June 21, 2007

Another one, so soon?

Tomorrow I'm not writing or emailing or working or doing anything at all except sitting on a beach with a big, fat book.

Tomorrow is my thirty-sixth birthday.

For as many years as I can remember I have always dreaded my birthday. Bad things always seemed to happen, or the milk was spoiled, or for whatever reason that one day could never live up to anything at all I wanted. I can get terrible morose sometimes and it's an awful trait, not attractive in a person at all.

This year is different, because I don't feel puddled up and lonesome, I don't have anything special at all planned but just the same I'm content and looking forward to doing absolutely nothing. I'm not sure if I got to shake the birthday curse or maybe it shook me. And when did that whole curse thing start, anyway? Maybe it started one year when something went bad, so the next year I was half-expecting disaster and got it. Then it came again and again. Or maybe I was dreading my birthday and then something bad happened to prove me right. Either way, I can't remember the last time I felt lighthearted before a birthday, except this year.

It's a change so fundamental it's like ... it's like that time I decided I was no longer a vegetarian and called my dad and asked him to smoke a rack of ribs because I was driving to Mississippi that very night and needed barbecue. With maybe a side of brisket.

It's that kind of change.

. . .

A few years ago I booked a vacation for myself and Mr. X. It was still fairly soon after 9/11 and we were right in the midst of the SARS scare, it was on the cover of every newsmagazine and people were wearing surgical masks on the subway. Planes were flying half-empty and I found a roundtrip ticket from Burbank (!) to Charles De Gaulle for less than $500. IN JUNE. It was unheard of. We booked our favorite hotel room, and I remember that all-over happy feeling I got when I pressed "send" on the payment for the plane tickets. I love Paris. Even though I dreamed of going there one day I had no idea I would actually leave the forever-dusty small towns where I grew up and go to THE REAL PARIS FRANCE ... and not just once but twice or three times. I love that city almost as much as I love Los Angeles. Plus, spending my birthday in Paris was on my then-Life's To Do List, a long list of 100 Things To Do Before I Die, a long numbered and bulleted typed-up list I'd made on the last day of 1999. I was excited to cross off:

#68: Spend my birthday in Paris

[I had to go find that list and re-read it just now and it made me a little sad and reminiscent. A lot of it is sweet and goofy and some of it is personal, as those sorts of lists should be.]

So, one of my big Life's To-Do List items was to visit Paris, France on my birthday and I was going to really do it! Tres exciting! I started planning and mentally packing and just that looking-forward-to feeling you get when a vacation looms out in the distance, making life inside cubicles and spaghetti dinners at home seem less mundane, everything tinged with excitement because in so many days I will be on an airplane to somewhere good.

A few weeks before the trip, Mr. X did a Very Bad Thing. And it affected us in lots of ways both emotionally and financially and I was very angry. I was hurt, and upset but most of all I was plainly pissed off.

I'd have moments when I sort-of forgave him ("It was just a stupid thing to do, people make mistakes...") then other moments when I held it against him like a mean-faced ogre, conveying my disappointment in every inch of my body and permeating every room with my dour, nasty little attitude of wounded unforgiveness.

I was mad, and also he is ruining my birthday, my vacation, our goddamn marriage... no, too scary to think of that last one. He is ruining my birthday! I said it like a mantra.

One day I was at work-- we were back at the old building then, a complex rabbit warren of beige cubicles with flickering computer screens. I remember very clearly sitting at my desk and trying to work and thinking all the time, what do I do? it's ruined, all of it, what do I do? Do I go on this vacation? Do I go and be mad at him? Do I not go thereby basically punishing us both? How on earth can we return to normal after what's happened? Damn him!

Then, in some flash of enlightenment I'm frankly surprised I was capable of at the time, I asked myself: Why would I choose to be unhappy? Why can't I go to Paris and try to have the best time possible? What kind of person sits here and thinks of all the ways of her unhappiness? Why can't I just let go?

Is it possible to be so fundamentally screwed up in the head that you actually choose to be unhappy?

Just that morning I had sat alone in my Jeep at the train station and pitched a royal hissy in the car, alone, crying and hollering about failed everything. And I was actually considering going on the pre-planned, already bought and paid for trip BUT sulking and having a miserable time just to prove a point.

Of course I had no idea what point I would be proving by choosing to be miserable on vacation, as if being wounded and cranky would hurt the buttmunch who screwed up my best laid plans anyway. It is a universally known fact that plan-ruining people could care less about how you feel, or they wouldn't have ruined the plan to begin with.

And I remember asking myself: What does it say about me as a person that I actually have to decide to be happy? Or that the equally appealing option was to be miserable in an I-told-you-so sort of way?

. . .

The truth is that I was very invested in my unhappiness. I wanted to be happy, I did, but when The Bad Thing happened (and we had so many Bad Things happen, like many couples do) I couldn't let go, I just stored them up in my little ledger of hurtful things. It was a role I knew, it was something I took comfort in. I could whine and carryon and be sad and in some way this gave me a fair amount of power. I was at least in control. I was in the driver's seat, I had a roadmap, and the town we were going to was Misery. Next stop, Whinealot!

We did go on our trip and we had a nice time, considering. Of course ya'll know how well that all worked out in the end.

I'm thinking of all this today, have been thinking on it, because something inside me clicked together like two missing pieces of a puzzle this week. I was sitting at my desk, at work, new building and now in an office (!) but getting that familiar twinge of Woe Is Me, because my birthday is coming and this one is a biggie. My thirty-six! Year of the golden pig and all that.

Then I thought, "Nope, not this year."

It's a nice Friday off work and I'm not going to think about deadlines and expectations and dates and money problems and the treadmill and birthday curses and why is he off being married and I still can't commit to a mascara ... this is my life and it will all work out somehow in the end. Me + one book + the beach equals birthday, no curse. The end!

That is what my divorce did for me. It taught me how to see that every soul-sucking craptastic event can have a surprisingly good outcome. It's finally knowing that even if something bad happens I can make jokes about it later. When he left I thought it was the VERY WORST THING ever to happen, and yet now sometimes Jennifer and I joke about that time I actually tried to set his favorite DVD on fire in the charcoal grill, waving my coffee-cup of Jack Daniels and declaring in slurry twang "I will never find love again, but hell if he is getting this goddamn DVD!" I was like a drunken, mad Southern Belle stood up at Winter Formal, declaring to everyone and God Is Her Witness that "I am truly dried up with love! You hear that you little peckers! I am SHUT OF YOU ALL!"

And hey, it worked out pretty great in the end. And the jokes get funnier the more divorced I am. So who's to say other bad things won't work out just as well? I'm tired of Very Bad Things and birthday curses, I'm tired of picking sad over happy. I AM SHUT OF YOU ALL.

That's a change, I tell you what.

And the best change of all is that I'm different in one way that counts more than all the others, a thing so different in me I almost didn't recognize the me in that birthday-in-Paris story. I was ashamed and embarrassed when I realized it. I looked back and I thought: why did I stay so long?

I don't even know that girl anymore. I would never ever stay five minutes with another man who did Very Bad Things, not to mention stay for years. I was a little humiliated for myself, ashamed of not making good decisions. Why did it take me so long to learn that lesson? Why was I so weak? Why wasn't I smarter than that? Why did I stay? And I sighed and let go of that one, too, for the first time maybe ever I felt a little compassion for someone who got married hoping it would all somehow work itself out and seeing that it did, really. In the end it all worked out just fine.

And that's a nice birthday gift, I think. And in case you're wondering it is much harder to grill a DVD when it's still in the plastic case. Just in case you yourself may be needing that little piece of advice. I am just saying is all.

Posted by laurie at 11:36 AM | Comments (229)

December 06, 2006

Isn't it ironic, don't you think?

One full year.

My divorce was final one year ago yesterday. THAT IS CRAZY.

Honestly, for all my talk about working it out and trying to bring ChristmasBack (yes one day that joke will get old but not yet! bringing XmasBack!) I have to tell you there was a moment, maybe more than one, where I sat alone on the patio recently and wondered how it was possible that things are where they are. He wanted to be free of responsibility and the antiquated notions of "through thick and thin" and I wanted to be married forever, yet here we are coming up on my third Christmas without love in my life, and he's spending it with his new wife.

This is what we call "irony." Or, also, "shitonastick."

You have your good days and your bad days. Everyone wants you to have more good than bad, of course, so after a while you stop telling people anything. They have a notion there is a timeline on feeling crappy about a thing. In a weak moment, you might whine to your parents about how you miss them, and also HE GETS TO SPEND CHRISTMAS WITH HIS WIFE OF ALMOST ONE FULL YEAR and DIDN'T ALANIS MORISSETTE MAKE A SONG ABOUT THIS. My mom has reminded me how nice it is I will be spending Christmas with Grandma and Aunt Pam and making poor Mr. Hakim's ear fall off from the talking, too. She's right, of course. Others have reminded me how far I have come, all that, it's lovely and true. And also, let us not forget I do not live under a bridge. Thankful all around.

But -- cruel trick of nature -- you can be thankful for blessings and still want some love in your life.

It isn't a thing you can remedy by surrounding yourself with people. That's like being really thirsty, so you visit a public aquarium. Fun, but not thirst-quenching! Some folks will understand that same brand of puddled up, some people never feel it and no one is right or wrong either way. You don't cease to function, you don't grouse about it except on the internet to the whole wide world (whoops) and you just motor along because you are Doing Well, and People Have It Far Worse, and it's fine. It's fine.

My theory is I am just more like a penguin, what with the whole mate-for-life thing. Also, I am sort of shaped like a penguin. It's nice, I have a low center of gravity and lots of padding for harsh winters.

I know this is one of life's little lessons, and I should probably be learning something, or valuing something, or appreciating this time of ONCE AGAIN being free to contemplate my navel without any distractions whatsoever or some other noble thing that my small, shallow brain cannot yet grasp. But ... hello. Universe? I am kind of tired of lessons. I would like some hugging now. Thank you.

So, I have been divorced for a year and I'm fine and nothing dramatic is happening and I did end up buying a fake tree because it fit in my house and was On! Sale! and it came in a decorative urn and I decorated it with all new ornaments, there is not a single thing left to remind me of the past. And it should surprise no one at all that my entire theme was built around a sturdy little fellow who likes the warmth and company of a special also-sturdy friend, and wears nothing at all but a scarf:

So it's fine. You just have good days and bad days, and I guess One-Year-Divorced Day wasn't one of the better ones. It was maybe one of the grouse ones. But I have my penguins, and that is a starting place. I will take this lesson. I will make sure to be appreciative. I will enjoy everything I have. I will not think much of ex-husbands and new wives and so on. YOU HEAR THAT UNIVERSE? I got the life lesson memo. YOU CAN STOP PLAYING ALANIS MORISSETTE NOW.

Posted by laurie at 12:07 PM | Comments (130)

November 23, 2006

An exerpt

November 19, 2005

There are thirty-seven days until Christmas.

“Maybe you should put up a tree this year, decorate the house a little,” said my dad. We were on the long distance. It is a long distance.

“Maybe,” I said.

“It would be good for you,” he said. “The holidays are coming, you can’t just ignore it.”

I shopped for my husband every Christmas, carefully tucking away the little hints all year, the things he would enjoy, the things he would love. I wanted him to open each gift, and laugh and smile at me, and say, “You remembered.”

My house now is too small for a tree. I gave away the Christmas tree stand to a neighbor. I didn’t need it anymore. We had so many boxes of holiday decorations, each a piece of a day an hour a minute spent with him, I gave it all away, I sold it to strangers at a tag sale, I said, “Take this, be happy,” but I knew I was selling myself. Each memory. Goddamn him and his fucking freedom.

------

November 21, 2005

Thanksgiving comes first. People who don’t know, who are not alone, say it is the herald of the holiday season (those of us alone, empty and used up like so many bottles of wine, know that it starts with Halloween) and anyway, Thanksgiving is just a minor-league heartbreak, minor-league holiday. But it tells you what’s coming, about people at work … cautiously at first, then more nosy, asking what your plans are, cooking a big dinner?

You can lie of course.
You can lie, but it still makes you feel sick to the pit of your stomach, like sharp acid pooling at the bottom of you, knowing other people feel pity for you, you alone, all alone, while they…. While they eat dry turkey and soggy green beans with family members they speak to four times a year.

When you were married no one took pity on you.

-----

November 23, 2005

I hate Thanksgiving, it is even worse than Christmas for the lonely divorced alone not perfect. Thanksgiving just makes you pathetic eating frozen pizza and drinking wine with your cat. At Christmas, the very same behavior is maudlin and vaguely Henry Miller. If you throw in some pained longing, you’re practically a revered artist, because everyone else wishes they could be you, their family is on their last nerve and the day drags on, nothing to do nowhere to go. You with your wine and cat and ...

Or so you tell yourself.

Goddamn Christmas, that you used to love and look forward to and decorate the whole house with garlands and lighted wreaths and powdered silver ornaments, velvet stockings, clove-stuffed apples.

“So, what are your plans for Thanksgiving,” my coworker asks.

“Oh,” I say. I was getting coffee in the breakroom. This was not expected, please make it go away, please.

It does not go away.

“I am… just… cooking for a few friends.” This is a lie.

My coworker knows it’s a lie.

I finish pouring coffee, smile. But I am lying.
There’s no reason not to.

Always, always hold onto the diary you kept during the bad year. Years. Months. One day you look back on it, want to reach backward in time and love youself, tell yourself it gets better. (It does get better, evidenced by the fact you no longer write diary entries WITH DIALOGUE. Freak.) You don't lie anymore because the truth isn't that shameful, after a while.

And cats love your frozen pizza Thanksgiving. And you finally know compassion after you thought you'd gone plum crazy. Keep that diary, trust me. Even if it contained, uh, dialogue.

Posted by laurie at 06:50 PM | Comments (51)

November 15, 2006

One nice thing.

A few months ago I had a very small dinner party at my house, burgers on the grill and chips and cold beer for a hot day.

As the party got later and drunker, as parties at my house tend to do, we were seated in a small circle on the patio passing around a bottle of sparkling wine and that's when Penny asked me about Mr. X, and how on earth I had married him, what it was that made me say 'yes' to that man.

You should know that Penny is Jennifer's younger sister, twenty-one years old and with the most beautiful skin you have ever seen, she radiates youth and promise and future. I looked at her, slouched comfortably in a faded wooden patio chair, and I went all dramatic and Blanche Dubois as I tend to do from time to time, with a drawl and a freshly topped cocktail glass.

"I am a cautionary tale," I twanged at her.

But the story of how we met isn't particularly Streetcar Named Desire, and it is only a cautionary tale (as I am) because you never know what life holds, or what secrets a person is hiding, and frankly I didn't have very high standards. We as women demand so little sometimes. Or anyway, I demanded so little. The common denominator in all my failures is me, after all, and I want to learn from such missteps and not repeat my past.

That's when I told Penny the story of Mr. X., and how I came to marry him, and how our whole life together began.

It was almost a decade ago and I was working at the Los Angeles Daily News with an editor whose wife worked at one of the Hollywood movie studios. In her office was an eligible bachelor, Mr. X of course, and he was my first-ever blind date. We met at the Cheesecake Factory for dinner, and I remember exactly what I wore (brown miniskirt, sweater) and what I ordered (mashed potatoes and crabcakes). At the time, I was dating a golf pro named Rob, a guy who was clearly the inspiration for the book "He's Just Not That Into You." It wasn't going well. I wanted to be married and content and adult and settled. Rob wanted to get naked in golf carts. (By the way, MY HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED. Hello young man! May I see your golf cart, please?)

I was at that very place you find yourself one morning while brushing your teeth when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that You Are Ready. So I went on that blind date.

Mr. X sat across the table from me, and recited his credentials, nervous, and I was much younger anyway. We had zero chemistry, but he was very nice and honestly, I didn't think he'd like me. I was from a poor, small backwater town and he had traveled all over the globe, lived in China, he talked about screenwriter friends and big Hollywood stuff. I didn't know 99.999% of the names he dropped. I felt kind of young and stupid.

But he called a few days later. I didn't return his calls. I didn't think we had much in common, I'm more of feet-on-the-ground kind of girl and all that Hollywood talk made me nervous. Rob took a golf instructor job at a private course in San Diego, and stood me up for New Year's Eve. My friend Alicia spent that night with me in my tiny apartment I had rented in Sherman Oaks, $850 a month for a bedroom and a miniature kitchen, a bathroom so small you could barely shut the door and a balcony view right onto the 405 freeway. It was a really bad way to start the new year.

Mr. X called again, in early January, and we went out for drinks at a local dive bar called Pineapple Hill (my pick) (could he stomach a dive bar?), where drinking was required and smoking indoors was still legal. We ordered a round of drinks and a basket of fries, and he looked at me.

"I rented those movies you told me about," he said.

"What movies...?" I said.

"When we were at dinner, and I asked you what your favorite movies were? Remember?"

He'd done that on our first date, asked me my three favorite movies so I bluffed (okay ya'll, who says "Oh my God, I have seen 'Stripes' three thousand times and I think 'The Princess Bride' is maybe the best movie ever created, next to 'Purple Rain' of course!") (Well, I would say that now, but back then I was still working on having An Image and trying to Look Smart.)

And so I had mentioned three artsy-fartsy films and he had gone out and rented them, and watched them.

I was floored. After all, no one, no man, had ever heard me before. No man had ever listened to me, filed away my words, stored them for reference and paid such attention to me. I looked at him with new eyes.

"You rented those movies?" I asked. The word "incredulous" comes to mind.

He had, indeed.

And so we started going out on dates, to dinner and movies and spending time together on the weekends. It was nice. He was nice. He was nice to me.

One day we were at Solley's Diner having breakfast, him reading the paper, me pushing around the food on my plate. We walked back to my tiny apartment in Sherman Oaks, and he reached for my hand as we crossed the parking lot. I looked at him then, an evaluation. I saw a man who was nice to me, if somewhat detached, and I thought that I liked him even though I knew things weren't perfect with him. We didn't talk a lot, and there wasn't really any crazy passionate you-know-what.

"But attraction fades," I told myself. "He's a nice man, stable, smart, funny, and besides. Eventually in marriage you move past pure physical attraction and see only your friend, the person you live with, the kitchen-reality of your life together forever. We're already there. We're comfortable."

And I really did love him.
And I married him.

I often think I did the right thing, marrying a man who I was comfortable with, who I loved (even if I didn't always desire him). It doesn't matter anyway, the decision got made, it's up to me to make good from all of it.

But after a few years together, I began to wonder (and fear) if all relationships are only ten minutes from devolving into companionship. Are all of us, even those with crazy passion at the outset, a mere ten minutes from becoming simply roommates, or siblings, or strangers?

I know that no matter what my future holds I'll pick a guy who excites me. One who isn't detached, isn't always comfortable. I want a man who I'm so happy to be with that I never want to cross that ten-minute line, never want to reach comfort with him to the place where I think, "Attraction fades, anyway, so we just moved past that phase early..."

After every single thing that has happened in the past two years (!), I still love the story of how we ended up together, those damn movies he rented. It's a sweet story, maybe the only sweetness left to our whole long relationship.

Sometimes things don't work out, the end wasn't pretty, or kind, or even amicable. But in the beginning I thought he was a good guy. Perhaps my standards changed, or maybe he changed, we both did. Either way it's like it happened to someone else, a whole lifetime ago when I was 25 and he liked me and I liked him and we never imagined all the hateful things that would transpire, the women whose names I never knew for sure, all the hurtful words and slammed doors and all of it.

It's almost a relief to remember something nice. Something kind, like how he rented those movies. It feels like letting go, I don't know why. But it feels good to let go, a little. Just one nice thing.

Posted by laurie at 09:57 AM | Comments (86)

August 26, 2006

Landmarks

All the sudden it dawned on me that tonight marks exactly two years to the day that Mr. X looked at me across a plate of spaghetti and said, "I think we should talk."

That is never the beginning of a good story.

And on September first he was moved out and one day I will tell you about that, how an hour can burn a person's heart and how I learned to breathe lonely and what those first days, weeks, months were made of. But right now I want to tell you about this very minute, because I am on my lovely patio in my adored city and I am alone, but the crickets are here of course. And I now know you can be a woman so set in your path, so sure of the vision you hold for your life, and you think you will never ever be put back together again when the picture breaks, when someone says "I am leaving."

You ask yourself, What if a broken bone doesn’t mend, and merely causes you trouble each winter?

Maybe I will turn ninety years old and think about that because you don't forget, but I know this: you do not break. You just don't. I could never have looked forward and seen myself, the woman I am right now. I could never have envisioned someone so committed to living honest (not after so many years of lying, pretending that my marriage was good, lying even to myself that we would someday miraculously plug back into each other and be intimate and kind and a good, happy couple.) I could not have seen myself as a fiscally capable woman, and yet I am. I could not see myself as a single woman, yet I am. I thought if I failed I would be shamed. I thought I had failed beyond imagination.

I'm not sure exactly when it stopped defining me ("divorced") and started being an adjective. Maybe after Paris? I started dating, sometimes with disastrously hilarious results, and I felt more at home in my own skin and it was very slow. I'm not always there, the place we hope to arrive at. We desperately hope that things will get better but we need assurance, need to know what better looks like and when it will arrive. I do not have that certainty yet, but I do know this is Better. And better yet is still to come.

It always does. It always, always gets better. It mends. You do not break. You have sometimes disastrously hilarious results, but you do not break.

Posted by laurie at 09:43 PM | Comments (101)

June 29, 2006

Shoes don't stretch and men don't change

The insomnia returned about a week ago.

Nights alone, and it's so hot outside that the day doesn't lose its tension until about 10 p.m., when you can sit outside on a patio chair, legs crossed at the ankles, stretched out and languid like a cat. Except you can't relax, and you listen to crickets and drink another glass of wine and hear the signs of life from your neighbors. Sometimes a phone rings at a house nearby or a clothes dryer buzzes, and you remember people live there inside those houses with families and lives and you sit quietly knowing you're a thousand miles from sleep. You watch a spider build a web and you think, "The gardener comes tomorrow, I'll ask him to get rid of it." Because you can't, or won't and anyway it's a man's job.

And though I stay busy at work (the summer is always our busiest time), I find myself alone, at a single quiet moment, and at first I remember to get cat litter or to call the DWP about the recycling bin that mysteriously lost one rolling wheel, and then it dawns on me that he is married, that he was married for three months already before I even went out on a date with a man, that he planned a wedding while he was still technically married to me and they registered for gifts and towels and sheets and I can't tell anyone how much this offends me.

Because I am supposed to be over it.

And I know in my heart you can be over a person, you can be moving forward with your life however small and fine, and you can still feel lied to and disillusioned and untethered. You can have a moment, a weak moment, where you lament that the one you said 'forever and a day' to has walked down that long aisle with another. Bought an engagement ring for another, registered for gifts. You can know in your rational mind that he's merely re-enlisted for more heartache and sorrow and resentment. But your illogical mind says, "What is it about me that draws in lonely?" What is it about me?

Which is, of course, the very difference between you and the one who left. No one tells you as you plan your marriage, a life together, to hold back. They expect -- no, demand -- that you take the vows seriously and enter into a couple with a true heart and spirit of willingness. Yet we're expected to forget, to move on, to forget about all that the minute it fails and he shuts the door behind him, or you leave, however it fell apart.

Take the vows seriously, but not the dissolution?

No such thing. It makes the difference between me and him. But it isn't an easy understanding. I sit with these things so I can see how to better move forward, not because I am stuck in the past. But it's a fine line, and a hard one to explain. So I don't sleep, for now.

Posted by laurie at 08:49 PM | Comments (175)

May 28, 2006

Four a.m.

I woke up in the middle of the night, sweaty sheets tangled scared.

I was dreaming of him, he was here with me and we were in our condo in Studio City, the kitchen on the bi-level, tan carpet stairs leading to the bedroom. And he said, "I need my freedom."

And I said, "You are my husband, my family."

And he said, "I'm moving out."

And he packed, only this time I was right there begging him not to go, and I was small, and he shut the door behind him and took the winter coats even though it was August and I knew he was never coming back and I cried ...

... and I woke up crying. Sobbing, uncontrollably, "Come back."

Then I looked at the bed, the sheets, the room with the blinds half-askew and the tiny closet and I realized I was home now. He had left a long time ago, it was OK, I was in my bed, inside my house, inside my life, a cat yawned like an old man and stretched his legs and curled back into a ball by the pillow that used to be his (except when he left I chucked all the pillows because I was afraid they smelled like him) and I went to the kitchen, awake now, in bare feet and pajamas and drank the last third of a bottle of Cava, already flat, and smoked two cigarettes even though I quit and remembered he left me already. I had already done it, it was over, I never have to do it again. I am free.

But the dream grabs your hair, scratches your skin, like when you used to wake up next to him and you had dreamed he cheated on you, and you woke up mad and wronged. Then you say: I lived through it, and dreams be damned it is over and I do not know why it came to me at night, I feel betrayed by my own dream-life who is supposed to bring me release from this day-to-day, the one who knows like no one knows how far gone he is, that is over it is past ancient history you lived it ... you control the exterior but never the interior.

He left you already and you survived it. It was only a dream. So you finish your drink and go to bed and it's 4 a.m. and the cat yawns and you smell a pillow he never once touched.

Posted by laurie at 12:37 PM | Comments (96)

April 08, 2006

This comes as a surprise.

Well, weekend posts. Ya'll know.

I was just as surprised as anyone. Is this how it goes, then? There's no handbook for divorce (even though when I was in the middle of it someone told me to read 'The Road Less Traveled.' I'm sure it was a helpful book, to someone. I was wondering where the chapter on burying the bodies was... I could not find it.)

So there I was, the very last day of our vacation, in the hotel room alone. It had been a long day, as vacations can be sometimes, and with so many women and so many adventures, it had been emotional. But I have a family of men, all brothers and I am the only girl, and I hadn't planned for the trip like you plan with girlfriends. Prior to this I had only traveled with my family (brothers) or my husband. Usually, the biggest challenge is at what point do you tell him he must ask for directions or you are going to bail ship and fend for yourself, and also, where the hell is the beef jerky?

So we're in a city, so far from home, and there's all this adventure and hijinks, and it's late and I haven't slept at all, and suddenly I am alone. And oh God I miss him so much. It happened all the sudden, huge heaving sobs, the ugly cry. It was so easy to travel with him, and traveling is the only thing I ever wanted to do since I was a kid in a chickenscratch town, and this feels hard? Where is that place, the one where he hugs you, or holds your hand, or leaves you two towels, one just for your hair?

I was so embarrassed. I was sobbing, the giant cry of someone on the edge, where you sputter and gasp and go ugly. I missed him more in that moment than I had in months alone, it has been three months almost to the day that my divorce was final and here I was, a woman on her own in a dream city, crying?

So of course, I was humiliated (I should be stronger than this) and wanted to keep it a secret. But maybe you can tell me, is this what happens? Do you just forget a little every day? Do you not really love that person at all, anymore, but still miss a few things? Or do you just miss the very idea that you once loved someone? Had a shared secret? And at the end of every adventure and hijink, ya'll got into the bed together knowing tomorrow was another day, and you were still together and everything else was Outside.

Is this how it goes? Because truth be told, I do not really miss him at all. Not logically, not daily, he ended it all the day he walked out that door and I don't want him back, let's face it: I do not even know the man. Now you can see why it came as such a surprise. I do not love this man. I do not know where the crying came from.

I suspect that I am a revisionist historian. In that moment alone in France, I sat down and let a version of history wash over me, overlooking all the vile and unkempt moments in the memoir of Us, and I glorified our rare happy details. I am shamed. So goes My Divorce: The Reconstruction Period. Bring in the carpetbaggers.

When I saw "Before Sunset" I watched as Julie Delpy said, "You never fully recover from someone you loved." And I knew it was true. But it doesn't keep you from keeping on, does it? A few days after we came home from Paris, I was on the sofa and I was embarrassed all over again for descending into a puddle on vacation. Like the very idea of missing him was an indescretion, ill-advised, he would leave me anyway in the end so why bother?

But now I think maybe it's natural. Revisionist history, or maybe just a soft moment when you no longer are in such pain, or numb as you were, so you have a misty moment (if by "misty" you mean "the cry where your face goes misshapen") and why not? Love someone and it goes bad, you still miss the love part. I hooked my wagon to his because I loved him, so it's not crazy to think I'd miss him a time or two... right?

Just part of it, I guess. There's no handbook for it. Sure wish there were.

Posted by laurie at 06:55 PM | Comments (113)

March 18, 2006

Le Vacation and Le Fear

Hi! I am crazy. And also maybe red-wined. Hello, whine.

Thinking about vacation and its impendingness. Vacation is an amazing thing, a lovely happy leap that I can't truly afford but I need it, the same way I need sunshine or caffeine.

But I have fear. Scary fear.

It's because of the Fear Life.

See I believe there are two kinds of people in this world -- those who divide everything into two categories, and those who do not. I guess you know what category I fall into. My penchant for dividing things into this-or-that led me to the "Real Life vs. Fear Life" theory.

In my Fear Life, I worry about things, sometimes not even rational things. Living becomes very small, it's harder to visualize new and unusual things, or people, and the house that used to be a nice place to rest becomes your sanctuary (and then your hideout) and you start telling people... "Call before you come over. Email before you call."

In my Real Life, or what I want to be my Real Life, I take chances (even though I am scared) and I leave my house (even though I want to stay home) and when I get scared -- which I do, because this is me and I Have Issues -- I write down the scary things and they seem less like Real things and more like Fear things.

So, I am writing it down.

I'm scared. Scared that I will be the facade of happiness and the inner part of me, the one who never traveled anywhere without her husband, will ooze out at an inopportune moment and I will think of the Paris I Have Loved, and be sad. Every night, sitting in front of the open windows, me smoking off the balcony, him with a rum and coke in hand, no ice because it's Paris. I take a photo of him, he shakes his head.

(Is it possible to be me and to be only present-day? Some women are right-here-right-now women. I am the sort who often thinks fondly back upon life events, even sad ones, and I feel maudlin for things that were not even that great at the time.) (Not a terrific quality, I might add.)

I was barely twenty-three years old the first time I went to France. I had never been off our beloved continent ... who am I kidding! I had barely ventured outside the South, and was still in deep culture shock living with Mr. X in this crazy Los Angeles city. Before he introduced me to Europe, to Paris, the most exotic thing I had experienced was one hedonistic summer vacation with my parents in Cancun where I went buckwild crazy and ate these mysterious things called MANGOS.

I always wanted to travel, wanted to see the cities of Europe and hear people talk in strange languages and eat food I could not pronounce. I wanted to be bigger than my litle tiny one-stop-light world. I needed to see life, smell it, eat it whole.

Anyway. I got the eating part down pat.

He and I bought the tickets on the spur-of-the-moment, packed our mismatched suitcases ("Do people in France wear blue jeans?" I was very unsure) and after eleventeen million hours in an airplane we were officially not in America anymore.

I fell in love.

The signs, the smells, the people, the baggage carts, the swanky-looking taxis, all of it. Our hotel that first night was up on the top floor of an ancient building under thick dark wooden beams and slanting ceilings and I couldn't sleep I was so excited. I went into the bathroom to scribble in my notebook, always a notebook, and with the rusty old crank handle I opened up the (possibly hundred-year-old!) bathroom window and peered out across the rooftops of Europe. It was one of the most exhilirating moments of my whole life. And I was alone, in the bathroom, my husband sleeping across the lumpy bed in the next room.

Paris was for me:
a living museum
people in chic clothes and women in high-high heels
booksellers along the Seine, just like in Henry Miller novels!
smoking in public
cafes
strong, good coffee
the sound of those sirens (wee-wah wee-wah)
tiny cars on the motorways
men who opened doors, briskly
good wine
good beer
amazing foodgasmic bread and croissaints
little sugar cubes
lumpy beds
"deux vin rouges, sil vous plait"
"ou e le toiletes sil vous plait"
"Bonjour madame"
"Where the fuck is the E-11?"
"You think the metric system will ever catch on?"
"You look lovely in that light."

About every hour and a half I would pinch myself, could NOT believe I was in THE Paris, France! Not Paris, Texas mind you ... the real Paris France where they have French people! Where they do not need to call 'em "French fries" ... they are simply called fries. (That joke never got old. For me.)

Honestly, though, it's better looking back than it was at the time. I was the one who said, "You look lovely." I was the one writing alone in the bathroom with the door closed. We traveled so much because it was the only time I had him all to myself and he had to pay attention to me.

Where does the fear come from? The fear of being lonely in a crowd, a whole city, a continent? It's not like I don't know lonely. It's good to write this down. The fear loosens up. The Real life takes over. This past year I found out that sometimes the dreading of a thing (worried you'll be sad, miss him, fall apart) is worse than the actual emotion. Just sit with it. Write it down.

Other fear:

I am afraid something will happen to my cats while I'm gone. I have a house sitter and then Karman is also checking in on the furballs, and every neighbor (except Crackhead Bob) has been briefed and given long lists of phone numbers and emergency contacts, and I know that they're good people who will alert the po-po if someone is hauling out my sofa or something, but I worry about the cats getting sick, or one getting locked in a cupboard accidentally, or that my house will spontaneously burst into flames and burn to the ground.

I am afraid that the plane will crash, or someone will have the Bird Flu or Ebola, or that we'll get to the hotel and it will have bedbugs.

So, I have fear. It's part of who I am, it always has been, the fear of the unknown, the unhappy, the unloved. I'm writing this down, out loud, so I can see for myself how it's just scared, it's not reality, my life is an unopened book, an unwritten chapter, and even though I am anxious I will continue forward, onward, upward, Franceward.

The small-town girl inside me knows it's a luxury to have a memory of THE Paris France. And I am thrilled to my toes to go on a vacation. With my best friends! It's a gift. And if I get sad one night after too much wine and a trip down memory lane, I will probably cry and my friends will hug me, and I will not be alone, and I will make jokes about it and we will be in Paris (!) and he is the past and I am the future.

And the cats will be fine.
Real Life vs. Fear Life ... Real Life wins.

Posted by laurie at 08:16 PM | Comments (111)

March 07, 2006

The Seventeen Stages Of Divorce

Stage 1: Denial
I called my parents, but there was no answer. I am such a daddy's girl. They're on vacation.

Stage 2: Hunger
I will eat this snack-size bag of Cheetos, even though what I need is the grief-sized grab bag.

Stage 3: Presumption of Okayness
I was holding up just fine until my co-worker said, "Are you all right?" and then I had to leave, I just picked up and walked out the door, thank God it was raining anyway. It was yesterday, a Monday. Took me this long to even get the words down, I want it all to just end, I want to be Moved On, to be Finished, to be shut of this.

Stage 4: Recognition/Honest Now
But when I got the email, I immediately assumed the position (all those months right after he'd left and then again during the divorce you could find me in The Position half the day) elbows on my desk, keyboard pushed away, fingers outstretched on my closed eyes. Head bowed. Breathing. Trying so hard to just breathe. Do it. Breathe. Now. I can tell you this story -- A True Story-- because it is very late and I should be asleep. I miss one thing and it isn't him, it's the smoking, so I smoked tonight, I'm fallible, but at least I am not heartless. I don't care about the smoking. Or the heart, anyway. Who needs it. I was going to smoke in Paris anyway, and ya'll don't tell my dad.

Stage 5: God Help Me
Does there ever come a point where I will completely not care if he is dating the entire waitstaff at Hooters? Please, someone, tell me a day will arrive where I just. Won't. Care.

Stage 6: Realization/Let's Be Honest Ya'll
Clearly, I don't want him back. Clearly he did not love me the way I need, want, deserve. Clearly, it was a bad pairing and all the good things have come at a price, the disentanglement of me from my vision for myself, but anyway. It hurt. Because Shannon sent me an email yesterday, on Monday, confirming what I already knew (suspected?) that Mr. X and his girlfriend did indeed move into a new house together, and the ink wasn't even dry on the divorce papers when he did it. Two days after the divorce. But he hasn't told me himself and didn't want our mutual friends to tell me. BECAUSE THAT'S EASIER? For whom?

Stage 7: Clarity of Issues
The problem is not that there is another woman (that makes it easier, somehow) and anyway, I already knew. He never told me, he never had the backbone or moral stamina. No, you see he told me he needed his creativity back, that we (we!) would be happier for it, we could work on our relationship. (Oh please.) Or because telling the truth was so hard? (Yes, it is hard to tell the truth but you owe it to people, this much I have learned, you do it not because it's easy but because it's right.) He was scared, or weak, or just a liar all the way into his very bones. How can he be present, show up for a whole new life with a whole new woman when he never showed up for the end of this one? No, the problem is not that I still love him. I don't even know him. I have no idea who he is. The problem is the ease with which he has moved from Life A to Life B. And the inversely proportional unease ... the complete, utter mess I have been.

Stage 8: Begging
Tell me, please tell me it gets easier. That one day you bump into your ex-husband and he's with the entire waitstaff of Hooters, and you could care less. God, tell me this happens, that I will be with my best friend, or ... maybe even someone else? and i'll just look at him and wonder WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING.

Stage 9: Acceptance of Blame
When did I move from people-pleaser to husband-displeaser? was I: too hard, too soft, too demanding, what is demanding? Too much, not enough, too loud, too soft, too willing, not willing enough? Please pick up some laundry detergent on the way home? Was I so hard to live with?

Stage 10: Placement of Blame
He lied, he cheated long before he left, if she cooks his dinner now each night, pulls back the covers, lies next to him (he was someone else's husband when she met him) then good riddance to them both, no relationship borne of lies can ever be true. Also: I hate you both. You deserve each other.

Stage 11: Anger
I am good and I am true and I wish you a virulant and painful case of herpes, I hope she gets knocked up and you can know what real responsibility is all about, I hope you are made for each other, I hope you miss me, deeply, in the middle of the night, when I have somehow miraculously moved on and have someone to hug me when I wash a plate, sautee the zuchinni, pour a glass of iced tea. This will be better because it's real and you were a lie, a stranger.

Stage 12: Disbelief (More Anger)
I cannot believe here I am, so many months later and this news was like being kicked in the stomach, the very thought that the death of my marriage changed my life in every conceivable way and yet he just slid so easily from one bed to another, and my life is: figuring out the details, piecing together an entirely new future, a new set of friends because the old ones were the "married" friends, financially on my own, the way I see myself, my life, my future, when something breaks I am the one to fix it, it's all been changed forever. And he's set up house and has settled in already -- living with this woman! -- and I can't even picture what a date looks like, I feel like I can't ever trust a man, I'm terrified, I'm unassailably alone.

Stage 13: Insanity
The very idea. I guess his creativity came with boobs. Convenient, that one.

Stage 14: Prayer
Oh God. I do not know even how to put it into words, the feeling I had, at my desk, assume the position of shock and grief. But like all these times before, that's never stopped me. Help me.

Stage 15: Poor Grammar
He is LIVING WITH a woman, and I cannot commit to a mascara.
I've changed.
I don't know if I can ever let anyone in again.
I've changed.
I'm not as needy as I was.
I'm able to sit alone.
I like it.
It scares me that I may never want anyone. I may never trust anyone. I may never love anyone again.
He never could fix anything, anyway.
I should never have married him.
I'm furious that he has it so easy.
That leaving was just one day, a hassle, he'd left long before he moved out. Did he ever show up at all? Or was it just a lie?
I feel sick to my stomach.
I'm mad that he gets to bumble along, play house, have someone wash his socks and cook his meals, and it's so easy for him.
I'm scared to GO ON A FREAKING DATE and he has set up house and has someone in his bed, plays wifey to him, how does one trade warm bodies so easily? How?

Was I so easy to forget?

Stage 16: Exhaustion
He isn't worth the time it takes me to blow dry my hair.
I'm bored with the whole thing.
I want to be shut of it even more than you -- you, who've had to listen to me bellyache for a year. Really. I'ma tired of it all. So he lives with his girlfriend. The man cannot wash a pair of socks.

Stage 17: Hope/The Future
One thing is true, I know who I am every day of the week and twice on Sundays. I kept my sense of humor. I worked through this thing so that when I do decide, one day, to hitch my wagon to someone I will be fully present, no hidden agenda, and one of us got their creativity back, and I can garandamnteeyou it wasn't him. It's OK. he comes home to someone else each night, shakes the raindrops from his coat, they have dinner, have a cocktail, go to bed. I do not have that. I have: reality. The knowledge that I am true and real. I don't lie to you. I show up. I make promises that I keep. I pet the cat and stretch out, pour another in a long line of solid cabernets. Life isn't bad. I show up. I am present. I'm here to take whatever comes. This? Just something those of us who are GETTING OUR CREATIVITY BACK thrive upon. The future is wide open. I'm scared, but I will do it anyway. Because I have hope, and humor, and love inside me. The cat settles in for a long night. I'm fine. Surprisingly, I'm fine.
Amen.

Posted by laurie at 12:04 AM | Comments (238)

February 25, 2006

Wine and late nights and writing do not mix.

Tonight I went to the grocery store after work, it was a long day, a long week, everything moving so fast at my job and all around me, almost like I'm stuck in time or molasses trying to catch up with the whole world. Everyone just a step ahead.

The Trader Joe's parking lot was packed, but I got a spot as soon as I pulled in (I have good parking karma to make up for my distinct lack of actual driving karma. Carma?) I had the windows down on the Jeep even though it wasn't hot, because I just do that sometimes. The wind is so good when the music is loud.

And I bought blackberries, they looked ripe and fresh, and stuff for a quick dinner then one last-minute purchase: cabernet. I haven't been drinking much at all, but tonight...? It just looked good. I rationalized the price, "It's organic wine." I pulled my buggy up in line with all the other eleventeen hundred Los Angeles people at the store on a Friday night (no one but me says "buggy," though.) I saw him, I mean I saw him even before we got in line, because we were standing in the frozen foods aisle at the same time and he turned just so and looked at me, caught me right in the eye (even though I prefer to look away).

So when I got in line, I knew it was him behind me even before he asked me, "Have you tried that wine before? Is it any good?" Like he was interested. In the wine.

But when I get nervous, my accent gets real thick, I hate it. Then he says "Where are you from?" It sounds like such a teeny question but it's loaded. People from out here have all these ideas about where I'm from, and besides I've lived here longer than any other one place. And it puts me just a little on the defensive, because this is why I tried real hard to lose my accent to begin with. Except, now that I'm trying to be very honest about who I am (and who I am not) it's pointless to hide it and also, why am I feeling on the defensive? Probably just nerves. I got so used to being rejected by my own husband that having someone follow me to the checkout lane is making me feel ... ? Suspicious, I think. And a little anxious, and secretly happy because he's cute and buying vitamins.

I'm putting the bag into my car and he walks up to me and hands me his business card, or something, and he says, "if you ever wanted to... or, I mean, if you're not... married? I'm Scott..." and I just stood there, like an idiot, and I was baffled. It wasn't until I got home that I realized I had dropped the card in the parking lot, because I was so unhinged, maybe? And then anyway, it was so strange, because he went back inside the store. I guess to finish shopping.

I have no idea how to handle myself now. Single is hard after married. I want to be good at it, but I'm awkward and scared. Like I'm just one step behind everyone else. Stuck in time or molasses.

Posted by laurie at 12:08 AM | Comments (114)

February 23, 2006

We lied.

This Living Out Loud Thing was a new concept for me, a girl full of secrets, ashamed of being poor as a kid, with a checkered background, too much imagination. You just want to be so normal when you've had a crazy life. When I first met Mr. X, he lied about his age. It was the beginning, you know, of lies and secrets and all of it.

Lying is so powerful, it's so easy, you can slip into it easy as that. Trim a few years off your age, add a few dollar signs to your income, say you're not married.

He did. And then I did, too.

He made it so easy. I don't blame him. I need to tell you that when you're hiding from yourself, you say the untruths. You lie. It takes no encouragement. Finding a willing partner just adds fuel to the fire.

I'm walking a fine line these days, Living Out Loud is so much easier and harder than I expected. Someone emails me, and instead of telling them some bullshit story about... my hair? I tell them, no uncertainty, about the day when I was 13 and alone with angst, painting in my bedroom. Calling in to a radio station, it's a story that involves teenage awkwardness and joy division. Painful honesty. Or I tell ya'll what it feels like every day to be more divorced by the minute. I stop lying about my age, the smoking, and yeah I got four cats what of it? I write in curse words and talk about my love affair with wine, which some of ya'll think is addiction, but I know it's sadness and boredom because to live out loud is to say "I self-medicate, I eat, I drink wine. I am alive." I am not an addict, but I do love a good hearty cabernet with my whine. You can have a love affair with anything.

Hard-won truth.

I do not know who I married. He hid himself from me, the woman who slept beside him for a decade. When a man leaves his wife with no explanation, some bullshit, 'I need to get my creativity back,' it strips you of your value. Because he's saying "Anything would be better than you. You suck the life out of me. I want anything that isn't this." Well, fuck you. I want something better, too.

Advice: Men, if you leave your wives, tell them it was for another woman, a man, a career, a dream. Give a reason. We can explain away a reason, a woman, "Oh, he must like dark-haired women, flat chested, he's gay, God only knows. But he wanted this one other thing..." because lying to me, leaving me like this, made me question every goddamn thing about myself. It stole my self-esteem. And I am well and very pissed off about it.

Living Out Loud is hard. But it's worth it, because if you stop lying ("He left." Do you know how hard it is to say those words? To admit failure? To be flawed?) you can sigh, you can shrug, you can know that one true thing is good enough, that you're honest and it's enough. You have four cats. You drink wine. You fail and pick up the pieces. You love with abandon, honest love. You're hurt, but you're not bitter. Bitter implies a life without truth, and you live out loud. It's harder and yet easier than you ever imagined.

You keep on keeping on.

Posted by laurie at 12:04 AM | Comments (136)

February 10, 2006

Upon nothing, really.

Jennifer and I are on the phone. I'm waiting for the evening bus, and everyone is in their own world, talking on their individual cell phones, the collective sigh at the end of a week.

We're discussing our mojo, as much as one can discuss mojo surrounded by strangers on a city street at nightfall, and our individual attempts to connect with it. ('It' being mojo, of course.)

"Am I getting it back?" I ask her. "Today after my morning meeting, I was walking back to the building and I crossed Flower Street. This guy was walking toward me, in the crosswalk, a suit-and-tie guy, but anyway, he checked me out. Smiled at me and said hello. And then I said hello back. That counts, right? Progress?"

Because in the past so many months, since Mr. Ex announced over spaghetti that he was moving out, pass the parmesean cheese, I have buried and mourned my mojo, tipped a forty out for my homie. Gone, but not forgotten, rest in peace dear mystical mojo. I crossed Flower Street every day for months, my eyes on the ground, avoiding eye contact. Withrawn into myself, painfully shy around strangers to the point where I managed to exude a Go Away sign, a biochemical essence of isolation (my mom would call it "poor posture.")

Every night spent alone, and it's nothing to complain about, at the time being alone was a full-time job (why didn't you leave sooner I don't even know you, who are you? who did I love?) every night curled up on the sofa, a cat stretched out beside me. I broke the clock when I couldn't stand it ticking any longer.

During the hot months, last spring and summer, nights alone reduced to silence or sometimes crying or do nothing, tucked into a patio chair all night long, nothing visible in the dark but the lit end of a smoke, one glass of wine in my hand, but before long it's 1 a.m. and no way are you sleeping tonight. Might as well bring the bottle outside.

Being alone was a full-time job.

Nothing shakes you to the core, makes you feel more bereft of self-esteem than having the one who said "I do" leave you. There's no good way to phrase it, there's no cushion to make it softer. You can blame the other person, or the situation, but deep inside you're shaken and you break, or you wonder why you haven't broken, disintigrated, given up and gotten behind the wheel and driven all night to nowhere. Even smoking becomes exhausting. You pull way inside. You become quiet. You become alone in all these ways.

It would have been easy enough to take another road (he did) and buy new clothes, smile brightly, go out with new people. You can brush your hair and slide on a pair of high heels and sit on a barstool at Cozy's while your friends play pool and you accept free drinks from strangers.

Instead, I stayed home. It's just the difference in our bones, the way we live through the end of a thing. For me: nights without sleeping, months of never closing my eyes sinking into a bed feeling safe or warm or even tethered to this world, chain-smoking, writing it all down. Inside me everything was ugly.

Confidence has always been tied to my successes, so a failure of such magnitude surely must mean I am worthless? Unloved. Unwanted. Ugly. (Nothing makes you feel uglier than goodbye.) So you do what you have to, work these things out, wrap your mind around them. It takes its slow sweet time coming around.

But it comes around, eventually.

"He smiled and said hello and you said hi back, that's good progress!" said Jennifer.

"Yeah. It is? Before ... I would have avoided eyes. Looking down. But what a waste, right? Seventeen months of looking down? What a waste of time."

And it is a waste of time. Unless... unless you count all the time you sat on that patio, alone, and thought about even the smallest detail, remembered the day you walked down the aisle, the day you signed the divorce papers, and every single day in between. You were in there, somewhere. No one tells you the day you slide a ring on your finger that you need to hang on to you, keep a little piece just for yourself.

Eventually you sift through it and find a place to rest, it's not the place you may have envisioned for yourself when you were nineteen, or twenty-three, but it's all yours, and that's something. And one day you look up, instead of looking down, and someone smiles at you.

Success is not always about achievement. Sometimes it's about endurance.

Beyond hello, I'm still not ready, still locked mostly inside, but I know my mojo is there inside me, too. The things I blocked out are seeping in through the cracks of my finely constructed life raft. My future is an unwritten book: the way it feels to have someone whisper in your ear, or the night you stand at the sink in your sock feet and you're washing a dish when he hugs you from behind so unexpected, or the warm perfectly content feeling you get when he takes your hand in his and holds it, or the very first time you kiss (always the best).

It's in there.
Somewhere.

Posted by laurie at 10:16 PM | Comments (114)

January 28, 2006

Ch-ch-ch-changes

A few weeks ago I discovered that I have VH1 Classics, and they play a one-hour block of videos called "We Are The 80s" several times a day. We Are The 80s! I started Tivo-ing this video show, and in the mornings when I wake up ungodly early and it's so, so cold it my little house, I turn up the heat and get under a blanket on the sofa with a cat or three and watch music videos from the 1980s. Because that's how I roll, can I get a what what.

So. Addicted. To. This. Show.

Which isn't a show at all, just a ton of the videos I watched obsessively as a little crunchy-bang pre-teen and teenager. David Lee Roth back before he became Skeletor! Pat Benetar! Til Tuesday! Madonna ... back when she scared our parents. Adam Ant! 99 Luftballons in German. Ahd oh, the Bowie. Time may change me, but I can't trace time

Love. True love.

And I watch these videos and listen to these old songs and it kind of takes me back to when I hadn't even started dating and meeting guys (or driving!) and before college and work and relationships and marriage and all of it.

And I was so burned by his leaving, by the whole wretched past year, I never even considered dating or what life would be like "after." I just couldn't see that far ahead, because it took all my energy to stay focused on one day, one hour, one moment.

But now that the actual final divorce is over, and the holidays are over, and I have relaxed a teeny bit about all of the pressure and expectations and sadness, I'm beginning to see that this new life of mine has its really good points. And one of those good points is freedom. Freedom to experiment. Try new flavors, so to speak. Until now, I've been incapable of even thinking about dating. Too much. Too stressful. So. Not. Ready.

But in the past few weeks I have thought about it.
A little.

And while I was doing this thinking, something occurred to me that I had not considered maybe EVER.

Dating now will be REALLY DIFFERENT than dating was before I got married. Mostly because this will be the fist time I have ever dated just... for fun. Companionship. A nice evening.

Maybe I am a little relationship-phobic, yes. I admit it. I'm not interested in long-term anything or marriage, not now. I was married a pretty long time. And I already played wifey and set up house and did his laundry and dishes and cooked the dinners and made the beds... I did enough of that. NOW I AM FREE. Free to dabble. To date without strings. To... philander, should philandering be called for. Just like guys do! I had never considered this. In my entire dating life pre-marriage, everything was all about Finding The One, meeting Mr. Right. Does he have compatible values? Compatible family background? Similar views on politics/family/religion/money/blah blah blah?

But now, NOW, I have the option to go out with any one I want, anyone. Even if he is all wrong for me. Even if we have completely opposite views on life, or if our backgrounds only mesh at salsa clubs, or if we have one thing in common and that one thing is that we both live in the same city.

I don't have to date men that are appropriate to introduce to my family. I don't have to pick guys that would mesh well with my friends. He doesn't have to have income earning potential, or like children, or want to get married, or have long-term goals. Or if he does, they don't have to match my long-term goals.

This is the most liberating feeling... maybe ever. Imagine a whole world of strings-free dating. I can go out with someone just because I like the way they smile, or laugh, or whatever. Ok, no, I'm still maybe not ready to actually GO ON A DATE, and also, HAVE NOT BEEN ASKED, and also, no, this is not an invitation to ask me out on the internets, but I think it's a good sign that I'm even thinking these things.

Because, like my man Mr. Bowie says, you have to turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes.

Oh, look out, you rock and rollers.

Posted by laurie at 07:33 PM | Comments (97)

January 11, 2006

The Tango Lesson

This is the only picture I have of my bassackwards fridge.
But imagine that on the left, exactly where the photo ends,
there is a protruding bank of cabinets. Cat optional.

My refrigerator is backwards.

One of the little quirks about LA, if you move anywhere (even into an apartment, the cheapest you can find) you have to provide your own fridge. That's how I ended up with mine, and Mr. Ex and I moved it from place to place, each time a little higher up on the food chain, until we landed in a condo in Studio City that eventually sold for more money than I could logically envision. (We rented.) (Or else I'd be writing this column from the comfort of my very own velvet-lined jungle room.)

So I moved into this tiny house in Encino Park, one year ago, and I kept the fridge because I can only assume he made other arrangements. The moving company sent me three fine young Latin men who moved my 2500-square-feet of stuff into this tiny 900-square-foot place, and that was when we discovered all at once the refrigerator doors opened in the wrong direction. To get a beer or a slice of cheese, you do a little dance with the door, it just barely clears the countertops, like a French farce for appliances.

Oscar was 19 years old, one of the moving men. A reformed cholo with the tattoos to prove it, he was a tall Latin man who could rescue a damsel in distress. (A tall Latin man!) He offered to come over the next day and fix my refrigerator. On his own time. Payment? Dinner. We made arrangements for 7 p.m. the next evening.

Oscar never showed.
It was for the best.

I would have taken any shred of affection back then, I was so wounded by my husband's abrupt departure. A sideways glance, any kindness, and I could have been yours. It was fate and serendipity that The Refrigerator Repairman, as he became known, never appeared. Who knows what path I may have taken out of sadness and hunger.

That appetite we have for desire, it never leads to good when it's steeped in sorrow. This much I know for sure.

So, to this day, my refrigerator doors open the wrong way, and one day I will fix them myself or I will move and either decision will be better than relying upon the kindness of strangers, a'la Blanche Dubois.

I think about this sometimes as I do a little tango in my kitchen to get the milk for my cereal. All those little quirks about Los Angeles, and divorce, all those things you learn as you go.

Posted by laurie at 09:21 AM | Comments (123)

December 31, 2005

A new year.

I know that eventually my story will be more than just I Am Divorced, even though that's how it feels right now.

Eventually, I will find my other defining characteristics. I will always be divorced, but in time it will not own me, it will not describe me, it will not color my days and nights.

This past year was something to be weathered, endured, something to breathe through sleep through wake through. Next year I might be in love or on vacation or living in a different house or a far-away city with new faces.

When love ends it changes you. Who knows what the changed you will look like or sound like in twelve months time? Who knows what circumstance and happenstance may forever alter?

Just like getting married.

He was just a guy I met one day.

Posted by laurie at 03:23 PM | Comments (90)

December 25, 2005

Christmas.

Kristy sent me these beautiful little knitting-themed Christmas ornaments. She made them! And the best part ... she included a card detailing the kind of yarn used on each ornament.

My mom asked me if I was taking time off work, or just from writing in my online diary. "Just from writing," I said. "It's hard to write funny when I feel so bad."

It's night, and cold again, and dark and I have avoided writing this stuff down. But what is the point of having an online diary if you edit out the hard parts?

Holidays amplify emptiness. It's like that on Valentine's Day, when you suspect that everyone is getting lucky except you. Or Thanksgiving, other people packed around the table laughing eating drinking.

But I can feel this way even on a rainy night driving home from work and it's dark and the rain has kept everyone inside, behind closed windows and locked doors, and you wonder if all the curtains are drawn because behind them there is a hand on the soft place above the hip, an arm outstretched, someone holding onto someone, something, and you're alone in the car. Everyone gets held except you.

That's what this Christmas feels like.

And I didn't take any time off work. In fact, I was the lone person in our department yesterday, everything was quiet, even downtown seemed lonely and hollow. A firetruck, sirens on 6th street but no crowd, no curious onlookers.

After work, I went to a party for Faith's birthday. It was held at her sister Shannon's house in the Valley, and I got to meet some of Faith's friends and it was nice. I was afraid that the inside of me would seep out from under the precariously cheerful exterior and taint the evening. I adore Faith, and I'm so glad I met her and that we became friends, because she's one decidely happy thing in a year that had a lot of sadness in it. She was the one person who showed up on my doorstep the night I got divorced, and she is a very good friend. I'm so lucky I met her.

At the party we ate and talked and when the night ended and people went home, I hugged a woman I had talked to only a few times, maybe I was just in need of a hug? Or maybe I'm now one of those crazy women who hugs strangers?

It is Christmas Eve now, and it's late, the cats are asleep, the world is asleep. The weekend stretches out before me, mine for the contemplating. This is my first Christmas as a Divorced Woman. A Divorcee. Uncoupled.

I always lacked the power of self-reflection. I looked into his eyes to see myself, to find recognition. Now there is nowhere to be reflected. What I miss most: having someone see you when you put on lipstick, brush your hair, make the bed, smile. Wake up Christmas morning and laugh.

Being a whole person (now half of nothing) will have to be enough. I have to be enough for myself, because in this life it's all you can depend on. That's not such a bad thing, really. Is it? I spent all those years focusing on my husband and my marriage and now I have unbroken hours to figure out who I am, this adult who I am alone with. She's not that bad. She writes this kind of crap stuff when she's drinking.

I spend a lot of time alone these days. My real-life friends are tired of hearing about my divorce, me being sad, or being lost or angry or whatever I am at that moment. I know they're sick of it and really, why can't I just move on already? My parents just want me to be happy, so it's hard telling them I'm sad, it just makes them feel awful, too, and of course it can't be easy if your kid is feeling bad and you can't do anything about it. So I spend a lot of time alone.

It's manageable. The holidays make it echo, but they're small days in a long life. This is what I tell myself. Drink enough and you belive it.

The best part about Christmas -- ideally -- is that you spend it with people who are special to you. I'm spending it alone, so this year I'll have to be something to myself, someone worthy of getting to know. It was easier focusing all my attention on my husband, (ex-husband) (feels so weird to say that). Finding the perfect stocking stuffers, wrapping and hiding his presents. We'd sleep late on Christmas morning, and then open presents and eat breakfast and go to the multiplex in Burbank and watch movies all day.

I wonder if he's also looking backward, thinking about the ghosts of married Christmases past? I doubt it. I suspect he's blocked it all out, left the past behind as easily as he left me. But it doesn't matter. I have those nice memories, and that's enough. It's not about him, it's about a part of my life that was really nice on Christmas Day. That kind of happy lasts forever.

And there are a lifetime of Christmas days ahead of me, and who knows what they'll look like? I might move. Or make new friends, choose very wisely who I let into my life, maybe I'll write a book or join the Peace Corps or wear stilletto heels or anything. I do believe that you can make your own life, create each day, shape a future that looks and feels and tastes like something happy and satisfying.

There's so much in my life that is good and worthy of celebrating and I can build a good beginning starting right here, inside my little house. Tonight I walked from room to room, which took about 3.5 seconds my house being rather small, and there was a cat here, and there, and twelve mismatched socks, and a pile of books and yarn, and those beautiful ornaments sent to me by a complete stranger, and I think, there's good out there. You just have to take chances, and choose wisely, and find your reflection somewhere else, in your own eyes, in a glass of wine? Take it anywhere you can get it. Happy lasts forever.

Posted by laurie at 12:09 AM | Comments (114)

December 05, 2005

Still Life With Divorce

Posted by laurie at 04:03 PM | Comments (113)

Monday.

Sat here staring a the keyboard for twenty minutes. Do I make jokes about it? Ignore it? Is there a handbook for this?

Can I just jump the shark and be done with it?

Took this pic on our honeymoon. (We eloped.)
Look how happy I am to be in the shark's mouth.
Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

I got married to share my life with someone. I needed someone to see me, know me, witness each day with me. I needed to matter to someone. Needed someone I could claim myself with in the midst of chaos.

So it's no coincidence that when I realized he was never coming back I started writing my life out in words and putting it on the internets so that someone, maybe, would see me through all the days when he wasn't here. Maybe laugh at my jokes?

I used to think I needed closure. That he owed me an explanation. You see, the humiliating truth is that he left me like one leaves a motel room, never once looking back, never pausing to reflect, no attachments there. Just dirty sheets.

But here is what I have discovered: Closure is a myth. The only explanation that would satisfy me doesn't exist. And it's his humiliation to bear, not mine.

Anyway, it's just a Monday. I woke up this morning the same as every other morning, and Roy licked my left eyebrow, and I got into the shower with one sock still on, and I cleaned the catbox and did my little morning routine, and now I am having coffee, writing about a day I dreaded, but I am writing about it! Me! The same girl who gave up writing so her screenwriter husband could be the wordsmith superstar in the family. And I have all my fingers and all my toes and great parents and lovely friends and piles of yarn and one big bottle of Veuve Cliquot for later. And I will do this myself, no big deal, because it is just another Monday, not anything to remark upon.

And it is final and I am still breathing.
Fuck him. And the shark he rode in on.

Posted by laurie at 09:12 AM | Comments (196)

December 02, 2005

That Boy's Just A Walkaway Joe

I have to be at work in five hours. Can't sleep. The cabernet is nice but not a great conversationalist.

Last night was Stitch 'n Bitch, but I wasn't all there, not present, most of me was someplace else trying to keep it all together. I discovered an hour into the evening that I didn't have my camera, don't have it, where is it? Where has everything gone? Misplaced. I really wanted to go to SNB last night, especially to meet Denise (who I called Diane. Twice. Because although I have corresponded with this amazing lady for months, I apparently have stopped functioning in the real world and am now assigning names to people based on... my recollections of grade-school friends? Poetry? Famous Woody Allen actresses?)

Denise brought two huge bags of toys for me to send to Haji. If my camera hasn't divorced me for greener pastures, I will take photos upon its reappearance. I was instantly humbled, thank you Denise. It was so nice to meet you!

There's a reason for my disconnect, of course. It's humiliating. Aren't the roots of all nervous breakdowns steeped in embarrassing details?

Yesterday was payday, and so I sent off another $400 to the lawyer. (Love is grand, divorce is twenty grand.) Then I realized that Divorce Day, is.. Oh My God. Soon.

Monday.

And I began to panic -- you feel a deep horrible (terribly unladylike) scream and it's trapped inside the pit of your stomach, and you are desperately trying to keep it inside, way down there, because no it would not be OK to begin screaming at your desk at Corporate Job, Inc. It would be, in fact, Very Bad.

It was the first daytime panic I'd had in a long time. It followed me around all day, even to Stitch 'n Bitch, where I prattled on aimlessly about... I can't remember. Ridiculous nonsense. None of it matters. I was maybe a bit shrill.

Panic isn't new of course, and maybe it isn't panic at all? Just anxiety or horror or humiliation? The middle-of-the-night panic started up again about a month ago. Until then, things had really improved -- I was even sleeping more. Almost five hours a night.

Then just a few nights before Halloween (is it any coincidence? My anniversary was October 25) I sat bolt-upright in bed, couldn't breathe. Scared the cats half to death, I can tell you that. Sobakowa was not pleased.

The daytime panic is back, now, too. It's just under the surface. People can sense it. Realization of impending finality and actual divorce is fully a white-knuckle attempt to hold back a scream.

Which is crazy, right? I don't want him back. I don't want to go back in time. I've grown up, made new friends, learned to stop lying, stop pretending my life is perfect, stop forcing a broken relationship into a Christmas card mold, to hell with it, live out loud.

But still.
Panic.
Monday.
Can't stop it from coming (but I want to).

I have decided to deal with this problem the same way I deal with all problems: throw money at it. Usually I buy shoes, but this is a strong panic. Looking at my closet and all my cute shoes could not calm me down, not one bit, those boots, maybe were made for walking? That boy was a walkaway joe. Born to be a leaver tell you from the word go.

(I hope whatever I buy has no-interest financing. Because while I adore throwing money at a problem, it is significantly harder to do when there is no money.)

Posted by laurie at 01:18 AM | Comments (172)

November 21, 2005

Master of the obvious.

From left-right: Christine, me the crazy.

Dear Christine, Hi. Really glad you came to the party and I kind of apologize for ... well. Remember when I walked you out to your car? And then I started talking and would not shut up and you had to stand out in the valley cold and listen to a crazy drunk woman talk ON AND ON for an hour? Whoops! But... if it is any consolation I only do that with people I really, really like. For example: you.

Love,
Your crazy and rather talkative friend Laurie

And of course everyone knows by now that I am a little bit unbalanced, the good kind of crazy (for now) where I don't wear my bra on my head or put tin foil on all the windows and outlets, but I tell good stories and maybe have one or two or seventeen quirks and if you're just around for a few hours it is all highly entertaining.

Maybe that is why he left?

Do you think I will ever truly know why?

Do you think it matters?

As time passes everyone expects (hopes?) that I will get better and happier and fixed, and of course maybe the opposite is true, and I get unglued a little every day. No real reason not to be. I am the sort of person who is often humored. And this is just who I have always been, even though I get a little scared sometimes (I can tell you that, right?) knowing that I am not right, crazy as a bedbug, but functional in a Walter Mitty sort of way.

So. Yes. Today and today only I will acknowledge it, I will be honest, tell ya'll the truth.

I am a little bit not right.

In my family we call this "colorful" or "touched." A good thing about Southerners: we like to keep our crazy people out in the open, none of that institutionalize them crap for us. We can take it. We are Southern and sometimes we are colorful. End of story.

Just a little bit not right.

Of course all this is coming up with:
1) Drew leaving, departures that make me remember when I used to have a friend (HUSBAND) at home all the time, we woke up together and talked about coffee and the cats and mundane things and

2) shit BREAKING, everything all at once (First, the tall guy telling me I wasn't pretty enough, next the car overheating in a big pile of steam and smoke, third, the cat gets sick) and I get scared that it is happening again, that everything will break again and I am powerless to stop it and

3) the holidays. LIKE YOU DON'T KNOW, how your co-workers ask what your plans are for Thanksgiving when they sort of already suspect you'll be home alone with a bottle of cabernet and your Tivo and some instant mashed potatoes and you are totally OK with this... it's their looks of thinly veiled pity that make you crazy.

And my day?
Roy was very sick, no one ever knows what is truly wrong with him (he has asthma, and a hard time breathing sometimes) (plus he is very emotional, or maybe I am?) and that was an expensive visit, almost $500, with X-rays and medication and I swear to a fiery god that I will keep Roy alive through the sheer force of my will; and I will not leave him he will not leave me and also, I love that animal. Anyone with an animal knows, you have one (a favorite) you don't mean that one to be the favorite but it is, and by God YOU WILL NOT LEAVE ME. We have had enough departures for one year. No one else leaves here. OK?

The Jeep is... oh shit, I love that Jeep (no one ever accused me of having good judgment) and while no car on the planet should require THREE BRAND NEW RADIATORS IN ITS LIFETIME, mine eats radiators for breakfast. So... $757.12 and now this is a thousand-dollar-day and why NOT admit I am crazy? I earned it. After all.

I earned it.

Posted by laurie at 08:44 PM | Comments (135)

November 12, 2005

Just things you notice in a weekend.

You know how weekend colums are ... i.e not funny.

Humor me into thinking no one is reading on the weekends.

I know my friends, my family, even passing strangers ... they hope I'll find someone soon. As if replacing the soon-to-be-ex will fix me. It won't. You can't fix something by merely replacing the valves, the context, the warm body beside you. But I love their hopefulness. It's charming.

Sunday we're having a yard sale, again. Come buy my clutter, my memories, all of it, set me free, only a quarter! One dollar!

A reader, Julie, said, "I don't need a blog; I tell my life story through the comment sections of other people's blogs. Sorry about that." Julie. Nothing to be sorry about at all. I tell my life story in bits in pieces in email to strangers who write to me, in silly website columns, as ya'll know, intermittantly. The rest is just fluff ... fluff ain't half bad.

Things I discovered this weekend: Not yet ready to date. I got my hair cut at Umberto, which I can't afford but needed it for my sanity. Vanity? Still in love with my hairdresser. Also discovered some guys really don't like cats and will kind of kick them off the couch. And when a man helps you cook in the kitchen of your own house it is both sexy and disturbing. (He doesn't read this.) I am about as ready to date as I am ready to cut off my own right leg. Or give away my Ugg boots. It's a tough one. You don't want to let down your family, your friends, people who are rooting for you. But you aren't ready yet. You are sitting down with someone, hand on your leg, and thinking, THIS IS A LIE AND HE NEEDED HIS CREATIVITY BACK (AFTER TEN YEARS!!!) AND BY THE WAY I NEED TO GO TO TARGET, GET TIN FOIL, THOSE LITTLE PLACEMATS...WHERE IS MY RED SHARPIE, I MEANT TO LOOK FOR IT? MAYBE IN THE KITCHEN DRAWER? and before long you are making a grocery list, hoping this ends soon, wishing you had never said yes, liking a tall guy in your kitchen, but realizing you just aren't ready for anything.

Yet.

Posted by laurie at 06:03 PM | Comments (83)

November 05, 2005

Christmas decorations, the Penthouse Forum version

During the week I try to keep it on the up-low here, with jokes about my mushmouth-sized hats and painfully un-nutritious breakfast foods. But on the weekends no one is on these internets reading this stuff, so I can be totally honest with ya'll. I'm sure both of you will appreciate it.

Today I am going to finally deal with Christmas.

That isn't a metaphor -- I'm not that deep. I really am going to deal with Christmas, and the seven green Rubbermaid tubs of holiday decorations that are living in my garage. Ten years of married holiday purchases sat there rotting in their little tubs all last year, and now it's time to finally sort it and put the chaff aside for strangers to paw and buy for a quarter at the next yard sale.

Memories. Just twenty-five cents! Get your memories here!

I'm keeping only the 1950s tinsel tree that I got on eBay and the few ornaments I hand-made for it. Mr. X was never fond of said tree. Everything else in those tubs was purchased with him in mind, or with our home in mind. Some of the decorations are actually his from before we were married.

I'll box those up and send them to him. It's the right thing to do. Although my inner asshole tells me to write a letter to go with the box, I won't.

I want to say:
"Dear Mr. X, remember the many years we hung these ornaments on our tree? Remember the year we brought home a 7-foot Douglas Fir on the top of your car and couldn't figure out how to get it up the condo stairs? Remember the time Sobakowa knocked over a fully-decorated tree and we just laughed? And the stockings? Remember how I sewed them from soft cotton velvet, making each one special and sewing a tiny note in the lining of each cuff? Now I kind of hate you and wish you a holiday full of herpes and Avian Flu. Love, Laurie."

I don't really hate him, to be honest. I just hate those Christmas stockings, and what they represent. Each minute spent making my own pattern, cutting the fabric, sewing them up like the Perfect Wife I had hoped to become. I hate that he left me and never looked back. I hate that he got to walk out, with only the posessions of his choice and make a new life, and I was left to sort through ten years of our collective stuff, and the cornerstone of my divorce settlement is four cats and a shitload of Christmas junk.

But I love that I am finally able to deal with Christmas. That pile of green plastic bins has been haunting me every day since I moved to my new house. I'm glad I have the cats. I'm glad I have my soul intact, and he has (maybe? herpes?) nothing but an unmarked postal services box of meaningless holiday decorations, sent to him by his ex-wife, his badge of failure.

I really dread the holidays.

So, there's that.

And I have a collection of Barbie dolls, many many Barbie dolls, all boxed away in my garage ... most of them given to me by Mr. X, all still pristine in the box. Can anyone suggest a children's charity, a place where I could take these dolls and give them to kids who would love them? Yeah, I could sell them on eBay. But I need to do something to redeem my shriveled heart. Maybe some little girl will get a kick out of a collector's edition Paleontologist Barbie? Some kid will think the French Dentiste Barbie he bought me in Marseille is cool?

Posted by laurie at 12:03 AM | Comments (88)

October 25, 2005

Welcome to Carjackistan ... or "Happy Anniversary, Baby, I Got You On My Mind."

Today is my wedding anniversary. Le divorce isn't final for a few more months, so I am still officially married. Coincidentally, I am officially going to be quite soused in exactly 8.25 hours.

Today is also the anniversary of my Jeep's grand adventure with a convicted felon, a period of my life fondly known as "My car got jacked, taken on a high speed chase in Hollywood, and all I got was this stupid police report!"

Yes, it is true. Last year my beloved red Jeep was stolen ON MY WEDDING ANNIVERSARY. The first wedding anniversary that I celebrated sans husband, as Mr. X had left me and the cats just a month before. I left work that day, morose and schlumpy, caught the red line home to Studio City, walked out to the parking lot and ... nothing. The entire Jeep had disappeared. And it was dark. And scary. AND MY WHOLE CAR WAS MISSING.

A prison parolee stole my Jeep, and then he participated in a high-speed chase in Hollywood IN MY VEHICLE. ON MY ANNIVERSARY. Just two days after all this excitement, I got a hand-delivered letter from my landlord letting me know the condo was being sold and I would have to move.

Ya'll. It was not a good week.

In fact, I was a total zombie. I cried A LOT. I often burst into wailing tears at inappropriate times... like, for example, during staff meetings. And when putting on my socks. My husband and my condo and my beloved Jeep had abandoned me. All seemed lost.

But I think the famous writer William Shakespeare said it best:

If you love something, set it free.

If it doesn't come back to you, then it's probably a piece of selfish, insensitive, cheating, lying CRAP and you're better off without it.

If it comes back to you, it's your true love forever.

(I may be paraphrasing a bit, and also it may not be William Shakespeare.)

I am here to tell you that this ancient proverb is quite true. My heart was broken. My life was in pieces. I was without transportation. I was soon to be without lodging. I was wearing stripes with plaid. I had visible panty lines.

But my beloved came back to me.
My true love returned.

I love, you, Jeep. Happy Anniversary, baby! Thanks for coming back to me! We make a wonderful couple, you and me. Amen.

Posted by laurie at 01:09 PM | Comments (59)

October 07, 2005

Stitch 'n Bitch 'n ... Uma Freaking Thurman.

No, Uma Thurman did not attend Stitch 'n Bitch. But I attended Stitch'n Bitch, and as you'll see later on in about 37,000 words and comma splices, I am practically exactly the same as Uma Thurman. Really. It's ... very philosophical.

I don't do any actual stitching at Stitch 'n Bitch, in fact I think I completed the grand total of ONE ROW of knitting last night, but then again I hadn't been to SnB in a loooong time and there was so much catching up to do. And who can both catch and knit at the same time?

Click for bigger pics. L-R: The group; Tami hides behind her gorgeous cotton cabled knitting; Peggy is so cute you want to cover her in chocolate and take her home.. here she teaches Faith intarsia.

Click for bigger pics. L-R: New peeps at SnB! Darcy really loves her yarn, and I mean that in the deepest sense of the word; Faith learns intarsia!!

I arrived late to SnB (thanks, job!) but I stayed late, too, since I HAVE A VACATION DAY TODAY. Yes. You heard that right. I am taking a much-needed break from my job. Me! So! Happy!

It was so nice seeing everyone last night!

And since today is A Vacation Day and therefore I AM NOT WORKING OH HELLO LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU WORLD! I was plenty able to meet up with Faith first thing this morning for breakfast at Marmalade. After eating 546,000 carbohydrates, I was determined to go home and begin the long, arduous task of getting my house back in shape from weeks of neglect. So, immediately after breakfast I talked Faith into going shopping. To trick the housework into thinking I was coming home. And maybe it would do itself?

Click for bigger pics. L-R: I get attacked by Xmas decor; Faith Falls at Michael's. HAH HAH ...get it? FALLs? Oh boy was I cracking myself up. Then I sniffed a gourd to see if it was plastic. Good times.

After shopping and picture-taking, I finally came home with every intention of cleaning my house and getting some control over the pile of shoes collecting by my front door, and the laundry, and the dishes, but instead I ... watched TV. Which must have been Buddha's plan for me today. And let me tell you why.

As I walked in the door, and stumbled over the shoe pile, and grabbed a beer (AT 3 IN THE AFTERNOON, HELLO VACATION DAY!) Oprah was on TV and her guest today was Uma Thurman (Yes, I am about to write about an epiphany I got from THE OPRAH SHOW. Got a dictionary? Look up "spinster crazy person." See my picture? so cute?) and within five minutes of the show starting, Uma was holding back tears and I was crying into a fresh beer.

Because it never occurred to me that any one person out there could go through what I'm going through, and there is Uma Freaking Thurman on the TV, all tall and skinny and rich and gorgeous... and she is thisclose to crying, because divorce is hard, ya'll, it's hard, and we do make strides, we do make it through each day somehow, and have good moments, and meet new people, and have hope, and we sometimes... we sometimes are doing JUST FINE.

We're FINE. Really, everything is GREAT.

So, being now GREAT and FINE, you make a meager attempt to get back on track, and off the sofa, and having quit smoking and so on, one day (a perfectly normal, fine day) you decide that maybe it's time to do that crazy newfangled exercise thing.

And so you go for a walk.

And on this walk, the first time you maybe have done any walking-exercise in over a year, you pet a dog in the neighborhood. And another one. And you laugh, because dogs! So cute! And then all the sudden you remember how every single night you were married you used to go out in your old neighborhood and go for a walk and when you got home your husband would say, "Did you have a good walk?" and you'd say, "It was great!" and he'd ask, "Did you pet any dogs?" and it was... a thing ya'll did. A tiny thing. A little insignificant part of your day that until THIS VERY MOMENT you had forgotten.

And now you really, really wish you could have kept forgetting it.

But all over again you feel like someone, someone maybe very fat, is standing on your chest and you can't breathe and you know you must go home immediately and drink wine and have a cigarette.

Except that you quit smoking two months ago.

So you just keep walking. And thinking you kind of need to wash your hands from petting on strange dogs. And that you are a thirty-four-year-old-woman who is going to walk back home, alone, and tell nobody that you're home, and probably have a glass of wine, and probably be just fine, and in fact you're better off in the long run THANKYOUVERYMUCH, but still. You don't feel whole.

You feel maybe... broken.

And it's weird to hear a celebrity, a complete stranger, say these same things. ON OPRAH. But it's also kind of comforting. And yes, I saw Jennifer Aniston on Oprah a few weeks ago saying she was FINE, I AM SO FINE! LIFE IS GREAT! I AM GREAT! and maybe she was great. Maybe being divorced made her soooo damn happy!

But seeing Uma Thurman on TV saying, "I don't even know what it means, moving on, what does that mean?" it was like she was channeling me, my sadness, my inability to trust anyone or trust in the future, my little pieces of heartbreak here and there, my awful self-esteem, my clever ways of making it all unbearable and then bearable again.

For some reason, this made me feel better. In fact, I felt... UNDERSTOOD. NORMAL. For the first time in a long, long time. Because if we've learned nothing from being raised here in America, Land Of The Free Home Of The Brave, it's that you're normal and right as long as you're doing exactly what the celebrities are doing.

And Uma and I are doing the same exact thing! Except that I am not a skinny, 8-foot-tall glamazon who is rich and famous and in movies.

But that's OK. I'm normal. Like a celebrity. On the teevee!

And that's pretty good learnin' for a Vacation Day. Right?

Posted by laurie at 04:29 PM | Comments (61)

August 19, 2005

Real Women bring home the bacon. And/or wine.

Signed, sealed and delivered: One divorce agreement, one check for a $1000 towards my lawyer's bill, and one very soon-to-be emancipated woman.

Coincidentally, today is exactly the one-year mark since Mr. X announced he was moving out. In that year, I have managed to stop bawling at my desk, stop smoking (so far, so good!), start writing stuff, discover the durable love of battery-operated devices and Face My Debt.

(Hi Dad! All the battery-operated flashlights are working great!)

Of all the things I have accomplished this year, I am most proud of getting my finances under control. For the first time in my entire life, I believe that I can live as a grown-up, a real woman, one who brings home the bacon and puts it in the fridge. And then has a glass of wine and feels FANtastic about bringing home that bacon.

Prior to the marital meltdown, I was a complete money moron. But now I have reformed! Mostly this is my control enthusiast side kicking in -- I know I can't control when stuff catches on fire, or when I'll bump into Mr. X, or when the spontaneous belts and hoses and radiators break on my car.

But I can control my money.

I can develop a plan, and have a goal. (In fact, my ONLY financial goal this year was... well. To develop a financial goal. Task solidly accomplished!) I tell ya'll this because maybe out there -- somewhere -- is another girl like me who wants to hide in the closet and eat Oreos every time the credit card bills arrive. Or go shopping. Because we all know the best way to tackle your finances is to SHOP THEM AWAY.

(And by "you" ... I mean "me.")

Because I AM A CAUTIONARY TALE. And if I can get a handle on my finances, what with my love of shopping and hatred of math and general ignorance of all things fiscal, then any human on the planet can do it. Really. And you know I never shut up and can't keep all this good hard-earned knowlege to myself, so here is what I have learned so far ... all summed up in five easy pieces. It has a pretty creative title, too.

1) Never ever EVER lose track of your money.
So, hi ya'll! I was married. And in my fantasy life, I had a Barbie/Ken marriage and Ken was a Man (debatable, but still) and therefore imbued with the Ability To Handle Money. For years I worked and shopped and let Ken do all the manly money managing. Well! Not only was I wrong about Ken's personal predilictions, I was also wrong about his money-managing talents.

Bottom Line: While it is tempting to have someone take care of the adding and balancing and so on, never NEVER cede your personal financial power to anyone. Think about it this way: You wouldn't let anyone, not even your one true love, take total control of your yarn stash and do with it whatever he/she wanted at any time. Would you? Then why on earth would you let anyone have control over your finances?

2) Figure out what you owe.
Can't speak for all ya'll, but I was too scared at first to even know HOW MUCH DEBT I had. Sure, I had a pretty general idea ("general" meaning "a whole lot of debt" and "maybe I will cry" and "is there any ice cream?") but I did not KNOW the actual AMOUNT. And ya'll, that is sad.

Bottom Line: Write down every bill on a piece of notebook paper. Or use my Excel budget (it's pink! makes it less scary!) Add it up. NOW YOU KNOW.

3) Figure out what you make.
This should be pretty easy. Write down what you bring home for the month. See! Not too hard! You did it!

4) Spend less than you make.
Um, again. Things I have had to learn that most people KNOW, yet me? With the hoarding habit and shoes and cats? Had to LEARN. Anyway. Moving on. Spending less than you earn will always be a smart goal, even if you make a bazillion dollars. Because when you spend more than you have, you're poor. You're endebted. You're unable to quit your job and join an alpaca herding community.

Bottom Line: Track what you spend. Ya'll know that diet trick, where you write down every potato chip and carrot stick you eat? Treat your money the same way. Track it. Understand where you can cut back. And then, ya'll know, CUT BACK. You can use Quicken, your check register, a Word doc, a sticky note, or the back of a napkin. But figure out to the penny where the hell your money is going. (After looking at past receipts, I discovered I was spending $40 a month on MAGAZINES for chrissakes. That was embarrassing.)

5) Pay off your debt.
I have massive consumer debt. MASSIVE. I'm still paying off my lawyer! But I have a plan now, one that involves calculating my balance and figuring out how much I have to pay each month to be FREE of debt in 24 months. Me! FREE! And when I say "massive" debt, I mean ... GNP of a small country. I could cry sometimes.

I have had consumer debt since I was nineteen years old (coincidentally that's when I got my very first credit card). Every day since then has been a payment. My paycheck, my life ... it's all tied to a bill right now, and being free of that is my greatest achievable goal.

Bottom Line: You have to stop taking on more debt RIGHT NOW. This minute. DO NOT CHARGE ANOTHER ITEM. Research debt reduction online. Read what the experts have to say. Google "debt repayment." Find ways to lower your interest rate. Cut down on the Starbucks or movie channels or magazines, whatever you can, for a 3-month period and use every penny to pay off your debt. Wash, rinse and repeat for another 3 months ...

In Conclusion...

There you have it, those are my five Cautionary Tale pieces of learnin' when it comes to money. I don't know a lot -- let's be honest, until a few weeks ago my savings account was an old butter tub in the vegetable crisper -- but I'm learning. I think it's a lot like knitting a sweater: you can only accomplish it one stitch at a time. So, I am slowly becoming a financial grown-up ... one dollar at a time.

Posted by laurie at 01:13 PM | Comments (79)

July 27, 2005

Hypothetically speaking, AGAIN.

I don't consider myself unlucky.

(Also, I don't consider myself short because I aspire to be tall, so you know. Just consider the source here is all I'm saying.)

Anyway, things happen. Trashcans disappear. Cats puke, occassionally on your tax return. I just always think of it as life: stuff breaks, wine flows, sometimes you find yarn on sale, and maybe you get your car stolen on the same day as your wedding anniversary, the first one you're spending alone because your husband is off getting his creativity back. It happens! Gives a person something to make jokes about. It's life.

My dad used to say that if I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all. We all got a big chuckle out of that, until about a year ago when the real bad luck kicked in and good.

After a while, when the bad luck kept coming, it got to be funny. No one can have this surprising amount of bad luck, it's just FUNNY. At first my friends and family kept up the Pollyanna routine, "Well, it could be worse..." and then of course it did get worse, and then I noticed one day people had stopped telling me how the worst was over. They also started saying how they themselves would be fine driving separately in their own car, because I am apparently CURSED. Which I am not. But you know, people spook easy.

Then about a week ago, I was on the phone with my dad, and he got BRILLIANT on me.

Me: blah blah blah

Dad: You know I was thinking. About how people, some people, have good luck and then it runs out?

Me: Yep.

Dad: I suspect it is the same with bad luck. It runs out, too. So you got the bad luck first, and one day it's going to run out. Then all you'll be left with is good luck.

Me: Dad! You're right! And you may be in fact my most favorite person ever to live EVER. I love you. Thank you!

And this is so, so true ya'll. The bad luck totally runs out, I can feel it running out. I'm pretty sure I'll win the lotto and wake up skinny one day and also, maybe four inches taller. Until then, however, I'm still cautious. One can't tempt fate. Fate hates to pass up a temptation.

So, let's say hypothetically you're someone who really believes that things are improving, but based upon your previous experiences (which are many and varied) you are hesitant to do anything really stupid.

And let's say your lawyer sends you the final divorce papers you have to sign on the EXACT SAME DAY your horoscope says Mercury is off retrograding until August 15, and you should never sign any legal agreements when Mercury is in retrograde. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

Would you:

A: Acknowledge that living your life based on your horoscope is one step away from the funny farm.

B: Pretend you never read the horoscope and sign the damn papers.

C: Pretend you never got the papers or misplaced them until, oh look! It's August 16th already! Better sign these suckers!

D: Realize that you can, under no circumstances whatsoever, ignore a direct message from GOD who is telling you to wait until August 16th to sign those papers, because if you don't heed your past life experience and your horoscope, you'll end up owing Mr. X money or conversely, stuck in a Mexican jail with no antibacterial hand soap and facing espionage charges because you signed papers when Mercury was in freaking retrograde YOU IDIOT.

Hi! So, yes, I am solidly in the "D" category there, not gonna lie to ya'll. I am not signing those papers until after August 15th. There's no legal reason why I can't wait. It does not affect my outcome or my final divorce date.

And now I have THE REAL DILEMMA, and I need some help.

Let's say you have (hypothetically of course) decided to take advice from YOUR HOROSCOPE and you are not going to sign any legal documents until August 16th because you are many things, including crazy, but STUPID isn't one of them.

Also, you now have to somehow tell your lawyer that he won't have the papers for another month.

Would you:

A: Follow the Live Out Loud creed and tell him straight up that you've had some bad luck (he saw a small portion of The Bad Luck that day in the courtroom, so he should know) and you may sound buckwild crazy ... but your horoscope says don't sign anything until August 16th. And he'll have those papers in hand by August 19th.

B: Tell him you need to send the papers to your dad first before signing, and say he'll have them back in "a week or so."

C: Pretend you didn't get the papers, or misplaced them, and that as soon as you find them you'll mail them off straight away.

D: Insert answer here. help help help I am so embarassed to tell my LAWYER that I am CRAZY yet I CANNOT SIGN those papers and help! Please? anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Help? Anyone?

Posted by laurie at 09:10 AM | Comments (122)

July 25, 2005

Insomnia, not just for crazy people anymore.

I used to be the sort of child that could sleep a whole day away, drove my parents crazy.

Although I was a light sleeper, I was committed to it and through sheer will alone could turn the wisps of a delicious, fading dream into a new dream, letting it wrap around me and fading back into it, even when my mom ran the vaccuum cleaner to wake me up. Even when one brother stomped around the stairs, another knocking softly at the door, "Come play... are you asleep?"

Now it's like being strangled by wakefulness, unable to relax and breathe in this not-exactly-night, not-exactly-morning. Just wandering from room to room, smoking on the patio, listening to crickets, thinking. Admiring the fact that I can sit now, alone, completely untended. Feeling somewhat better at this thought -- how much easier it is to be my own company now -- and still tight all over, like being awake all the time is a straightjacket. Watching. Waiting. My primary occupation these days is waiting. Listening.

Tonight I paged through an old photo album from our first road trip cross country, the year we got engaged. It was a hot summer just like this year, darkly humid at night and blistering all day. I know you think I was crazy, looking at those pictures can do no good. But then I saw the one I took of him ... I was in the passenger's seat and he was driving my old white convertible, we may have been in El Paso by then, and as I looked at the picture and traced it with my finger, all I could think was Goddamn, I loved that car.

So there's that.

And Lord how I do miss a good road trip. Driving in LA scares me, all those cars and people and traffic and off-ramps that have no corresponding on-ramp. But sometimes at night, like this, I think of packing all the cats and my cute shoes in the car and getting this show on the road, as my daddy says. We're a whole family of travelers, peculiar for southerners. It's something right down to the core of me, this need to just up an leave, get this show on the road.

It's like something is missing in my life but I can't place my finger on it. Can't trace it in any picture. And all I think about is moving, not really in the concrete sense, more like looking, but I have no idea what to look for. They don't make that type of car anymore.

Holes are crazy thing, sometimes so small you can ignore them, only they rear up and swallow you entire in one night. Or they just sit there in the pit of you, making you feel not exactly complete, not exactly sure. Hard to sleep when you're in that place, contemplating the missing thing. Is it a person? A place? A job? A house? Is it the way the air smells in a certain town, or the way a person smells, or good food simmering on the stove? Is it a dream you had, a dream you want for your whole life? A picture of a perfect day?

All these books in the Self Help aisle and these TV shows and talk radio hosts, they have an easy fix: just complete yourself. Know yourself and you'll be whole. As if knowing yourself is such a happy accident; half the time I'm tired of my own jokes and covered in cat hair.

I like the way older women seem to feel comfortable in their own skin, caring less each passing year what people think of them. I like the way I'm not teetering on some edge anymore, always about to crack. I like the way I can sit alone and night and not feel lonely anymore. There's nothing particular about my own situation that's hard now. All that crying had its place and I am cried out, it's over with, just paperwork and waiting left.

Maybe this hole is just quietness; nothing is there to fill it up with new emotion, everything moves forward today the same way it did yesterday. Kind of makes me want to go shopping. Or drive. George Jones on the radio.

And now I just miss my old convertible, the way I felt free to roam with someone hand in hand, the sheer joy of taking a snapshot of a beloved friend driving your beloved car.

Something's missing. I assume it will become clearer in time -- either that or I'll do something impulsive because action makes you feel like you're filling up, doing not waiting. I assume it's like this for most folks (is it?) because we wouldn't spend so much time looking, waiting, listening, or filling each day with distraction. Some people fall asleep at night exhausted, from a whole day packed end to end with a to-do list, some don't sleep at all.

I'm just going to wait a little while longer. Listen. See if anything turns up. See if I can fall asleep some night, all the way through, reaching back into a dream to keep me on the pillow a little longer.

So there's that.

Posted by laurie at 09:46 AM | Comments (60)

July 05, 2005

Mo' Money, Mo' Shoes

Whenever my financial outlook is particularly uncertain, I have the inconsolable urge to shop. I can only assume this is a plot hatched by the government and key retail establishments (mainly Target, and anyone who sells cute shoes), and they have implanted some kind of reverse financial homing device in my brain. I bet all those years of getting salmon to swim upstream was just a beta test.

Remember when Americans were urged to go out and shop right after 9/11 to keep the economy going? Yes. Well. Let's just say I can be a very patriotic woman. Each time I was faced with a new purchase, I could practically hear the Star-Spangled banner playing. I was a single-handed economy-buoyin