Posts Tagged: personal happiness
A New Leaf
Temporary solutions
In 1984, my then-husband and I were ready to turn over a new leaf, and upgrade from an old Formica-topped table we’d been using for several years. This table was, of course, a parental castoff.
My parents had used it in their kitchen, then on their deck. When they bought some beautiful wrought iron furniture at a Meier & Frank warehouse sale, they passed it along with two wooden chairs, Nichols & Stone beauties marred by a strange, sticky finish. Mom let me know that they were “really good” chairs.
Yes, but they were sticky.
It was a temporary solution, but as my mother had explained to me, “Temporary solutions have a way of becoming permanent.” Her example was a crate used as an end table, something you do in college. Ten years later, you look up and that crate is still there, being used as an end table.
Mom had a point. Our entire apartment was furnished in temporary solutions, castoffs and loaners and curbside finds. We’d been using that patio table for at least three years. I used my dad’s staple gun to staple on a new vinyl tablecloth every now and then, but still. I decided to take a look at the “World’s Largest Rummage Sale.”
A heck of a sale
This secondhand extravaganza was held each year in the Memorial Coliseum by Catlin Gabel, a private school in Northwest Portland. The donation drive went on for months, resulting in an astonishing assemblage of upper-crust castoffs. I knew I could find something at the Catlin Gabel sale.
Boy, did I. A square pine table with a dark finish set me back all of $25.00. Such a bargain, for a “really good” table. It was solid, with a pieced top, braced corners and sturdy turned legs. At one time it had a leaf, because it had a central join with pegs on one side, holes on the other, and levered closures (like the ones you find on windows) underneath to hold the two halves tight.
I think someone built this table in a home workshop. Mom was a furniture snob—she’d worked selling furniture at one point in her life—and she approved of the quality. So did I. My husband didn’t understand why we liked it so much, but it fit in our apartment’s dining space, nicely accommodating our family of four.
It made the move from apartment to our first home, where we grew to a family of five. I thought we were fine. Each side could hold two chairs, especially when two were occupied by little girls. But my husband decided that we no longer fit.
A new leaf
He unscrewed the legs, carted the tabletop somewhere for measuring, then carted it back home and put it back together. “We need a new leaf.” I asked him who was making this new leaf. “I know a guy,” was the most he would tell me.
That’s all he would tell me about, well, anything. He followed his father’s advice to “Never tell a woman where you’re going, or how much money you have.” Fine, then. I retaliated by refusing to be curious (can you see how well this marriage was going? but that is not the point of this blog post. well, not really.).
He brought the new leaf home and unveiled it with pride. I was appalled. It had cost $85.00 to have it made for our $25.00 table, and it wasn’t even finished. He said he’d finish it himself, but I knew him. I covered the raw wood with a large tablecloth and got on with life.
The five of us ate dinner together at the elongated table for a few more years. The girls perched on rickety wooden kitchen chairs my husband found secondhand. Us adults continued to sit in the chairs with the sticky finishes.
But he made it home for dinner less and less. Shift work, most of the time. Other times? Who knew. I was resolutely incurious. It was my only defense.
His sticky chair wasn’t usually empty, though. We had dinner almost nightly with my friend Lauren, whose own marriage had ended. Her two kids came to my house after school, and it was easy to feed them dinner on weeknights. She reciprocated on weekends. That filled up the table very nicely.
New Chairs
When my husband finally moved out, the nightly dinners with Lauren and her kids continued. She was right there, every single day, helping me find (and keep) my footing. We formed our own little Kate and Allie situation.
But times change. I went back to work myself, and worked strange hours. My kids were with their father and his new girlfriend part of the time. One of my girls needed extensive surgery, so my family came down to help a lot that next year.
Eventually, Lauren remarried, and I began my single life adventures. But I believe she kind of, you know, saved my life. And I mean that.
Turning over a new leaf
Destruction brings opportunity.
That’s a realization you have after undergoing fundamental devastation. I was grieving the end of my marriage, terrified by the disruption of my children’s security, and just plain furious. But I had to move on. I needed to recognize the opportunity for change.
On the level of personal identity, this meant reclaiming parts of myself I’d set aside. I’d been told by my husband that for the marriage to work, I simply could not be me. I’d given away half of myself (or more, if I’m honest) to be part of that marriage. I wanted it all back and then some.
On the mundane level, that included making decisions about the house and how it was furnished. I looked at every part of my home to make sure it was exactly how I wanted it. Those creaking, rickety kitchen chairs had to go. I laid away four solid oak chairs at an antique mall in Newberg. They were early American in style, and very sturdy. I can’t remember what I paid, maybe $35.00 each? They’d been consigned by a Catholic monk who had finished them himself.
Once I got those home, I felt exalted. No more crappy chairs around my table! I took the table outside, painted the skirt and legs, and refinished the wood top. This included (finally) finishing the leaf, which I had considered taking out. We were back down to a family of four. We didn’t technically need it.
But I’d grown used to the sweep of a larger table. Plus there were kids’ birthday parties to consider. And family dinners on holidays. And all those freaking piles of laundry to fold.
More destruction brings more opportunity
The 2006 house fire allowed me to make more changes, not just in my home’s layout as it was being rebuilt, but in furnishings, because so many were lost. I have a new table now, a sweeping eight-footer. It took some years and some shopping, but it is now flanked by six sturdy modern chairs my daughter found for me on Marketplace.
All on my own, I found two bow back Nichols & Stone chairs for the head and foot of the table (thank you Goodwill, for pricing these beauties at $9.99 each). I like the blend of modern and traditional. And I love a bargain.
The remaining sticky chair is in the bedroom. That’s where I set my purse, and where I heap garments when I can’t decide what to wear.
The oak chairs made it through the fire, and I used them as a temporary solution around the new table. That temporary solution lasted fifteen years before they went to Goodwill. I was glad to see them go. They were sturdy, and gave me good service, but they were also tall and pale and dated. One of them had a little green paint on it. That’s how I identified it when I saw it at my local Goodwill, priced at $14.99.
So long, old oak chairs. It was good to know you.
And yet…
I kept the old table, which also made it through the fire just fine. I’ve loaned it out twice, once to a friend who used it as a desk, then to a daughter until her boyfriend surprised her with a new dining set. Currently, it leans against a wall in the garage, legs detached, solid and square as ever, waiting to be called into service. The new leaf is there, too, minus a skirting board, but still usable.
I like that table. It would work nicely if I ever call it up as a desk, maybe for the office I plan to create in one of the spare rooms. I’m not sure.
Like I said, it’s a really good table. It was always a really good table.
That’s why I’ll never let it go.
I’m not dead.
I’m not dead, I’m languishing.
Languishing is that in-between place, where you’re not one thing or another. You just are. And we all are, right now. Is it over? is it not? Where do we stand with opening up, here in my rigorously liberal city where we have been dutifully masking and distancing and vaccinating and boostering? Are we going to throw away our masks or just wait for the next wave? Will we start eating in restaurants? Are there any restaurants left? Will my book groups start up again?
Can I have a goddamned dinner party already?
I’m not dead, I’m sleeping.
Sort of. I’m tossing and turning my way through some nights, unsure what time it is, if it can be over, if I can get up and get on with the day, if my husband is asleep or not, if I’m asleep or not. Last night I slept eight full hours, and would have slept more but woke up to the sound of a horn giving one loud honk. I started awake, wondering what in the world that was. Was it a foghorn? Unlikely, since I live almost 100 miles inland. Was it a car? Also unlikely because I knew the honk originated within my own head. Yes, it was me. I honked. I honk when I’m falling asleep.
I woke myself up, and who can I blame for that?
I’m not dead, I’m waiting.
I’m waiting for…something. Well, one thing for certain, another grandchild arriving this month. This is the third time I’ve awaited the birth of a grandchild, and the first time was an agony. Now, three times in, it’s more like this. Imagine a woman and her three daughters, who made it through so much together, waiting for one of them to give birth. Three of the four focus on the pregnant woman with keen intensity, watching and waiting and worrying and fussing over every scrap of information as if we are the pregnant ones, not her. She’s merely incubating the baby for us. We will take ownership immediately, as a grandmother and as aunts.
We will all have our new baby soon.
I’m not dead, I’m writing.
Yup. A project that was an idea, then a germ, and then a sprout, is now 60K+ of words. Good words. It’s not quite enough words to send out to my carefully selected first readers, but it’s there and it’s real and I am so delighted and baffled with this project because it’s nothing like Iris or the Gentry books. It’s more like the Trailer Park book. I’m not trying to unravel the knots in anyone’s soul through suffering and humor, well, maybe I am, but it’s a work of pure imagination in a version of America that has never existed. I believe that’s called alt-history in the lexicon of terms I don’t give a shit about when it comes to writing.
Look, this place isn’t real, but my hope is you’ll enjoy the visit.
I’m not dead, I’m bingeing.
I’ve been really miserable this week with the state of my aging, leaky gut, and my husband has been in rehearsals every evening, so I’m watching my streaming channels with an unlikely intensity. Here’s what I can tell you. If you don’t have HBO Max, you should get it in order to watch Somebody Somewhere. If you’re in Schitt’s Creek withdrawal, watch Somebody Somewhere. If you’re languishing, and waiting, and sleeping, watch Somebody Somewhere.
Are you getting the message? Good.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this:
I’m not dead. I’m just here. And I’m glad that you are, too.
And…he’s here. My grandson.
I’m going to start out by saying that my daughter has given me permission to write about the delivery and birth of my first grandson.
Overdue
So, my daughter was overdue. She sailed through her pregnancy with perfect blood pressure, minimal weight gain, healthy habits and (mostly) good humor, interspersed with what she called her “hormone flares,” when lightning bolts shot out of her eyes and she hated everything and everyone. Aside from those, she was doing great, even when she went past her due date by a week. She was due on Friday, and the next Friday, at her doctor’s behest, she arrived at the hospital at midnight to begin the process of having labor induced. When she checked in, her blood pressure was at stroke/seizure level. The dreaded gestational diabetes had arrived.
The only cure is birth.
I didn’t know this. The plan was that I’d sleep as usual on Thursday night, and hop up to the hospital with a paperback book and my phone charger in my purse. There, I would join my daughter and her boyfriend for the birth, which I assumed my tall, athletic daughter would handle with no trouble at all. The best-laid plans, yes?
So I arrived, and heard about the blood pressure, which I could see on a little screen that monitored her erratic, weak contractions, and the beating of my grandson’s heart. This blood pressure was scary. The nurse assured me that an epidural would bring it way down, but before that she needed to move into real labor. She just wasn’t there yet.
My experiences
As a veteran of one completely natural birth and two predominantly natural births, I am under the impression that I know what I’m doing. And maybe I do, but I only know what I’m doing in non-medicalized births. My first labor was a rough walk—and I mean a literal walk, because at some point I got up and began to walk around and they really had to convince me to get back into bed—and my second and third deliveries were induced in hospital to avoid precipitous delivery. That’s how we do things on my side of the family after the first one comes. We go fast and hard. I know this from family lore.
My mother, a second child, was born in the front seat of a truck. During a freak snowstorm in June, my grandparents’ car went into the ditch on the way to the hospital. They were picked up by a bachelor farmer, and at some point my grandmother reached down, pulled her coat up between her knees and caught my mom. Grandma was embarrassed but I suppose that farmer was, too. I’ll tell the story of my grandmother’s third child another time—it’s great. A generation later, my brother took a reasonable time to appear, but my sister and I were born quickly. And I took the usual amount of time to have my oldest, but my second was a three-hour affair. Labor with my youngest daughter took 44 minutes.
Versus reality!
So this was the legacy I thought I’d have passed on to my daughter. And apparently I couldn’t have been more blithely mistaken. When I arrived up at the hospital, she’d been taking Misoprostol for eight hours, without much progress. And they didn’t want to start Pitocin yet. So we spent some hours watching her progress, and talking, and laughing, but really being scared each time that BP cuff inflated and gave us scary numbers. Finally, they offered her some Fentanyl. She took it, knowing it would help with BP and anxiety and pain, but she haaaaated how it made her feel. Sorry, all you opiate lovers out there, but there are people who despise that rush and I am one of them. So is my daughter. But it relaxed her.
We did some walking around the ward. Walking is a good thing to get contractions going, and she had been training for this for months before she and her C started trying for a baby, so we walked a good half a mile or so. This got the contractions started, and we returned to the room and did the breathing that you do, that natural childbirth stuff I remembered from 27 years earlier, because you really can’t forget it. The contractions were really hurting her.
When she asked for her epidural, we all were relieved, knowing it would bring down her blood pressure. But here’s the thing. It also slowed her progress. I remember watching the monitor that showed baby’s heartbeat and my daughter’s contractions. It’s interesting that the monitor showed her lines, and then the lines of the woman laboring in the room directly next to her. It was pretty easy to tell when her neighbor was delivering–the contractions do something dramatic at that point, they go from modest, regular hills to Grand Tetons to the Swiss Alps, a big jagged mountain range that drops off suddenly–and I said, “Looks like your neighbor beat you.” My daughter said, “Remarks like that don’t help, Mom.” At that point, I guess I thought I could still be flip.
Freezing
It was so cold in there, but she didn’t mind, so I dealt with it. When I say cold, I mean freezing. When I say freezing, I mean Arctic. And they kept hooking her up to stuff, and running monitors and lines and so on, and she bravely, stoically consented to all of this because how else do you get that baby out? I stopped being flip and became concerned. I would go out into the lobby occasionally to warm up, and I called T at one point and just softly poured out my concerns. He listened, and he would definitely have patted my hand had he been there, but it was enough just to let out my worries. I was okay. The morning turned into an afternoon, and the afternoon into an evening. I spent that night with them, sleeping in a chair while C slept on a bench/bed that was positioned under the window and under the air duct that kept pushing up a relentless stream of icy air on our heads all day and night.
I dozed, then would wake up and watch her contractions, which evened out as she slept (I thought they had stopped, but the monitor was in the wrong place). I didn’t remark on the appearance of a new neighbor, whose contractions didn’t look very impressive, either. I was so cold that night. And so worried. At some point, C woke up and went to take a shower (I am assuming to WARM UP) and he steered me to the bench, where I slept for two hours under that damn icy air. I apparently kept myself from waking up with a form of lucid dreaming–I kept dreaming cold dreams, like I was asleep in a chest freezer, or I was tied to the wings of a bi-plane with icy air current flowing over me, and the like. This allowed me to sleep instead of waking up to shiver.
Another day
Morning was a relief. Except of course the neighbor’s contractions did the towering peaks thing they were supposed to do, and my daughter’s stayed as gentle and rolling as hills. She was starting to feel like she was doing something wrong, because she just wasn’t dilating. All the loving support from her C, all my motherly ministrations wouldn’t hurry along the process. At 5:30 AM, they broke her water, warning her that she might get an infection. And we waited for that to make a difference. But each thing they did to her seemed like it pushed away the possibility of a regular birth, until the idea of her pushing out a baby was a tiny ship on the horizon, so far away from whatever was happening in that room.
Later in the morning, T brought me a bag with my heart medicine, toiletries and a Pendleton blanket. I sat with him in the blissfully warm lobby, telling him everything while he listened with love and care, then returned to the deep freeze labor room where I cleaned up, BRUSHED MY TEETH THANK GOODNESS, and wrapped myself in the blanket. I wasn’t sure if it gave me the gunslinger air of the Man With No Name, or maybe it gave me and air of some hippie doula lady who was wearing the blanket to usher in the birth with the help of the Universe and its blessings. I kept that blanket wrapped around me tightly. It saved me from frostbite, I think. And my daughter and C stayed calm and brave as she began gently, finally, to make some progress.
Discouraged
Is there any worse feeling than being in hard labor for over 24 hours, and being told you haven’t made any progress? I don’t know. I could have given birth in a field while chewing on a leather strap, then gotten up and gone back to work. I had no idea what to say, what to do, how to help. I just stayed calm and held her hand and watched that monitor, watching for peaks. C had gone out into the hallway to ask the nurses what they thought, and heard one saying something to the effect of, “You know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid that after all this, she’ll push for two hours and we’ll have to section her anyway.”
After all that work? Worry? Waiting? No. Not fair. But that little ship seemed even farther away. I could almost see the sailors waving at us, wishing us well with the Caesarean. Maybe next time, they said. And my kids would have done it, their goal was a healthy, whole baby, not a natural delivery. But she’d worked so hard. They both had. Was major surgery the only option?
To their credit, not one of the nurses, the doctor, or the midwife ever mentioned a C-section. But it was out there. I knew that if she didn’t have the baby by 5:30 am the next morning, they would take him 24 hours after they broke her water. The staff encouraged her to keep trying, and she did. I wish I’d taken notes, I really do. Because it was such an ordeal, amplified by fear, multiplied by the sheer hours we’d been there. But then, finally, after another day had turned to another night, after she’d gotten a temperature and had to start on two IV antibiotics, after an hour when C had ducked out to try to find something to eat and the epidural failed her, my daughter and I sat quietly, doing the breathing while the terrible contractions of active labor overtook her.
Progress.
I knew she was making progress, because this is how my own first labor had progressed. Hours of labor. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and boom. A lot of progress in a short time. When C returned and the midwife checked her again, she was almost there. And after a very kind and sweet anesthesiologist came in and re-relieved her pain (I cannot be thankful enough for how carefully he listened to her, how gently she advised her, how sweetly he encouraged her), after the table full of draped birth supplies was rolled in, our matter-of-fact and encouraging midwife said she could push a little.
C hadn’t told me about what he’d overheard in the hall, but I believe it steeled him to be the best, strongest coach he could be for the pushing. He held one of her hands and pulled back one of her legs, and I took the other. It was just us and a nurse at that point. And after she did push a little, it was clear the baby was descending. I mean, he was arriving. C said, “We need some more people in here.” I thought it might take longer, but somehow, he just knew his son was imminent.
The midwife came back in, in they took the drape off the birth supplies and took the bed apart and made it into a delivery table and ushered in the NICU staff (there because my daughter gave birth in the high-risk area). And she pushed and we cheered and she pushed and the baby began his descent into the world, he was coming and it was happening, slowly but surely and irrevocably, all of us cheering and watching and hoping and that little head appeared and retreated and appeared a little more, and when I got too tired to pull on that leg another doctor took hold, and after fifty minutes of effort and encouragement, my daughter curled up like a potato bug one last time and pushed and then he was there, this long jumble of baby and cord and limbs and head and shoulders, his head a cone and his forehead scratched from battle, but she did it, all that work and he was finally there, 11:11 PM, just 49 minutes short of 48 hours after they got the hospital.
And…
My grandson is the most amazing little thing in the universe to me right now. Beloved, precious and perfect. 8 lb 7 oz and 22 inches, for those of you who would like to know the dimensions. Eye color is still a mystery, hair is soft, silky, blond/brown. He looks like my daughter and C both, and he has the longest legs and squarest shoulders. Everyone is settled in and doing fine, especially since her milk came in. This is a new venture for me, this grandparent thing.
I really can’t wait to watch my grandson grow.
Asking for what we want.
It’s hard, asking for things, isn’t it? At least, for me it is.
The word my mom always used to describe me is “self-sufficient.” She was amazed that a baby could have internal resources. She used the example of cleaning the sun room, which served as a toy room, when I was a baby. She’d dump all the toys from my brother and sister in the middle of the room, and then start sorting them away. I’d sit and play with whatever was left. Eventually, she said, I’d be sitting there, contentedly playing with dustbunnies and a clothespin.
Mom loved this story and I find it illustrative, but not in a “poor pathetic me” way. Oh look at me, the baby on the floor of the sun room, playing with dirt. No, that’s not how I see it, but I have a hard time articulating exactly how I do see it.
Asking for things.
I asked my mother for three things. A small bisque doll from the Shackmans catalog when I was five, like a tiny Bye-lo (it was just like this one). I tried to demand this and it didn’t work. I remember the tantrum I threw. Mom was adamant, but the doll showed up on my sixth birthday, and I remember internalizing the lesson. Things are given. One does not demand. One displays the need, the preference, and one is granted, like magic, what one desires.
Asking again.
I put this strategy to work with the next thing Mom said I asked for; a set of Raggedy Ann and Andy books that would come in the mail, like a book club. I brought her the flyer, talked with her about how I would happily share them with my older sister, how much I wanted them. And asked respectfully if we could at least sign up to get the free book. And miraculously, my mother agreed.
You’d think, having learned how to ask, I’d have tried again. But it wasn’t my nature. The bisque baby tantrum was an aberration in my childhood behavior, and not rewarded. But the book club request was also an aberration, and even though it was rewarded, it wasn’t repeated.
The third and final ask.
I didn’t ask for anything else until I was thirteen. I was at this cool boutique in Bozeman, and I found an alpaca cape trimmed with llama hide. It was a true 1973 leftover hippy wonder garment, and my sister and I wanted it. But I was the one who told our mother about it, I was the one who went home and described it and it cost forty dollars, do you have any idea how much money that was in 1973? I knew I would never get it. My dad made 11K a year as a forester, if that gives you any idea. From somewhere, Mom got the money and bought it for me. It seemed miraculous.
On the way home she explained, “It’s that you never ask for anything, Karen.” And she was right. I didn’t. I think those three things were it, as far as asking my mom for anything at all. She offered plenty and she gave plenty, but it wasn’t because I asked.
When asking backfires.
When my friend Jay was still alive, back when we were still friends, he said, “You don’t ask for much. Hardly anything, to be honest.” But I do ask for things, I really do. I actually lost my friendship with Jay because I asked for one week off from hearing about his problems with a friend of mine. I was so tired of hearing about it that I asked them both for a week where we talked about anything else but their breakup. She completely understood. He ended our friendship. Look, I wanted to say to him, look what happens when I ask for something. But of course, I never said that to him, and he passed away, so that was that.
Asking for something carries risk, then. There is the risk of rejection, of disappointment, of denial.
Still, I continue to ask. I ask for space. I ask for quiet. I ask for respect of my intellectual boundaries, the uninterrupted time I need to live in my head so that writing can come out. I ask for less engagement, less conversation. Sometimes I ask for conversations about dogs or TV shows, rather than emotions or disappointments. I ask for time to go away and be alone. I ask for weekends to myself. I ask for rain checks.
I ask for things that make people feel rejected. Because even though I love them, what I’m really asking for is less of them.
Asking within the marriage.
Everyone else wants more time, more contact, more conversation. I am atypical. And when I admit this, I see how much of the estrangement in my marriage was my fault. Because my ex is a man who needs more. More time, attention, affection and affirmation. Even now when he stops by, I set up my little fences, look at him over my glasses, over my laptop. Sorry, I say. Not a good time. Go talk to your girls.
I remember that he expressed this when we were married. He said, “You never make a fuss over me.” And I said, “What do you want, a one-man-band in the living room every night playing the ‘you are special’ song? A little party to celebrate you?” I also said, “What do you ever do to make me feel special? Ever?” He had no answer, because he basically didn’t do that (as a side note, whenever someone calls me nice, I crack up).
I’m not very nice, and I don’t need anyone to make me feel special. I don’t require it. I’m at times embarrassed when people make me feel special. There will be a birthday or the like and everyone will be so nice and giving and sweet and I’ll become completely flustered, unsure of how to graciously accept the attention. I do like it, once in a while. I just don’t need or want it most of the time.
I’m not like the other girls, you see.
I didn’t understand that. I didn’t understand that with my emotional self-sufficiency comes a lack of empathy for the millions of normal people who aren’t emotionally self-sufficient. Not everyone else is a self-repairing emotional robot. Not everyone wants to go live in their head and make up people and stare at a monitor and type until their fingertips go numb and their eyes bleed. I think anyone who doesn’t is missing out on the one true and real joy of life, but there you have it. Not everyone goes through life listening in on it, recording it for later use in the illustration of some basic emotional truth. Not everyone is interesting in observing life rather than living it.
This is why it shocks me when people say I’m a good mom. I’m not. I’m far too self-involved. I love the interior of my head and I adore my own company. I’m also not a very good friend because I forget people and I don’t make time and I pull away when I want to write or when I’m sad, tired, or overwhelmed by stress. That’s maybe ninety percent of the time. And yet I’m told I’m a good friend, too. I already know I’m hopeless as a wife or girlfriend and have periodically withdrawn myself from that market, though I appear to be doing a good job at the present time. But we are on our second go-round. He knows me. He knows how weird I am. He loves me anyway.
That is a wonderful thing, to ask for acceptance and love, and to receive it.
In conclusion.
I guess I never really understood how strange I am until I started thinking about this. I think I should have to wear a sign. It would say, “Faulty wiring.” It would warn the world that I’m not quite the norm in the head, but I like it in here, anyway.
And now, I’m off to play with my dustbunnies and clothespins.
Save
Haunted by Exes: the spirits of exes past
Over the course of four weeks this fall, I had an unexpected amount of contact with four exes. It was a concentrated dose of visitations from my past, and just like Ebenezer Scrooge, I found it uncomfortable. But you know what? I’ve decided to view it as an opportunity for personal growth. Growth is never comfortable.
1. An Ex from the ether
I have one person blocked on Facebook, and the first ex who contacted me is that one person. He’s blocked on my personal profile, but I received a lengthy letter from him at my author page. Eyebrows up, user banned. That is all I have to say on this matter.
2. This Ex was all my doing
I’ve been submitting a lot of work over the last few months, which involves sorting through writing, old, new, in-progress and best forgotten. It’s all part of building up the inventory.
I found a group of poems and a piece I wrote about an affair that ended years ago. It was on-and-off, adolescent in its furious breakups and emotional reconciliations. It’s difficult for me to track just how long we carried on like that. Two years? Three? I honestly don’t remember. I look back on it with a distant amusement. Who was that woman, mowing down the traffic cones, having all the Big Feelings, writing those tortured love poems?
Yes, love poems. I write very few, because I’m not in love all that often. But I read this flaming little bouquet of poems, and I thought, wow. Look at that. I was totally insane.
Despite all the stormy crashings and thunderation of our time together, this man and I have remained on friendly terms. It probably helps that we live in different towns. I found him online, said hello and asked him if he wanted to see the document. He did, very much. It triggered a bittersweet rush of memory and emotion on his part, just as it did for me. The exchange was short, pointless, sweet. And over.
3. The “you have got to be kidding me” Ex
So, then, contact number three. A year after the breakup, I received a long email from my most recent ex. I actually woke up to this email. What a way to start a day. It was a catalog of all the ways that he was perfect, blameless, faultless, selfless and giving, while I was mean, cruel, uncaring, selfish and inconstant. He backed up his claims with copious evidence, including a list of every single time I’d changed my mind over the course of three and a half years, including something about my dining room table. I change my mind a lot, it appears.
After thousands (yes, thousands) of words, he pronounced that he will never be able to love again for as long as he lives, for which he blames me. And not to write back as he is “completely done” with me.
He signed off, “GOODBYE FOREVER.”
Just a thought, here. If, after a year of silence on her part, you have to create a new email address to write to someone because she’s blocked all your other email addresses, maybe it’s not necessary to write her to let her know that you’re completely done with her. Maybe this is redundant. Maybe you can just write the email and delete it, rather than sending it.
Because if you don’t, you’re going to get one hell of a scathing reply.
4. And then, this Ex happened
A week before that email hate-bomb arrived, I’d decided that I might like to try dating again. I know, I know, I wasn’t going to DO that, but apparently this old grey mare isn’t dead yet. I like having a man in my life almost as much as I don’t.
So, I signed onto a site to create a profile. I’d not used this site before. One of the features? When someone is looking at your profile, his face pops up in a circle with a little ‘boop’ to say hello.
The very first face that popped up was a familiar one. I dated this man ten years ago, and I thought at the time that we broke up for really good reasons. I realized within a few months that they were really stupid reasons, but one must live with one’s actions. He’d gone on to get married, and I’d gone on to do whatever it is I do.
But there he was, and I said hi! and he said hi! and we started to chat and we started to laugh. I remembered how funny this man is, and how smart, and how well-read and deep and intellectually curious. He is so many wonderful things, plus the additional wonderful things added by ten more years of living a full and interesting life.
Reader, I’m dating him.
I will write sometime about the fluttery, intense, eerie feelings around this reconciliation. But for now, just know that little birds are circling round my head, trailing ribbons and chirping songs of happiness. My stomach dances with delight and anxiety. I smile like a fool. I’m happy.
I change my mind a lot, remember?
Save
The Introvert’s Lament, or Why I Like Being Single
It’s been a year now, a year of being single. It’s time to celebrate with a fresh, crisp bulleted list.
What I enjoy about being single:
- Comfortable cotton underthings. Yes, that’s right, Jockey for Her is number one on the list.
- Long uninterrupted stretches of time in which to write. Or not. But it’s mine.
- Control over the type and amount of music in the car. And type and amount of conversation, too.
- No mansplaining. I hate the term because I’ve heard it too much, but it’s the best there is for a phenomenon I can’t abide.
- A general lack of huffiness. I’m not sure why I attract huffy men, or maybe all men are huffy. I don’t miss the huffy.
- Zero discussion as to what or where or when to eat.
I know this seems like a relatively modest list, as far as happiness components. But these small things can absolutely wear away at me until happiness is impossible. Wearing uncomfortable underwear while riding in a car with a huffy mansplainer who can’t figure out where to eat sums up too much of my last relationship with [redacted] (I’d also like to point out that he’s happily established with another girlfriend, so it’s not like there isn’t someone who can handle all this stuff).
Here’s how it happened. Not the relationship’s end. Relationships tend to grind to a halt while you’re not paying attention, they’ve usually ended before you start to notice, and are actually over during that terrible, pointless part of the process called “working on things.” This is how I admitted it was over, because admitting it meant I had to take action, and taking action is the hardest part.
Coming clean.
Just over a year ago, I was sitting in my neighborhood pie house having breakfast with my youngest daughter and a friend visiting me from Tacoma. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but we were laughing over some rapid-fire group of observations. I was enjoying myself so deeply, so joyously. In the pause that comes after people laugh, I spoke without having a clue what I was going to say. As best as I can remember, this is it:
“I feel like I’ve had every conversation I’m ever going to have with Redacted, and now we’re just going to repeat. I’m so unhappy. And the weird thing is, I feel like I have no right to be happy. I feel like I’ve somehow signed away my right to happiness.” It only took saying it out loud to hear my own stupidity.
I’d been hanging in there for a few months trying to work on it, making myself absolutely miserable so that he wouldn’t be. It had to change.
The inalienable right to happiness.
Do we have a right to be happy if it causes someone else pain? I know, it’s surprising that anyone still asks that question, right? We’ve been living under the imperative of personal fulfillment for decades, now. Self-sacrifice is out of fashion. The last thing anyone in our society is ever supposed to question is the right to personal happiness. But I did. I’ve been asking that same question for much of my adult life when it comes to ending relationships. Am I entitled to want personal happiness?
I’m afraid I’m going to have to come down on the side of yes. Yes, even if it makes someone else unhappy. Even if I’ve discussed commitment and planned for the future. Worst of all, even if it disappoints someone who has been good to me. I am entitled to at least try for happiness. Because, to be fair, I’ve had to allow that same right to several men who decided they would be happier without me. And though I greeted their decisions with more than the usual amount of disbelief and anger–I guess I think I’m really something special–I did know, deep down, that they had the right to leave me to pursue happier lives. I think this is in the American Bill of Rights or the Constitution somewhere.
But back to breakfast. And figuring out how to leave. Leaving is never easy, even when it’s easier than staying.
Timing.
What followed was a discussion on timing. Late summer meant the fall holidays were approaching. Would I drag out the inevitable through Thanksgiving, our anniversary and Christmas? And having gritted my teeth and made it through Christmas, there was his birthday, and after that Valentine’s Day, and…no, best to do it soon. ASAP. On the double. So, in early October, after what I thought was a very kind and amicable discussion, I walked out of Redacted’s house feeling lighter than air. That was not the end of it, of course. There were dismaying reverberations that still echo around today. But the difficult deed was done.
Friends.
The relief of ending a failing relationship is considerable, but the tension-filled months before the breakup had been sandpaper to my psyche. After the breakup, I stayed abraded for a while. Skittish, scuttling away from human contact like a fragile crab, I spent the first six months hiding from the world to repair my damaged introversion.
Eventually, I could get back out there and see my friends again. Oh, my wonderful friends, waiting with open arms, accommodating my single self in their couples-oriented events, rounding out dinners with charming men who were often a foot shorter than me, but still great company. They even found games that three people could play, instead of just four. I love my friends. One, though, was not supportive of the idea of a breakup. When I called her to say that I was tired of being with Redacted and ready to be alone for a while, she said, “I can only support your breaking up with Redacted if it’s to find a better relationship. I can’t support it if you’re breaking up with him to be alone.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “Thank you for putting up with me.” I hung up the phone and burst out laughing. And of course, I broke up with him to be alone.
So wish me happy anniversary, people. It’s a year now, of being single. Let’s hope this time, it lasts. Except–it never does.