Thursday, May 31, 2012

Why Do Guys Suck So Much, Pt. 1


OK, my guy is my guy no more.  In all honesty one of my very biggest fears (and the queen can totally verify this as she heard me whine about it with big, blubbery tears when she could still stand to hear my big, blubbery tear whines) was that this was it.  This was my one shot at “twoo wove” and I was now to start the rest of my life as sad, lonely spinster woman.  I was plotting the purchase of the third cat (because remember that the mandatory minimum number of cats to be a crazy cat lady is three and I only have two.  But if I’m gonna be a spinster I should just buy another cat and a horribly-floral housecoat and bunny slippers and go for it…) and thinking about selling my big, 2-person bed for a tiny 1-person bed for no reason other than to not be mocked by the whole extra person-worth of totally unused space.

But then Mr. Distraction showed up and seemed to find me… interesting.  Or at least potentially interesting.  I very definitely got the idea that he considered me potentially… something.  I had potential.  And potential is good!

Also this potential for potential meant I could practice my flirting.  I’m a terrible flirter, or so I’ve been assured by the actual women I know.  So practice would be good, and it seemed like I was being successful enough to at least not drive him away.  And that was potentially potentialful too.  So that gave me the hopes.  It let me decide that maybe T.E. had found some glimmer of something in me that he, at least once, found compelling and if I could compel him, even though he’s made up of 100% unique and amazing, maybe I could compel someone else.  For instance Mr. Distraction.

Now one of the things that has been constantly and repeatedly shoved into my poor, red, puffy face this year is that though I have the creaky bones and stretched-out skin of an old lady of over 40, I have the relationship experience of someone who’s totally psyched to vote for the first time and looks forward to puking up Tequilla legally.  It makes me crazy that I’m only now wandering through such classics as “how can it be over?” and “what do you mean I still have to get up and live my life?  Every day???” and “what do you do with a life that was supposed to be lived w/ that other person after that other person decides they want to live their life with some other other person?”  I know that most folks my age will have gone through this a super-long time ago, become blasé about it and now find the idea of having ever felt this way quaint.  Silly even.  But not me.  For me this is fresh and new and now and totally what the kids are doing these days.  If those kids are me.

The other thing is I’ve never figured out guys.  Now I know that most women, even those of my wretched age, will tell you that no women have ever figured out guys.  They’re un-figure-out-able.  They’ll tell you they’re simple, but that’s all lies and falsehoods.  They’re like a puzzle box made out of a whoopee cushion and fart jokes.  However the big difference between me and most women my age is I’m still so new to this that I keep trying to figure them out.  I have not hit that point where either A. I’ve FOUND my man, so screw the rest of them I don’t have to figure it out anymore – HOORAY! or B.  I’ve tried it so many times with so many different men, always to reach the same frustrating conclusion, that I’ve finally given up and have comfortably adopted the attitude of “screw them.  They want sex – they’ll figure me out.”  I want to get there – to either of these places – but my Plan A blew up and my Plan B should be ready about the time I’m doing physical therapy with my new hip to prove I can even HAVE sex at my age.

Ok, how did I get here?  What the hell were we talking about?  Oh, right.  Mr. Distraction and having potential.

OK, so there I was being wonderfully distracted from my all-encompassing heartbreak by Mr. Distraction.  We were chatting and emailing and there were flirtings and sexual innuendo and pictures being bandied about.  And finally after a few weeks there was a meeting.  1 hour for a beer and some chatting, and I drove there totally ready to find our in-person chemistry to be of the “ammonia + bleach = death” variety.  And yet 1 hour/beer later I was vaguely smitten.  I was at least charismafied enough to think I’d made a new friend, and that’s a very good thing, so yay!  We connected and went our separate ways, and though I probably over-talked and over-shared and though I spent the drive home doing a lot of “I can’t believe that I…” in my head it still seemed extremely promising.

Three weeks later I sent him an email basically saying “it’s a pity you turned out to be a jerk.”

After we met it was three emails in three weeks.  He kept saying “super busy but still interested!” or “out of town but still interested!” or “sick, so sick, but really, did I mention I’m interested?” but at a certain point I realized, as all girls probably eventually realize, that I somehow got to a point where he was just keeping me on the line for the possible potential for sex.  (and as you guys already know if that’s what he was looking for from me it is to laugh!  Laugh until you pee!)  So I let him know I was lame for waiting around and he was lame for being lame and buh-bye.

Thus endeth part one…

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Ideal Distraction


4/26/12

In the months before everything went down the big toilet of badness and sadness I made an online connection with a guy, or actually he made it with me.  I had permission from T.E. and yet I still felt guilty even just sending the occasional email back and forth.  It could often take me a week, or even a month, to reply to his missives because it felt even a tiny bit like the disrespect I felt when T.E. spent nights with other women.  At the same time it was sometimes the only tonic for my beat-up pride, and so email I did.

The emails were tame, benign even.  Tiny bits of flirtations tucked in around “do you have any pets?”  “What’s your favorite movie?”  “Boxers or briefs?”  Then my world went “BOOM” and I asked Mr. Man to excuse me for a few weeks.  I needed to grieve; to show respect for the relationship that I’d had with T.E. and to have any interactions with some other guy, even of the benign type, was wrong.  Just wrong.  He was very nice about it, wished me the best and also big luck and left me alone.  And I figured that was probably the last I’d hear from him, having thrown cold water all over our tiny, little ember of heat. 

So it was a nice surprise a few weeks later when Mr. Man emailed again just to check how I was doing and let me know he was thinking of me.  (say it with me, everybody – Awwwww…)  We went back to emailing, but with the understanding that I was still all shapes and sizes of broken, still on the razors edge of sad all the time, still nobody’s flirt.  But the emails lead quickly to online chatting.

I had no expectations.  Wasn’t looking for a new guy or a new anybody.  Wasn’t looking for love or lust.  I wasn’t looking.  So the chatting was really… nice.

It was really very nice.

It took me a few days to figure out what it was I liked about the connection:  distraction.  I’d been drowning in thoughts and feelings, overwhelmed by introspection and now I had something completely NOT my dead-and-broken relationship to think about.   I could focus on learning the mundane details of this new person’s life instead of wallowing in my own. 

I also really enjoyed having someone pay attention to me.  For the last few months of my time with T.E. that was the thing I craved and got less and less of from him:  attention.  It gradually shaved away all my shiny surfaces and bright colors.  I got smaller and quieter.  I got dismal.  I got dull.  But all of the sudden someone was paying me even a fraction of the attention that I missed from T.E. and it polished me back up!  I got shiny again!  Like Dorothy and Toto I went from sad shades of grey back to Technicolor!  My life had a soundtrack and dancing midgets (munchkins, Oompa-Loompas, Ewoks – pick your perky poison) and special effects.  All from just a little attention.

Sadly this story of Mr. Man has a sort of lame ending – the cool guy ended up disappearing without even a puff of smoke or a "Sheboof!" noise.  At this point I have no idea where he is or what the hell he was looking for.  I also let the positive mojo of the interactions walk me into a stupid mistake, but nobody got hurt (most importantly me!) and I needed the lesson to complete the transition.  But even though Mr. Man was really Mr. Poof I still owed him thanks.  Thanks for attaching his towline to my bumper and using his winch to pull me out of the wallow mud that was my life.  Thanks for being a living example of the very wise rule “don’t get caught up in the drama” – a lesson I’ve always known but never proved was true.  (It is true, by the way.  Totally true.)  And thanks for giving me that little boost to my ego that I needed to think about moving forward to the next chance.  Because I think I will get another chance. 

(hope, hope, hope...)

Taking the lesson of "distraction" to heart that has been my watchword ever since.  Working out and reading and photography and hobbies and... and... and...  The most important thing has been rule number one:  DON'T THINK ABOUT T.E.  Don't think about the relationship or the end or the good times or the bad times or anything else.  Just don't think about it.  I know I'm not over things, but I'm not smothered in those things either and that's a huge step forward.  Distraction ho!

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Biking with One Eye Open.


CURRENT DAY POST.

I think my bicycle is trying to kill me.

It started out as a simple wipe-out – the amount of time I spend on my bike the law of averages really demanded that eventually I’d have a collision of gravity, inertia, idiots and pain.  In this actual instance I came around a corner after a super-steep hill going about mach 4 to find a pack of wild morons had taken refuge in the mouth of the tunnel into which I was barreling because of 3 minutes of sprinkles.  Not so many sprinkles as to really require the seeking of refuge, no matter how much beer one has apparently soaked one’s clothing in, but just enough to make the ground at the near-end mouth of the tunnel slightly slick.  The kind of slick that, when breaks are applied in a panic, makes your rear wheel swing around to be parallel with the tunnel and then, since the wheels are no longer pointed in the direction of movement, start flipping ass over tea kettle.*

In short, I got surprised, skidded, slid around and then went flying. 

When things stopped going “crash!” and “Oof!” and “Holy…!” and “screech!!!” the bike lay on the ground and I lay on top of it.  On top of the front wheel to be specific.  It was ground, then bike, then my ass.  I took the first few seconds to do that body parts inventory – you know the one.  “Are my body parts all still there?” followed immediately by “Do they all still move?”  Somewhere in there the silence was broken by a voice from the pack of morons at the other end of the tunnel.

“You ok?”

When I told the story later I really wanted to be critical of what seemed like the most stupid of all possible responses, but honestly what else do you say?  You just watched someone come screaming around the corner and then explode.  They’re now just lying there, possibly dead or dying or hoping for death.  You’re kind of worried that if they DON’T die they’re gonna get up and kill you.  It was really the only proper thing to say. 

My response was, at the time and in my judgment, also the only right one.  I said, with growing volume and intensity, “yes, but it’s YOUR FUCKING FAULT THAT I CRASHED!!!!!”  I was actually really pleased with the echo that followed my response down the tunnel – I was rocking the evil villain voice right then.  It would have been much more impressive if I’d been able to get up off my totally prone position, but I did what I could with what I had.

One guy – the big one, and also the stupid one.  The big, stupid one, that guy, got defensive and started in with “oh sure, it’s OUR fault…” and I’m sure he had compelling evidence to back his theory, but he was cut off by the other guy – the cooler one who was much cooler than his social group and his “Coors” cologne gave you reason to expect – who went right into ‘hero’ mode.  He was through the tunnel to my end and helping pick me up off the ground in a flash.  He dusted me off (which was nice but ineffectual) and then gave me a hug (which was nice and… well, weird.  But the nice overwhelmed the weird in the moment) and I kind of teared up. 

Oh, important clarification here:  This was about week 2 or 3 after T.E. left me.  I was still sad and emotionally bare and the dumbest little thing, like accidentally killing a spider in the shower, could set off the water works.  I’d also had a very sucky day that day and was in the process of trying to bike away from that day, but it had very clearly dashed ahead on my bike path and crouched down to leap out and attack me.  So there were tears.  I hated them so much, especially in front of The Big, Stupid guy and the Cooler Than You’d Expect guy, but I knew there wasn’t anything that was gonna stop them.  So.  Tears.

The Cooler Guy checked me over and fixed my bike chain and gave me another hug, all while The Big, Stupid one lectured me on why it was actually my fault due to my biking on the wrong side of the path and this one time somebody gave him a ticket for walking on the wrong side of the path and it was so wrong but what are you going to do, right?...  I was eager to get away from the whole beer-stinking group once the bike was working and my tears were bottled back up and so I hopped on the seat and dashed away. 

About 30 seconds in the saddle and I knew my knee was waiting to have words with me about a paradigm shift that it had experienced when I smashed it into the ground and slid it along.  I explained to the knee that it would have to hold that thought until we got home.  Oh, and here I should also mention that we were exactly as far away from home as was possible on this route.  So home we went…

The days and actually weeks after (up to now in fact) had lots of bruises and one purple, skinless knee approximately 60% larger than it’s neighbor and general pain.  But again, this was a rare event, one that I literally walked away from and I was basically due, so…

Today I was barreling down the path at my normal 15 mph.  The weather was beautiful with sun AND blue skies (a great combination – I highly recommend) and I was almost 2/3 of the way done with the run, so… you know, it was good.  I went to pass this pair also on their bikes and giving definition to the concept of “strolling by bike” especially compared to my speed.  Then they decided that, given the person coming at them from the front (and yeah, I saw her coming, but I had the window to pass) and the voice they’d just heard from behind them calling out “passing on your left!” (that was me), the appropriate course of action was to turn suddenly left, closing up my passing hole. 

I jumped all over the breaks and some stuff happened.  These things are extremely mysterious.  I know that the top of the toes on my right foot scraped the ground in some fashion; that the breaks were so effective that all wheels stopped rolling but did not stop moving; that I did go over the handlebars, but not because I was vaulted into the air but instead because the bike disappeared under me somehow.  Once I was no longer riding the bike I managed to stay on my feet and ended the performance running down the bike path away from my bike who was now dead and lying on the ground behind me. 

You heard me:  I wrecked but somehow ended up on my feet and running down the path.  I went from biking to running in mid-work-out.  I.  Am.  Awesome.

The damage this time, as you could imagine, was far less severe.  Basically the left peddle went all gangsta on my left foot/ankle/shin/calf/make it stop…  But I had the time during the rest of the ride to consider how it was that I’ve had two wreck-like-instances in a month and in the end the answer seemed clear:  my bike, tired of all the work I just keep putting it through and resentful of the shameful lack of washing that it’s had, is finally rising up and seeking appropriate and reasonable revenge. 

What to do about it.  Stop biking?  Oh please.  Wash the bike?  Sure, but I’m tired and that’s hard.  Open up a dialogue with the bike to work out the issues and find a compromise?  Clearly you, my friend, are a communist.  No, I’m going with the only reasonable course of action:  keep doing what I’ve been doing but be generally suspicious of my once-trusty-steed. 

I’ve got my eye on you, Blue Thunder.

Trying Out the Woo-Woo Thing, Part II


4/16/12 – part II

When last we left our girl-hero-type-person (can’t say heroine – sounds like I’m on drugs) she was headed into a seminar geared toward making less-good things in her world somehow more-good or, at least, helping her figure out the difference between the things and determine what possible solutions there could be.  She feared spontaneous tears, over-sharing about the super-recent break-up and the potential group-hugs that lay ahead, but still she biked in and arrived on the first day of seminar.  Mind open, butt-cheeks clenched.

I’m not going to do a play-by-play of the entire four days.  In short:  many of the people got their epiphanies, some got their revelations, and the hugs flowed like wine over togas.  There were hours spent in audience to the woman who owns the company and runs this particular seminar – she’s a very impressive woman, completely unflappable with the sharpest fashion sense and impossible balance on Mt. Everest-inspired heels.  The supportive, earthy, “I’m ok, you’re ok, fish and mice and rocks are ok” music flowed like Helium at a party store (and even gave some folks the high, squeaky voices!)  And everybody reflected on stuff.  A lot.  One big room of funhouse mirrors all reflecting all over the place. 

I didn’t epiphanize.  Nor did I revelatorize.  Oh, I had a few moments where I either confirmed something I’d kind of already suspected about myself or figured out a couple of connections between things I’ve long since known.  But don’t get me wrong:  I’m certainly not saying that I got nothing from the experience. 

I got a room of 39 new people to whom I’d never whined about my relationship with and break-up from T.E.  By the time the seminar started I’d been a veritable fountain of sorrow, second-guessing, “why did’s…” and “how could I’s…” all over my family and friends and they were already done.  But here was a whole new group of people who hadn’t heard any of my shit yet.  A group who had to, HAD TO, be sympathetic to my whining because they were doing their own whining and I was being sympathetic to them.  It was why we were all there.  Tit for tat and other such interesting exchange rates.  What’s more, I could spread the pain out around the entire group – one story per participant so nobody got a clear shot at how pathetic I was right then. 

I got a 4-day break from my real life, which I didn’t even think about as I went in, but which may have been the single most valuable aspect.  Trying to juggle my grieving with all the rest of my life was exhausting, but somehow I could take great, big breaks from wallowing in my life to help folks wallowing in theirs, and when my shit did splash back all over me it was just that.  Just the shit.  Not the shit and my job and my bills and my social obligations and all the rest of it.  Things were much simpler for those four days, and that was just a bonus.

And probably the closest thing to an “Aha!” moment for me:  I got to confirm something I’d already started to figure out:  I had no “self esteem issues” I needed to work through.  Not on my own.  No, my only “self esteem issues” were due to being in a relationship with a partner who made doing other women more important than protecting my heart.  My “self esteem issues” started the day T.E.’s extra-curricular sex did, and that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me.  It means I’m sane.  That I expect my partner to respect and value me and my feelings.  That when I keep being told (in deeds if not in words) that I’m not enough to satisfy him it makes me feel less important.  (also?  DUH!!!  Big, fat, dumb DUH!!!)  I can avoid this little glitch in the future – when someone asks for an “open relationship” my answer will be the only sane one:  NO.

If you’re looking for some help in figuring out stuff that isn’t working in your life I highly recommend finding an event like this one.  All around me people gave teary testimonials about their life-changing decisions and lessons learned and sudden bursts of clarity.  They came in and got exactly what they were looking for, and I sure hope that they all went home and made the changes in their lives that they realized they needed to make.  I think the Queen was disappointed that I didn’t have the magical betterment offered, but I know I got all I was ever going to get from it and I have no regrets about the experience.

But come Monday I had to go back to real life.  That was the hard part.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Trying Out the Woo-Woo Thing


4/16/12 – Part I

My BFF, The Queen, works for a local company that specializes in making people better thems.  One of their taglines is “Ready to live a balanced and meaningful life?”  They do seminars which are designed to help folks figure out what’s not working in their lives, what they would like instead and, at least hopefully, how to bridge the gap.  Make the change.  Work the voo-doo.  Hocus the Pocus. 

Among my longtime friends I’ve been significantly outnumbered by folks who have done the Magical Betterment Seminars (or “MBS,” trademark pending) for literally decades.  The folks who’ve done the MBS’ have all come out the other side with stories of epiphanies and revelations and big plans to make big changes and get big payoffs and other things of bigness.  Most of them will tell you that they think that everybody – EVERYBODY – should do these seminars.  And yet with all of that I’d never done one.  Never even considered doing one.

Don’t get me wrong:  I’ve never been opposed to the Magic people and their seminars.  And I’m all for any of my loved ones doing anything that will make them happier, be that religion or seminars or sleeping with a Kardashian.  (ok, not the last one…)  To be honest, I just never had anything in my life that I wanted help to fix.  Not saying my life is or has ever been perfect, but my woes have been tiny compared to so many (and don’t you worry – I’m very aware how lucky I am to be able to say that!!!!) and generally things I felt like I had a handle on. 

Jump forward those decades of “no thanks, not my thing” to that dang break that T.E. and I had earlier this year.  While waiting for those two weeks to pass and having WAY too much time on my hands I did some thinking.  Lots of thinking.  Gobs and piles and oodles and frickin’ gallons of thinking.  Some of it was good, and some of it seemed really good at the time, but then later turned out to be utterly insane.  One of those thoughts was about how much time I seemed to spend needing T.E. to reassure me of my place in his world.  I decided, in my crazybrain, that this meant I needed to do something about my apparent lack of self confidence in relationships.  That I shouldn’t put all that pressure on my partner, and I needed to figure out how to reassure myself.  I couldn’t afford therapy, but thought about The Queen and those countless invitations to check out the MBS’s.  I decided I finally had something in my life that seemed broken and that I couldn’t fix, so this was the time.

Though there are a bunch of seminars that these folks run, and many of them are specifically focused on things like relationships or communication or… possibly gardening?  I’m not sure.  There are many focused ones.  Anyway, though there are focused ones you have to start with the same one.  It’s designed to cover a lot of ground and give, I would say, a good starting point for the more focused ones.  The initial seminar takes 4 days (Thurs, Fri, Sat and Sun) and you’re in there and working a seriously long day – 9am to around 9pm or sometimes later!  I took the necessary days off of work and made excuses to the rest of my friends and family and headed in.

Oh crap, wait.  I should explain a couple of things here:

Explanation #1:  No, I didn’t tell anybody other than The Queen and her family that I was doing this.  Don’t get the wrong idea:  I wasn’t ashamed about doing the seminar or anything like that.  But this kind of thing doesn’t really resonate for most of my family.  Now I was going in with as open a mind as I can manage.  No kidding, my mind was super-open.  Thoughts and memories and very stupid limericks kept falling out of my mind, so open was it.  Really, really open.  Really.  BUT I knew that openness was a tenuous thing after having spent so many years watching my friends join the cult from afar and raising my eyebrow ala Spock, and the rest of my social sphere is still Spockish about this idea.  So I decided I didn’t want to let any of their possible doubts or concerns, or even their possible enthusiasms and potential dirty jokes, color my view.  Best to just give them vague and mysterious ideas of where I was going to be for four days and let them wonder if I was in rehab or just getting botox in my butt.

Explanation #2:  Though the inspiration for doing this was part of various plans and plots to save my relationship with T.E. by the time I actually WENT to the seminar T.E. and I were done.  Done for about 6 days.  So where as I was slightly worried about overly emotional moments in such a seminar when I signed up I went in knowing that I was going to be on the verge of big, dumb tears all the damn dumb time during this seminar and being proactively resentful about the situation.  I hate to show the vulnerable emotions to people who I know, and would pretty much rather gouge out my eyes rather than allow them to leak in front of strangers.  In short, I went into this seminar with every single worst fear and possible nightmare I’d ever envisioned totally real and in full freaking Technicolor.  Awesome?  No, no awesome.

So, there I was:  emotions as raw as an elbow that has been attacked by cheese grater and dipped in Tabasco Sauce; surrounded by people who were coming to this MBS for real issues and problems and seeking true revelations and epiphanies and doing it all on the down low.  (yeah, I’m regretting that last choice of youth-oriented slang too.)  What could possibly go wrong? 

To Be Continued…

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Being THAT Girl


4/10/2012

So there I was, single again after three years.  The last time I ended a relationship it was my idea, and it was a really crappy relationship, so the break-up was a lot easier to get through.  This time, even though it only took me a few days to start seeing the reality of things and understanding that it was really necessary to end it, I was still a wreck.  The cliché of being a “raw nerve” is obnoxiously accurate – the smallest little things would start the waterworks and my poor, sad brain was too foggy to do anything like think straight.

As I’m afraid too many of you already know, the beginning of the break-up healing process is needing to talk about it.  All of it.  Talk every single tiny, miniscule, microscopic thought or feeling or idea to death.  It’s like you’ve become the coroner character in any police TV show and you’re doing constant and repeated autopsies of the relationship, the end of the relationship, your ex, things that he said, things you said, things you didn’t say, that funny tone in his voice when he said that thing, the other thing he said 2 years ago and did it have something to do with the thing he just said and oh.  My.  GOD.   But it’s annoying. 

It’s annoying to you and it’s annoying to everybody else.  And you know it’s annoying, so you go from being a person with friends and a partner and family and a nice, supported life to being that person that you’re embarrassed to be and that you know nobody else wants to be around because you just CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.  That transformation took me exactly 5 days.

Once I made the transition I was stuck with still so much emotional crap I needed to spew and not really anybody I could dump it on.  I pulled out the trusty old journal and that helped for a while, but eventually I couldn’t even stand to cover the same ground, or even new-but-still-lame ground, in my lovely, leather-covered friend.  So I had a few weeks where I talked to myself. 

A.  Lot.

I have to tell you that it’s a very good thing there is no law against talking to yourself while behind the wheel of the car.  Also thanks to the evolution of cell phones I worried much less about judgmental looks from passers by when I took my bike rides, ranting on and on to nobody at all but me.  I struggled to keep myself together all day at work and thanked my lucky stars that my office-mate sits behind me and wears headphones all day.  And say what you will about judgmental cats – my furry roomies curled up around me in my safety zone on the couch and purred supportive comments all day and night.  (twice as loud when the treats were within reach.)

In the end I made it out the other side and I reassured myself that I can do that physician thing and heal myself when I don’t have resources available to me.  It’s a good thing to know, and I also hope I don’t have to do this kind of self healing again any time soon. 

Break-ups?  They suck.

The Catching-up Will Now Commence!

As I said before, I have many posts that I'd like to have posted at the time.  I could just say "ah well, these are things that just didn't get blogged about.  C'est la vie." and move on all French-like with my life.  But really, does that sound at all like me?  No, it does not.

Instead I'm going to try to recreate some of those vintage posts and post them with dates for about when they would have been posted if I'd have been something other than sad.  Or broken.  Or possibly drunk.  Or very likely all three.  I'm sure they would have been tons better if they'd been posted at the time, or at least fresher.  These will be a little stale.  But at least they're here to snack upon.

You're welcome.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Getting Back up on the Horse...


I’ve been wanting to get back to this blog for weeks.  Months even.  I have stuff to say and stories to tell and super-clever views on the world that I know you would all benefit by reading.  Seriously, they’d probably change your life.  And I want to change your life.  I want to write those life-changers and other stuff here, but I’ve been stuck.

Stuck behind THIS post.

Because before I can share all the new things I have to update you guys on all the stuff that’s happened since the last post.  And that’s a lot of stuff.  Also large amounts of that stuff sucked, so I really haven’t wanted to re-hash it.  Also it’s not a very interesting post – just exposition without the swanky flashback scenes that we’d do if this blog was on television. 

But still, it has to be done, so here we go:

Last you heard T.E. and I were “on a break.”  That lasted for those 2 weeks but at the end, despite about a million reasons from T.E. why he worried about staying together, we stayed together.  In hindsight I know now that was a mistake.  In fact I realize now that T.E. and I should have said a sweet, loving and genuine “good bye” at the airport before he flew home from his time here for the holidays.  Since that visit things were never right between us and they just got worse and worse.  But one of the things I know about myself, for better or worse, is I’m a fighter.  So I fought for us.

Oh crap, I’m totally jumping ahead.  Let me get back to the chronology.

We stayed together, but with all sorts of plans for how to make it better or more solid or less oval or more turquoise or whatever.  Those plans lasted for about a week and then it started to unravel again.  The last few weeks were awful, and some of the only things I could possibly categorize as a ‘regret’ in our time together.  But again, we fought to the bitter end and I give us credit for that, so I can’t really call it a regret.  It was painful and confusing and frustrating and completely, tremendously heartbreaking.  I knew that it was over for about 2 weeks before T.E. finally said the words.

And still, with all the foreshadowing and pain and heartache the first four weeks after it ended were some of the darkest days I’ve ever had.

I won’t go into details – I was depressed.  In all the ways that a person could be.  Daily tears and lack of sleep and crappy, crappy eating and things like that.  I decided to just let myself wallow in all the sorrow I needed to get through for those first four weeks.  If I felt like sleeping all day, even if the sun was shining and kids were playing in my front yard and birds were singing then I was gonna sleep all day.  Take that, stupid birds.

After that first month I decided I was tired of being sad.  I was tired of sleeping all day and flinching when I heard someone say his name and being completely exhausted with overwhelming misery all.  The. Time.  So the second month, I decided, would be “take a month off from getting over your great and lost love.”  I cleaned up my house (many thanks to my Mom for helping me do that) and started caring about how I looked and found safe books to read and music to listen to and things to watch on tv.  And above all else:  distraction.  Don’t think of the relationship.  Don’t think of the break-up.  Don’t think of T.E. or heartbreak or any of the stuff that paralyzed me. 

I’m heading into the last week or so of the second month and I haven’t decided, yet, what to do with the third month yet.  I read somewhere that it takes a month of recovery for every year you were together – it was on the interwebs, so it must be true – and so I have just over a month to go before I can be “over it.” 

I can’t wait.