Tag: separation

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Good evening, Maria lovers. It’s the final night of the past decade. The decade in which we all grew up together and shit got real. The decade when we learned how horrible human beings could be, but also how kind and how much we need each other.

I don’t have a definitive song for this post, which is odd. My mental jukebox is playing loops and nothing seems to convey the optimism, hope and inspiration I feel going into the new decade.

I’ve mostly been off social media, but popped in today to find everyone is posting notes on their decades. So oblige me a bit as I reflect.

Dr. X reminded me yesterday that just over a decade ago I was freaking out about a job interview, worrying that I wouldn’t be any good at the job. I thought about that woman, the one who didn’t know her own mind at all, the one who was riddled with anxiety and panic attacks. A decade ago I had a two-year-old and a five-year-old. I was somewhat happily married, though the seeds that would grow into the weeds which choked out our Eden were starting to take root.

I was STRUGGLING. I had so little self-confidence that I gave all my power to a garden-variety narcissistic white man, one who espoused “I’m one of the good guys,” but gaslit every single experience of sexism I was starting to flag as a burgeoning feminist. And in that experience, I also became an angry, ugly, horrible person. In trying to make myself fit his ever-changing demands to make our marriage better, I tarnished my heart of gold. In trying to accept his pessimistic view of the world as my reality, I became monstrous.

In fairness to him, I was also a bit entitled. Like him, I was sold a bill of goods about what a marriage and a life were meant to be. And when we began to have fundamentally differing opinions on what that life should look like, we grew resentful of each other. I kept lowering my bar and asking if he could perhaps start moving up a bit so we could meet in the middle. Nope. My expectations were also all over the place. You can only grit your teeth and say, “Fine, fine” for so long when you don’t actually mean it.

In 2012 his depression really began. He was drinking and smoking a lot of pot. He was struggling to hold down a job. And we were spiralling down fast. Sometimes I wish that I knew about thought work then, about the kind of mindset that could have maybe turned our trajectory around. But I didn’t and maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.

We each own our own behaviours. I know now that I was an enabler, rushing in to fix everything rather than letting him learn from his own mistakes. He asked for space and I gave him a wide berth. I made my own life outside the marriage and he resented that, although when I would scale back to give him my attention, he resented that too. I could not win. I loved him though. Seriously. Still do.

Then our child grew gravely ill, was diagnosed with a rare, progressive and deadly disease, survived a major surgery and the complications that go with it. We walked through fire together and came out the other side, but as different people. The years of triggers and processing that trauma… well we only just figured that one out this past year, thanks to the help of some key friends who read this blog. The journey to healing was long and tough, emotionally more so than physically. Tough love helped us in the end. So has compassion. But I’d also like to commend myself on providing a strong foundation and surrounding us with a community of caregivers and people who love us dearly. It’s only in this past decade that I really learned how to be a good mum.

The aforementioned wide berth given to my partner of the time meant getting into debt so he could go back to school. I was proud of him when he graduated. I know how hard he worked. I was hopeful it was a new start for us. But alas, he decided his new profession was not for him. While all this was happening, I was taking on more and more at work, pushing myself into uncomfortable places so that I could get a foothold or grab the next rung on the ladder.

If I’m honest, I was also pacing myself, holding myself back a bit. I was worried I was surpassing him by a mile. I knew his “pride” did not like how any of this was going down. If you watch my fave show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, my ex is a bit of a Joel, but without the family backing to make his dreams come true. His “pride” kept him from truly supporting and helping to fuel the one career in our household that was taking off. Misogyny fucks with us all.

Halfway through the decade, my ex-partner moved to another city for space and a possible job opportunity, eventually came back to try and work things out, but found he still resented me. When I think of me during that time, I feel pathetic. I feel sorry for that woman who listened to the man she loved (but was always furious with) tell her he didn’t love her anymore. I think of her going on a summer island vacation with friends and kids and how she still tried to work on it, because he was too cowardly to end it and she was still trying to be a good wife. In sickness and in health, she thought. He’s just sick with depression and taking it out on me. I can be stronger than that. Each time he broke a piece of the marriage bond, she changed, until she barely recognized herself.

Eventually, through therapy and homeopathy and journaling and meditating and all those things, I woke up. It took YEARS, but I am so grateful to the past decade for that eventual alarm bell. The one that said, “It’s OK to say, ‘enough.’ Being kind to yourself and ending your suffering is OK.” The one that said, “You are not the horrible person your brain is telling you that you are.” Accepting the death of my marriage gave me new life. Accepting 100% responsibility for my part in it forced me to push myself harder to examine my self! To learn who I am, what I want, that I’m worthy of love and good things.

Despite this story of woe, I’ve never been more grateful for my ex. Much like Midge and Joel on Mrs. Maisel, Theo and I have a mostly solid co-parenting relationship. It’s evolving all the time. As I learn to let go of my control freak ways and let him take on more, even if it means he screws things up, he takes on more responsibility, easing my load. Watching him grow as a person, alongside our children, has been rewarding. He’s getting better. He’s finally learning to have compassion for others, how to consider others before himself. It’s not something that comes naturally for him. He comes from a family of self-obsessed individuals, where I come from a family of loving, but co-dependent abusers. His weaknesses forced me to be stronger, and we are learning how to be better people, together-apart, as really good friends.

I am pushing myself harder and higher. More kindness, more compassion, more forgiveness, starting with myself. I am starting to believe in my birthright, that I am someone who can make a difference and makes a difference in people’s lives regularly. I’m openly embracing my gift instead of downplaying it. I am good with people. I have the kind of heart that can love the world. My career is an important one to the well-being of humanity. I am learning to make it count, all of it, to monitor my energy but to use it wisely. As the Christmas card from my deeply introverted employee wrote, “Your enthusiasm and energy are infectious.” I’m owning that!

I’m a hype girl. I rally. I get people to feel and to share and to care. I believe this will be an important gift in the next decade, as we need to rally together to stop the horrors we’ve been facing in the past decade — the decimation of the environment that sustains human life and the subjugation and marginalization of groups of people that are not rich white men.

In the past decade, I’ve raised two children into the double digits. I cannot be more proud of the absolutely kind, compassionate, caring, funny and smart human beings they are blossoming into. I know the next decade could see them outgrowing the family home. It’s already changed once as we know it and we survived and are closer than ever. I’m not worried. It will all be beautiful in its own way. Every phase of parenting has been the best (although I never want to live through 2013 again).

In the past decade I met my business partner, but only built our business this past year. I can’t tell you the feeling of how she loves me. It’s inspiring. It gives me the power and the courage to do great things for others, to love freely and openly. I’m looking forward to how we will grow together and help our community of clients grow too. We are candles who light other candles. Sometimes we drip wax on the birthday cake, but we light up the room together nonetheless.

In the past decade I built my village with my bestie. What an amazing village, seriously. My people love me and take care of me, and boy do we make each other laugh. She is the centre of it all, that round middle part of a kid’s drawing of a flower, from which all the petals emanate. She has supported me through my DARKEST days. She’s had a shit year, I’m sending her so much love. I want good things for her, that hardworking badass queen that she is. She is the first person who taught me true, unconditional love. There is nothing I can throw at her that makes her love me less. I am blessed to have her.

In the past decade, my bestie and I (along with a friend) ran a secret feminist Facebook group for 3300 women around the globe and that became the Women’s Studies education that I never got. I learned about White Feminism vs. Intersectional Feminism and realized that while I don’t identify as white (I’m not actually Greek like the real Maria Callas), my skin is light enough that I have benefited from white privilege and thus it’s my responsibility to do better to make the world more just and inclusive of all people.

In the past decade, I made several A+ clusters of female friend groups. Insanely wonderful covens of fucking hilarious, courageous women. You know when you’re watching a show like 24 (shows that are inherently racist to Middle Eastern people, but make Westerners feel like they are gods who need to protect the gates of heaven) and they show those overlapping cells of terrorist organizations? It kinda looks like that in my mind, but with lovely human women who share their resources, their victories and their losses with humour and grace and love.

In the past decade I’ve travelled. I’ve learned to jump in every lake I come across, because there are only so many swims in a summer. I learned the universe has my back when I lost my wallet on my way to my first trip on my own of life. I have been to my mother’s hometown and to the country of my ancestors. I found a future home in a warm country in Europe that has my heart and gave me a feeling of possibility when all was lost. And when all was lost, I was found!

In the past decade I’ve learned to love my body, as it is. I’m learning to see it as a home for the space that contains ME! I’m learning to respect it and care for it, to allow it to experience pleasure without guilt. Learning to loosen the tight spots and tighten the loose spots, but love them fully even when I don’t look like the patriarchy told me I should to have worth. My hope is that I can teach my children this lesson now, so they don’t miss their more flexible years and ruin their future mobility by sitting still for too long, but also so they can love themselves as they are, where they are. Learning to connect mind, body and spirit has been a gift, a skill I’m deepening by the day and one I wish for all of you too.

In the past decade I’ve had more lovers than in the previous 2-3 decades combined. I’ve written about all of them here. While I’ve chosen to take a six-month “fallow” period (my lady-fields have to rest before they can flower again), I’ve had a lot of fun in the past three years. I’ve learned how wrong I was about so many things. Finding out how wrong you are is fun too. I feel prepared to learn some things through dating again. I’m confident that I’m ready to get back on the proverbial horse. Giddy up! I’m ready to build the future with someone and I feel his vibe out there. I can’t wait for the magnetic pull of the universe to bring us together.

In the past decade, I’ve met famous people and politicians. I’ve become friends with every woman I ever had a WCW for. I am the first woman in my family to own her own house (though props to my sis for buying a condo solo). I have had my name printed in proper publications, next to work I felt truly proud of. My actual life has exceeded the dreams of my immigrant parents. I have so much and so much to give. Now I just have to practice reciprocity.

In 2020, I’m releasing shame and transforming it into vulnerability. Honesty without tact is cruel. Vulnerability without compassion can be aggressive. Practice a bit at a time. Read Brené Brown. Embrace your imperfection and then learn how to own your mistakes, how to forgive yourself and love yourself through it all. Remember it’s all just an experiment. We are travelling to places without a map (not one that any of us are wise enough to read, anyway). We are baking without a recipe. It’s all trial and error. Every decision gives us a data point.

2020 is going to be about re-writing your story and not getting attached to how it might turn out. It’s about letting go, letting go some more, giving away, shedding, releasing, trusting that you are held in the palm of a hand you cannot see. It’s about assuming best intent. It’s about examining your own privilege and thinking about ways you can share your privilege and use your gifts and your “too much” (whatever that is) to help those who have less. It’s about smoking out the lies we’ve been fed for generations as women. It’s about telling them who’s boss. It’s about saying sorry and meaning it. It’s about doing better next time. It’s about staying with yourself like a faithful dog. It’s about opening up wider than you ever imagined and letting people in, because people are good and this world is worth saving.

Happy New Year!

Forever your optimist and cheerleader,

Maria

Releasing the weight of expectation

After a helluva a month, I turned a corner about two weeks ago.

I spent that morning with my anxious child’s therapist and my ex, working out how best to support her through this troubling period of constant panic attacks. (Answer: quiet compassion and tough love.) Then I was faced with an unpleasant email from my other kid’s teacher about how homework isn’t getting done (RAGE!). My employee was having cancer surgery and my other employee was sorting out a major sensory issue. Work was generally sucking and I was completely overwhelmed.

Then they screwed up my lunch order and the new order never came after waiting an hour, and so I tried to call into my 1PM meeting because I wasn’t going to make it there in time, but couldn’t get on because technology isn’t perfect and… WHOOSH. I was desperate and completely saturated with the weight of it all. Walking towards my office building, I cried, defeated. I looked up at a tree and prayed to Gord for something to change because I couldn’t take much more. It was extremely windy, and I know to be careful of what you wish for, because sometimes the Universe can’t be specific when you’re not, so I whispered, “But don’t like, drop a giant tree branch on my head or anything.”

I’m not entirely clear as to what changed in that moment. If a vessel cannot carry anymore, it has to let go or it will sink. So the vessel called Maria somehow let go. I decided in that moment that everything would somehow work out. A kind young colleague brought my revised lunch order to my desk and then sent memes to cheer me up. I successfully steered the panicky kid away from her fears via text. I went home and coached the homework kid until he had a major breakthrough. The universe just somehow tipped a quarter degree in my direction. I felt like myself for the first time in six weeks. Fun Maria is back, I thought.

All this recent hardship has made me really miss Theo and wonder if we could get back together. There are nights where I rush in and start to make dinner before even taking my coat off. The therapist suggested texting the kids on my way, telling them to put on the kettle, and then sitting down in the living room for a cup of tea before I start making dinner. I must remember to do that.

Then there’s the stuff that happens while I’m making dinner. One kid needs emotional support, the other needs homework support. Ah fuck, I burned the garlic. Wouldn’t everything just be better with another adult human next to me, sharing resources, sharing the load? What I constantly forget is that Theo is like adding a third child to the mix; a petulant teenager who wants his independence but can’t do the work to secure it. Why do I always forget this? Why do I always forget that I wanted it to work so badly, that I tried everything from micromanaging his part of the to-do list, to taking most of his responsibilities off his plate to just completely accepting him as he is and ALL OF IT added up to an unequal distribution of labour and emotional labour that left me completely in debt to myself.

And yet, when I feel completely bankrupt emotionally and energy-wise, I think, geez, it might just be nice to have him here to put the dishes away after dinner. So what if he NEVER wiped down the counters? Was that the deal breaker? I long for a hug, to have someone hold me, or to lie with my head on the chest of a man while he strokes my hair and kisses my forehead. Surely that must be worth it? In my loneliness and despair, I forget that I was lonely in my marriage as well.

“He did not love you the way you needed to be loved,” comes the voice, the story that I repeat in my head. The narrative must change, this I know. But to change it to, “He loved you the best he could and it wasn’t enough for you,” is a different kind of pain. Was the alternative to let go of the little things? Was it to accept his resentment when Fun Maria was nowhere to be found, her mind a giant pile of to-dos and post-its?

Was it to ignore that I was a growing feminist married to someone who couldn’t accept his misogyny or acknowledge his male entitlement or his privilege? How was I to continue to exist like that? I’d left Plato’s cave and seen the truth. How could I stay and watch the pantomime of shadows in the dark and pretend it was OK?

Leaving was painful, continues to be painful, but it doesn’t mean it was wrong. Sometimes I forget that it hasn’t even been two years yet.

Theo and I have had lots of heart to hearts of late, because we’ve been triaging our treasured anxious child. I think he wishes things with Mr. Saturday Night were better, that I had someone to cherish me. I want that for me too. It’s painful when he sees me spending time with someone who does not want to do the work to be with me. He knows, because he was that person. Or rather, to quote Theo himself, he did not “have the capacity” to love me the way I wanted to be loved. Neither does Mr. SN.

He tells me about his lady. I know a bit about her, because I’m a master digital sleuth. I know that Lars and Zofia introduced them. I know she has no children, but a great career and a thousand-watt smile. I think she’s smart and has the bandwidth to make him her second full-time project. They go paddleboarding together. She’s nurturing, by the sounds of it. It’s not a wild, passionate love like he and I had, but it’s a comforting stew on a slow simmer. It hurts, but I’m happy for him. She would be good for the team.

It is bittersweet, the tender way we are saying goodbye, in fits and spurts. We will need each other for a long time and it’s better to be nice to each other and to honour our 20 years of loving each other this way.

On the weekend he came over to sort the last bits of our car that is no longer, winter tires and storage racks hiding under the deck. He was going to help me build a tool shed, but we ran out of time and he made us all a chicken soup instead. The feelings of wanting him to stay were quite strong. We shine in fall when he’s not complaining about the heat and I’m not complaining about the cold. There is harmony in a season where things are ending, when the trees let go in the most beautiful way. We had dinner and so many laughs, and so many times I had to resist reaching out for him. I wanted it to be just “us” in that moment.

He went upstairs to get one kid’s bath started and his phone began to ring on the kitchen counter. I glanced over and her name was there. Our kid grabbed his phone to take it to him, “Dad! It’s your girlfriend!” We laughed awkwardly.

And then I cried, a super ugly cry. I’m a fool, I thought. I’m a fool to keep thinking that he’s ever coming back. I was ashamed. I’ve put everyone through so much and yet I would take him back if he asked in the right way.

I sought emergency counsel from my text chat with the Mommy Mafia and the plain truth came from no-nonsense Brenda. While her abrupt way of telling me what I need to hear often stings, I knew she was right. “No more playing house,” I texted Theo, “I can’t anymore. I keep hurting myself. Please let’s separate for once and for all so I can close this and move on.”

He apologized for lingering, he expressed concern that this might mean he sees the kids less.

“If it means anything, I’m TRYING to move on,” he replied, “I don’t know that I’m doing a very good job.”

But then I had a puff or two after he left and the kids were asleep (it’s legal today – woot!), and fell into a delicious sleep. There was a man in my dream, with dark hair and glasses. He was flirting with me, putting his arms around me and we were falling for each other in the dream. And the thing was that there was no fear in this dream, the falling was a feeling of butterflies but there was no ambiguity about the feelings of this man. I woke up feeling like he’s still out there, whomever he is, and remembering that I have no clue where he will come from, or when this might happen, but there is something yummy in trusting that it could happen when I least expect it.

“You are not responsible for my feelings,” I apologized to Theo. He sat on my steps while I did my hair. “But I need boundaries. I can’t count on you to do stuff for me, and you shouldn’t feel you have to. She may be cool now, but she’s not going to like it.

We are not getting back together, ever. It would make no sense. We tried that, for years, and we don’t work. I need to stop entertaining the thought.” Not speaking out loud is not my strong suit, you might have guessed.

“What if I do stuff for you when you’re not here,” Theo offered. He can’t seem to let go either, and truthfully, the well-being of the mother of his children is in his best interest.

It’s a weird fucking So You Think You Can Dance routine where we tear ourselves apart and run to the other side of the stage where we take turns freestyling, then freak out and run back to each other until one of us turns away. But the song is ending now and we need to decide what pose we are gonna finish this on, when they turn the spotlight off.

I love him. I will always love him. But he is no longer mine. And it’s time to truly let go.

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“I can tell you’ve changed,” Theo said with a smile as he got up to leave one night.

“Thank you. How do you mean?”

“You seem… lighter,” he offered, shutting my front door behind him. I took it in, sitting under the glow of a new lamp I’d bought, another totem to mark how I was moving on and bringing in more light.

I’m no longer carrying you, the voice in my head reminded me.

WHOOSH… freedom.

 

Bridge of Sighs

Welcome to my pity party!

Take your coat off, grab a drink, get comfortable!

The emotional labour of September always catches me by surprise and this year it seems more exaggerated than ever. My ex started production on a show he works on, putting in unconventional hours and making our co-parenting schedule difficult to manage. Guess who does the managing? Guess who sends out the weekly “operations” email to try and wrangle it all? Guess who suddenly has one fewer night a week to herself now?

I actually don’t mind having only one weeknight off (which I dedicate to writing). It’s getting darker earlier, so my desire to meet new adult humans (and even friends) is starting to dwindle. But more importantly, my beautiful, unique, quirky-brained children need consistency, and homework struggles is where I shine. What I didn’t expect, or remember to expect, is that with those homework struggles come an emotional whirlpool, one that has proven extra difficult to swim out of this year. Calls and texts all day long, because they need mom’s help navigating the world, because their own overwhelm needs to go somewhere, and because they don’t quite know how to manage their own tasks and time just yet. Nightly heart-to-hearts, hugs, tear-wiping, reassurance. I’m weighted down by carrying everyone’s feelings, by suddenly making therapy appointments and reaching out to professionals to see if they can help.

But it’s all work, isn’t it? Scheduling, corresponding, remembering to pay, remembering to submit invoices to insurance, checking in? Holding your children while they cry, being grateful that they still run to your arms for solace, while simultaneously worrying that you are somehow enabling anxious behaviour or learned helplessness. If my sister and I freaked out as kids, my mom would dismiss us, tell us we are being “silly” and send us back to our rooms to get homework done. There was no “talking about feelings,” instead, there was a heavy dose of guilt and disappointment. I’m probably only doing marginally better in that department. There’s only so much you can take on before you yell at them to snap out of it and send them back to their rooms to get homework done.

Do dads just get out of it? Do the kids not go to them with their feelings because their fathers have taught them that this is not in their skill set to deal with in a cosy, compassionate way? I know I’m HUGELY generalizing here, but in every family that I know, it’s the mom who carries this all.  It’s the mom who gets the panicked texts from the school bathroom, the mom who helps come up with the strategies, the mom who books the appointments. And eventually, your own mental health slips under the weight of it all and you are snippy, bitchy, teary mess (and sometimes referred to as crazy). Sigh. I’m so tired. Do households with two moms have the same dynamic or do they get double the capability?

Since splitting up, Theo has taken more on. It’s like he’s determined to prove to me that he is capable, and as such, I’m remembering to hold him capable and let him own it when he screws up, just as I do when I’m the fuck up. We’ve divided the labour between Physical (him) and Emotional/Mental (me). Physical is everything from making sure they are getting enough exercise, to booking dentist appointments. Emotional/Mental is feelings work, social work, homework, raising adults. I still wrangle most of it, but he’s getting better at it, even being proactive on occasion.

I see now that for a relationship to work and last, the two people in it must commit to their roles as well as to each other. “There are two types of people. Are you a flower or a gardener,” my QUEEN, Allison Janney, asks while playing Tonya Harding’s mother LaVona Golden in the film, I, Tonya. Is there something to that? Perhaps it’s more that one person is the Planner and the other is the Entertainer. But both have to see their roles as valuable, and the Entertainer has to support the Planner, to keep him or her up by making them feel loved, appreciated, valued. The Entertainer also has to remember to make space for the Planner to have fun by taking on some tasks, because wearing out the Planner is in no one’s best interest. But what I see time and time again is that the Entertainer takes all the fun and the Planner gets exhausted and is accused of not being any fun any more. Just me?

For the garden to thrive, the gardener must get energy from the fruits of her labour. The flower must bloom, attract visitors, put on a show for the gardener. Janney’s LaVona says, “I’m a gardener who wants to be a flower—how fucked up am I?” And maybe that’s my issue. I want to be adored, I want to blossom and bring joy through my mere existence, but I’m so capable at taking on the tasks of gardening that when the gardener doesn’t work fast enough or do things JUST the way I would like, I just march out of the dirt, shove aside my petals and pick up a hoe. And then I resent the fuck out of the other person. Sigh.

On Sunday we had a photoshoot, just the three of us. A friend is trying to get her photography business off the ground and asked if we would sit for her. I want to embrace the new family within the larger family, the Three Musketeers against the world, and having photos of just the three of us seemed like a great way to frame that for myself (pardon the pun).

I was feeling good that day, strong. Hair and makeup were looking good, kids were happy, we managed to get out to the suburbs in the car I rented like a grown-ass woman. I was feeling ready to start looking for a REAL relationship, one that involves EQUAL ENTHUSIASM (more on Mr. Saturday Night later in this post). I posted on Instagram, asking friends to start introducing me to a “healthy, kind-hearted, financially independent male who can handle a feminine, feminist mama who owns all her own shit (bull and other).” It’s time! Setting my intention! Putting it out to the universe! Bring me a Good Man. A Grown-Ass Man! One who dates WITH HIS WHOLE ASS!

But then this week shit the bed and I am suddenly faced with the realization that WE, the Three Musketeers, are a LOT to take on. That even their own father couldn’t handle staying with the person I am in tough times, which sometimes feels like all the time, and I was faced again with negative thoughts around being difficult, being unlovable. Who will I ever find that could love all of this? Who is going to be man enough to stand by me and prop me up and give me the love and encouragement to keep going? Who will love me on bad days? Who will also love my quirky kids on their bad days? It seems like an impossibly tall order. Sigh.

Mr. Saturday Night has not texted me since Friday, and even Friday’s exchange was initiated by me (as were Wednesday’s and Thursday’s exchanges). I woke up today and said to myself, “I cannot spend energy on someone who can go FIVE DAYS without asking me a question!” I mean, clearly he’s just not that into me. Sure, people get busy, but in busy times, we prioritize, and his actions say to me that I’m not a priority.

But let’s also be honest. If he messages me Thursday to ask about my weekend plans, I’m going to respond and likely find the time. Because it’s finally here: I’m lonely for romantic love. I sleep alone every night unless my daughter crawls in next to me. I miss being spooned and cuddled. I miss being someone’s sun and moon. There’s a longing, an ache, to give and receive. Last week, I came home early on one of Theo’s nights and snuck into my bedroom so as not to disturb them, crawled into bed in my clothing and wept. (Admittedly, I had my period and it felt like my ovaries were trying to cut my uterus out with a butter knife.)

Theo put the kids to bed and realized that I’d crept in. He texted me from a floor above to ask if he could come down to my bedroom. I said yes. He immediately saw that I was sad and asked if I was OK.

“I’m homesick,” I bawled, echoing the complaints of our younger child this past month. I miss being us. Somehow, now, on the other side of it, even though he’s often an inconsiderate asshole, some days it feels like maybe all of the bullshit of being married to each other was so precious and valuable and WORTH IT. Because this current state, while often fun and free and easy, it isn’t dramatically better. And then, whoosh, the wound opens and gapes and sputters and spurts. “He didn’t love you like that,” it hisses, “He didn’t want to stay.”

I know he’s out there, Mr. Real Thing, because I feel it. Deeply. I know this sounds hokey, but sometimes I connect with his energy. Sometimes I acknowledge his presence in the universe. I whisper to the wind, “I see you. I know you’re here.” I imagine what it feels like to love him and be loved by him. I thought I didn’t believe in The One anymore, but maybe it’s like trying to shake my Christian upbringing: My rational brain thinks religion is bullshit, but my heart likes believing in the idea of God. Of course there is probably more than just ONE, so maybe this faith is in knowing The Next One is out there (and feels closer than I think on tough days).

I don’t want to be a person who doesn’t believe in magic or miracles. That would be counter to who I am. And I’ve worked so hard to love myself, exactly as I am. It’s still a struggle sometimes, to accept myself and not see negatives, flaws or faults, but to realize that it’s all part of this beautiful quilt that is me, Maria. I hope, even though your stories are different than mine, that there are bits in here that speak to you exactly where you’re at right now. And if so, all I ask is that you send me a thought, a hope, some energy or a prayer—bonus points if you know a man that fits the above description and could love a flibbertigibbet like me.

Be kind to yourselves. September is a cruel month.

Reflecting on fear

Dr. X is a dear friend and also a homeopath. But she’s not a regular pill prescriber, but more of a therapist that uses homeopathic remedies to help you get to where you need to go, healthwise. The researcher in me knows that I can’t sway any skeptics here—the science doesn’t hold up. But anecdotally there is magic that happens, and I know because beyond my own experiences, the two therapists in my family’s life take their families to her too.

I got a UTI two weeks ago, from getting too cocky (pardon the pun) and forgetting that I should go pee after fun sex with Mr. Saturday Night. So I called Dr. X to help, because she has in the past and I hadn’t had one in a decade or so as a result (and while my marriage was broken and I felt we didn’t have sex enough, we still had sex more than lots of couples, so don’t try to pin that on abstinence). After prescribing something that worked almost immediately, I called her to check in about the weird sensations I was still experiencing. There’s been a dull ache in my lower back, on the left side, and it feels like energy is stuck there or something, or maybe it’s actual back pain. But my panic and anxiety is back after maybe 18 months of nothing. (And so, I’ve got an appointment to rule out anything more serious this week.)

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the kidneys are affected by fear. So the belief is that any issues with your kidneys are impacted by deep, prolonged fear. I’ve been anxious my whole life (though anxiety lives in the lungs in TCM), but there’s something deeper in me, a fear that makes me make decisions that aren’t in my best interest. Dr. X said I should use the Jewish holidays to reflect on my transgressions (I’m not Jewish, but we often joke that I’m “Jew-ish”). So I’m going to try to meditate and journal for the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

So this is a meditation on fear. (Those who come here just to read about the sex might want to move on.) What exactly am I afraid of? The same things as everyone else: death, endings, making wrong decisions, getting sick, missing out. But what fear and anxiety have always robbed from me is the ability to live fully. Now, I’m getting better at living fully, for sure. But every time I think I’ve got it, fear creeps in to remind me that it’s going to take more than an eviction notice to get him to move out permanently.

Saturday was an evening where I was crushed by epic grief. My daughter asked if I could host her birthday party at my home, even though it was her weekend with her dad. We all agreed that it could work, but as parents we were mindful that the transition back to his place after the party could be tough.

Theo and I collaborated on the party, though of course I did most of the planning as I am the planner. I gave him things to do and he did a lot to help out. And after the guests all left, the four of us hung out for a bit. I hugged Theo a beat too long as we congratulated each other on a job well done. Suddenly my men were dancing in my dining room, the way they used to when my son was small, and I felt the fissure in my heart (that I could swear was healed) erupt. I was overcome by a desire to have them all stay.  This was exacerbated by our daughter quite vocally announcing that she couldn’t bear to leave her home to go to his place. It was painful. But then I remembered she’d been given new books and used those as a way to get her excited about going to dad’s. They said goodbye, I closed the door and I wept.

There was a knock on my door. My mom! She’d missed the party (because they are terrible at timing), but showed up right when I needed her. I hugged her and revealed my sadness. I don’t like putting that burden on a woman in her late 70s, but I needed to and she was there, just enough, short and sweet before her comfort turned to unsolicited advice. But then she left and there were Anxiety and Fear, best buds, hanging out in my head.

The thing is, they are so damn convincing, that I believe I am at death’s door. It’s always been this way. But because I don’t actually trust myself to make a true judgment call on a health issue, I don’t do anything about the ideas they are presenting, except wallow in the fear. Conceptually, I know that my ego wants to make me feel so important, that my fear around death is that I’ll miss out on important stuff and that everyone who loves me will be so terribly sad, especially my kids who may never recover. Isn’t that really what everyone fears about death? Missing out on stuff, being missed yourself and being forgotten over time?

Conceptually, I know that there is no future, only the now, and that there is no death, that dying means only the death of the human form and that the spirit returns to the ocean, the master spirit, the life force and so I should not fear it. But try explaining that to a brain that’s irrationally afraid in that moment! Hoo! Good luck! I know it, but I don’t know shit. And that’s the practice, my friends: remembering that you don’t know shit about shit, but that you can get there with plenty of curiosity, a clear head and an open heart. That’s what the Buddhists call Samsara, I think. (But as I don’t know shit about shit, don’t quote me on that.)

So, my curious mind now wants to know why I’m so afraid of dying. But also, why am I so unable to accept joy in the moment it’s offered? Finally, the clincher, why can’t I just stay in my discomfort? Why can’t I watch it, without judgment and just wait for it to pass? Not always, but often, in my quiet moments, I take something that’s mostly good and THINK IT TO DEATH. Kinda ironic.

On Sunday, I ended up scheduling a yoga date with a girlfriend. I knew I needed yoga to set me right (in addition to a homeopathic remedy to support), but I knew myself enough to know I needed the buddy system to get me there. The yogi spoke of the new moon and of deciding what we wanted to invite in. I asked for Peace, Confidence, Serenity and Love. I started to feel greedy as my list expanded, but then she asked us to move to our right/masculine side and talked about how our masculine energy supports and defends our feminine energy. I realized that I am afraid of men and masculine energy, and that comes from a mix of childhood physical and mental abuse, and the sexual assaults I’ve written about in the past. There is so much to explore in this one little fear nugget, but it’s getting late and I’ve committed to sleeping better in order to get my anxiety back in check.

The yogi then asked us to move into fetal position on our left sides. “Your feminine side is your receiving side,” she noted. “Women are often taught that they are the givers, but giving is actually masculine energy.” In order to support our natural nurturing tendencies, we need strong masculine energy (not necessarily in the form of a man) to offer strength and support, so that our feminine side can receive love. It was interesting to consider receiving as nurturing, as loving, as a gift. So often we don’t think of ourselves as worthy of receiving, because of messages we’ve received from childhood to present day, but we must remember that these are just stories that have hardened, and they can be worked out like a kink in one’s back—with gentle perseverance.

At the namaste bit, the yogi remarked on the power of the new moon, of the unknowns in the complete dark of a new moon sky. We should be curious about all dark matter, I thought, it’s the majority of our universe and it’s expanding (which is the only thing we really know about it, because we don’t know shit about shit). We should be curious about the eternal dark and the darkness within, because it’s all connected, and I’ll bet if you followed it through it would lead you to divine light. And that’s not a bad thing. I piped up and reminded them all that it was Rosh Hashanah, also. A Jewish New Year new moon was surely extra powerful. It was for me.

On that mat I realized that in the times in between seeing Mr. SN, I freak out because I’m trying to control something. And that surrendering control is still something I’m working on. He’s driving it with his distance, or by just being a guy who is giving what he is able to at the moment and me being a woman who wants more, but can’t articulate it, because the truth is she doesn’t want to turn her whole life upside down to make time for more. Not yet.

I realized I’m looking for a Swiss Army knife, and missing the value of a tool that does one or two things really well. I have a full tool box of friends and loved ones. Why can’t I savour the orgasm tool? Why do we expect one person to be all the things to us? How unromantic and not-sexy does that become over time? I don’t have these answers yet, friends, but they are coming, in small increments. But what do I know? My desire to push him away and out of my life completely, my desire to retreat into myself because it’s nearly fall, that all comes from fear. Retreating into myself is about protection and control. It’s not necessarily out of love for myself.

In TCM, the seven ruling emotions are: Joy, Anger, Anxiety, Pensiveness, Grief, Fear, Fright. There is only one happy emotion here, people. The other six are unpleasant ones. So it’s safe to say that the majority of human life is spent in one of the bad places. Joy is not a given or a constant. Instead it’s a gift we must receive and when we lose it, we must remember that it will appear again. Often, if we stay with the uncomfortable feelings and watch/observe them rather than judge them, joy appears as the reward.

Too much joy can also cause problems, and in TCM overdoing joy can affect the heart. Overstimulation, insomnia and such, can come from too much joy.

So how to find balance? I welcome your comments.

Mr. Saturday Afternoon

My life is an HBO show.

It was Pride this weekend, so we decided to go as a family of four to support our gay child. We had never taken the kids before, mostly because our past Pride experiences were sex, drug and alcohol full dance parties. How would we explain all the naked people? How would we explain the hyper-sexed culture of it all?

We needn’t have worried. Kids are amazing and just roll with things. They laugh if someone’s dingle dongle is hanging out. They are with their parents, so they aren’t nervous. They know us — if they have a question, we’ll answer it honestly. From their vantage point, Pride was about letting your freak flag fly. Completely accurate. Be your brave, bold self in all its rainbow glory.

Kids are smart. More on that later.

Mr. Saturday Night has been a bit more chatty over text this past week. Mostly because, hey, we had an incredible time together two Saturdays ago when I had him over for dinner and he had me for dessert. Ba-dum-cha!

He was texting me yesterday about Pride t-shirts and I assumed he had seen them at the museum where he works most weekends. So the fam and I wandered up the avenue, past the food trucks and the DJ booths and the corporate “activations” to the public school where a big Family Pride event was taking place. We had the option of going into the gym or walking back to the playground, and our adorable queer kid chose the playground because there were monkey bars. This kid has never met a set of monkey bars that weren’t a magnet for them.

I send Mr. SN a photo of my kid standing in the middle of the rainbow-painted avenue in full costume with the caption, “Baby’s First Pride!”

…

“Awesome. Come visit. We are at the school.”

RECORD SCREECH! Not that I could hear a record screech, my heart was pounding so loudly. I am standing with my ex and my kids and this handsome man, whom I’m smitten with, this gorgeous creature that I just had amazing sex with the week before is saying he happens to be right where we are. I freeze.

“This is why Dr. X says we should stop doing things as a family!” I berated myself. After scanning the schoolyard casually, I excused myself and went to a Port-a-Potty to hyperventilate and consider my next move.

I text my friends and they mostly laugh at me. I would too. I’m an idiot. Why do I keep hanging out with my ex? Breathe, Maria, breathe. OK, just put it all on the table. He’s a grown up.

“So are we! Where are you? Heads up that their dad is here with us. Which is weird [shrug emoji] but perhaps not…”

“Gym.”

Oh phew, I can escape the Port-a-Potty at least. When I reach my fam, they are watching a magic show. I tell them I have a friend in the gym and I’m going to say hi. I wander into the dark gym. There is the usual gym food fare by the stage: a desiccated fruit tray, the orphaned raw broccoli in a veggie tray, some sad-looking pizza with green peppers on it (ew). There’s a mom breastfeeding in a corner, and a painting station and some assorted wee chairs to have a rest on. And there in the back of the gym is the handsomest, most charming man I have ever had sex with. Even in this dull gym, he is SPARKLING.

I try to do a sultry, sly walk-over. I catch his eye and melt a bit as the corners of his mouth turn up at the site of me. I convince my knees not to buckle. He introduces me to his colleague, a 50-something woman with glasses and dark curly hair. I promptly forget her name. “Where’s the gang?” he inquires. Out watching a magic show, I tell him. “We can’t compete with that,” he quips. We talk a bit, he tells me about the community outreach programs they do to educate people about the museum. Then I decide to go get the kids.

This. Is. Happening.

The younger one is immediately interested. The magic show was babyish and pissed her off. We walk in together and I introduce him as “My friend, Sam.” Mr. SN is smiling, clearly pleased to make her acquaintance, and shows her the antique historical artifact he’s brought with him. They use it to make something tangible, my kid’s hand on the same machine as Mr. SN and I can barely contain myself.

He hands us the tangible thing to take home and just as I think we are going to walk away now, my kid wants to play a game of giant checkers, 10 feet from where Mr. SN’s booth is. So I take off my jacket and indulge and try to play it cool at the same time. I text my ex, who is with our other kid, that we are in the gym playing giant checkers, but I don’t want Theo to come into the gym and don’t know how to say it.

The game takes way longer than I’d like it to. Mr. SN is serving visitors and I’m playing giant checkers and we’re pretending not to take notice of each other, but all I want to do is go over and kiss his whole face. Maybe find some bleachers to make out behind or something. But I don’t know how to be in this new world where two worlds are colliding. Not yet. I wasn’t expecting this. I didn’t have time to prepare! Is he even the guy worthy enough to be the first person I introduce to my kids?

Then Theo walks in with our older child, who has just done a project on exactly what Mr. SN knows the most about. Introductions are made. Mr. SN gives an even bigger performance of his subject matter expertise. He wants to slay. I’m not sure who his audience is: me, the kids or Theo? I am so uncomfortable, I just want it to be over and yet I want Mr. SN to impress the shit out of all of them.

Mr. SN shakes Theo’s hand. Firmly. Looks him in the eye. There’s a macho-ness to this interaction. The hand that a week before had been all over my body (and way up inside it, too) shaking the hand of another man who had years ago been all over my body (and had seen a baby fly out my vagina). It felt like a Clint Eastwood western.

HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?

We say our goodbyes and I give another sly smile. He sends a happy face emoji and I say something about how hot he looked with the antique machinery. Then I say it was lovely to see him and I was glad he got to meet my humans. He responds saying my humans are great and he was glad to meet them. SWOON. But the fact that Theo is with me makes me question both our uses of the word humans; is Theo included in that?

Theo is CLUELESS. No idea. This is partially because I know EVERYBODY and he can never remember a name. So if I say, “This is my friend Sam,” then he just assumes I know the person through work or social media and never asks. I could have just left it. I assume that someday Mr. SN could be an anecdote, because I’m still new at this. I can’t possibly have found a person I might settle down with so soon.

So I should have said nothing, but I don’t, because I’m neurotic and a fool. “Sorry, I didn’t know Sam was going to be here. I hope that was OK.” Theo still doesn’t get it, and then eventually his old fashioned lightbulb flickers on. “Oh! Well he seems like a nice guy… He’s really good-looking!” Yup. Sigh.

“Does he like you?”

In hindsight, WTF did he mean by that question? But I love that I didn’t waver. “Yes… yes, he likes me.” Because he does, even if it’s mostly just sexually right now. He likes me. He waited 5 dates before trying to sleep with me. Which I now get. Because when you’re as good-looking and as charming as him, you can get women to sleep with you fairly easily. But if you can like getting to know someone enough to last five dates, then it makes it a bit more worthwhile. It means that the person is more than just sexy, there’s something there. Yes, Mr. SN likes me. And I REALLY like him.

So it happened. Everybody met everybody. Nobody died. Nobody had a Russian Roulette style shoot-out outside the saloon. All hearts remain in tact. The kids, however, are not clueless.

“How do you know Sam? Like, where did you meet him?” Uhhhh, work? Kids can see through bullshit like Superman checking out Lois Lane’s undergarments. I resisted the urge to talk about Mr. SN all day. I just wanted to conjugate his name for hours. Sam, Sammy, Samuel… but I kept my glee in check and focused on my time with my littles. I often say I live on two continents since the separation. The one with the kids and the one I occupy when it’s just be and I’m not with them. But yesterday those two states collided. I think it’s inevitable. The lesson is that there is a new me and a new life I’m trying to build. And if I keep a foot in the old life, then I am going to be faced with this kind of awkwardness over and over. (To be clear, it was only awkward for me.)

I need to move forward. And yet part of me is still tethered to Theo. I came home last week, a little sauced after taking Ali to dinner for his birthday. And I waltzed in with a swagger that only three glasses of rosé and a flirty dinner with one of your lovers can provide. And Theo started in. “Do you think that someday we may get back together?” Argh.

I told him no, that “back together” implied backwards and I’m not headed that way. Besides, what exactly would be better? Why, WHY after we broke the kids hearts, would I even consider it? I hate that he asked me this question. His refusal to let me go, whether conscious or subconscious, is problematic. Does he not realize how much hurt and pain he’s caused?

For now, I distract myself with these men, handsome and fun and wanting only me. I need to make some more changes, commit further to myself and treat myself like the lover I’ve always dreamed of. I’m going to practice that this week. Stay tuned…

20 years

April 10, 1998 was a Friday. I put on these tight low-rise baby blue printed jeans I had with a slight flare below the knee. I put on my shiny white low-cut tee. I coiffed my bob and put on some Spice Girls-style platform shoes. I wore Cool Water perfume.

I had convinced my inner circle to go with me to the birthday party of this guy I was friends with in college. We were graduating from our program and loads of my school friends would be there. And it was becoming apparent that I had a total mega-crush on the birthday boy.

He was shy and awkward, but possibly the funniest man I’d ever met. His energy was infectious and when we talked about the music and movies we liked, we had so much in common that I wondered how we could have existed our whole lives liking the same things and not have known each other. One day, I got to my locker to find a VHS copy of Stand By Me in it. We had gone for tea and had an intense conversation about how much we both loved that movie. “Barforama! Hahaha!” The romantic gesture made my stomach flipity-flop as I scanned the halls to catch a glimpse of him so I could thank him.

He was slightly dorky, but muscular and bright, and if I’m being honest, beneath his plaid shirts and baggy jeans I saw the potential for someone great. He just needed a bit of work is all, like he was a pre-war cottage with great bones in an up and coming neighbourhood. Little did I know he was a money pit with archaic zoning laws.

The girl everyone thought he had a crush on was there too. She was wearing a crop top that said EVERLAST, the iron-on letters struggling against her robust rack. I thought for sure he was going to go off with the reigning queen of our program, but instead he sat with me, drinking beers while I downed Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

“So, you’re drunk enough, why don’t you go ask Melissa to dance,” I teased.

“Because… I don’t like her that way… I… I like someone else.”

I’m a bastard and prodded until he spit it out. “I like YOU, OK?!” Then we danced, I can’t remember the song but I’m sure there’s a journal in my possession that has it documented. I put the journals in a box with the wedding photo album. They are decaying in my parents’ garage, because I can’t fucking look at them without crying. They are the history books of this great nation that rose to power and then had its borders attacked. They are the Museum of Czechoslovakia and what was once one country is now two. The artifacts cannot reside in the Czech Republic or Slovakia, so they live in no man’s land.

When we danced he asked me to go out with him the next day, but I had plans to see Radiohead the next day, so I asked for a rain check (priorities!). “I’d kiss you,” he slurred, “But I’m too drunk and I don’t want it to be like this.” It wasn’t our first date, but we always marked our togetherness as April 10, his birthday, because we were inseparable from then on. Until we weren’t.

I didn’t mean to ask to take Theo to dinner tonight. I was actually just trying to get him to make his own plans with the kids and his family, but no one in his family has the sensitivity to think that there son or brother might be alone on his birthday and maybe they should do something for him. I knew that he would not ask his friends to do something. People learn from us. And he has spent a lifetime teaching everyone that he is OK on his own. He’s the subject of Simon and Garfunkel’s “I am a Rock.”

Except he’s not. I asked him to do the Myers Briggs and he got an E for Extrovert, which surprised me. He pushes everyone away, but like anyone, he wants to be acknowledged and appreciated. So instead of going to see Tinder Nightmares like I REALLY wanted to, I found myself spending $200 and sitting at a table with our kids, the birthday boy and his parents. I even thought to invite Lars (of the peaches) and Zofia to join us.

I got the kids to pick out thoughtful gifts weeks ago. The girl one spent a sick day making a card and decorating wrapping paper that she made herself. I wrote, “Thanks for all you do for me and the kids,” in a card and when he read it this morning he smiled. Somehow the words resonated, which made me sad for all the depressive years when my appreciation could not get through to him.

I know that regardless of how many times I honour him on special days, the sentiment will not be reciprocated. Last year on my birthday, he showed up empty-handed, kids empty-handed, my first birthday with no one. He said, “I wanted to get you something, but I was waiting to get paid.” That’s OK, I said, like I say every year because I expect nothing and yet part of me hopes this is the year he does SOMETHING, a card even. “Yeah, I really wanted to get you a composter.”

Ummmm… why? So every time I take out the garbage, I think of you? How did we get from “Stand By Me in your locker” to “composter”?

When we renovated our first bathroom, back when we were one child in and still so very much in love, we found an antique clawfoot tub. When we flipped it over to paint it, the date embossed on the bottom was April 10, 1940. I’m sure relationships started and ended on that date too. I wonder sometimes about whether couples were happier then, whether expecting less from life was a good thing.

But I’ve only got this life to go on, and I know that we are both happier and more sane. I know that once he got rid of the wife he believed was making him miserable and the job he believed was making him miserable, he could see how much of all this depression was actually on him to own and take care of. He’s starting to do the work and that’s the only gift he can really give me at this point.

My Facebook memories today were mostly painful reminders of me posting birthday greetings to Theo year after year, joking about his disdain for Facebook and praising him as a father, a partner and my best friend. Was I faking it? Did I mean it? Was it real? I’ll never really know.

I spent the dinner feeling like I was in the Twilight Zone. Like everything about it was so familiar. No one in the damn restaurant would imagine we weren’t a couple in a real family doing really family things. We looked so NORMAL and I couldn’t help but think, “What was wrong with this?” I kept looking at my phone for zings from boys, but there was nothing and the kids could sense my discomfort and chastised me for looking at my phone during dinner. So I sat with it, the discomfort, the farce, the “for the good of the children.” I took an Instastory of my prosecco glass and toasted to my character and the high road. My kids were happy. Their dad was happy. And my happiness ebbs and flows, but it’s here goddamit, and I can finally breathe.

To give you a sense of how long a 20-year relationship is or feels like, have a look at this list of other things that will turn 20 in 2018.

My gap year

I saw Ali again. He messaged me after a week away (and forgetting to mention he was working in another province for a week). He got back and realized that he’d just missed my free weekend and was bummed. I was high off my date with Mr. Saturday Night and didn’t feel like indulging him for shit, and yet who knew how MrSN was gonna go? I want to occasionally break one off (or four) as much as the next girl, and Ali is so damn good at making me feel like a goddess. I told him I could maybe find some time and would let him know.

After I made the mistake of inviting MrSN to a late-April event too soon (I’m the consummate planner and this can hurt me as much as help), as much as I wanted to give him my rare free Sunday, he never asked so I left it. Plus, I really do love hanging out with Ali, I just don’t love the long silences in between. I want a daily little zing on my phone, or every few days at least, but Ali can put me on the shelf for far too long for my liking. There’s something about being a considerate partner, one who knows to check in every few days, or just help the cadence along with a “saw this and thought of you” or a “you crossed my mind in a meeting, so just saying hi.” I reluctantly told Ali he could have my Sunday but we needed to DO something other than just shag, because frankly I feel empty when our encounters are only X-rated. To my joy, he agreed with me.

But as the date grew closer, it was clear he had planned nothing. His mind was on the A+ sex (and who could blame him?), but I really want to be treated like more than a plaything, this much I now know. “Will everything be closed for Easter?”

“Looks like you have your homework cut out for you,” I retorted, with a winky face to take the bitchiness out of my text. God! Do some work! Why am I always with men who don’t want to make the effort for me?

My fucking ex told me over Easter brunch that he took his date dancing to new wave music and it took every ounce of energy for me not to reach across the table and poke him with a knife covered in hollandaise sauce. We’ve been chatting casually about our dating lives, which feels good and also weird. But on Sunday, we did the Easter egg hunt at his place and then went for a walk and took the kids out for brunch and all was fine! For the good of the kids, and all that. Until he quietly mentioned that he’d been on his third date in a week with a woman and took her dancing the night before.

Then I was wrecked. Would it have killed him to take me dancing on occasion? He knew how much I love to dance. It’s appalling how little effort it would have taken to make things better with us, effort that he REFUSED to do. Then the wound opens again. “He didn’t love you like that,” it whispers. “He didn’t want to love you like that. He couldn’t love you like that. He didn’t have the capacity to love you like that. He said it over and over and you didn’t want to believe it. Just accept it and let go.”

Because of the Easter parade in his neighbourhood, we came back to my house and they all piled on the couch to watch TV. I had made the aforementioned plans with Ali, because—if I’m honest—having intense sex with him numbs my brain and also makes me feel like I’m rebelling somehow. Like if I fuck Ali for four hours then I’m somehow getting back at Theo. Which the rational part of my brain knows is not true, but the teenage/alligator part of my brain wants to believe is the antidote to feeling sad about how my marriage went out.

My first sexual relationship was like this too. He was terrible for me. Everyone knew it and I knew it too but somehow I was determined to see it differently. I remember cruising downtown on a Saturday night down the city’s main street, passing a median where cute boys were standing and when our car got stopped in the bumper to bumper traffic one yelled out to me, “Hey are you Manny Rodrigo’s girlfriend?” Why yes, I exclaimed, excited that Manny was telling people about me. The boy looked at me and smirked, and just as our car started rolling again, yelled, “He cheats on you ALL THE TIME!”

It was 1992 and skinny eyebrows were all the rage. Linda Evangelista, Helena Christensen, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington… all the supermodels of the era were sporting them. I was 18 and fashioned my look on Madonna’s Erotica, sporting crop tops with men’s pants and berets and very skinny eyebrows. I came down for dinner one night and my father reprimanded me for making my brows so skinny. “It’s the style,” I argued, “You don’t know anything about FASHION!”

madgeskinnybrows

“You look like a whore.”

I was so mad. What the fuck did he know? I was 18 and newly sexual and did he know how lucky he was to have a daughter who only had one sexual partner at 18? If he thought he had a whore for a daughter, I’d show him. So I drove to see Manny and fucked him silly, putting on my best whore performance.

I know that didn’t hurt my father, because it’s not like a sent him a VHS tape of the event. I also know that having sex with “He cheats on you ALL THE TIME” with no condoms and just birth control pills was fucking stupid (I was SO DAMN lucky it’s not even funny). Just like I know that shagging Ali on Sunday for four hours wasn’t going to hurt Theo. So why do I go there? And why can’t I just own my own sexuality without the idea of a patriarch that I need to get back at, or a kinky man driving my actions so that I don’t have to be accountable for my desires?

But Ali. His apartment was beautifully sunny. He’d put up some photographs and prints with more character since the last time I’d been over. He’s been studying my place and taking notes on what makes it warm and inviting, so I was flattered that he’d made changes after our last conversation about my decor. But I know they are not for me. Ali is about power. His appetite for more is insatiable, and putting pictures in a frame that make him seem like he’s got a strong sense of where he’s from is all part of him trying to stake out his turf in the big world. He is so beautifully complex, but I also worry that the writer in me fills in his blanks in a way that he might not see himself.

Here’s a guy whom I perceive as being often distant or unavailable to me in the way that I want or need a guy to be with me. But when he wants me, Ali WANTS me. He thinks I’m amazing and says things like, “What do you have to be neurotic about! Fine as hell, brilliant, career angled sharply upwards…” He’s a fan, and having sex with him is lovely, because he adores me physically and mentally. But there is no soul connection, and he’s so much an atheist and a logical thinker that I don’t think he gets that.

In his mind, he’s thinks giving me what I’ve stated I want. I asked for a sexual relationship and he delivers. But what’s missing is the other part, the dating and doing stuff together because we actually have fun together. He thinks he’s an open book, and if I ask him questions, he does answer thoughtfully, but part of him is behind a wall somewhere. He’s always a bit cagey because he’s dating so many women and doesn’t know what he wants from his future. And I don’t think he will know until it stops him dead in his tracks.

We cuddled on the couch for a bit and the goal was to go for a walk and then come back to Shag City. We talked about how our dating experiences on the apps were going and he did mention casually—in between kisses—that while we’d started out X-rated, maybe we should consider dating each other officially. Bah! I don’t even know what to make of that? What would be different? So I just kept kissing him until eventually the couch action proved too racy and exciting, so we agreed to change the order of events around and headed to the bedroom.

What followed was epic. Hours of fun with a wee nap in the middle and FIREWORKS at the end. He has this gorgeous skylight that flooded the room with light, and when he spooned me and fell asleep, I could hardly close my eyes for the smiling. He’s definitely a generous lover and is verbal with his praise and adoration of my physical self and my sexual prowess. (Hey, I’m in my FORTIES—I’ve got some chops!) And that is truly yummy in the moment. It’s like buying jeans that make your ass look good. Except with jeans, you can put them on whenever you want. In Ali’s case, the jeans decide when I get to wear them.

Eventually we got up and walked to get a bite to eat. We talked about dating and dating apps and weird experiences. I tried to be thoughtful and ask questions, but there’s something about our conversations that just don’t… FLOW. At least, not for me. We picked a place with a vibe and food that was too pricey. He’d been drinking the night before so he chose a soda and a salad. But I was happy to be with him, happy that he and I can be really honest when we choose to be. Still something niggles at me. Something makes me feel sad when I leave him, and it’s not because I miss him. It’s because there’s something missing in me.

This sadness followed me into the next day and I ended up having what I call a “Bad Divorce Day,” where the grief at the loss, the loneliness and the feelings of being unlovable overwhelm. I know this is bananas, because I have an abundance of love in my life. But there’s this nagging feeling about how hard it will be to actually find someone to partner with who can love me the way I am. Which, as I write this, I know that’s a story I’m going to keep perpetuating if that continues as my focus. I have to work to change the script. And maybe, after running it by Dr. X, the key is going to be to cut both Theo and Ali out of my life to make room for someone who is just right.

I do have a new realization after the events of the past few weeks. I’d like to fall in love again. I’d like to bet it all in the hopes of finding someone to swoon over. What I will no longer do is put any expectations of forever on that someone. Whatever happens happens. I want to be a bit of a tourist. I can love New York and London and Paris and Madrid and Montreal all for different reasons, and I’d like to live in them all before I die. Istanbul will always have my heart, but we aren’t meant to be together for long. There’s something in this metaphor that may be worth exploring while my kids are such a big part of my life. Would it be possible to find a few great men, who would fulfil my emotional and physical needs for a few years until I’m really ready for another life partner? Could it be like visiting my favourite cities over and over again?

Maybe taking a traveller’s approach to dating is the way forward. I’ve decided this is my gap year. The year I try a bunch of experiences to see where the gaps are, what needs filling, and where I need to grow to fill those gaps, rather than filling them with someone else. But if the men I date are like the places I would visit were I 22 and backpacking through Europe, that’s OK, because each destination will be special in its own way for what it teaches me about myself. More to come as I test out this idea.

 

Random thoughts from earlier this week that needed an edit

**Giving this another path because stream of consciousness dictating into your phone is not quite the technology it needs to be yet.

I have a Theo reunion fantasy playing in my head as of late. It might be because I’m ready to start dating again. Well, I’m not ready, but it feels like maybe I should give it a shot. Of course this coincides with Theo and I getting along better than we have in over a decade. Suddenly he is the thoughtful, appreciative, giving human being that I fell in love with. And I know it’s a trap. I know in my heart of hearts that this can only exist because we are not together. And that is so fucking sad. Because at our best we were magic. We were the mystical wonders who made two incredible human beings out of love.

So here is how my fantasy goes. He asks me out, simple. He takes me somewhere awesome, maybe our usual spot, a dark little bourbon bar that has great food. He does something chivalrous— a romantic, sweeping gesture like he did when we were first together. He’s assertive with the kids when they ask where we’re going. “I’m taking your mother out to show her that I appreciate all that she does.”

After dinner he walks me home and he tells me he can’t live without me. He takes me up to the top step, right by the door that opens into the house we bought together so many years ago. And then with me on the top step, with him down a step to even out our height difference, he tilts my chin towards his face and suddenly he kisses me in the way that only he knows how.

Suddenly I’m engulfed by the mouth I know intimately and by heart. This goes on for sometime. Weeks go by. We go to our social worker to get her blessing and surprisingly she gives it to us. He moves back in. We make plans to get a bigger place because suddenly he doesn’t fit here anymore. And this house is full of sad memories that the happy ones don’t quite erase. He makes me coffee every morning, like he does now, except he brings it down to my bed each day with a kiss and the look of tenderness.

Edited to add: Looking at this description again, I realize that none of it is about sex. If I read it back to myself, it’s about being noticed and appreciated just as I am. It’s about connection and value. And frankly, now that I will be exposed to more sexual adventures, I’m realizing that it’s not a priority for me. That, for me, good sex is a byproduct of connection and intimacy. It’s important but it’s not the tentpole. It’s just indicative of the health of a relationship.

We do nice things for each other now, and these days we actually notice them. So getting back together feels so natural in that way. But I have to remember that the reason there is no resentment is because we don’t live together. And yet when I look at him some days, and overwhelming desire to hold him in my arms and kiss his face takes over. And I’m so scared to say it out loud. Because we tried that for so many years and it only ended in heartbreak. And I can’t possibly imagine myself doing that again.

Today I realized I’m not crying as much as I was a year ago, and that was profound. I posted an Instagram story to commemorate that moment with that realization. I’m happy here, now. I feel it, and Theo’s happier too. Neither of us seems to be enjoying dating. Above all else he really misses his time with the kids. And I struggle when events happen with three of us that the fourth person can’t participate in because of the separation. In some ways it would be so easy to go back to how we were. Except, it wouldn’t. I know this and yet the fantasy lingers. I wonder if it’s the same for the kids.

My daughter is at that age where she’s getting pre-pubescent hormonal nightmares (she’ll be 11 this summer). She came down to my basement bedroom in a tizzy last night around 10:30. I told her to crawl into my bed, as there’s space to do that now that her dad is living in an apartment a 10-minute drive away.

“I’m feeling really scared right now,” she said in a small voice. I told her that I knew the feeling, that she is so much braver than I was at her age, that I had been afraid of a lot of things, growing up with post-genocidal anxiety that was handed from my grandmother to my mother and down to me. “I used to be scared of bees, animals, of my own shadow!”

“What are you afraid of now?”

“Well I’m always the most worried that something terrible could happen to you or your brother. The second thing I was always most worried about was that your dad and I wouldn’t be together. (Pause.) But that happened… and I survived.”

“You know what? You’re stronger since dad left.”

“How so?”

“Well you used to rely on dad to do lots of things for you. Because he was your man. He was THE man in house. But now, YOU’RE the man. You’re the man-woman.”

Whoa-man. Heart-swell. Kids say the darndest things.

Everything’s coming up Winehouse

Every time I go to hang at my friend Lars’s house, he puts on Back to Black on vinyl for me. It was the tail end of summer and he’d just enthusiastically procured flats of peaches and called me over for our annual canning session. His wife Zofia and I poach, pit and peel, but Lars is the sterilization and syrup master. He runs a tight ship. And that’s part of the joke, really. He’s so stern with us, that we invoke sulky teenagers who are forced to spend time doing chores when we’d rather be riding bikes.

Every January when I open a jar of summer, I say a prayer of thanks to my friend for insisting we do this crazy thing that takes a whole day and wrinkles our fingers and stickies up the floor, with an adorable terrier trying to trip us the whole time.

He plays the epic Winehouse LP on every visit, because one time, before Zofia was in the picture, we went to karaoke together and I sang “Rehab.” And whether he has a clear memory of this or not (I’ve never asked), Lars has somehow connected me to Amy Winehouse in his mind. A fellow big schnoz babe with a furry face, I love Winehouse, but to be honest, I never REALLY listened to Winehouse, at least not with intent until this past holiday season.

I am a big lover of Christmas. It’s my jam. I’ve always made a big production of it, for my entire life. I’m the girl who starts playing Christmas music in November. IDGAF, I love the ridiculousness of the whole thing. It’s the same reason I love Celine Dion, or period films. I love pomp and circumstance. I love overt gestures. I love when anything is done big and loud and proud.

But this Christmas I was a mess. I spent Christmas Eve with my parents (watching a period piece). I woke up early Christmas morning and drove out to my ex-in-laws in a snowstorm, to watch my kids open their gifts. It was the first of maybe 19 Christmas Eves that I did not spend with all of them, at my ex-MIL’s house. And it was ROUGH. My ex-MIL, who is not evil (not since she stopped being shitfaced daily anyway) gave me a passive aggressive greeting card. It said, “Merry Christmas to the both of you.”  Which was kind of hilarious, but also she didn’t do it for any sense of irony, just “why waste a perfectly good card?”

I spent NYE completely alone. By choice. I made a bubble bath and bought myself a baby bottle of Veuve, moved the TV to the bathroom and rang in the New Year watching Call the Midwife. Hashtag: #doublebubbles. But leading up to all that was so fucking painful. I don’t even know if I fully understood that pain. It was like when I went to go get my tattoos. I was in a trance, completely out of body—no, the opposite, so completely in my body, but also in that quiet room in my brain. The holidays were like that, too. I was getting through, but going into the panic room in my mind, hiding the bodies there.

And so my love affair with Winehouse began. Because listening to someone else spilling their entire soul into a work of art was preferable to tuning into my own.

For you I was a flame
Love is a losing game
Five story fire as you came
Love is a losing game
One I wish I never played
Oh what a mess we made
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game

Theo and I have been talking. He has been making eyes at me again, but I have not indulged, even if it would feel really goddamn good. One Friday night, he asked if he could buy me a drink while waiting for our daughter to come out of music lessons. I should not have had a second bourbon cocktail in under 30 minutes. But I did, and I started to reveal things and to ask things. I told him that I was kind of seeing someone, if you could call it that. When he asked if I could take our daughter the next day (it was my weekend off), I told him about Ali and our impending date the next night. Then I told him how Ali is in his thirties and can go three rounds in three hours and how he’s just for me right now, just for fun. I shouldn’t have. And yet… was there a part of me that wanted Theo to hurt?

Then, boomerang to the face.

“I was seeing someone too,” he said quietly. When pressed, it turned out she was a young woman he used to work with. A 20-something ballerina, because OF COURSE. And I should know better. Boundaries, blah, blah, blah. But I went there. WE went there. I saw her tall, perfect-postured, size-ZERO photo. “What was it like, being with her,” I found myself asking. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Well she was young, so she really wanted… to learn.”

“Aww, your teaching degree finally came in handy!” Laughter from both of us. He told me she was ultimately boring and not funny, so it pilfered out. Yeah mofo, because this kind of humour comes from crazy and crazy is work! “Are we friends now?” he asked. Sure, I replied, why not. It was one of those “fuck it” moments where suddenly you are going there, like when you have a Big Mac combo (and maybe a McNugget appetizer) and it seemed so fine and cool when you decided to do it, but the next day you feel like total shit.

But somehow the thing that has survived this fucked up scorched earth of a year is our friendship. It’s like the cockroach in Wall-E, it refuses to be incinerated. It’s here to stay, in this ugly, unforgiving landscape. Because there’s still life on this planet.

Played out by the band
Love is a losing hand
More than I could stand
Love is a losing hand
Self professed, profound
‘Til the chips were down
Know you’re a gambling man
Love is a losing hand

We had another boundary issue when Theo walked in on my “session” with Ali on the weekend. And that is a really funny story that I want to tell in full humour mode, not in this sulky, “who the fuck am I and where did this all go wrong” mindset. But let’s just say we now have a code in place and it’s called “going offline for a few hours,” which I thought was really apparent while being subtle when I texted that, but apparently not, because SURPRISE! Anyway, lesson learned.

The day after THAT incident, we all went to the movies as a family and it was nice. I like that we can hang out. It’s awesome for the kids. But it’s also confusing because fuck, don’t we all just want to be a family in the real way again? Like if you eat vegan cheese all the time, don’t you sometimes just want to go down on a double cream Brie? Don’t you wish you could stay there forever without enslaving cows?

Let’s just say that it’s been a month of openness and transparency and that’s lead to some comfortableness in what we are sharing and how we are talking to each other. So we went to what I will forever refer to as “the Big Mac” place again today. I texted him to ask if I could have a second weeknight off during the weeks, now that the job he’s working on is wrapping up. He was weird about it, like why would I be asking for more equal distribution of time with the kids? Or maybe he was miffed that I said it was 75/25 right now (pretty damn close when you add it up). He doesn’t count the hours they sleep in my house, he only counts awake time, so you can see where this gets complicated.

I was honest and said, “Look I’m going to start dating with intention soon, not just fucking around, and I need time to be able to explore that.” And that turned into a looooong text exchange and he was left feeling like the one who just ate a Big Mac I think. There’s always that moment where I think, he could just come out and say it! Just ask! I would consider it. Because I still love him, though not in the same way I suppose. Deep down I am still that girl who wanted her father to love her, who became the woman who wanted her husband to love her. I got my father’s love in adulthood, when I let go of needing him to be like other fathers. But would I, could I, ever get the same with Theo?

 

I finished my fave breakup podcasts: Alone, A Love Story, A Single Thing and the ex-husband/ex-wife combo that did the fantastic Our Ex-Life podcast decided to call it quits on the cast, because the dude started dating someone seriously and I think it bugged her. So today I started Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin? Coincidentally, the day that Theo told me that he no longer wanted to be romantically involved with me, I began listening to Perel’s book, Mating in Captivity.

The premise is that Perel gets one counselling session with couples in crisis, and each episode reveals the massive fault lines under the bedrock of every kind of marriage. The second episode, with two moms struggling to make each other feel special and loved under the weight of little kids destroyed me. Because I found myself back in the place I lived in for so long, where I wanted to desperately for Theo to feel loved, and I wanted to feel loved and appreciated myself.

There was talk of defining roles. One person has to be the planner of the date, the other person has to be the planner of the logistics of the children so the date can happen. And these women, they so clearly loved each other, you could hear it. They were just missing the path to connection over and over again. And that’s when I started sobbing uncontrollably in the car.

“He couldn’t do it, remember! You were doing it ALL. All the roles were you. And he kept saying that he didn’t have the capacity to love you how you needed to be loved. He refused to meet you halfway. He refused to date you. He kept saying the children came first and you kept telling him that making time as a couple was ultimately good for the children and he refused because he didn’t want to be with you and you just have to fucking accept that!” my inner voice screamed. Heck, I may have said some of that out loud.

Every, single time I think about getting back together, my wound reveals itself, reminds me that our marriage was cast aside like an orange rind. Like something that was once so whole and perfect, it contained all of our life, but now there was no putting it back together or seeing it the same way. It was refuse, and we were left exposed, vulnerable, thin-skinned, in pieces.

Though I betted blind
Love is a fate resigned
Memories mar my mind
Love, it is a fate resigned
Over futile odds
And laughed at by the gods
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game

I went down the Winehouse rabbit hole in the dark months of winter. I listened to Back to Black on repeat. “I died a hundred times,” she sings on the title track, and didn’t I feel exactly that? I wanted to know every lyric, every inflection. I wanted to crawl inside her hurt and wear it like a blanket. The album became the holding place for my own pain, like a machine I could put my broken heart in to have it come out as polished as beach glass. Garbage, but pretty garbage. Smooth garbage that could become something worth looking at.

Then I watched the movie.

I’d been putting off watching Amy, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary, because kind of like watching Titanic, you know how it’s going to end and it’s not pretty. And man did I ache, watching a talent so rare be destroyed by the media machine and by her own hand. To be consumed by heartache. To live in the place of longing and worthlessness. It’s so terrible to watch a bright spark be unable to see the shiny diamond she is. I think my friends felt this about me, too. My relationship consumed me and anger ate me from the inside out. I was mentally bulimic. I would put good things inside me in the form of experiences or art or meditation, only to barf it out to make room for the demons. I just wanted him to see his fault in it all, as if somehow that was the way out. As if somehow that would make it all better. Instead it took us both down, like the heroin did Amy and Ray-Ray.

The day Lars, Zofia and I canned the peaches, it became clear that we needed help if we were to get it done with an evening to spare. So I texted Theo to ask if he and the kids would mind helping us. So they joined us, pitched in, laughed and in the end we all went up to the roof deck for shawarma as the sun set, pink and orange on our famous city skyline.

So we are history
The shadow covers me
The sky above
A blaze that only lovers see

This family, it’s not quite a masterpiece, but it’s a work in progress.

The peaches? Perfection.

My saviours

“How long has it been?” Our firecracker of a tween-age girl looked at us over Family Day dinner. “Since what?” I asked coyly, hoping she wasn’t asking what she was asking.

“You know, since the breakup?”

Their dad and I looked at each other. God she’s astute. Neither of us had acknowledged this fucked up anniversary. We broke up at the end of November, but it was February before he moved out. We both mumbled something like, “A year and a bit.”

“What month? What day?”

February 4th.

I quickly pivoted to talk of Family Day weekend the previous year, when we were painting their rooms, building IKEA furniture, getting ready for THEIR separation from each other after nearly a decade of sleeping in the same room.

But on February 4th, 2017, we were doing something entirely different.

On the morning of Feb 3rd, 2017, my daughter said, “I don’t want today to be over,” and started weeping. She had realized it was our last night as a family of four. I’d dealt with my own pain the previous night by going out dancing with a super fun colleague and her merry band of Polish friends and gotten stupid drunk, slam dancing to Lida Pimiento in a gallery. It was all so awful (the husband leaving, not the dancing) that I only have hazy details sketched out in my memory bank.

Dealing with my child’s emotional pain while nursing a massive hangover was not my finest moment. But that morning I was focused on letting them know we just had to get through it. The social worker had advised against letting them stay home, because that could create an ongoing issue, so I gently coached us out the door.

When I called home after school, it was clear that my kids were not in a good way. My son, who is not generally overly emotional, was a teary mess. I realized that I would circumvent the pressure of the last night all together by overriding it. I rushed home to get them and called my sister on the way. Sushi and sleepover, STAT! My sister is a successful adult human, but also an incredibly childish plaything for my kids, and going to her posh condo would be just the thing to distract us all.

She had a big glass of wine waiting for me and video games for the kids. Somehow it was fun, even though their dad was back home, packing for his move the next day. After dinner, I got the kids ready for bed and then I gently made my way out of Neverland and back to the house we all shared together. Why? Why did I go back to the marital home? I’ll never really know.

The boxes I’d procured for him to pack were sitting empty in the front room. He had done nothing and was sitting in the dining room, watching YouTube on his laptop. My memory tells me that I avoided making a snide remark to cover my anxiety over his lack of packing, but I can’t confidently say that this is true. I know I eventually went upstairs to our bedroom to pack up my own things from the dresser that he would be taking with him to his new apartment.

We must have slept in the same bed that night, but again, I have no memory of it. Did I weep on his bare chest, like I had so many nights leading up to that one? Who knows? That glass Inside Out memory ball is buried in that land where Bing Bong goes to die.

The next morning, we said our goodbyes, Theo and I. I don’t remember that final goodbye either. I could only begin to imagine what it’s like to leave the home your children grew up in and would continue to grow up in, just without you. But he wanted this, I kept reminding myself. He didn’t have the courage to just leave, of course. For years he just made himself absent by whatever means necessary. Now we were just making it official.

I had a fun day planned. I wanted anything but for my kids to have a memory of their dad leaving. I headed back to my sister’s and she took us for a super fancy brunch in a super fancy hotel. My mom called us at some point, to discuss how she’d been a mega bitch to Theo when he came by to get our old furniture out of the basement. She spoke in our native language so the kids wouldn’t understand. My sis and I giggled, knowing mom had my back.

Then the boy child went to a birthday party, while the girl one and I went to the nail salon with a bunch of her friends and their moms. The village I had carefully built over the years rallied together to support us. After manis and pedis, we retrieved the boy one and went to see Hidden Figures with a single mom friend and her daughter, who was my son’s classmate. We were completely distracted and when we exited the theatre, it was suddenly dark out. It had been a bright, crisp February day and to be hit with the dark was a reminder that we had gotten through the worst of it.

“Let’s call your dad,” I said quietly, “He probably hasn’t eaten all day. Let’s see if he wants us to take him to dinner.”

When we got to his new neighbourhood, the girl one didn’t want to get out of the car. “It’s so WEIRD!” she kept saying. And yeah, she was right. Theo was hurt, I know it, but he eventually coaxed her out. We had Thai, and as we sat around the table we raised our glasses. “To us!” we toasted. The 20-something girls at the table next to us made gagging sounds and rolled their eyes.

I was surprised by how angry this made me. I wanted to go over to them, in all their young, hopeful glory, and say, “THIS IS NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE! This family has been through the wars! We have survived the near death of that sweet girl over there, but our marriage didn’t survive the post-traumatic stress after her disease and surgery, and maybe it was long broken before that, but GODDAMMIT we are here today of all days and eating Pad Thai and Cashew Chicken and it’s a FUCKING MIRACLE!”

Instead I swallowed a spring roll and turned to the girl one. “How about after dinner we go see Dad’s place?” And that’s what we did. Except when we got to the corner, I made an excuse about having to buy cat food and took the boy one to the store with me while the girl one skipped down towards the beach where Dad now lived.

“We’re going to buy him some groceries. Just enough so that he has breakfast tomorrow.” Was it generosity? Was it needing to be the smug person on the high road/horse? Old habits die hard, and I always took care of Theo. It’s what my mom raised me to do. So we showed up, the boy one and me, with a bag full of a lesson. It was the kindest way I could imagine beginning this new life.

“This is so WEIRD!” the girl one exclaimed again. It was SUPER WEIRD. Seeing our stuff in a new home, breaking up a life woven together. If you want to destroy my sweater, pull this thread as I walk away.

He came back to the house, I forget why. The shock of bare spots on walls where his concert posters had been removed. The absolute gut-wrenching blow as I walked into our bedroom to nothing but dust bunnies. I’d told him to take the bed, the mattress, the sheets. I didn’t want his energy on anything. I dragged the old futon mattress up from the main floor and plopped it down. When the kids saw this, they asked for their mattresses to be pulled in too. They flanked me, in a makeshift camp, little refugees ready to make a new life, but needing the safety of the maternal womb for the transition.

They saved me. For two weeks I destroyed my back on that floor, but they saved me. I was forced to go to bed early, forced to not cry myself to sleep, forced to accept that I was surrounded by a great love that had been born of the very person who broke my heart.

Exhale.

They are the bright spot in my day. They are the reason Theo and I are still friends. They are my reason for everything (except maybe this writing here, which I’m not sure is sustainable). They are the reason I only moderately fell apart in this last year. They are why I keep going. They saved me then and they continue to save me, one day at a time. I hope I am able to give them even a fraction of what they give me.

I’m not ready to date with my heart just yet, but spending time with Ali, I realize that how my future partner will gel with my kids is critical in my decision-making. For now, Ali is just for me and I don’t know that this will change ever. Ali… sigh… that’s a tale for another post.