Return to Dick Mountain

So T-Bone was jettisoned and guess who calls? Right on the motherfucking heels of that shit. Don Juan/Hypocrites. He called and I had deleted his number so I answered with no fear or hesitation, thinking it was a student or the Gurl Child.  When he said, “Hi.” Followed with, “It’s me.”, the bottom dropped out of my stomach and I wondered what in the world he’d be calling for.  I just couldn't imagine and my mind raced out a 100 different scenarios in a split second before I simply said, “Hi.”

He stumbled over his words but eventually told me he wanted to say hi and see how I was and he’d tried to tell a person we both knew from Schmome Schmeepo to tell me he’d said hello but then what kind of coward would he be if he didn't tell me himself and a bunch of other stuff that I didn't really hear because I was still wondering what this was all about.

He said that he’d missed me, that he knew he had no right to be saying any of this to me and that he would understand completely if I hung up but he wanted to tell me, “Hi.”

I simply said, “Well, hi.” Again.

He asked what I thought about his calling and I said, “Well honestly, DJ I don’t know what to say.  I’m dumbfounded and I’m going out of town and I’ll be back next week and I guess we can talk it over then?”

He acquiesced immediately and said,

”Whatever you want. Take your time.”

I said okay back and we hung up.  I still, to this day, wish I’d have been a bit more of a hard ass.  Made him work harder for my agreement to even speak to him. Chances are, it would have turned out the same but I would have maybe come off like a bit more of a someone who wasn't a doormat. 

In any case, he sent some of the most panty-melting, heart stopping, Nicholas-Sparks-would-be-proud sweet talk via text until I finally said, “Yes, come by the store and we’ll talk.”

He walked in while I was working and my stomach flipped and I grinned because there he was. He followed me throughout the store, he told everyone he was there to take me away from it all, he practically made me swoon and he waited for me until I had closed the store.

I walked to my car slowly and I was so scared and sick. Why? Why was I scared? Because last time he had so completely broken my heart that I drank myself into a crying, sobbing stupor that had my best friend and daughter pouring me into bed?  Because last time it had taken me weeks to feel normal again? Because last time I had taken back TBone on the rebound from a shattered heart? No biggie.

There we stood in the parking lot, his arms around me while I felt my worth being buoyed.  I felt at once stupid and elated.  Why did I need this indecisive jackass to make me feel so good about myself and yet here he was, another one crawling back. He was offering himself up as my life partner telling me that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Telling me how insane he was to ever let me go.  How perfect I was for him and that he would NEVER EVER NEVER do to me what he’d done to me before.  Never shut me out and push me away ever again.  That he loved me like he loved no other.  I cried and felt an enormous sense of relief.  I told him that I felt like less of a fool for putting myself so completely out there last time and I wasn’t as stupid as I’d thought before. 

I was wondering to myself how two men had come to ask for me back in the space of just a few months and how had I ever settled at all at any time for anyone. I must be pretty fucking awesome.  The glow of all that awesomeness led me right back into temptation with DJ.  I ate it up.

He held me and crooned, “Oh baby, you are not stupid, I am. I’m the fool for ever thinking that I could do better than to have you in my life.  You are beautiful and a beautiful soul. I can talk to you and tell you my heart and my fears and I can trust you with them.” He laid his hand on my heart and said, “I was the stupid one and I’ll never let you go ever again.”

I cried from relief. I cried from the relief that I hadn’t imagined all that had gone before with us. I had agonized over whether I’d imagined this great love and passion and here he was telling me he felt it too.

I pulled back and asked point blank, “Why did you leave me then?”

He paused, he took a breath and launched. “Remember when I first started this job and I told you I needed to get some good shoes and slacks and you offered me your Macy’s card?” I nodded and opened my mouth and he held his hand up. “And you did that because you thought we were going to conquer the world together and now I understand that, but at the time I felt like a supreme failure.”

I wrinkled my brows and backed up against the car and hung my head.  “I offered you help and you didn't want to take it and so you flirted with some girl on Facebook and then broke my heart?? How do I know if you were to get sick or if something terrible were to happen, you wouldn't act exactly the same?”

He advanced and scooped me off the side of the car.  “Because I realize what an idiot I was. You were right.  You were right about everything. Nothing and no one in my life has or ever will compare to you.”

I sagged against him and buried my nose in his neck. He still smelled so fucking good. We kissed like we’d never kiss again.  Ridiculously passionate, grasping and desperate right there next to my car. I was swept up in all those sweet words and let myself be carried away.  I told him I would give him another chance that I’d loved him so and never really stopped and he told me the same.  We hugged and laughed and talked and kissed and it was a bit of delicious déjà vu in that parking lot where it had all started.

So it went … loving messages and conflicted schedules and stolen moments and we did more this time.  We all went to dinner…me and DJ and my daughter and his 6 year old son.  The Girl Child and his Boy Child cut up and played during bowling and then dinner.  Suddenly, as we were sitting at dinner, his BC said, “Is she my new sister?” I panicked and all the blood drained to my toes.  He didn't ask me and so I sat back in the booth and let his dad take the lead. 

His father took a drink and said, “Yes.”

I almost slipped under the table in shock but it felt like he was all in this time and I began to relax into it. We looked at houses; we talked forever about what, when and where. I stopped looking for work out of state and decided that this is where I could stay because this man, this great love and I were going to build a life together. I really could not have been happier.  In those moments, I was standing in the sun again because this guy had so much more than any that came before… a hard worker and a good father and dedicated to succeeding. He was sweet and complimentary and appreciative. I had a purpose… for all of us. 

One thing I have learned about myself in the last couple years since leaving Tucker is that if I don’t have direction, I’m not happy.  I can’t just drift by every day and escape depression.  The more days I let just float by without doing something in service of accomplishing something else, the more the black fingers reach up and pull me back under the covers.  Enveloping me and soothing me into nothingness.  Nothingness with nachos and Netflix...but nothingness nonetheless.

This purpose and drive moving forward made me overly optimistic and I suppose slightly blind.  It happened that our schedules conflicted so much that we hadn't seen each other in over a week when he called me very early on a Monday morning.  So unusual for him and it threw me.  I won’t divulge the entirety of the situation but he had an issue with his son that had sent his ex-wife into a full on freak out.  A freak out that was not warranted but pushed DJ into super fixer/sponsor/protector/man mode. 

I offered what I knew to be calm, sage, loving advice because I’d been through very much the same thing with my daughter and step kids and told him that I was here for him and anything me or the Gurl Child could offer was his.

“Thanks, Medi. If I don’t answer my texts or call, it’s because I’m wrapped up with this. I spent all night with Barbara last night trying to calm her down.”

My brain imploded.  You spent all night with your ex-wife trying to calm her down???? What the codependent fuck?!?

I was silent and I think he sensed that did not settle with me particularly well. 

“Her fiancé is out of town working and she had no one and she’s really flipping out. I had to stay with her and keep her calm so she didn’t make the whole situation worse.”

“I understand. Something like this can be unsettling but it’s what kids do and I’m sure it’s nowhere near as bad as all that.”

He hesitated and sighed then, “Well Barbara can be a bit hysterical when life doesn’t follow the script but we’re talking about my son here. I needed to keep the situation as calm as possible.”

“That’s fine. I understand.” But I didn’t understand.  I felt like I was dealing with a pack of idiots here and wanted to shake them all and knock their heads together.

That moment, when he called me by my name instead of baby or honey or sweetie; that moment was when I really knew.  Oh, I hung on for 3 more weeks sending encouraging emails…hearing from him via phone call exactly twice and a few scattered texts, but I knew. 

Here’s the thing…he had all these wonderful qualities. Goal oriented, handsome, cared for other people but he was also tortured. I knew this already from the last go round but I had let the fact that he’d tortured himself over losing me sort of blot that out. Have you ever met someone that doesn’t necessarily seem happier when things are going wrong but they seem comfortable there? This, I was discovering, was DJ.  He picked up misery and wrapped it about him. He wore it well and may not have reveled in it but he certainly thrived.  He wore the hair coat with pleasure and I finally figured out why.

 He once told me that being 20+ years clean and sober was still a struggle some days because when things were going well were the times that he thought, A beer would be good right now, I can handle a couple of drinks.  So…he was more comfortable in turmoil or strife.   He could handle that.  He could work his steps and talk to his sponsor and go to meetings and have this thing working that kept him on a path that he knew how to navigate without fucking up and using or drinking.

There was also this slightly martyr-ish portion that told him if he had to sacrifice his ultimate happiness for it then that was okay because he was doing important shit.  He was saving his kid or the world or whatnot. I was vaguely reminded of my dog that used to roam our acreage and always managed to find something dead somewhere to roll in.  He would come home reeking of funky decay and be thrilled with himself. It’s like DJ shrouded himself with funk because it was his comfort zone.  It was the only way he knew how to forge ahead with any sort of regularity or normalcy. He flourished in his funk because happy and normal was scary as fuck.

The two phone calls I DID get from him were one sided conversations about how he counseled his ex through everything and kept her relationship with her fiancé intact because he was, in fact, such a fucking wonderful stand-up dude.  Those things made me angry when they should have made me proud of him but how is it a man can ask someone to share his life or even say, “You are the love of my life.” when he doesn't even manage to speak to them or think about them for 3 weeks?

I was already lounging in bed one night wondering what the fuck I was going to do about all this when called and he said, “Everything is starting to work out and the counselor told us much of what you told me and I think everything is starting to get better.”

“Well that’s great.” I answered cautiously and without much enthusiasm. 

“I’m ready to see you, babe.” He said it quietly and I made him repeat it.

Not I need to see you, not I want to see you but I’m ready.

Omg hallelujah. He’s ready.  I should drop everything and make sure I can meet all his needs in this moment.

Guess what?  I’d been ready for weeks but what I wanted hadn't mattered.  I felt sort of like an asshole and as if I were being a bit selfish because he was dealing with shit about his son but I also knew deep down that they’d all overreacted and turned something that most kids with blended families go through into a major ordeal that didn't need to be one.  I felt like a casualty of a stupid, pointless war.  Not to mention all I’d been going through and it hadn't been world ending but it had been a pretty shitty month for me.

He said, “I’m going to text you first thing in the morning even if I don’t have anything to say.”

I told him okay and that I’d talk to him the next day.  Guess what, again? Nothing.  All morning I stared at my phone willing the light to notify me that he hadn't forgotten about me, that I mattered to him as much as he mattered to me.  At 11:55 while it was still morning, I texted him.  I sent it on Kik so I knew when he had read it and that he had simply chosen not to fucking answer me.

I wrote an email that day and I agonized over sending it. I agonized over and over.  Was I ready to let go of this shit?  He had made me realize what I wanted out of life, finally.  I had been adrift since I’d left Tucker and didn’t know if I’d be trying to travel the world or be looking for a place to settle down. I basically hadn’t figured it out.  The excitement I felt when looking for a place to raise our family together was genuine. I hadn’t felt it because it was what he wanted.  I had seriously felt it in my heart.  An experience during all of this where the Girl Child had friends over and I cooked them all breakfast and we sat laughing and chatting had made me realize that I am happiest when I’m nesting and being a homebody. It solidified what I wanted. For that, to him, I am grateful.  He helped me find my way but sadly, now it just wouldn’t be with him. 

I sent the email which you can read if you click the pic over there.   Who knew if I’d ever be able to see him face to face again? I wasn’t important enough for him to make time to see much less even text me apparently.  I felt awful and okay all at the same time and mostly like I’d been on a rip roaring roller coaster that had taken me to an incredible high full of promise only to leave me 3 seconds later feeling like I was going to puke. 

He sent a short text two days later:

You’re right. You were right about all of it. I’m sorry I dragged everyone into this

He missed the point. He missed the entire fucking point. It solidified my decision but it didn't ease the hurt.  I’d made the same wrong decision twice. I’m going to blame it on hubris and chemicals.  His stroking my ego was legendary and I’m not gonna lie, he made my panties fall off but he had to go.

It was a mess. I was a mess.  I have no idea how I feel about anything anymore except I know more of what I don’t want.  I know I’m ready to settle down and I have to be happy doing that alone.  Unfortunately, this little episode catapulted me into Tinder/OkCupid frenzy in an effort to bandaid the stab wound, which I can assure you has made everything shittastic for my emotional well-being. Whoever said the whole getting under someone to get over someone was the thing apparently had zero emotional baggage.

I’m not trying anymore.  I’m going to make some goals that don’t have penises involved.  I’m going to post a prologue for my book this week. I’m going to make myself accountable for finishing the damn thing. If I’m not holding a copy of my book by 2016, it’ll be because I wrote a piece of shit and not because I didn't write it.  

  

TBone Reheated

I picked up my phone and stared at it with a bit of incredulity but mostly this feeling of satisfaction and smugness crept in unbidden, delicious but tinged with guilt because a good person wouldn’t be so arrogant. It was TBone.

There I sat, still reeling from Don Juan/Hypocrites and even though it’d been many weeks, I was still pretty torn up.  I had so loved him and thought we could make a beautiful life together and then he was gone like I didn’t matter at all.

TBone on the other hand was asking me to go to dinner with him.  I didn’t answer right away. I didn’t know what to say.  We were more than likely the same two people with the same differences we’d had last time.  I just couldn’t believe he was messaging me. He’d acted like our breakup had been a complete shit storm and I was more than just a little surprised at the contact.

I finally answered and said sure and he seemed really happy. He continued to sporadically text and I answered.  Don Juan had really ripped out my heart and TBone was being nice. Salve as it were. I knew though… way back in that place where you know things.

I went anyway. We had the dinner. He took me to a nice place and I had too many cocktails and he sat across from me staring adoringly.  At one point he said, “You’re so smart and beautiful and NOT crazy. Whatever I was doing that got on your nerves before, I’ll quit doing.”

I smiled at that and told him, “We are still the same people. With the same issues.”

He interrupted me with, “I didn’t have any issues.”

I clamped my lips shut and leaned back in the booth.  I had plenty of them and I wondered since he’d busted my Facebook blog page if he’d actually read the blog and then assumed he must have.   It wasn’t anywhere near complimentary and I felt he must’ve read it by now.

We started the dating. Again.  It was somewhat okay.  At first I was swept up in all the nice, all the feels as it were.  He was still handsome and accommodating and the sex was different.  Like not as bad at first but shockingly quick and he’d developed a habit of yelling out during his crisis in a loud extended way that made me cringe. Every time almost. I found myself frustrated for different reasons than before but still frustrated.  He had eased up on the kitty cat talking but told me he loved me immediately during our first time out.  It was disconcerting but after a while, I fell into it too. It seemed easy. The same shit we did before revisited and again, it was salve.  I didn’t recognize it fully or maybe I just didn’t want to. Don Juan/Hypocrites had just really taken me weeks to feel normal again and this was balm for the wound.  

So it happened that after exchange of love and a few weeks, we decided to go visit my parents, me and TBone and the Girl Child and a camper and his decrepit Bronco.  TBone exhibited nerves at the prospect of meeting my parents and I told him to calm down and relax. They’re regular peeps and they wouldn’t give him a hard time even if they hated him.  Tucker was proof enough of that.

He showed up with the camper and we loaded up.  It wasn’t too bad going up there. He had brought his boys to meet their mother to visit for the 4^th of July.  Most of the visit was okay.  He was trying too hard and I could see that he wasn’t content unless he was sitting still and doing not much and smoking a joint.  I mean, I knew he smoked but it was just so evident that he wasn’t happy at all unless he was high and to hear him tell it, he “never got high”.  Whatever.  So we had a fairly okay time but when we headed home the aforementioned decrepit Bronco started to have some problems.  It was overheating and exhibiting some electrical issues and he proceeded to grab his rosary and rock back and forth as he was driving.  Genuflecting like a lunatic, swinging those beads around with them knocking all over the place.  I am not a believer.  He knows this and I know he’s a Catholic and I accept you have to do what you have to do to get by. Believe what you like and that’s all cool but the display that he put on was discomfiting almost frightening. Even on my most fervent, prayer-filled days, I would not have acted like that in front of anyone for any reason. It bordered on mania that was more than a little unsettling. 

Ironically, though, in between all the reverence to the lord, he was puffing on his one hitter with my kid in the car.  I just looked at him with murder in my eyes and he finally set it down with a look that was disgusted. My daughter was dead silent and bug eyed in the back seat watching everything.

We then drove the 3 ½ almost 4 hours without stopping because he was afraid the truck wouldn’t start back up.  We got home, we piled out stretching and I said, “Wow, thank goodness. I’m dying of thirst.”

Only to be answered by TBone with, “Yeah, well I haven’t had anything to drink since we left your parents’!”

I really couldn’t believe what I’d just heard and all I think was

 Congratulations! You’ve just won the Thirsty Games!!!

But … because I am the person I am and I knew that he was very stressed out even though the worst that could’ve happen was to wait on AAA, I went directly inside and made him a cold drink.  He was sitting on the couch and leaned back as if he’d just gone through complete hell…duuuh-raaahma.

I handed him the drink, and the winner of the Thirsty Games, who had had to go 20 minutes longer than me and the GC without a drink, took it and set it on the coffee table without so much as taking a sip. I stared incredulously as he then said with all the zeal he had in him, “I know you don’t believe it but the Lord got us home.” I felt a snap, an imperceptible hitch in my feelings.  That moment was the beginning of the end.

I thought,  Did the lord also tell you to toke up with my kid in the car so we could make it home?

I turned and grabbed GC and we left to get food. That night, after he’d fallen asleep, I got up and slept on the couch.  I couldn’t bear it.  The GC was on the other side of our sectional and I snoozed until about 9AM and got up and made some coffee. I got back on the couch with my blanky and coffee and snoozed off and on.  About 11:00AM, Tbone got up suddenly as if it were 6AM and he were the motherfucking poster child for early risers and began to bark at us.  I stared blankly while he growled orders, “WE NEED TO GET UP AND GET THIS DONE.” 

I said, “Uh, if you need to go, then go. We’ll figure out how to pick up her car if you’re in a hurry.”

He stopped in his tracks and looked at me. Let the back pedaling and martyrdom commence.

“No, it’s just that I thought we should get this over with and….” I interrupted and repeated myself in a very kind, even tone and he again refused to leave and I said, “Well I’m going to get breakfast and coffee and then call the shop and we’ll figure out when we’re getting it after.”

He went outside, presumably for his wake and bake and the GC and I again left. I called and the guys were at lunch and we couldn’t get the car picked up til 1.   We returned to find him sitting on the steps of his camper in what looked like classic pout pose.  I told him that they wouldn’t be back in the shop until 1PM and he could leave if he wanted and it’d all be fine.

I think he told me no but all I heard was, “Wah.  I’ll stay. Wah.  Poor pitiful me. Wah. Martyr. Martyr. Wah. Can you see my cross? Wah…”

Then…omg…then….

I’m trolling Facebook on the couch, waiting to head out and my son, who is the world’s BEST drama queen had posted:

Tired of no matter what I do it’s not the right thing.

Tbone had liked it and commented:

I know what you mean.

I absolutely lost my shit then and I told him about it.  I confronted him with the fact that you don’t put your shit all over Facebook much less on my SON’S page and what’s more he was relating to and commiserating with an 18 year old kid. Like I said before, that was the beginning of the end. It deteriorated quickly after that. He hadn’t actually read the blog and he did manage it a fit of pique to find it and read it. He sort of figured out what I really thought after that. In the end though, it was not so much a “you’re not good enough for me” judgment as an “I judge you to be too different from me for this to work.”

I have loved and been loved. I have not, however, ever been taken care of so completely that I didn’t feel absolutely alone in my skin at all times.  Normally, I’m okay with that …it’s just those times that you feel like if you have to be in charge of one more motherfucking thing without SOME kind of backup, you’re going to lose your shit in a special way. 

I never had that person there that was my lover and who understood me. I have my friends and I have my daughter and my family but it isn’t the same. It’s not the same as being skin to skin with someone, sharing breath with them and knowing that they cherish more than your body. I want that intangible feeling of having someone to fall back on when I am low.  Someone who will say, “It’s okay that you feel shitty right now because I’m here.  You feel shitty and we’ll take care of this together and you won’t feel shitty anymore and I won’t make you feel even shittier for feeling shitty.”  No scorekeeping, no I did this, so you have to do that.  No guilt.  No obligation. Just love and acceptance. Someone who would be there regardless and wasn’t trying to take advantage of me in any way. Someone I could feel safe loving and giving my heart to and would give theirs right back to me for safekeeping.

I had been very guilty in my younger years of rejecting anyone that seemed like they “loved me too much.” So much self-loathing abounded that I began to reject any club that would have me as a member.  I felt that had happened with Don Juan and his own feelings of self-worth were what got in the way between us.  I hadn’t wanted to be like that and had given people chances they didn’t deserve because I wanted to be sure I wasn’t doing that exact thing, passing something up fundamentally good because I was damaged. Enter TBone and my need to fair and think everything out instead of going with that thing that I know from that place where you store up the shit that you JUST know.

I can handle being by myself. It’s okay. I can do that. I can get through the times when I’m adrift in a sea of chaos and feel like I’m standing stock still in the middle of roaring bedlam.  After all is said and done, the only person I need to worry about being fair to, is myself.

Aging

I have linked aging to my maturity level my whole life as if the two were supposed to run parallel.  You get older, you get more mature but the two have run in very skewed manner since I have rarely accepted my lot in life, not gracefully anyway.  Unless, like a very quiet doormat translates to gracefully.  I suffered with massive, turbulent, churning inner turmoil and barely contained mental illness but only rarely handled any of it with any grace.  

For instance, when I was 10, I tried to commit suicide.  Months before that, my biological mother had abandoned me. Literally.  She worked nights and I got up and got myself ready for school every day.  I would see her getting ready for work when I got in from school in the afternoons and we would have perfunctory conversation only because my real mother just wasn’t very motherly.  Sometimes, I wouldn’t see her for a couple of days but I never worried; she usually popped up sooner or later and there was always food to prepare for myself. One time, after about 4 days, I thought maybe something was off. I was not allowed to use the phone, ever. So great was my mother’s tyranny that even in what I imagined was an absence fraught with foul play, I would still dare not to defy her orders.  So, after school, I walked to my grandparents’ house across town.

My mother and my Nana are English and I remember my Nana opening the front door of her house, looking down at me and saying, “Hello, Love. What’s this?”

I stared up and simply said, “My mom hasn’t been home for a long time.”

She backed up and ushered me past, “Come in, then.  Let’s sort it out over a cup of tea darling.” Her accent and the years she’d been in Texas always made darling sound like dullin and I loved it when she called me dullin.

My Nana constantly had the kettle on and she made me a cup just like hers which never failed to make me feel special and grown.

She indeed poured two cups and went to dial the phone.  I heard snippets of conversation.

“…Little one is here …. Where is she?...no she says …How many days dullin??” she yelled across the room.

“3, I think, maybe 4.” I was nursing my tea and feeling super special.

I could hear her say, “Oh no reason, just checking in.”

Nana made so many phone calls her tea was cold when she came to sit and she had to warm it up. 

She sat down and made a sort of a squeaky, chirpy noise with her mouth and said, “Well, why don’t you head back to the house and get your clothes all together and you might have to stay here tonight.  Papa will come by and get you before bed.”

I looked at her and thought, Wow. Maybe my mom is dead and that would be so great. I didn’t feel badly at all and I didn’t feel badly that I didn’t feel badly either.  I wasn’t explained to any further. I did as I was told, went home, got my shit together, made a sandwich and some Kool-Aid, fed the cat and turned on the TV.  I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get in trouble for it because my mother most assuredly was not coming home and hopefully had been grabbed and stabbed by some landlubbing pirates or something.  I fell asleep on the couch and was woken by a loud noise outside.  I opened the front door to see my Dad pulled up bobtailed in a big ass Kenworth.  He opened the truck door and my little brother scrambled over his lap and came running across the front yard toward me.  He hurtled into my arms and we hugged and hugged.  My dad had a huge smile on his face and told me to get my stuff.

I was ecstatic.  I loaded all my stuff in the truck and off we went, hundreds of miles away and away from my horrible mother.

Eventually, though, in a world surrounded by testosterone, I sank into a slight dark princess, Lydia Deets-ish place.  There were nothing but boys about all the time.  I felt all put upon having these men all over the place and then the boys in the countryside that flocked to play with my brother were ever present and always taunting.  I was shot with their BB guns, I was forced to kiss one of them at BB gunpoint once.  I was pushed, prodded and picked on mercilessly. 

One day I’d had enough. 

I cleaned my room. Put on the nicest dress I had and wrote a very moving suicide note.  I say that because I don’t remember what it said but I know that I was very sure it was devastating.  I went to the medicine cabinet and checked myself in the mirror before I pulled it open to do myself in in the only way I’d ever heard of…with a bottle of pills. I sat down on the edge of the tub and proceeded to gnaw up every last one of the chewable, fruit flavored Tums in the family sized bottle. I went then and placed the suicide note on the yellow frilly pillow sham next to me and laid upon the bed…crucifixion pose, like any good martyr, and waited. I waited for the sweet release that only about 15-20 fruit flavored antacids could bring.

After what seemed longer but was probably 10 minutes or so, my brother burst in the front door and into my room and asked what the hell I was doing. 

I bolted upright and grabbed the suicide note. I hadn’t figured on having to explain myself. I was going to let my beautiful, lifeless corpse do the explaining.  He grabbed the note from me and after reading it, he paused and looked at me with a furrowed brow and then he just hugged me.  He said, “Let’s get rid of this and me and you will play in here. Away from everyone outside.”

So the nature with which I handled being abandoned earlier was practically heroic compared to being picked on and the ensuing botched suicide attempt. Turns out though, all that abandonment shit ages, and not well.  It sits and ferments and comes back to haunt you.

The decade that followed was confusing and full of more chaos brought on by spotty parenting and oppression. Mother blew back into town and Dad let her back. By the time I turned 20 I was marrying a virtual stranger, thousands of miles from home in order to feel as if I belonged to someone. My dad had driven me to upstate New York on a run to Canada. When he met the beau I’d been corresponding with for a mere 6 months on a snowy, bone-chilling night outside a barracks on Fort Drum, he was not thrilled…in the least.  The last thing he said before he loaded up to leave the next day was, “Whatever you do, don’t get married.  I’ll come from wherever I am and get you if you need me…just call.”

I agreed and sent him on his way.  Two weeks later, I called him to tell him I’d wed the aforementioned near stranger. He blew a heavy sigh, “I knew that was gonna happen.”

Aging 10 years hadn’t improved my thought processes or injected any maturity or wisdom.  Aging – 10, Maturity – negative 20.

Fast forward another 10 years to the second husband and I turned 30 and I was feeling as if I had it.  I had two babies and a child groom (5 years younger than me) who was devastatingly handsome and equally as devastatingly simple.  I had accepted that lot and was fairly secure in the feeling that I had “grown up”. I liked turning 30.  I had hitherto held the design that things would be better when I got older; that as I aged, magical insight would settle about my shoulders like I was a Disney princess being attended by benevolent woodland creatures. I felt as if this were happening when I turned 30. The thing I had always waited for had arrived.  The 10 years between 30 and 40 pretty much dashed that all to hell.

When I turned 40, I was so miserable and dealing with inner crazy that I often dreamed for an amorphous blanket of nothing to swallow me whole.  The aging process had not, in fact, conspired with the universe to turn me into an astute, happy sage. I waited and waited for everything to get better but as I looked in the mirror, I noticed that I was getting older and for the first time, I noticed the wrinkles. I noticed the not as smooth skin, the stray hairs growing in weird places, the flesh that did not snap back, the hair that was oh so slightly thinning. The fact that my world was completely spinning out of control behind me as I examined my many flaws compounded every last one of them.

I hated that my body was betraying me. It was all I’d ever had when my mind was constantly on the blink.  Big boobs can get you through a lot, don’t kid yourself. Now though, they were turning into 38 longs instead of DDD’s.   It was all so terrible and I cried.  I was old.  I had to face it.  I was my mother.  I was chunky and old.  I couldn’t be anyone’s real fantasy any longer because I was practically geriatric. The only thing that any man had found interesting about me up to that point was gone. My looks had just disappeared.  I cried.  I cried a lot.  I avoided mirrors. What little self-esteem I had vanished. Aging had finally caught up to me.

It is a mere 4 years later.  I will turn 44 in two weeks and I feel fabulous.  I look like a 40 something woman and I’m okay with that. I have wrinkles, I am doing a thousand pushups to help curb the southbound journey of my boobs, I’m poofing my hair with outrageously priced products, I drink a lot of water and take a lot of supplements. I am, indeed, trying to look as good as I possibly can…

BUT I have found that feeling love and peace inside shines love and beauty to the outside. The person I love, who loves me, watched me act like a complete happy, doofus moron for months before we got together.  Just like I do with every friend I have. I was myself.  My real true self.  The one that breaks into song for no reason and whose feelings would best be expressed in a monologue from TV’s Portrait of a Teenage Centerfold. The person that has for the first time really, truly found joy in living every day. Don’t get me wrong, shark week rears its ugly head and the hormones rage occasionally, but I don’t cry every day anymore. I suppose mostly that is because I realize with age comes aging. I won’t have every day forever and for the time I have here, I want the most out of every last second. I don’t want to be crippled with worry or anger or self-doubt or self-loathing. It’s a waste of precious time and I want to live before I die. 


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