just don't need that much any longer. It's tantamount to realizing I haven't spoken to my ex face-to-face in almost a full year, and I used to think I could never go a day without seeing him. The difference between my ex and blogging is, I am certain I will never need him in my life again. Blogging, however, I am pretty sure I will end up coming around to again when I do need it, and when I feel like I do have something to say again.
But definitely check out Gabriel's blogging project because I think everyone should read it:
http://www.squidheadfiles.com/2014/01/no-dj-is-better-than-his-crowd.html