So, it’s been six years since I’ve dated. And when I did date six years ago, I was 1. hotter, 2. aloof, and 3. carefree. All of these things made the process much easier and far less painful than what I’m experiencing right now.
Before, I generally just floated around dating men (boys) who were interested in me. I never had the experience of pursuing anyone, because I’d never been single for long enough to care about finding anyone. Also, I’d never met anyone I was really interested in. I always did the breaking up in my relationships.
Therefore, I was never rejected. This worked well enough as a coping strategy, but the rejection has finally happened, and it’s been tough.
Guy Who Works on My Floor, I’m talking about you.
After the horrifying experience in my bedroom, I’ve hardly heard anything from him. Maybe a text and IM or two, and some comments on my Facebook wall. But I’ve definitely been rejected in a big way, and for a while there I wasn’t handling it very well. Namely, I came to the conclusion that I must be crazy and undateable. Which may or may not be the logical conclusion.
However, it’s been over a month now, and the sting of the blow has finally worn off a bit. And, remarkably, we haven’t even run into each other at all, despite the fact that our companies’ offices share the same half of the same floor of the same building. This coincidence is too great, since we used to see each other at least once a week in our shared kitchen. I suspect he’s hiding from me, since I’m definitely not hiding from him.
But, just in case we ever do run into each other, I’ve been rehearsing a conversation that might take place if he ever tries to ask me out again.
Case in point:
Me, through Facebook status: I’m going to spend the night hiding from the world.
GWWOMF: Do you mind if I hide with you?
Me: Funny, I thought that you’ve spent the last month communicating to me that you’re not interested.
GWWOMF: Oh. I thought I spent the last month not communicating at all.
Me: Exactly.
There are variations on this, of course, but I always get the punchline.
And, of course, this conversation would never happen in real life. Partly because he’s too clever to respond the way I have him responding here (and would never give me the punchline), but also because clearly he’s never going to ask me out again.
I’ve continued to date. A lot. Probably too much. I call it my rebound rampage.
And I’ve also continued to not blog. In case you haven’t noticed. Because, by the way, my antidepressants got doubled last week. And my doctor prescribed some Klonopin on top of that. Merry Christmas to me!
Anyway, hopelessly cute Dog Park Guy who has dimples and beautiful brown hair and is all-around WAY out of my league took me to the movies last Wednesday. This is the conversation that ensued on the drive there.
DPG: So, my buddy asked me to help him ring shop today for his girlfriend.
Me: That’s awesome! Did you find something?
DPG: Well, what do you think a reasonable amount to spend on a ring is?
Me: Well, um, I’m poor, so my number is probably really different from yours.
DPG (who, did I forget to mention, is VERY well off): Oh, c’mon. Just give me a number.
Me: Well, you don’t want to be ostentatious about it. (Stalling as I try to remember how much MY engagement ring was and then adding a little extra on top of that so that I don’t sound too pathetic.) Maybe seven or eight grand?
DPG: Oh, yeah. I was thinking more like 20.
Me: Yeah.
It’s been a week, and I still haven’t heard from him.
Just like marriage, divorce is harder than I thought it would be.
Specifically, I’ve become just a bit needy. Sitting at home used to be my favorite thing in the world to do. I’d put an Ella Fitzgerald record on and drink some wine and stare into space and think and write and meditate and light incense. And now I can’t stand to do it for longer than a couple of hours. I actually look forward to going to work in the mornings, which is a really scary thought. And every night when the workday is finally over, I look at the next 4-5 hours stretching before me and wonder how in the world I will fill them.
But, God, I do remember this feeling. I had it right before my doctor diagnosed me as clinically depressed last April. The agonizingly slow passage of time coupled with the sense that time is passing much too quickly, and if I could just stop it for a bit, I could figure everything out and then proceed with my life without missing a beat. I guess it all comes down to feeling passed by. Passed over.
I have some friends, but they seem preoccupied with their lives. I’ve realized how much married people really do just sit at home and do nothing. Since they have someone else sitting there doing nothing with them, they develop a sense of false comfort that they’re actually doing something. I know this, because I did exactly that.
I have a dog, of course. We go for walks. I talk to him more than I’d like to admit. We play. But our relationship has its limits, since he can’t really talk back.
And then there are some guys. Who are interested in dating me. The Guy I Met at a Dog Park a couple months ago; when he asked me out, I asked for a raincheck so I could get my shit together first and not pull him into the vortex that was my confused and confusing life. The Guy Who’s Been a Friend but made it clear when we met that he was interested in more, if the time were ever right. The Guy Who Works on My Floor who takes my breath away when he kisses me, which he did for the first time after a work outing the night before Halloween.
But I’m afraid these guys can sense The Crazy that’s inside of me right now. I don’t hold any of the power in any of these relationships. I sat home all last weekend willing one of them to call, to no avail. Before I was married, the power was always exclusively mine because I simply never really cared that much about all of it. Now I think it’s a really bad mixture of not wanting to go home alone, not wanting to die alone, and, well, actually caring, actually showing people myself–all of myself–for the first time. I’m here for the taking. Or for the rejecting.
Last night The Guy Who Works on My Floor took me out on a date. And then took me home. And there was some kissing, and the removal of various clothing items, and some touching, and then, at a very crucial moment, he stopped abruptly and asked me to tell him about the boy I fell in love with. Without thinking, I corrected him. I said, “Man. He’s a man.”
My head spinning, partly from all the wine at dinner and partly from all the aforementioned touching, I tried to understand what in the world he was talking about. Oh yeah. Last week he asked me about my wrist tattoo. I told him it was a lotus, which symbolizes consciousness. I told him I’d been asleep for a while, but now that I’m awake I don’t want to go back to being asleep, and the tattoo is a reminder of that. He asked me what woke me up. I told him I fell in love with someone who wasn’t my husband.
Shit.
I’m really actually interested in this guy, the first guy I’ve really actually been interested in–and single–for a long time. But because he asked, I ended up telling him basically everything, all of my tragic secrets, that I’ve had sex with only two people: my husband, and this “man.” That this “man” is also married, and his wife still doesn’t know about the affair. That I broke the affair off 1.5 years ago and told my husband. That you think you know what love is until you actually know what love is. That I realized I can’t force myself to love someone.
Basically, that I’m an undateable wreck. Needless to say, the frenzy stopped, and he left around 10:30, saying it was a “school night.” I asked him if he thinks I’m a bad person. He said he’s not one to judge. But the fact of the matter is that I still am married. At least for the rest of 2009, due to my state’s divorce laws. And, of course, we still haven’t filed. And, of course, I’ve proven that I really have no problem with adultery. But I’m separated! I pleaded. It’s just a piece of paper! I dug myself in further.
Shit shit.
I don’t know anything about any of this. And it all feels somehow simultaneously too soon and too late.
I know. I said I was back. And then I promptly spent the next while not writing, aka not being back. But I wanted to be back–doesn’t that count for something? Things I want to write about kept popping into my head. But I didn’t know how to write about them because I didn’t know how to jump over the initial hurdle.
Which is the news that I am getting a divorce.
Okay. That wasn’t TOO hard.
I moved out a week ago Sunday into my very own apartment. My second very own apartment, except this time I needn’t feel guilty about buying things for it because this time I’m staying in it indefinitely and now my money is my own money and who cares if I want to buy a giant wooden S for my bedroom, anyway? (It’s hanging above my bed.)
It was my fourth time to move in less than one year. I would say I hope that I never have to move again, but, actually, I’ve grown to not mind it so much. I daresay I kind of like it, actually. The thrill of finding a new place that will be home. The comfort of making it my own. It’s nice, except that the places I keep choosing are rather old (this new place was built in 1930), and my childhood belief (fear) of ghosts always surfaces right around the time I switch off my bedside lamp and settle into bed. I swear to God I saw a man-sized shadow in the hallway the other night in a half-awake state. I sleep with my bedroom door shut now.
So. Yeah. That’s what’s going on. I want to document this time in my life. The things that are hard, and the things that are easy. The things that are probably normal, but, since I don’t know anyone else who’s been through a divorce except for my parents, I wouldn’t know are normal.
Today when I went home for lunch, I found the scrapbook I started when I was 10 and added to until I was nearly 14. I used to meticulously document my life, keeping things like the (unused) vomit bags from plane flights and balloons from birthday parties. But then I stopped. What happened to that girl? Did she stop being interested in herself? In her life?
Primarily, I want to document being in love with my life again. So I suppose this is the place to do it.
And I promise that I will write a real post soon.
But first:
The kiss that goes with the words “and love” at the end of this commercial made me cry.
A reader sent me an e-mail calling me out on my “extraordinary selfishness,” and I guess because of that I don’t really feel like blogging anymore.
They were all “no”s, anyway, and that was depressing.
Maybe I should just decide to love my life as is.
A friend of mine suggested that, as a way to make my blog a little less depressing, I should start listing happy things and then, if necessary, ending posts with a simple “no.” I guess the idea is that even if the happy things don’t top the bad things for that particular day, at least there are happy things.
He also said that he expects me to begin blogging about cutting myself any day now. Duly noted. P.S. I don’t cut myself.
Things really aren’t THAT bad. I mean, just today two men asked me out on dates. Of course, I cannot in good conscience accept these dates, but it is nice to be asked. Maybe someday I’ll be asked and I’ll get to say yes. Or maybe someday I’ll be asked and I’ll feel really good about saying no, because the only guy I want to date already has me all booked up for the rest of my life.
Clearly, my idealism when it comes to relationships hasn’t been ruined.
So happy things.
I got to wear my boots, the best riding boots in the whole wide world, because it was in the sixties for the first time since March. A girl in my office broke her boots out the second the calendar flipped to September, but as it was still 95 degrees then, I refused to wear mine and just admired hers. But my day has come.
The friendships in my life have really been flowering lately, and I’m grateful for each and every one of these women. They are all hilariously funny, intelligent AND beautiful. Only two of them have blogs, so I’ll only link to two of them here. But they are all fantastic. And they need me sometimes just as much as I need them, and that makes me feel like less of a train wreck and more like just a regular old person. Which, yep, is a good thing.
Last night my friend T (mentioned above) took me out for drinks (good thing), and while I waited on his late ass, I smoked a cigarette and drank a martini and thought about the developments of the last week or so. And I felt really calm as I thought about them. And, woo boy, is this a good thing. Usually I’m frantic as hell when I’m trying to come to grips with the fact that perhaps I really just don’t like my husband enough to be married to him.
Ugh. But it’s still hard to type it.
Two more “no”s, but also some good things. So there, T.
I’ve been sick since my last post and have spent the last several days in a fog of DayQuil and NyQuil alternately, with some cough syrup and ibuprofen thrown in there as needed. I got tested for the flu on Friday, but the test was negative (thank ya Jesus), so I got a flu shot immediately thereafter.
My recently laid-off husband-turned-housewife took good care of me, and I was too tired to put up my usual guard with him, so we were able to share some tender moments over the last few days.
That all ended Sunday night, when I was feeling better. C and I went to go get some frozen yogurt, and a fight we had there made me realize that I’m STILL not getting any of my emotional needs met in our relationship. And that I get more emotional support from my friendships than I get from my marriage. And, well, that’s not really sitting well with me.
Usually when I get to a point of emotional desperation, I reach out to the man I had an affair with. Which, yes, does meet my emotional needs in a way, but also causes a whole slew of other problems, not the least of which is the fact that it enables me to stay in my marriage because 1. it makes me feel guilty and I convince myself that I must not really be trying, so I should try to keep trying, and 2. it lets C off the hook for meeting my emotional needs during the time period I’m in contact with the other man.
But this time I’m not going to contact the other man. I’m going to go this alone and see how bad things truly get. It’s gonna suck. But it’s necessary.
Anyway, all these days are obviously “no”s. But. Things are slowly becoming clearer than they’ve ever been for me.
Now I’m sick but not so sick that I can in good conscience call in sick to work and I was impatient and rude to my boss and I had a major “HELP ME, JEEBUS” moment publicly on Facebook, which led to a string of “Are you okay?” e-mails and messages from semi-strangers and a phone call from my mother.
Which would make today a no.
I’ve been wondering lately if all the “yes”es we ever have in life are only in hindsight. That rose-colored 20/20 glasses thing, or whatever. I was thinking back to a time in my life in which I regularly said “I love my life,” usually while laughing hysterically, and I wondered how many of those days I would’ve answered “yes” if I’d been doing this experiment then. I should’ve answered “yes” to all of them. I was in college, and I was, for the most part, carefree. I had no major financial responsibilities, I drifted from relationship to relationship, I loved my classes and my professors and my friends and my living situations, even when I was crammed in a 300-square-foot duplex with two other women. I really did love my life.
But I’m not sure if I would’ve answered “yes” each day. I was stressed out beyond belief by my classes even though I loved them, and drifting from relationship to relationship damaged my reputation at my tiny Christian college, where a girl could earn “slut” status by simply dating more than one guy in her four-year tenure there. Or by kissing another girl’s boyfriend during an alcohol-soaked spring break in Panama City Beach, but I digress…
Anyway, the point is, maybe this whole experiment is flawed. Maybe the nitty gritty of daily life results in a whole bunch of “no”s, but in retrospect when looking at the big picture at some point in the future, I’ll say, “Man. I really had it made then.”
Or maybe I’m just given to nostalgia more than most. Which I fully blame on how goddamn forgetful I can be sometimes. Somehow, the bad always floats away and the good always stays.
What do you think?
Sooooooo I decided that having all those “no”s up there in the title is a wee bit depressing. I found myself wanting to post a “yes” just to break things up a bit, but that wouldn’t really help this little experiment of mine. Instead, I’m going to bury my answers in my entries. Wheeee! Fun! Like a pessimistic scavenger hunt! (Cheaters can tell by the post’s category.)
Also, I got internet at C’s place finally, so hopefully I can actually write these posts on the days I’m supposedly posting them (I’m a cheater too).
When I was a senior in high school, my class (of 900 people) voted on our senior song. I don’t really remember the choices. There were five or so of ‘em. I think I got “Run” by Collective Soul thrown into the mix, which was a hit when we were all sophomores and related to the film Varsity Blues. One of my good nominated “In My Life” by The Beatles, and that’s what ended up winning, which I was pleased with.
However, on graduation day our principal decided that our chosen song was too relationshippy and REPLACED IT with a song that WASN’T EVEN in the running when we voted: “I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack. As the song began playing at graduation we all asked our neighbors sitting on either sides of us, “Huh?” We voted for THE BEATLES, not CRAPPY GENERIC COUNTRY STAR.
Last night as I finished moving (FINALLY, JESUS CHRIST, next time I’m telling the movers to TAKE IT ALL, DAMN THE COST) and cleaned my apartment, “I Hope You Dance” played on loop in my head. The song is bad, y’all. But it has some tiny little nuggets of wisdom in there that, as trite as they are, maybe we should consider, some that seem especially appropriate for this blog.
Or maybe I’ve stooped to an all-time low, saying we should all draw nuggets of wisdom from a Lee Ann Womack song. God help me.
I thought about all my “no”s so far as I cleaned and tried to get the terrible song out of my head. And how one “no” doesn’t seem like a lot, but three do, and I wondered how many “no”s I’d have by now if I’d decided to do this blog years ago. My guess would be, um, a lot. And a lot of time wasted on a life that produces so many “no”s. They add up quickly. And it’s probably due to the refrain sung during the chorus of this damn song, “tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone” but I was rather stricken by this thought.
But I cleaned and cleaned, dog hair in every single recess of the apartment including the refrigerator drawers, and I bid farewell to the bedroom in which I had my first self-induced orgasm. And I thought about how even though I had another “no” at the end of that day, hopefully those “no”s will allow me to understand how I can go about getting my first “yes.” And then another. And another. Until those add up too.
Towards that end, I landed a job interview. On September 28th, two years after my first kiss with a man who wasn’t my husband. A man who happens to be a Presbyterian, which is the denomination of the church that happens to be interviewing me. A man who is still walking around carrying my heart with him, leaving me to find my own way out of this forest of “no”s.
