I won't say it, but you can.

I have a very dear friend whom I refer to as "The Id."  She was the one who went right to the "you are one sexy woman" place when I worried about dating, and she has adopted a zero tolerance policy towards people who hurt her friends.  More than anyone else (who I am not having sex with), I can talk to her about how sex is fun and funny and not something that has to be attached to a relationship.   She has been filling in for my own underworked Id, encouraging me to do things that make me giggle like a child.

I am working on being at least neutral in everything I say about the ex.  I want to follow my father's example.  After he divorced my mother, he never said an unkind word about her to anyone.  In fact, he made a point to talk about how much he admired her and to compliment her on raising us kids on her own.  I want to be able to be that gracious, even though I am the one who got left.  It does not serve me to insult or bad-mouth the ex.  Any words said in anger only cling to me and make depression that much harder to shake off.  Usually, I am pretty good at this.

Some friends are confused by my refusal to call the ex names, or to say unkind things about him in anger.  Recently, someone tried to tell me that anger is natural, that my approach was weird.  I told him that I truly believe that things I say in anger come back on me.  When I allow myself to speak from resentment, even justified resentment, it only makes me more resentful.  I am not in the place to speak truly and sincerely well of the ex yet, but I can be neutral, and I can honestly report that there are positive aspects to his character.  This pains me now because it reminds me of how much I am losing.  Later, though, I trust that this will be a comfort because I will not have to look back in embarrassment at my bitterness.

Which brings me back to The Id. We went to a Christmas Choral Concert.  It was the cheesiest this vegan has ever gotten, and I loved it.  Trust the  Id to help me enjoy wacky holiday cheer.  On the walk back to her place after the concert, she asked me how I was doing.  Because I trust her, I answered truthfully.  I have not been great.  The winter and the holidays were kind of knocking me down.  She answered with a brief expletive against the ex for all that he had wrought in my life.  My Id.  I loved her for her loyalty, and for her honesty.  I continue to struggle to stay neutral-to-positive, but that night I thanked her.  I thanked her for saying all the things I would not allow myself to say.  Coming from her, it was a relief.

Ginger Problems

Laugh and the whole world laughs with you.  Cry and the cat gets scared and bites.

Or something like that.

So, the event went about how I expected.  It was beautiful and uplifting and I walked around the whole time feeling like I had a knife stuck in my chest.  I stayed just long enough for the Introduction of the Practitioners, then I sneaked out into the rainy night while the strains of "I Will Survive" drifted out the open door.

I am not kidding.  The ultimate woman power anthem was playing in the background while I walked to my car, sobbing into my hands.  Great, gulping, gasping sobs.  Did you think I'd lay down and die? Oh no, not I.

When I made it home, I knew I was going to eat my feelings.  I needed to stop into the store down the block and get something to eat.  I checked the mirror before I left the car, and came on another disadvantage of a fair complexion. -- the way crying reddens the face for a very long time.  Well, into the night with my red-face ginger problems.  Sugars and trans fats trump all.

Grief Surprise

This weekend, the center where I have my practice is throwing a party. We are celebrating the completion of a major expansion, and the opening of a beautiful new event space. This will be a great opportunity for me to network with my peers, show off my space to my friends, and generally be happy with my professional life so far.

This is the kind of event you want to share with a partner.

We had a community meeting this morning, and in the middle of joy and excitement at meeting new practitioners, I was bombed by grief. I was thinking of what I would wear and how I would a arrange my materials.  I was picturing a partner to compliment and reassure me on the way over. Then I remembered I don't have that right now. Boom.

I am trying to redirect this self-pity into excitement for the event.  But. Still. I keep picturing getting dressed with no one but the cat to reassure me. Fortunately for me, she is very vocal in her praise.

Kentucky Building

I was in Paducah, by myself, and some friendly Kentucky boy tried to sit down next to me while I was trying to write.  I politely turned him down, and he sat on the next bench down, furiously texting someone and occasionally glancing at me. This derailed my planned Deep Contemplative Thoughts and led to me becoming a 13-year-old, writing in her diary about who likes me and who doesn't.

When did my heart stop growing?  Was it at 11 when my parents divorced?  At 13 when I was so deep in despair that I wanted to die?  At 18 when my first serious love broke up with me?  I picture my heart in my mind as a solid foundation, incomplete but well made, with a random patchwork of rooms and floors stacked on top.  Dead end hallways.  Windows on brick walls.  Rooms with no doors.  Some living spaces are bright, clean and full of air.  More often, walls are patched over with crumbling plaster and duct tape.  Bit of a mess back there -- under construction with nails sticking up and tools scattered all over the floor.

The foundation is strong, but this feels like a gut rehab.  I only hope I have the energy to see it through.

My Kind of Man

Yesterday a man asked me what kind of men I am attracted to.  I found that very difficult to answer, but now a picture is beginning to emerge.  I am drawn to men with anxiety issues.  Men like the one who asked the question.  Men like the Ex.

I don't know where this began.  With the ex?  Before the ex?  Who knows.  S says I have a caregiver personality, that that is who I am.  I question whether I should even try to change that.  Is it really so unhealthy?  Is there a way to make it more healthy?

This morning I got a text message from the man who asked the question, saying he was feeling "crushed under the weight of loneliness."  I feel for him in his anxiety, but it is not my task to make him feel better.  He says I am working through something psychological and I am, but so is he.  He says he feels calmer focusing on others -- and I think that is because then he isn't focused on himself. I have compassion for his suffering.  I will try to help as far as I am asked and able, but the digging and remodeling is his alone.  Just as mine is mine alone.

Couldn't these be thoughts from a healthy caregiver?  Couldn't this be a glimpse that there is such a thing as just anxious enough, just nurturing enough?

The Most Awkward Dinner of All Time

It was too soon, is all.  Before he moved out, we went out to dinner and talked about a settlement.  It was cozy and friendly and almost comfortable.  And there was wine.  So we went back home to the same place.  I sat n the couch and he sat in a chair, and through my wine haze I talked about how we could still go kayaking together.  Or learn how to windsurf.

A few weeks later he moved out.

A few weeks after that, he wanted to talk about the settlement again, to finalize the details.  He wants to meet over dinner.  My tiny little sane inner voice said "No," but the he suggested a good vegan restaurant I'd never been to.  Bribed me with food.  As it got closer, I got nervous.  My aunt said, gently, that maybe it was too date-like a setting.  Little sane inner voice agreed.  But, vegan food.  So I went.

And I had The Worst Dinner of My Life.  As soon as I saw him, I wanted to run out.  Everything about the place became oppressive, from the lights with no visible source, to the black-clad serving staff with their fucking friendly smiles and perfect vegan skin.  I went into defense mode, saying right away that I had to teach early, so couldn't stay long.  (Subtext: no wine and no friendliness.) We looked at the menu.  We talked business.  We ordered food.  We finished our business talk.

Then we were left looking at each other before our food even came.  He asked me, plaintively, I thought, if I would even have a glass of wine.  No.  I just wanted to run away.  His appetizer came.  He offered me some.  I said no.  (Truly, I felt like I would vomit if I swallowed anything other than water.) He offered again.  I said no.  He begged me to just take a little.  I let him put some on my plate, and I pulled it apart with my fork.

Our food came.  I choked down my salad, grateful that I had the foresight to not order anything else.  We finished eating.  The server, poor woman, entered the veil of awkwardness and whisked our plates away.  She packaged up his leftovers in the speed of light.  I think we were giving her wrinkles with the tension.

He offered his leftovers, desperately.  I said no.  He offered to settle up so I could leave and catch the train, and I was up and out the door practically before he finished his sentence.   Just another woman sob-walking through the West Loop.  Nothing to see.

And I spent the next few weeks trying to make it up to little sane inner voice, who somehow knows.  Always.

Stuff is Nonsense

Well, he finally came over to get the rest of his stuff.  He claims to have it all.  All the CDs, everything he wanted.  He did take away everything I set aside for him, even the crappy Christmas lights I didn't want to look at any more.  For that I am grateful.

On the day,  even though I was on vacation miles away, I was destroying my karma.  I spent an hour reading about accepting, non-grasping, and having patience with those who hurt you.  Then I picked up my journal, and I wrote this:

"I hope he sobs so hard he can't put the tape straight on his pathetic little boxes of stuff.  I hope he picks up something and remembers something I said about it.  Something clever, funny, tender, simple.  Something you don't remember but can never forget.  And I hope his heart breaks."

It's a good thing I don't believe in reincarnation, because I'm sure that little outburst pushed me towards the cockroach scale.  I wrote it out, took a deep breath, did some stretches and had a solid, dreamless night's sleep.

When I got home and started looking around, I saw that he didn't really take everything.  He left this. Dance party in 3 . . . 2. . .  1 . . . .

Music is Back

For about the first six weeks after he told me he was done, I couldn't stand music at all.  That was almost harder to take than the leaving.  I used to love dancing around the kitchen while I cooked, listening to ridiculous pop songs and waving kitchen utensils in perilous ways.  (He always warned me to be careful, but usually he was the one who cut himself.  It was the protective powers of ABBA, I think.)

But right after my life split open, even the opening notes of my favorite songs felt like knives in my stomach.  One day, being careless with the car radio, I heard a few notes of Pink's "Learn to Love Again," and I started crying so hard that I had to pull over.  Every pop song is about love.  Finding love.  Losing love. Quiet love.  Loud love.  Love in the time of cholera.  I couldn't take it.

My solution was NPR.  Lots of it.  Morning Edition as I got dressed became a soothing background hum, and at times a reminder that my brain was pretty hungry for material.  This American Life at the gym was both a perfect timer (since most podcasts are just about an hour) and pleasant fuel for my little crush on Ira Glass.

The music is starting to come back, though.  It started when my good friend took me to see Sixteen Candles (the band, not the movie) at some street fests.  They play 80s music -- the music I loved before I knew him, and still love now.  A couple of evenings dancing like an idiot in the street, and I was ready to try some music in the car.  I learned that Taylor Swift still needs a hobby, Ke$ha is still ridiculous, Adam Levine's voice still makes me cringe, and that I can sing along to ridiculous pop songs again.  I reopened my playlists and started dancing around the kitchen again.  I don't feel that open, artless joy I used to feel yet.  Sometimes that damn Pink song still makes me cry.  But music is back.

Right now, I'm listening to a playlist I created a while ago, when things at work were unpleasant. The name of the playlist is "Defiance."  Time to dance.

**********************************

Some songs on the Defiance playlist:
A Better Son/Daughter. Rilo Kiley :  http://youtu.be/Lh6liDtDThk
Titanium. David Guetta: http://youtu.be/JRfuAukYTKg
Girl on Fire. Alicia Keys http://youtu.be/J91ti_MpdHA
Dancing with Myself. Billy Idol http://youtu.be/FG1NrQYXjLU
Lose Yourself. Eminem http://youtu.be/jgn-rq3ibzE
Lover of the Light. Mumford and Sons http://youtu.be/nMJUbZrNnA8

Interior Design

I have a fresh, new perspective.

I literally have a new perspective.  I just re-oriented the couch in the living room to the way I wanted it when we first moved into this place together.  Little cat got over her dislike of the change when she discovered she could now move from the window to the top of the couch without touching the floor.  She is playing "the floor is lava," and I am playing "I am an entire, complete human being."

He didn't like the couch in this spot because to him it meant you could only see a wall of concrete.  I see that wall of concrete, yes, but I also see a wall of windows and my own building reflected in the late afternoon sunlight.  I see spaces created and subdivided on a human scale -- carved out to hold and protect these lives we carry around.  In my view, but out of my sight, people are living their joyful, contented, complicated, messy, happy, grateful lives.  If they can do it, maybe I can, too.

Little cat comes down from her perch at the top of the couch, sniffing the cushions and silently meowing at me.  Briefly, her pupils enlarge and she pulls back into fight mode.  I understand her fear.  Change makes me want to fight, too, little cat.  I scratch her head and she relaxes, just enough.  She wanders back to her water dish, familiar and unmoved.  Meanwhile, I look out at the view and feel . . . different.  Joyful, contented, complicated, messy, happy, Grateful.

Episode IV: The Conclusion

Want to hear about my happy ending?

Well, like me, you're going to keep wanting.

He cancelled. Said he had a "work-related emergency" and had to fly back to California. What a waste of a pedicure and bikini wax. And now I'm supposed the get back on the horse that I never even got to ride in the first place?

Well, at least I got to feel sexy and desirable for a minute. That was fun. And I practiced some new writing techniques. Now, to the stables!

Freudian Ears

I went to Starbucks this morning for a coffee. So, I ordered my coffee, and I heard the barista say, "Get a room?"

Sheesh, dude. I don't even know you, and I haven't even had coffee yet.

Then I realized that what he actually said was, "Room?" As in: do I want room for cream in my coffee?

Oops.

Episode III: Email Seduction

He's not the most good-looking guy, and certainly doesn't have that David Tennant, skinny-Euro thing I like.  But I'm buying condoms and waxing my crotch because the boy can write.  He has got this subtle email seduction thing right down to the ground.  If the live meeting is half as good as the email exchange, I may lose my ability to speak.

I wonder if I'm being a fool, falling for lines that, when analysed, aren't really all that creative.  But he's the first person who has bothered to write these lines to me.  I have decided the enjoy the sexy little butterflies I get when I read his messages.  I have decided to take this for what it is.  A fun night, where I am an alluring woman and he is an avid suitor.  And maybe we both get our rocks polished, or whatever the kids are saying these days.

As a side benefit, I'm getting better at sexy writing.  I think this has been lacking in many of my attempts at fiction, so now that I have a bit more practice, I think I'll be able to create better characters.  I'm certainly more creative with the double entendres -- they aren't all penis-shaped anymore.  I've just sent off a message making good use of the phrase "come to you," if I do say so myself.

Can't wait for the reply.  I've got rocks to polish.

Episode II: Bikini Wax

I wanted to see Marie. Marie shares my indifference to makeup and general disdain for the excesses of the beauty industry. Marie has also been divorced. She has been through the "first sex after" thing, and could maybe help me understand it all.

Marie was not working, so I went to Rana. Rana's appeal was that I didn't know her very well. Also, being European, I thought maybe she would be supportive of an adult woman who still wanted to keep some pubic hair.

Just as I expected, Rana worked quickly, efficiently -- I hardly thought about the fact that a relative stranger was looking at a part of my body that I rarely looked at. I was telling her about my "sex date" and letting her talk me into a French bikini with a little off the top, rather than the very modest bikini wax I had planned.

I told her, "Nothing off the labia," but when she gave me the mirror, I saw that half my outer labia was raw, red, and stripped of hair.

"My god," I said, "that looks so weird!"

Rana transformed into the Angry Romanian.  She snapped off her gloves.  "You mean 'clean.'  'Clean' is the word you're looking for." She gave me curt instructions for caring for my skin then left the room so I could dress.

I looked again at my half-naked labia.  Weird.  Weird is what I meant.

Sex Date Chronicles, Episode I: The Condom Incident

I thought I should bring condoms, since I couldn't guarantee he would have them.  I went to the CVS when I was sure to have two or three other things to buy, and late enough in the afternoon that the Curious Nona of the self-checkout wasn't working.

After a bit of confusion in the family planning aisle, (what do they mean, "pleasant scent?") I settled on a small packet of three condoms, tucked it behind my other purchases, and headed to the self-checkout.

Now, I know I have nothing to be ashamed of.  I'm a grown-ass woman in my 40s.  I have sex. (Or, rather, I want to.) And I am being responsible about it.  This should be the opposite of embarrassing.  This should give me the same feeling as when I bring my own bags to the grocery.  But, since this country got the Puritans and the Tea Party, I am trying to be discreet about the whole thing.  So, I slip up to a self-checkout station, out of notice of the (male) self-checkout minder.  I quickly scan the condoms and drop them into a bag.  Scot free!

Until the assistance light starts flashing, telling me the coupon box is full.  Coupon box? I didn't use a coupon.  I look around, stuff some loose papers down into the coupon box.  The light still flashes. I have to ask the minder.  And, of course, as soon as he steps over, the light stops flashing, and the self-checkout is sweetly ready to serve me.  I say a polite thank you and start to scan my other items.

"Did it scan what's in the bag?" the minder says.

"Huh?"

Before I can think, the minder reaches into my bag and pulls out the condoms.  Which didn't, in fact, scan.  Now I'm a potential thief.  I grab them out of his hand.  Snatch them, more like.  (Hee hee.  "Snatch.") "I'll do it," I say, in exactly the same tone and volume my 3-year-old nephew used when talking about his shoes.

Mortified, but trying my best to look like some confident, sex-positive uber-MILF, I complete my purchase and scuttle out the door.