From Nerdy to Thirty

Chapter 17: It Takes a Village

2009-08-03T22:22:00.003-04:00

For the past eight weeks, I have been neglecting my poor little blog. When I was writing about my past, the words came easily because I’d had time to reflect. Unlike some blogs, my posts are not pithy quip-filled anecdotes, but rather lengthy missives about significant aspects of my life. My life over the last two months has been really good and pretty calm, so it seems comparatively uninteresting to write about what I had for dinner the night before when my prior entries were filled with much more drama.

So what have I been up to?

Ramón and I are still going full steam ahead and are settling in to somewhat of a routine. Awhile back he asked his daughter if it was okay if I stay over at their apartment, and she said yes. This meant that I could come over before she went to bed and stay until after she woke up in the morning. Therefore, to the dismay of my two cats, I’ve been spending about five nights a week in Hoboken with Ramón (and the rest of his family, of course). This makes him happy because he gets to spend time with both his daughter and me and not worry about neglecting either. It also means that he doesn’t have to come up to my apartment, which to be honest is not nearly as nice as his (though better decorated!) and doesn’t have air conditioning. We commute home together after work, watch television, have dinner, go to bed, wake up and commute back to Manhattan together. Wash, rinse, repeat. He jokes that according to tax law, I am a New Jersey resident now, since the majority of my time is spent there. On the weekends we relax and try to find something fun to do.

I like spending time at Ramón's apartment and am getting more comfortable as the weeks pass. I am slowly sneaking my possessions over to his place. First some clothes and shoes, then some cook books, and now even my slow cooker. Given that I spend so much time there, it comforts me and makes my life easier to have some of my things around me. For now I feel like I am biding my time until December when my lease is up. I am already fantasizing about how our two lives will merge. In general, he has better electronics and major furniture pieces; I have better accessories and kitchen gadgets. The prospect of moving in with someone who has their own place set up is a little scary as it means that it if things didn’t work out I would pretty much have to furnish my next place from scratch. But that possibility doesn’t really hinder my excitement. Eventually, I would hope we could move to a new place that becomes distinctly “ours.”

I think the fact that we talk about our future means that what we respectively want is more likely to be actualized. It certainly helps that we are on the same page about most things, but simply knowing that is so makes it so much easier to put my trust in someone after having it shattered a year ago.

Through his actions, Ramón has made it especially easy for me to have confidence in him and our relationship, principally because he has put his faith in me. He trusts me alone with his child and his car, is working on getting me a key to his apartment, and doesn’t mind if I hang out there by myself. Another big act of confidence was giving me a copy of his credit card in my name to use for things like groceries for his apartment. I think he was motivated to do so after I cooked up a huge meal for a picnic in the park for him, his daughter, her mother and myself. It didn’t feel right to him for me to pay to feed everyone when he knows my budget is tight right now.

This bequeath is not without self-motivation for him as it means I can pitch in by running errands and keep his fridge stocked and his life running smoothly (and not have to pester him for cash anytime I need to go run to the store). This is an act of trust because he knows my spending habits have been historically questionable, and I accepted the card knowing my charge (ha!) was to treat it with respect.

As a result of his acts of faith, he has essentially made it easy for me to take care of him. Chores that I historically detested (such as laundry or dishes) I do without complaint. Heck, with a dishwasher and washer/dryer in the apartment it is almost a fun novelty. Almost. If he says he’s hungry, I cheerfully cook him a late night snack. Almost every day I make the bed and straighten up the coffee table. In my marriage such efforts went unnoticed or worse, were criticized. With Ramón, I always get a thank you. In return I make a conscious effort to verbally thank him for the back rubs he gives me or our nice dinners out. I am honestly thankful he is in my life, and I want to be sure he knows I take nothing he does for granted.

I have always sought reciprocity in relationships, and in this case it is not literally, “I scratch your back, you scratch mine,” but rather, “you scratch my back, I do the laundry.” In the past it was hard for me to figure out the exchange rate of this currency. My marriage dissolved into a tit-for-tat debate in which we nearly had a chart of stickers like a child would for their chores to see who was contributing more to the relationship. My feeling with Ramón is more one of, “you just pitch in.” This is how Ramón has structured his relationship with his daughter and her mother, and I am now working to find my position on that team. The team is one, however, that you’d find at one of those “progressive” hippy schools where you don’t keep score. I can’t tell you how refreshing that idea is, and yet how foreign.

As I try to figure out my place on the team, I also contemplate how the team will evolve if Ramón and I were to have children or if his baby mama were to start her own family. Ramón and I both want to have a couple of kids, and we can see having them with each other. How that new family takes shape will remain to be seen. For his daughter’s entire life it has been the three of them looking out for each other, without interlopers. Now I’m in the picture, and I can only hope I am a positive addition who one day begets more positive additions.

It’s a strange situation because Ramón has a daughter who I am just getting to know. Her mother is very present in her life, so right now I get to be her dad’s fun girlfriend who takes her to the park, watches iCarly with her or accompanies her and Daddy to paint pottery and go out to eat. I don’t tell her when to go to bed or discipline her (not that she requires much discipline, being the sweet thing she is). I think because having a kid around is a novelty for me, she takes full advantage. I’ll hand her the remote when we are watching television, play games with her when she asks, do arts and crafts and listen to the stories her friends and family have already heard. To me (and probably to her), all of this is fun. I can imagine if I had to do it 24/7 for nine years it might get a little tiresome and I’d be ready to tell her to knock it off. On the other hand part of why I want to be a mother in the first place is to open up the world to a child and in turn to see it through their eyes.

For example, the four of us went to The Cloisters for a picnic and to tour the museum. I have wanted to go for years, and since having moved mere blocks away, felt the tug even stronger. I adore museums and could spend hours reading every placard by every piece of art. Going with others in tow is always a precarious situation. Finding a good museum-going companion is like finding someone who is a good travel buddy or someone whose opinions about movies you trust. I wasn’t sure what the day had in store, but I was excited.

So anyhow, here there we were, sitting having a Burger King picnic outside the cloisters building when the curious little nine year-old spots an inchworm climbing a blade of grass. She points it out, but only I get down eye-level with her on the lawn to check it out. To me, that sort of self-discovery and curiosity should be celebrated and encouraged, so that’s what I did. It is in sharing these little moments that I feel motherly, even if she might never call me “Mom.”

Later, as we wandered the museum and Fort Tryon Park, I tried to point out things that I had some knowledge of, hoping to make it the educational experience it could be. I mean, I’ve lived in Europe and seen this type of stuff before. This was my neighborhood, and I’d wandered this park for hours. I certainly should know something on the subject. On the other hand, I also was hyper-aware that her mother and father, both teachers themselves, might want to lead the tour. So I offered up my little tidbits cautiously, and in the end I think we all had a good day.

I don’t know that I will ever be an authority figure with Ramón’s daughter. Luckily they’ve done such a good job raising her that for now it doesn’t matter. I just wonder what it would be like if she is a rebellious thirteen year-old and there is a toddler in the house calling me mommy who she is asked to look after. I just don’t ever want to hear the words “Oh yeah, well you’re not my mom!”

So the big picture is everything is going well. But that is not to say Ramón and I don’t have our moments. Or more to the point - that I have my moments. It is probably fair to say that any disagreements we have are instigated by me. When confronted with something that doesn’t sit well with me, I tend to make a snippy remark or grow huffy. I get upset when confronted with something unexpected that I disagree with. I realize some things (like the weather) are beyond my control. But I am a planner, and when what I anticipate or imagine doesn’t come to fruition because of an extraneous source, I tend to get PISSED! This is true in all aspects of my life (work, travel, traffic, whatever), but when it comes to romantic relationships, things get a bit more hairy. We can read each other pretty well at this point, and he even knows when I have something boiling under the surface. Even when I know it’s not a big deal I tend to make reactionary comments or faces that cause Ramón to react defensively. The problem is, once the bomb has been triggered, it is hard for me to figure our which wire I need to clip to defuse it.

In conflicts throughout much of my life I would retaliate with a raised voice, cutting words, or (in the case of my little brother) mutual assault. I see where that has gotten me in the past, and as a result now try to remain calm and explain what I’m thinking.

The problem is, I don’t always immediately know why I reacted the way I did to a certain situation. My writing, in part, has helped me take a step back and analyze my thoughts and actions in an effort to modify the ones that cause me undue pain. However, in the heat of conflict, I can’t always take that step back and figure out just why I got upset. So my response is to remain quiet. I feel like not saying anything will prevent me from saying something stupid that I will later regret, or asserting something to which I will later be proven wrong. Ramón grows increasingly frustrated with the bombs I drop and my subsequent silence. The obvious solution is to let things slide and go with the flow, but part of me always wonders where does the line between being easy-going blur with the one of being taken advantage of?

I try to learn from the experiences in my life. I know that I am prone to sarcasm, which in inter-personal situations is not something anyone (myself included) appreciates. I think I have been pretty good about checking that. I know I am quick to anger, but I am also quick to forgive. I know that even if I thought I’d forgiven and forgotten those old wounds, like with a boxer, open up quickly when the punches start flying. So I am trying, and I think Ramón knows that. I am sure if he thought otherwise, I’d be kicked to the curb by now.

But I’ve not been, and so life carries on in this new usual way. I realize that going from nerdy to thirty does not just entail finding the man who will make me happy for the rest of my life, and I for the rest of his. It is about me and making my self a better, whole, happy person. The feeling of being in a bit of limbo with the living situation has not helped my bigger goals. I’ve not started the exercise regime I’d hoped. As a baseline I am a demotivated person and the idea of going home to a man who loves me as I am does little to motivate me to change that. But he does have me thinking about the future and where my career path might lead.

My boss has been travelling for the last two weeks, and returns tomorrow. While he was away I was running the show, which included overseeing subcontractors doing work at a showhouse we are doing. This particular showhouse will be published in Town & Country Magazine with a coordinating television show on the Fine Living Network. The theme of the townhouse we are decorating is the movie “Dinner at Eight.” I have been on-site directing electricians, painters, wallpaper hangers, faux finishers and delivery people without oversight from my boss. I can only hope that the executive decisions I made when certain questions came up are made with his approval.

It was gratifying to be the one in charge. I think the people working with me appreciate my level head in a time of crisis. My boss is the kind of person who thinks raising your voice and insulting people is the way to effectively solve a problem, but I prefer to catch flies with honey. Figuring out whose fault a problem is or why something went wrong seems like a waste of time. I find it much more efficient to just look for a solution.

For example, a wall’s worth of wallpaper did not arrive on site as scheduled just two weeks before our deadline. It is a hand-painted product from China that normally has a twelve to fourteen week lead time. Despite my emails with attached drawings and dimensions, the salesman missed the fact that we needed that paper. When I realized the mistake, I explained the situation to the salesman and the owner of the wallpaper company, who were both mortified. My boss had said not to worry about the paper and just paint the wall instead. In the end, I had the wall painted just in case the additional paper do not arrive on-time, the missing wallpaper panels should arrive with several days to spare, and hopefully in the end the way I dealt with the situation will help make the project look better in the end.

Being on my own in the office the last two weeks has made me realize how much I want to have my own company one day. I have some ideas for businesses I would like to start. Ideally, when I settle down and have a family I would like a flexible career that allows me to spend time with my children. When my brother and I were little, my mom worked from home. When we went off to grade school, she began working part time and so was home in the mornings and afternoons with us. I can’t imagine myself not having a career of some kind, but I also can’t imagine letting someone else raise my children.

I would love the opportunity to start a flexible, home-based business, which I think being an interior designer allows. Alternately, I would love to set up a restaurant/shop that would have a manager and thus not require me to be there all day (or where my children could hang out with me). I wonder if I have the connections, drive and business acumen to make such an endeavor succeed, but I sure think working for my self would be exciting.

In talking about these ambitions with Ramón, he told me that if we end up married, my ambitions would not just be pipe dreams, and that he will help make them a reality. If past successes are any indicator, he will always be more financially successful than I. However, my own measure of success has always been more motivated by personal triumphs and my ability to contribute something intangible to a community or an individual. Even as a waitress, if I could recommend a wine to a customer that they loved so much they wrote it down – that was a good day on the job for me. This is not dissimilar to the satisfaction I get as an interior designer, showing a client a beautiful chair that they just can’t imagine living without. Or, as I mentioned before, imparting some bit of wisdom to a child. You never know when those little moments, like the proverbial flapping of the butterfly’s wings, will impact the world.

I went to a party recently at my cousin’s apartment in Brooklyn. He had lived in the city for about a year, but we’d never actually gotten together. He moved here from Illinois to work for a record label, signing new bands. When I was chatting with him at his party, I told him I was accountable for all his success. He gave me an inquisitive look. I said, “Well, when I was your nanny in Michigan, when you were about twelve, I taught you what a signature was. Now getting people to sign their names is your job!”

He laughed and said, “Oh that was you? When I went back to school that fall I taught all my friends what a signature was and worked really hard to make mine cool.”

I then asked him to sign the printed-out hopstop directions to his party. Just in case he really makes it big one day, I could say, “I taught him that, even if he hadn’t remember himself.”

So, I am happy. Contented. Definitely optimistic. I took Ramón home with me for the Fourth of July, the anniversary of my husband telling me he was leaving. He made an effort whilst there, which was all I cared about. He chatted with my grandmother about finance, my uncle about photography, and my cousin about law school. He put himself out there. Despite whatever trepidations he may have had, I deem the weekend a success. He, in turn, has invited me into his family’s life. They visited the city (Dad twice, Mom once) and we hung out when they were here. I like to think that our families recognize what we do: that what we have is special, that we are a good match, and that the love and laughter we share now is real and will endure. And I think it will.

We have a winner!

2009-06-22T09:22:00.001-04:00

Congratulations to Jonathan Sheffi who won the Rug Giveaway!

Stay tuned for a new post, hopefully this week!

Amazing Rug Giveaway!

2009-06-15T11:24:00.014-04:00

I am so excited to announce that I have a giveaway for all my loyal readers! I was contacted last week by CSN Rugs to see if I would be interested in offering one of their products as a giveaway on my blog... I am so excited to participate, not only because you all have a chance to get something free, but because they are a great on-line interior furnishings retailer I use in my work.

I searched through their wide selection of rugs and decided on a hand woven, natural fiber area rug. It's good for the environment (natural fiber = less plastics used) and good for your indoor air quality (no VOCs). Plus, because there is no pile to it, it retains less of those pesky allergens and dirt! On top of all that, the rug is offered in a range of trim colors, so the winner will be able to select the color that best suits their decor.

The specifics:
Construction: Handmade
Technique: Woven
Material: 100% Jute
Origin: India
Size: 3' x 5'
Color: Available in Blue, Green, Brown, Black, Terra Cotta and Wheat & Ivory.
Images:

~ The full size rug, in blue ~

~ Black ~ ~ Brown ~

~ Green ~ ~Khaki ~

~Terra Cotta ~ ~ Wheat & Ivory ~

So what's the catch? To enter, simply become a fan of my blog on Facebook. If you are already a fan (thank you!), simply post a shout-out on the fan page wall to enter. The winner will be selected at 5pm on Friday, June 18, 2009.

The fine print:
Shipping is included in this prize, and the giveaway is only open to US residents.

Good Luck!

2009-06-10T18:32:00.003-04:00

A Character List
About this Blog (Introduction)
Chapter 01: From Nerdy to Thirty
Chapter 02: Falling in Love with Narcissus
Chapter 03: The Polyester Bride
Chapter 04: The Other Woman
Chapter 05: Choosing Sides
Chapter 06: Margaret
Chapter 07: Uptown Girl
Chapter 08: A Single Girl in Single Digits
Chapter 09: The Meat I Eat
Chapter 10: The Patron Saint of Baby Mamas (1/2)
Chapter 10: The Patron Saint of Baby Mamas (2/2)
Chapter 11: Caring for Crystal
Chapter 12: This Jane-of-all-Trades Marches to the Beat of Her Own Drummer (1/2)
Chapter 12: This Jane-of-all-Trades Marches to the Beat of Her Own Drummer (2/2)
Chapter 13: Turning Thirty
Chapter 14: Out of the Blue
Chapter 15: On Butterflies and Fireworks
Chapter 16: Please Curb Your God
Chapter 17: It Takes a Village

Chapter 16: Please Curb Your God

2009-06-06T21:08:00.006-04:00

My writing up to this point has been a catharsis or a purge. I wrote about my past as a way to explain who I was as I approached my thirtieth birthday. Now, my past has been transcribed and I am writing in more-or-less the present tense. In the months since I began this blog I have shared few of my reflections on how I plan to improve my life going forward. That change for the better is the ultimate goal of this project, so I may as well get to it!

In looking at my life, I often feel like something is missing, but I am not sure what exactly. I am filled with an emptiness I cannot identify: Is it hunger? Thirst? Loneliness? Boredom? Or maybe it is that I lack a profound spirituality. In the past I ate, drank, cuddled and played without finding true happiness, so I figure it couldn’t hurt to think about “The Big Picture.” While making my life better will in part be about concrete actions like exercising or budgeting, what good will any of those tasks do if my overall Self feels out of balance with the world? I think I need to recalibrate my life in a way, and I need to take a holistic approach to do so.

The first things that fill my mind when trying to think about my spirituality are only questions. What should be my role in the universe and how do I succeed in fulfilling it? Or is that even the right way to approach these things? How exactly do I perceive the world and my role in it presently? If I don’t know my current orientation I will never be able to chart a better course. To establish my point of reference, I have to go back to the past as a way of explaining what I have come to believe today. I think only then will I be able to identify the pieces of the quilt that make up the fabric of my existence and decide which scraps to salvage and which to fashion, along with many new pieces, into a fresh, much cozier, quilt.

When thinking of spirituality, most people’s minds immediately jump to religion. When I told Ramon the topic of this entry was spirituality he groaned and said, “Oh no, are you a Christian now? I thought you were an Atheist!” My response was that I am, in fact, neither (and that I hoped he would read this to understand what I meant by that).

I was not raised with religion. My family is ostensibly Christian (Protestant/Lutheran I think), but I was never Baptized or Christened and I my parents never once brought us to a church service. Church was a place for weddings and, for our more religious kin, Christenings. On one occasion, when I spent the night with my Gram, she took me to the Sunday School at her church while she attended the service. All I remember from that experience is that I didn’t understand what was going on and that we made placemats. Religious holidays (limited to Christmas and Easter) were not a time of celebrating Jesus, but rather gift-giving, candy, secular cartoon characters and family get-togethers.

I didn’t even realize we had any religious texts in the house until one day my brother decided he wanted to practice Satanism and my dad chucked a massive King James Bible at his head. Up until that point, my dad had always proclaimed that my brother and I could choose any religion we wanted. While he would have been perfectly happy with us, say, following in our Druid ancestors’ footsteps, apparently Satanism was not on the list of acceptable world religions.

My hometown has a large Jewish population, so when junior high rolled around my mailbox was awash with B'nei Mitzvah invitations. Before long, I had spent more time in a Jewish temple than I ever had in a church. My best friends from grade school through high school were primarily Jewish, and I was often a guest at their traditional Friday Shabbat and Passover Seder dinners. I enjoyed the ritual of prayer, candle-lighting and the ceremonial hand-washing and breaking of bread (or, alternately, matzo). In time I began to recognize the Hebrew prayers: “Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam…” While I did not know their meaning, I could recite those few words along with my Jewish hosts.

My knowledge of Christian prayer, at the time, was equally limited to the first line of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven…” Over the years, I attended various church services, primarily to appease first Joey’s and then James’ devoutly Catholic mothers. I learned to stand, sit and kneel at the appropriate times. I bowed my head low when it came time to pray to hide the fact that I did not know the words to the prayers. And I never took Communion. As my friends began to get married, I enjoyed witnessing the ceremonies associated with their varied faiths. In the cases of three of my girlfriends and their fiancés, one member of the couple converted to the other’s religion (Christian, Catholic and Muslim) before their weddings. I enjoyed learning about religion with an outsider’s perspective, but generally referred to myself as Agnostic.

When James and I began planning our own wedding ceremony, I simply could not see myself converting to Catholicism or having the ceremony under the roof of a Catholic Church. If I had my way, I would have been married by a justice of the peace, but was willing to compromise on a non-denominational pastor. I didn’t think James would be upset about not having a Catholic wedding, as he did not attend services himself, but he was in fact angered by my refusal to be married in the Church. I thought at great length about how to reconcile my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) with those of my future husband. It came down to two distinct aspects: my views on God and my views on religion.

I’ve never in my life said, or even thought, “I believe in God.” On the other hand, I have never said, “There is definitely no God.” Frankly, over the course of my lifetime I have probably spent more time considering the contents of my refrigerator than the existence of the Almighty. Calling myself an Agnostic was a bit of a cop-out in this respect because it meant I could say “If you haven’t proven it to me, it doesn’t exist,” but I never sought the proof either.

Because I did not definitively believe in God, I frankly did not want the name invoked in the wedding ceremony at all. If I proclaimed in front of all my friends and family some sort of faith in God, it seemed like my marriage would be founded on a lie. I found out later that I needn’t convert to Catholicism to be married in the church but express a commitment to raising Catholic children. Even that seemed like a lie on which to found a marriage as I didn’t see myself (or James for that matter) taking our offspring to Church.

My desire to get married in my parents' backyard began to take on significance beyond aesthetics. Man built the church (both the edifice and the institution), but God created the grass and the trees. I asked James, “When is one closer to God than in Nature?” He had no answers for me and shared nothing with me about the basis of his faith, so I took it to be blind. And while my parent’s backyard is a cultivated suburban version of Nature, it felt more appropriate to have the wedding there than at a church selected at random (or for me any church at all).

To me, matrimony is matrimony, whether it is holy or not. The thing that makes a couple into a husband and wife (or husband and husband or wife and wife) is the profession, in front of all those who they’ve invited to bear witness, that they are committed to sharing the remainder of their lives together. If God happens to be one of those caring witnesses you invite, great, but his presence should not be required to bless a union. In the case of my wedding, If God was in attendance, he was definitely sitting on the groom’s side.

My parents had given me the freedom to choose my religious path, but I had been provided with precious little information about what my choices actually were. If there is “A God” I don’t know if he (or she?) is benevolent or fearsome, Jewish or Muslim, distant or internalized. I enjoyed seeing how my friends of various faiths practiced their religions, but no one devotion seemed to call out to me, and I hadn’t put forth the effort to study the world’s less prominent faiths. Ultimately, any organized religions seemed outdated and corrupt to me, with Catholicism being the worst. It is to me an establishment filled with middlemen and diddlemen, neither of whom would help me find or reach God.

So rather than choose to take my husband’s religion, I chose to do nothing. I finally learned the Lord’s Prayer, and recited it to James’ surprise, during the ceremony. I wonder now: if we had been married in the church, would he have held our vows to be sacred? Would saying “I do” in God’s house prevented him from cheating on me? Somehow I doubt it. Nonetheless, James’ claim of faith to his religion followed by his unfaithfulness to me made me doubt even more that religion was for me.

In New York, religion is in your face all the time. From the garb of the more conservative sects to the beautiful religious buildings lining the city street, all the world’s religions are on display. You need only enter a subway car to find a Muslim, Hasidic Jew and Mormon all holding on to the same pole for balance to see just how peacefully they coexist in this metropolis. Yet on that same subway car you are likely to see a seated man so deeply absorbed in his religious texts that he does not offer his perch to the visibly pregnant woman standing uncomfortably in front of him. To her, the piety implied by the man’s religious fervor is no more than hypocrisy. And on the next car, where the air conditioning is not working, a woman is preaching about eternal damnation without the salvation of Jesus Christ. Her hollering only serves to agitate and alienate the tired businessman, trying to catch a quick nap before going home to his family. To him, that train car became the Hell the preacher warned him about.

I see these people who claim devotion to a system of beliefs but literally do not practice what they preach (or what is preached to them). I know deep down that while I may be able to find spirituality, or, who knows, maybe even a God, I don’t think I will ever find a home amongst the world’s major religions. I may find lessons from one or another, but I don’t think I will be able to fully accept the tenets of an entire faith.

I have talked so far at length about what I don’t believe, but my focus going forward is determining what exactly I do believe. I have always claimed to be a spiritual person, but have only scratched the surface in internally examining what I actually believe when I say that. In the last few weeks I have begun reading books that I hope will help me on my path to spiritual enlightenment, and ultimately a happy, productive, successful, and love-filled life.

The first book I read was of the “self-help” genre, The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, M.D. It was recommended to me last fall by a recently divorced friend. As I take all recommendations seriously, I purchased it which went against my commitment to never buy a self-help type book. I could not connect with it at the time because I was barely coping with my day-to-day life, let alone in a place where I could find this type of book beneficial. Recently, with spring’s promise of renewal spurring me on, I picked it up again. I found the volume contained many valuable insights, and read it with the attention of a textbook.

One section of the book discusses religion, and I began reading that portion with some trepidation. My mind was pretty made up when it came to my view on the institution of religion, but the author threw me for a loop when he presented his take on the matter. All religions, he said, present their followers with a way of seeing themselves in the universe. Conversely, since everyone has a world view, everyone has a religion. The opening paragraphs of the section on religion even touched on my feelings of hypocrisy in organized religions and the notion that you don’t necessarily need to believe in God to be religious or spiritual. “Right on!” I thought.

So what is my world view right now and how, by exploring my spirituality, will that view change? I want to preface this by saying that I am in no way preaching. My outlook on things is mine alone, and I have a feeling that there are few people out there who have established the same set of beliefs that I possess. And, I am aware that I will come off as a bit of a kook in part because what I believe is not derived from the world’s main religions. However these religions ask you to put faith in something you have not experienced, and I am not comfortable with that. Instead I have formulated my world view on the experiences I’ve had, which I would like to share with you now.

I have already said that I do not believe or disbelieve in a God, which is the basis of Agnosticism. I certainly don’t believe that some mystical being created the world in seven days or has control over out fates and destinies. Rather, I feel that there is a certain life force that exists, but what exactly that is I have not yet been able to pinpoint. Aliens on Star Trek described humans as simply “ugly bags of mostly water,” but I think there is something (electricity, a spirit, a soul, I don’t know) that makes us more than that. Maybe it is simply chemical reactions and synapses firing, but I think there is something else going on that makes me different from you and both of us different from, say, a cat.

I think in part this realization that we are more than just flesh helped influence me to become a vegetarian. At sixteen I sat down to a dinner of medium rare filet mignon and had an epiphany that it was not just “meat” but tissue and blood from a formerly breathing creature, and I didn’t see how that was any different from the flesh that made up my body. I read a theory once that more women are vegetarians because they are more exposed to blood through their monthly cycles, so to consume something that is part of the process of creating life seems counter-intuitive and off-putting. This certainly didn’t cross my mind when I decided to stop eating meat cold-tofurkey, but it may a subconscious truism.

I am not a huge animal rights activist or vehemently proclaim that every creature has a soul (and I’ve heard every snarky comment about the undeveloped nervous systems of sea creatures and how plants breathe too). However, there are days when I look into my pet cat Duke’s eyes and think there must sentience in that feline brain of his. Somehow Duke knows when I am sad, and reaches out a paw to rest it reassuringly on my thigh. This happens with such regularity (I’ve been sad quite a bit in the past year) that I feel it is more than mere coincidence. Perhaps it is just anthropomorphism on my part, but I’ve noticed he does not make the same gesture when I am happy. In part because of this, I do feel a connectedness to the living things of the world and I feel better knowing that another creature did not have to die for me to live.

During the time of slavery, it was believed that blacks were not sentient beings so it was acceptable to subjugate them. We would scoff at such a notion today because we are a more enlightened civilization. Just as people back then would have argued “Oh, I like having slaves because they make my life better,” today I hear “Oh, I could never give up meat because it is so delicious.” Mankind (especially in America) today does not need animal protein to survive, but savors it as part of an archaic cultural heritage. Our lifestyles are much more sedentary than generations past, meaning our dietary needs have changed and can be adequately met with our ample supply of plant-based foods. One day more people will come to see that their gratification comes at the unnecessary cost of another being’s suffering. I understand that most people consider animals to be lesser creatures than humans, so I want to clarify my intent when making this comparison. I am in no way saying that black people are no different than animals, but quite the reverse: I believe fully that animals are no different than humans.

While I am confident in defending my belief of the equality of man and beast as valuable on this earth, other convictions of mine are either a bit more undefined or unsubstantiated. For example, I wonder if the same life force that I see in my self and my cat may exist also in what we call inanimate objects.

That which grows from the earth eventually becomes the man, who then returns to the earth when he dies. It is a cycle of ashes to ashes and dust to dust, even according to the Bible. We are physically made up of no more than the earth upon which we walk, and it in turn is made up of no more than our ancestors. So if we have a life force it would follow that those entities that do not perambulate, because they are made up of the same stuff as us, would also have a life force. The spirit, soul or energy that occupies my body is here only for my lifetime, and had a previous home and will find another (be it plant, animal or mineral) after I am gone. This notion of reincarnation (or metempsychosis or transmigration) is one held by my Druid ancestors and Buddhists, thought I do not know much more about it than what I’ve just written.

What then of the spirits that do not find a home in another entity after the one they’ve been occupying has perished – that which we call ghosts? I believe that these, too, exist. Even as a child I had the sense that there was something else amongst us. If that which makes us “alive” is no more than an electrical charge, I felt that there were these wanton charges of those no longer alive existing on a parallel plane. I never had any concrete reason to believe this, I just did.

That is until something strange started happening to me around 2006. When I moved into my Harlem apartment in 2003, I sensed that the previous tenant had passed away in the apartment. When I cleaned my new home for the first time, I noticed that there was soot around the top of the windows, as if the person who had lived there previously had been a smoker. I wondered if the apartment was haunted by this person, who I felt was a man who had died as a result of his nicotine addiction. The New York spiritual guide and psychic Rock Kenyon said “I think there are more ghosts in the City than almost anywhere else… more people were attached to the City in life,” and I thought maybe that were true of the person who had formerly inhabited my dwelling. I waited to see if he would visit me.

One night after several years of living in that apartment, I finally had what I felt was a paranormal encounter; although it bore no resemblance to the old man I was expecting to haunt me. It was around the Fourth of July, and I was in my bed with the window open. I was lying on my back, and as I dozed off I began to feel my entire body start to vibrate and heard a buzzing in my ears. I could look around my room, but could not move my limbs. Suddenly, I saw flashes of light, like fireworks, out in the street.

Then these things, looking like black handkerchiefs (which I can now describe as looking like the Dementors from Harry Potter, thought I hadn’t heard of such a thing at the time), flew in the window. The shadowy forms swirled into the room and right into my gut. I felt like they were trying to pull me up from my bed by the stomach, as if trying to take my soul from its vessel. I shook myself awake and after the vibrations and paralysis subsided looked over at the clock on the nightstand. Only five minutes had passed since I had clicked off the light, which seemed far too short of a period to have entered the dream state.

The experience frightened me. I wondered, “If I hadn’t woken myself up, would I have had an out-of-body experience? Would I have died if they took my soul?” I was so shocked by the experience that I painted my vision from that night in part to always be able to remember it and in part to not have to always remember it.

The phenomenon continued over the coming months, always as I was just nodding off to sleep. When it happened, my eyes always felt open (though I have no confirmation if they were or not) and I could see my room around me. Sometimes there was a visible entity associated with the experience, and sometimes it was just the sensation itself. If I were lying on my side, I might feel the force pulling me from the small of my back. I would feel like I was moving my arms or legs to reach out, but when I awoke they would be securely tucked by my side. In time I was able to rouse myself before I grew frightened, just as the vibrations would begin. This physical component led me to think these were not just dreams, but something else entirely.

As the occurrences became more commonplace, I began to analyze what might be causing them. I noticed if I had even one glass of wine with dinner, it would not happen. I also noticed that on nights when I would do logic puzzles in bed to put me to sleep, the sensation was more likely to occur. I began to wonder if the puzzles were tapping in to a certain unused part of my brain, and the alcohol only served to dull that area of the brain. I also noticed that the sensation only occurred when I was alone in my bed, and did not occur when another person or even my cats were sharing the bed with me.

Most people I told about my evening happenings probably thought I was nuts. I would have too, if it weren’t happening to me. Because I wasn’t seeing women in white nightgowns or whatever else may be considered typical ghost-like specters, I began to refer to my visions as “ghosties.” However this seemed to be a childish misnomer for whatever it was I was going through. I needed to know more so I typed my “symptoms” in a search engine.

I found information on lucid dreams, out-of-body experiences and something called astral projection. The latter phenomenon is a sort of out-of-body experience that people try to achieve through meditation. This desire to seek out the experiences I was having did not seem to jive with the terror with which I faced when having them. However the fact that other people could describe the exact same sensations as I was having was both reassuring and frightening. I was not alone; however the philosophies of the people who embraced their encounters were far beyond the reaches of my spiritual comfort zone.

After I moved out of Harlem, the phenomenon seemed to subside. Perhaps it was my husband’s nightly presence in bed with me, but over the next year I only had the experience once in Queens and once when I took a nap on the sofa at work. That experience was particularly alarming because for the first time I actually heard speech associated with the sensation. I heard a woman’s voice, coming from very close to my ear, telling me that my boss’ mother and sister were going to die. The fact that this premonition has not come true is again reassuring and confusing. Maybe it was just a dream, and not something to read too much into.

When I moved back to Manhattan, my nighttime visitors returned. Maybe there are more ghosts in New York after all! This time however I was seeing actual people, not just shadows. Perhaps just as notable was that these apparitions seemed benevolent whereas my prior experiences had been frightening.

The first time it happened in my new apartment, I was caught a bit by surprise as I’d not had one of these experiences in quite a while. I was lying on my back, with my right leg extended and my left leg tucked up (like a flamingo), with my left hand resting on my thigh. As I was falling asleep, I felt a caress on my left thigh, and then I felt a scratch on my right ankle. I felt fully cognizant and wondered if I was feeling the ghosties again, when all the sudden I began vibrating just as before, but for the first time I was seeing actual people.

I saw a series of semi-transparent faces in front of me, morphing from one to the next as if they were all trying to present or introduce themselves. It was like a flipbook of individuals: an old man, a black lady, someone with glasses. And finally it was just one man, whose face was very close to mine. He took both my hands in his and I could feel their warmth enveloping mine. After a moment, he let go and reached over his shoulder to scratch his back.

I heard myself say to him, “Ghosts get itches?”

He laughed and said “All the time!”

He then pointed to his left eye and said “I just have to be careful not to scratch this,” at which point I realized there was a big gaping hole where his eye should have been. The side of his face was in shadows, so I could not clearly make out the wound. It did not seem gory to me, but appeared like a gunshot wound might look.

He then whispered, “Shhhh…” and faded into the shadows.

I felt very at peace and went to sleep, knowing that benevolent ghosties would be my nighttime companions in this new apartment.

Since that night, I have had several other incidences of feeling the vibration and pulling sensations, but only one other with associated imagery. In that instance, as the vibrations began, I felt a sharp pain on the top of my head, as if I’d been hit with a blunt object. The visions I saw next were of a pretty blonde woman and two men who were on a boat. I felt as if I were viewing the scene through the eyes of one of the men. Everyone was smiling and laughing, when the next thing I knew I had the sensation of falling, followed by the sound of a splash. I felt like I was disoriented in space, and as I realized I was experiencing drowning, I forced myself to wake up.

When my breathing returned to normal from its accelerated panicked state, I began to ponder what that vision (or dream) meant. If there are in fact unsettled spirits roaming the earth, and this was one of them, what was he trying to tell me?

“So what then,” I thought, “am I to make of this incredibly vivid incident?” The feelings that were imparted to me were not of anger or bitterness, so I don’t think I am meant to set out on a crusade to find some vengeful baseball bat-wielding sea captain. I felt like the events I witnessed happened in the past, so I was not shown that to prevent some future incident. And everyone I saw seemed so happy, and until the horrible sensation of drowning took over, so did I. The thought sprung to my mind as I lied in bed that night that I was meant to find that blonde woman and let her know it was just an accident, and that she was meant to be happy again, like she was that day.

After these thoughts finished their quick romp through my tired brain, I laughed at myself for thinking I was some sort of psychic heroine. I enjoy watching television shows about the paranormal such as Medium and Ghost Whisperer. Medium, after all, is based on the experiences of a real person, Allison DuBois, who helps solves crimes using her dreams. But I am no Allison DuBois, right? The only thing that prevented me from scoffing at myself for my farfetched claims to myself came in the following days when the persistent, dull, throbbing pain on the top of my head would not subside.

So maybe I am psychic. According to the believers, we are all born with the ability to tap in to the paranormal but often lose the ability as we age and become more attached to “reality.” Maybe I have a secret desire to be blessed with this “gift” and so seek out coincidences or embrace experiences such as my dreams. Maybe I am simply observant, or absorb facts without realizing it only to recall them later and take them as psychic insights.

For example, in high school I was talking to a classmate and said something about his two much-older siblings who had the same father as him but a different mother. I had only just met this kid, and did not recall him ever telling me that information, but it was in fact true. He was amazed that I could read him like that. All those maybes, and yet these things like that keep happening to make me think there is something else going on.

One evening after James moved out, I was on the bus going home to my Queens apartment. A young thug napping on the seat next to where I stood suddenly opened his eyes, looked at me and blurted out “Excuse me, are you psychic?”

I must have had a puzzled look on my face because he explained further: “I can sense these things about people. Do you sometimes think you are psychic?”

I didn’t know how to respond, but replied with a whispered affirmation and a smile. I had to laugh a little because what the kid didn’t know was in my tote bag was a bottle of wine I’d consciously picked up as an antidote to my frightening dreams. My fragile psyche following James’ departure could not handle those experiences, so I self-medicated to prevent them. Just like everything else, I could write that exchange off as the ramblings of some crazy guy on the bus, but I simply can’t.

Ultimately my beliefs are founded on my experiences, and I have in fact created my own religion based on those experiences just as Dr. Peck pointed out in his book. Mine is a religion in which the existence of a defined God does not matter one way or the other, and the institutions known as Churches are inherently bad. The universe is made up of a physical component and a yet-undefined “other” (spirit / electrical / life force) component. This “other”ness cycles in the universe along with the physical matter, and if its progress in the cycle is stunted in some way, it manifests itself in what we would call ghosts.

This is the first time I have written any of this out, and the first time I have addressed all of these topics under one umbrella. I have not shared my feelings about much of this because I know my outlook includes many views that the world’s major religions would deem taboo, wacky, “New Age,” or any number of other negative words. Yet the religions to which I have been exposed seem just as made up to me as anything I’ve decided to believe may seem to you.

I feel uncomfortable also because I have no basis for my beliefs other than what I’ve personally experienced, and sharing those experiences has often led to raised eyebrows. For example, some of my friends mock me for subscribing in the least bit to Astrology. While I don’t live my life by what is in the stars, I have in my writing, attributed the same characteristics to Joey, James and myself because we all Aries. I do so because our three personalities were not only similar, they were similar in the way that astrology would dictate them to be (stubbornly butting heads like the ram that represents the sign).

Astrology might be silly, but as I began to delve into my spirituality as a pre-teen, I found comfort in discovering labels to apply to my beliefs and experiences. Going forward, I realize that to expand my understanding of my role in the universe I will have to reach outside the personal religion I have crafted for myself and absorb the experiences and wisdom of others. After all, if the universe is just an endless cycle of matter and energy, it means that whatever makes up another’s being also makes up mine, from our collective unconscious on up.

So I’ve started off on this journey by reading, with a critical mind, several different books which I hope to reflect upon in the future. Just as I have cherry picked my beliefs up to this point, I hope to read a wide range of philosophies, speak to many different people, and try many different techniques to see what strikes a chord with me and provides me with some fulfillment of the emptiness I’ve been feeling. I would love to learn to meditate, for example, or visit a sleep center to figure out what is going on in my dreams. Heck, maybe I’ll go to church all on my own one day (My aunt Crystal, a vocal atheist, went to church one day after her divorce and had an epiphany that has her returning every week now). I’m sure that some text I’ll read will say that to actively seek out spiritual enlightenment prevents it from finding you, but thirty years of not looking hasn’t resulted in any epiphanies, so what’s the harm in trying something new? And, if at the end of it if I have not found what I am looking for, I will at least know it was not for lack of trying.

Chapter 15: On Butterflies and Fireworks

2009-05-27T17:44:00.006-04:00

I have been thirty for well over a month now, and if the remainder of the year goes as well as the last seven weeks have, my quest to go “From Nerdy To Thirty” will likely be deemed a success. I have seen myself go from the depths of depression a mere six months ago to a font of optimism today. And how could I not be optimistic? I am in love, and someone is in love with me!

When last I wrote, I was proclaiming that out of the blue I have a boyfriend, and now suddenly I’m in love? I guess for Ramón and me to realize what we almost missed out on makes us appreciate all the more what we have. That awareness fostered an overall openness that endeared us to each other quickly and our mutual endearment in turn begat love and its proclamation. And the best part is: he said it first. I know I am historically the type to fall too hard, too fast, so when those three little words started tempting my vocal chords, I stifled them.

I didn’t want to complicate the good thing we had going by professing my love, only to have it unreciprocated. The moments of free-fall while skydiving are far less intimidating that the ones in which the words “I love you” float unanswered in the air. Ramón is a particular mix of sensitive and sensible and I couldn’t be sure how he’d respond to the L-word, and didn’t think I could handle a negative response to my effusions. Besides, I was pretty certain that he knew how I felt about him because I felt pretty certain I knew how he felt about me, so it could safely be left unsaid.

One day we were lounging on my bed, just staring into each other’s eyes like in some Bryan Adams or Peter Gabriel song. I was enveloped by a warm and peaceful sense of contentment. As we lay there, Ramón repetitively opened his mouth and inhaled, as if starting to say something. After a few minutes of him behaving like a grouper out of water, and of me suspecting what might be on his mind, I said, “You seem like you want to say something.” He mumbled a reply to the contrary, so I left it at that.

A few moments later, my intuition was confirmed when he said, in a voice barely audible, those oh-so-sweet three little words. Even though I saw it coming, the way my body reacted was something I’ve never experienced. I am a girl who enjoys the feeling of butterflies in my stomach. They can be induced by seeing a guy I am falling for, nerves, or going over a hill in the road or apex of a roller coaster. While Wikipedia has the entry for “Butterflies in the Stomach” filed under its “Disease” category, it is something I couldn't live without.

When I was a child, my brother and I would seek out the thrill of those butterflies like junkies seeking a fix. The road behind my grandfather’s house, aptly named Hillside, was a rolling thoroughfare. At family get-togethers we would beg our Auntie Betsy to take us for a drive on that road. When you hit the crest of the hills just right, butterflies would follow. As a young woman, I found great joy in the butterflies induced by a newfound romantic infatuation. I realized one day that the only time I’d felt butterflies with James was when he intentionally sped up before the small rise in the West Side Highway near 96th Street. While this was a sweet gesture, its artificial induction was no replacement for the real thing. It was an instance when I truly should have listened to my gut.

With Ramón, my gut is telling me a different story. When I walked up to the café to meet him for our reunion in April, my stomach was all a-flutter. From that point on a simple glance or touch from him (or even a wanton thought of him while sitting at my desk) could send my stomach somersaulting. None of those errant butterflies compared to the bevy that was released upon hearing him profess his love for me. In chorus with the butterflies, my heart leapt into my throat. It was a jolt I can only compare to the time I accidentally laid my hand on the electric fence wire surrounding the paddock housing my Grandmothers horses, albeit entirely more pleasant. Oh, and in case it isn’t obvious: Once my internal organs realigned themselves, I told Ramon I loved him too.

As if in some reverse-Lenten fever, over the last forty days we have seen each other almost daily – spending well over three hundred hours in each other’s company (yes, I counted). Working a block from each other means we can meet up for a quick coffee and a kiss, lunch, or an after-work rendezvous. Our outings are varied, but generally standard date material: dinner and a movie, a hike through the woods, hanging at friends’ houses, an overnight trip to the North Fork of Long Island, brunch, and a museum visit. Ramón has been spending some weekend evenings at my house, and I have been spending an increasing number of weeknights at his place.

Throughout our adventures Ramón continues to give me reasons to fall for him. Ever the gentleman, he is quick to open the car door for me. One day I was alone in the office and could not leave for lunch, so he brought me over a sandwich. He reaches for my hand any time we are walking somewhere. He gave me the CD containing the lovely song he had set as my ringtone so I could listen to it. When he says he will call me, he always calls. The dirty clothes I leave in the drawer he emptied for my use are magically returned freshly laundered. And in a particularly charming gesture, en route to my first visit to his apartment, and in an effort to encourage future visits, he presented me with a gift. It was a “SmartLink” card that is automatically replenished with fares for the PATH train that goes to New Jersey from Manhattan. I sometimes wonder how I came to be so lucky and try to figure out ways to reciprocate.

So while I am falling head-over-heels for this man, the wounded pragmatist inside me, having been once bitten, is now sadly twice shy. I want to navigate this relationship with my eyes open and to know that, while it may be rainbows and unicorns right now, ultimately it takes work to make any relationship succeed. I recognize that “falling in love” is the easy, fully enjoyable part. It is dictated in the subconscious by a mix loneliness, lust, readiness and hormones. It is building a love-filled and loving relationship that requires the effort, and that is what I hope Ramón and I are cultivating with our exchange of affectionate gestures.

In building our relationship, Ramón and I have independently and jointly envisioned our future together. While we cannot be certain what exactly that future holds, we both enjoy relishing the possibilities. We talk about it in “ifs” not “whens,” but the mere fact that our future is an accessible topic of conversation gives me great relief. Being able to discuss what we want out of life and finding that in general we are on the same page only solidifies my feeling that this is a much different relationship than my marriage was. I wouldn’t say I am learning from my mistakes but rather learning to appreciate what a true relationship – and the actual relating that creates it – can be.

To our disservice, James and I rarely talked about the important issues that create a strong foundation for a marriage. We each filled out a brief questionnaire before meeting with the pastor who was to marry us, but beyond that we never broached subjects such as finances, children or our grand life plan. Many things that should have been hashed out well before our engagement were never discussed. Those that were brought up more often than not resulted in a disagreement. To prevent further altercations, I refrained from mentioning the difficult subjects on which I knew we had disparate viewpoints. I decided somewhere along the way that in time James would grow to be a responsible family man, and all I had to do was stick by his side until that time came. I only hoped it was sooner rather than later. One example of the different pages we were on was our views about starting a family together.

I think around high school I began harboring the desire to have my first child by the time I was thirty. My mom and dad were young parents, twenty-five and thirty respectively when I was born. Granted, it’s not prom night childbirth young, but they were always active and energetic with my brother and me. I wanted, as a parent, to have the energy to chase a toddler around; to stay up sewing the child’s Halloween costume long after she went to sleep but not be bleary eyed in the morning to feed her breakfast; to not embarrass the poor kid with my out-of-touch fashion or music preferences; and to ultimately be around when my grandkids and great-grandkids were born.

My twenty-fifth birthday came and went, along with one boyfriend after another. At twenty-seven I realized that if I were going to have a baby before I turned thirty-one, I would have to meet the father of my unborn child that year. It would leave me one year to date, one year to be engaged and one year of newlywed bliss before conceiving. Simultaneously I realized that I was in no position to be raising a child at that point. A broke waitress living in Manhattan is not exactly set up to become Mother of the Year. But I figured if the balls were in motion at least I could set my eyes on motherhood at thirty-one, thirty-two, or thirty-three.

When I met James it felt like he was the right guy coming in to my life at the right time. In retrospect, if the life plan I’d concocted was a square hole, James was the round peg I was trying to force in it. Certainly my resolve to make the relationship work, if only to fulfill some great scheme I’d concocted, did nothing to further its cause.

However, James was wary to reproduce again. Jamie was such a perfect child, he said, that he didn’t want to risk having another who turned out to be a lemon. In my eyes, I knew that having a child with James in the near future was inconceivable (excuse the pun) as he was barely a father to the one he already had. I was willing to wait until the time was right for us, when he (and I) had matured enough. Rule number one of relationships is you can’t change a man (or a woman, for that matter). Why I thought James would change on his own or under my coaxing is unclear. It wasn’t until we were in couples counseling that I was bitch-slapped with the realization of just how ridiculous my “if onlies” were.

“If only we moved in together” (I pepper my entries with links, and even if you don't click on any other , I beg you to click this one)

“If only he didn’t go out with his friends so often.”

“If only he became a better father and let me be a step-mother to his son.”

If only I hadn’t expected him to change. Just as the discussion of children was shelved, so were all others of any significance. I avoided the confrontations and therefore avoided the reality of my situation. I honestly don’t think reflecting on our future was a priority with James as, in his own words during the dissolution of our marriage, he never saw us growing old together in the first place.

In stark contrast, when Ramón and I discuss our future together, it comes very naturally as part of our everyday conversations. Nothing is forced and nothing is a battle. I think most women browbeat their men with persistent nagging to settle down and procreate, and the men do their best to avoid these discussions. In a refreshing and somewhat startling role-reversal, it is Ramón who often brings up these fairly sensitive domestic topics. His matter-of-fact way of interjecting them into our exchanges puts me at ease. As a result I generally feel comfortable telling him about my dreams and aspirations without fear of ridicule or avoidance on his part. In the last six weeks we have shared many of our considerations for our future together.

Over dinner one evening, Ramón casually asked me how many children I wanted to have. I answered, but was so surprised by the inquiry that I don’t think I posed the question back to him. The query came during a conversation about parenting, during which I asserted, “I think I’d be a good mother,” to which Ramón replied, “I wouldn’t be with you if I didn’t agree.” This was not a conversation I would have expected to have with a man who’d only that morning called himself my boyfriend for the first time, but I guess at thirty, with one child and one divorce under our respective belts, these sorts of things can be discussed matter-of-factly. Heck, the on-line dating services ask these sorts of questions, why shouldn’t the actual guy you are dating?

With the “number of children” question out there to break the ice, our discussions continue to share our visions of our shared future. I mentioned at one point that I wasn’t sure what I would do in December when my lease expired, whether I would want or be able to afford to continue living in my Inwood apartment. Ramón replied “Assuming we are still together when your lease comes up in December, I doubt I would be happy if we didn't move in together.”

We’ve even discussed what our wedding would be like. I think Ramón is in a way grateful to potentially marry a girl who has already had her dream wedding as he doesn’t seem to be one who would make a big fuss about that sort of thing. During a discussion in that vein, I quipped, “We could just walk down to the courthouse on our lunch break one day and get hitched.” True to the nature of our relationship, he responded “I was just thinking that.”

Other topical issues pop into our conversations: the use of diamonds in engagement rings, the option to terminate a fetus known to have Downs Syndrome, the idea that baby food should be homemade rather than from a jar, an individual’s right to bear arms. I think we listen to each other’s opinions knowing that the answers are more than just political but also personal. Because the conversations are started casually they are easily revisited, even if they didn’t result in us completely seeing eye-to-eye the first time around. And even if I disagree with Ramón on a topic, I definitely enjoy hearing his arguments because they are always well thought out and clearly articulated.

The crazy thing is, after three years together, I don’t think James could have articulated my stance on any of these issues. In fact, I sometimes wonder what the hell we talked about for all that time. Because of his overbearing nature, I often felt too intimidated to bring up anything of a delicate nature. And goodness knows he never bothered to ask.

In relationships past, I would normally fret for hours or even days over how best to ask the guy’s feelings on an issue, big or small, or how to tell him my own. I would become overwrought trying to build up my courage and then blindside the poor fellow with whatever it is that was weighing on my mind. With tensions thus raised on both sides, the likelihood of an argument increased dramatically.

To avoid these face-to-face conflicts (and not just in my romantic relationships), I often prefer to address my concerns in writing. The advent of word processing, e-mail, on-line chatting and text messaging has created forums far less formal than the pen-and-paper days of yore. Electronic messages can be conveyed casually, yet precisely. Often when I am angry or hurt, I feel like a frustrated child, unsure what exactly it is that is making me unhappy. I just know I am upset. Typing out and editing a letter helps me sort through my feelings (much like writing in this blog does) and ensures that I say what I mean rather than simply say something mean. Perhaps writing as a means of conflict resolution (or outright conflict avoidance) is a crutch propping up my awkward nerdiness, but it is one I value nonetheless.

My relationship with James had no written component (aside from mundane text messages about what was for dinner or when I would be home from work). Over the course of our entire relationship he sent me exactly thirteen e-mails. Most of these contained material he would normally have texted, but as I had a penchant for leaving my phone charger at home I was often rendered unable to receive texts. The very first e-mail he sent me said simply, “There, I've sent you an e-mail. Now hopefully we can a cyber couple, and go on AIM dates and play online games together when we should be working.” His opinion of e-communication was pretty clear (and frankly downright mocking), which left only our flawed verbal communication.

As nerdy as it may seem, I cherish the e-mails, texts, Facebook messages, YouTube forwards and yes, even the occasional hand-written note, which Ramón and I exchange. A simple “Thinking of you!” beamed up to a satellite and back down to the earth only a block away from the message’s origin gratifies me as either sender or recipient. On days that we can’t meet for a post-market close coffee, in Ramón’s words, these “nuggets of intraday joy … add a bounce to my step.”

I have used e-mail to ask Ramón questions that were overlooked during a tête-à-tête but later still piqued my curiosity. My nonchalant questions are met with nonchalant answers. In another example, Ramón e-mailed me one day to air a concern that was “not a big thing, small enough that I didn't want it to consume any face time together and small enough that I felt comfortable emailing about it instead of [discussing it in] an in-person conversation.” (Of course his comment was in response to a misinterpreted, poorly worded text message I had sent, so the lesson here is clearly that electronic communications lack the nuance and inflection of their verbal counterpart). Yet clearing up that misunderstanding meant that when we met up later that day, we spent the entire time enjoying each other’s company and not working out some conflict. So, despite the possible pitfalls, I value our e-lationship.

Despite our open channels of communication, Ramón has, on a few occasions, seen my unfortunate tendency to dramatize the raising of concerns. Recently I sent him a long e-mail outlining a concern I had that I feared would be a deal-breaker for him. I had spent far too long lost in my own head running over how to present it to him and what his possible responses would be. I spent hours crafting a letter to him, pasted it in to an e-mail, and clicked send. I waited nervously for his response, and when it came I was overwhelmed by the kind, calm and rational response. His reassuring reply (and I quote verbatim) included the following words of support, “Calm the f@$k down. I'm not going anywhere! We'll figure it out together ... I love you!” After breathing a huge sigh of relief, I thanked any deity who was listening that this man was in my life.

And securely in my life, he is. We are becoming more entwined with each passing day. Last weekend I met his nine year old daughter. Yes, this is the same daughter who I was told “would never meet a woman I was seeing until a ring was on her finger.” But given the fact that I have been spending time around his apartment, Ramón decided it was in everyone’s best interest if I was at least introduced to her as his “friend from the dorm at college.” I enjoyed meeting her over lunch and a couple games of “Go,” followed by ice cream. She is a thin, pretty girl, who is intelligent with a shy giggle. Upon meeting her I immediately thought of my young cousin Sierra, and making that connection left me much more at ease.

I had met Ramón’s baby mama in passing one day, and just last night Ramón and I met up with her for a little while. She is very laid back and quick to laugh, and in no way seems threatened by my presence. Next week Ramón’s parents will be in town, and he is arranging for the four of us to go to dinner. Getting to know the people in Ramón’s life is helping me understand how he lives it. He’s asked me to keep the specifics of his family life private, but I think I can say that it has taken me some getting used to, as his arrangement is not the typical “dad gets the kid on the weekends” type of deal.

Not only am I becoming immersed in Ramón’s family life, but I have welcomed him into mine. In early May I invited Ramón to go home to Chicago with me for the Fourth of July holiday. I am optimistic about our future together so felt comfortable planning for an event that was two months away when we’d only been together for one month. I am excited for our trip, but he is understandably nervous to have to follow in James' disappointing footsteps.

Our Fourth of July trip will be a pretty emotional and hectic weekend. Not only am I bringing Ramón with me, but my brother is bringing his girlfriend of over a year home for the first time. My maternal grandma will be up from Florida and will also be staying with my parents. Family from Texas is flying in to celebrate the holiday with my dad’s side of the family. Plus, my paternal grandmother is trying to convince my Great Aunt Mindy and her husband Jumpin’ Jack Flash to fly in from Vermont for the holiday. It’s been so long since I’ve seen Mindy and Jack that they never even met James!

In addition to the family events, my brother and I have decided to host a pool party at my parents’ house on third. We have invited all our local friends – from grade school through high school, and in my case the handful of college friends who landed in Chicago after graduation. Many of my childhood friends I have not seen since I was fourteen, but we have gotten back in touch through the wonderful world of Facebook. It would be such a blast to see some of them again. Many of the visiting family members will also be invited, including my aunt Crystal and the cousin we had lunch with at Christmas (along with my cousin’s mother, whom I have not seen since she divorced my mom’s now-estranged brother some fifteen years ago).

I am looking forward to being surrounded by all these friends and family. I know if I were alone that weekend, I would likely spend it on my sofa in tear-soaked flannel pajamas, as though I were some Yankee Bridget Jones. My faithful readers will recall that the upcoming Independence Day (ha!) weekend will mark one year since James told me he was leaving me. One year! Part of me can’t believe it’s been that long, since I have come so far and am so happy, and yet part of me feels like the wound is still fresh. No one is more aware of this dichotomy than Ramón, and I often wish I hadn’t been hurt the way I was, if only for his sake. Yet whether it passed quickly or arduously, one year seems significant. I hope that when that day passes I will be able to let my relationship with James go once and for all. At this point I think I have learned all I can from it, and to dwell on it only prevents my current relationship from developing organically.

I know that, as Leona Lewis sings, “it will all get better in time,” and each milestone I have passed in the last year has helped me take one more step towards happiness and success. I am so glad that those steps forward now lead me into Ramón's waiting arms. I am thrilled to bring him home this year not only to introduce him to my family and show him where I grew up, but to create some joyful new Fourth of July memories with him and to feel some fireworks under the fireworks.

Chapter 11: Caring for Crystal

2009-05-15T23:03:00.007-04:00

One of the main reasons I hesitated to tell my parents about James leaving me (aside from the large wedding bill they’d fronted mere months earlier) was my concern for how my mom’s nerves would handle the news. She had a dream in January of 2008 that James and I were getting a divorce, and at the time I reassured her that everything was going well with us. I think her dream was prompted by the fact that her youngest brother was separating from his wife and her older sister Crystal was beginning the process of divorcing her husband. I was to become the final piece to fulfill the prophecy that “bad things happen in threes,” and I was not sure she could bear it.

Once the truth inevitably came out, Crystal and I began commiserating on our parallel yet distinct situations. While I was about to turn thirty and had been with my husband for less than a year when he left, Crystal was about to turn sixty and had been married to her second husband Bert for thirty years. Divorce can be terribly isolating, and knowing someone else was in same situation (even if she was twice my age and had been married as long as I’d been alive) was a kinship we both understood and valued. Once our respective papers were signed (and we were both surprised at how easy that step in the transition was), we were not just a niece and an aunt, but two single women setting out on a new adventure, not really sure how we arrived at that trailhead in the first place.

Growing up, I’d always enjoyed hanging out with my aunt Crystal. She is a an extremely passionate person, whether it was about her sewing, her giraffe collection, building her backyard Koi pond, decorating for the holidays, entertaining her grandchildren or off-roading in her Jeep. Crystal has a laugh that is boisterous and loud, the kind that would be easily recognizable on a laugh track, were she sitting in a sit-com audience. After her parents moved to Florida, she was usually the one to host family gatherings and grew into a second-generation matriarch of the clan. Crystal moved up to Wisconsin with her husband to be closer to her grandchildren after they were born, so my visits home to Chicago included precious little time catching up with her.

Because I had not seen much of her in recent years, when my mom told me that Crystal and Bert were having marital troubles, it came as a shock to me. I knew Bert had been dealing with some health problems, but I didn’t realize the extent to which they affected his personality. After a heart attack many years ago, Bert’s company essentially forced him in to retirement. Bert did little to fill his newfound free time, and over the years became a slovenly couch potato who would go for days without bathing or getting dressed.

This behavior, coupled with his increasing confusion (bordering on dementia) accentuated the wide difference in their ages. Crystal, through a combination of clean living and hair dye, looks (and acts) much younger than her nearly-sixty years. Over time she began to resent the fact that he had essentially checked out whilst she wanted to remain an active participant in all life had to offer.

Crystal would work long hours to support them, and upon returning home would find that Bert had done nothing to contribute, such as chores or projects around the house or even preparing her a simple meal to come home to. No matter how many hours she picked up at her job, it never seemed to be enough to cover their cost of living, especially when compounded by Bert’s medical bills.

Not willing to throw in the towel on a life they had spent thirty years building, the two tried couples counseling for a grueling three years. Whether it was senility or just stereotypical maleness, Bert couldn’t seem to comprehend Crystal’s unhappiness and made no effort to change his ways. Crystal had finally had enough and decided that divorce was the only solution to alleviate her misery.

Eventually they sold their house and Crystal traded in her beloved home with its pond for a two-bedroom apartment. Because she was downsizing, she sold most of her possessions (as I did when I moved), forcing her to take a hard look at what was important. One thing she rediscovered was music. Much as I rediscovered writing after I started “getting my fragments back,” Crystal realized she had found so little joy at home towards the end of her marriage that she had stopped playing the stereo all together. In her new bachelorette pad, her Mac sits on the desk in the kitchen, a constant stream of music filling the air.

She set up the second bedroom as a guest room so her grandchildren could visit, but the children’s parents were those of Bert’s offspring from his first marriage and Crystal’s step-children did not take too kindly to the divorce. They perceived that she had abandoned their ailing father when she had vowed thirty years earlier to be with him “in sickness and in health.” Crystal was barred from seeing her grandchildren, a blow I think she took harder than separating from her husband.

Bert moved in with one of his children, and even after the split she continued to care for him, taking him to the doctor and such. Slowly, she cut the apron strings and began to move on in earnest.

While I was in Chicago for Christmas in 2008, my mom and I drove my younger cousin out to Crystal’s new apartment to have lunch and catch up. I can’t think of the last time I laughed that hard, even going back before James and I split up. All four of us had tears streaming down our faces, and Crystal’s laugh was as riotous as it had ever been.

Crystal spent the entire afternoon regaling us with stories of her single life. After her divorce papers were signed, she joined an online dating service and had begun meeting men from throughout her metropolitan area. To keep them all sorted in her mind she would print out their profiles and jot down details she learned about them in their online and telephone conversations. This dossier of eligible bachelors ranged from young professionals to older bikers and everything in between. None of them resembled Bert in any way.

Crystal re-entered the dating scene after thirty years with as much passion as she had for any other project in her life. This, in her own words, rendered her a “slut.” She told us of the many strange dates she’d been on and the nights she spent bouncing around the city, laughing with one man or another. I had begun meeting guys by this point too, and Crystal encouraged me to follow her “slutty” example. To be sitting around a kitchen table with my aunt, mom and my twenty-one year old cousin where the word “slut” was tossed about with abandon was what had us in stitches. (This newfound vulgarity was at times a bit awkward for the younger two at the table. We were raised in a family of WASPs, after all!)

Around the time of our lunch, Crystal had been devoting the most attention to one man (who happened also to be named James), a distinguished, older, black gentleman. Crystal enjoyed his companionship, but was also pleased to rediscover her carnal side after so many years of being turned off by her mate. She e-mailed me after I returned to New York to fill me in on her adventures following our lunch, and her message pretty much sums up how she felt about her new beau.

Crystal wrote, “Slut life is fine here! I called to cancel my hair appointment the other day because James spent the night. My hairdresser said today that is the first time she had heard ‘something big came up’ as an excuse to change an appointment. ‘Forty-two years,’ she said, ‘and never that excuse.’ At my age ya gotta get what ya can, right?”

Crystal was open about her newfound romance, sharing her happiness with everyone from the customers at her store to her own mother. My Gram was of course a bit surprised that her daughter would be dating someone who was not white, but when emailed a picture was quick to comment on how handsome James was. My aunt knew my cousin has a propensity for dating black guys, and over lunch Crystal caused her young niece to blush fiercely when asked if the adage “once you go black, you never go back” was actually true. (My cousin did not respond.)

Crystal continued to see her James for a while, but their relationship was primarily confined to the bedroom, and she didn’t see how it would fare in the real world. He would often travel for work, and while Crystal had no reason to believe otherwise, she often wondered if James was honoring their tenuous commitment. Everyone has a deal-breaker when it comes to relationships, and for Crystal it is lying. She never caught him in a lie, but the unease she felt and his lack of effort to allay her fears was enough to warrant ending their fling.

She wrote me, “I think about how I have always believed that any relationship – to survive, grow, change, enhance – requires work. And that's what I did in my marriage. I always worked at it, and when Bert stopped working is when things fell apart. I want it all. I want to work at it all.”

Crystal and I would talk on the phone or email, and I often felt as though I were coaching her through her relationship ups and downs as I would a girlfriend. I would send her quotes that seemed pertinent to our conversations or relate stories from my own dating experiences. Towards the end of her relationship with James, Crystal received an enigmatic email from him. She forwarded it to me, adding simply, “I need a manual after thirty years!” I replied with the Amazon link to the book “He’s Just Not That into You.”

During one of our conversations we discussed the effort we’d been putting in to meet men. I had begun my writing project with the hopes of improving who I am as a person, and shared with her one of my favorite odes to singletons, from the exceptional Ms. Gloria Steinem: “There are many more people trying to meet the right person than to become the right person.” We both knew that without love for one’s self, it is impossible to share love with someone else.

In that regard, Crystal was struggling to figure out who she was in her new life, just as I was. She wrote me “I have lost my identity. I was a wife (no longer), a mother (no longer needed), a gardener (no longer), a Jeeper (no longer financially possible), and a grandmother (on their terms). These things defined who I was. They were my passions. And within the space of a couple months I lost them all. So I have to reinvent myself.”

One step Crystal has taken that I hope to explore soon was with her spirituality. She grew so depressed at the prospect of her first Christmas truly alone that she began seeking answers in uncharted territory. Crystal, a vocal atheist, began going to church. I could see how she ended up there. On one particularly dark day, shortly after I found out about my husband’s mistress, I was walking the streets of New York and thought to myself, “If I pass a church, I am going to go in. It will be a sign.” I didn’t happen to pass a church that day, but Crystal must have felt the same sort of tug.

I can understand how she found religion at this point in her life. Divorce throws everything in to question, and you want to find answers. You want to believe that even though you may no longer matter to that one person you were so devoted to, you still matter. You want to believe that there is a plan and that everything really does happen for a reason. Frankly, you just want to believe because hope seems so much more appealing than the hopelessness that threatens to take over after a divorce. Religion can provide that something to believe in.

I have been putting off my own deep spiritual soul searching because I don’t know that I can buy into the dogma of organized religion or even that I believe there is a man up in the sky controlling things on I. I was watching The Tyra Banks show one day (I know, I know), and she had on as a guest the woman who inspired the main character on the television show Medium. During the interview, the psychic said that if prayer is the way to ask God a question, meditation is the way God answers. I think my road to spiritual enlightenment may come through these channels rather than inside the four walls of a church. But for Crystal, the sermons she hears speak directly to her situation and her epiphany is helping her past her post-divorce depression.

Having her first post-divorce foray into romance under her belt, and well on the way to reclaiming her happiness and reinventing herself in her new life, Crystal ventured back out into the dating world. Right around the time that I initially started dating Ramón in February, Crystal met Chuck online. Their connection was instant and intense, and she was immediately more at ease with him that she’d been with her James.

Our two relationships seemed to run a somewhat parallel course at first, and Crystal and I would discuss our happiness as well as the bumps in the road. For me it was more of a bottomless pit than a pot hole when Ramón called things off between us in March. However, Crystal was able to work out her difficulties with Chuck through honest communication, no matter how brutal the truth was.

She emailed me, saying, “It's amazing to me (and maybe to him) that two people who know how they feel about each other and really want to be with each other (and have voiced this to each other) cannot just find happiness. I guess we both have baggage, and I just never thought of it as baggage. But if the communication stays open I think we'll be okay.”

Chuck (who, incidentally, rendered the answer to my aunt’s query a definitive, “No, you don’t go back.”) declared his love for her after just a month together, and she found herself falling for him too. Chuck introduced Crystal to his teenaged son, who immediately warmed up to my charismatic aunt. The couple spent an increasing amount of time together, yet one major issue hung over Crystal’s head.

My aunt, who is still recovering from the financial strain of caring for her ailing ex-husband, realized she could no longer afford her new apartment. She was faced with the choice of moving to Kentucky to live with her brother or seeing if Chuck was amenable to her moving in with him. There are three primary variables that can change in life: where you live, what you do and who you are with. If she moved to Kentucky, all three of those variables would be altered, with the one known being where she would be living. If Crystal moved in with Chuck, her location would not change greatly and she could theoretically keep her job. Plus she would not have to cut short her burgeoning romance.

Crystal was relieved when Chuck invited her to stay with him. The thought of losing her far outweighed the risks associated with welcoming her into his home. That security meant she could remain close to the majority of her friends and family, including her dear grandchildren, who live in the area. With geography and relationship status settled, Crystal set out to find (and secured) a job much closer to Chuck’s home. Crystal just recently moved many of her possessions in with Chuck. She must be happy and busy getting settled in, as I have not received any analytical emails from her since the decision was made. Their arrangement is for now on a bit of a trial basis. Most of her things went into storage and she knows that if things turn sour with Chuck she can always fall back on her idea of moving to Kentucky.

I know that our family must look at Crystal as foolhardy, but I understand where she is coming from. My renewed relationship with Ramón is turning out to be the same sort passionate, open and committed relationship she is experiencing with Chuck. At the end of the day, the people who love us just want us to be happy. I think Crystal and I have evidenced to our friends and family that we are rushing in not as fools but as experienced, optimistic romantics who have found something worth dealing with any snags that surface along the way.

Sometimes circumstances dictate that you must make tough decisions that would have otherwise been deferred, and you can only hope that your heart and your gut help you make the right choice. Whereas the tables turned when my idolized aunt turned to me as a sounding board, they have now turned back as I watch her life change. I hope for her continuing successes to be a portent of my own to come

Chapter 7: Uptown Girl

2009-05-12T00:59:00.009-04:00

Telling my friends and family about James’ departure was the first hurdle I had to overcome in fully extricating him from my life. Signing my divorce papers was the second, and finding a new apartment was the third and final major step I had to take, and when the time came it was a task I relished. Moving to Queens in December 2007 was bittersweet. While I was excited to set up house with my new husband in a place that we’d picked out together, I knew I would miss my old apartment, and perhaps more importantly I would lose my long-standing identity as a Manhattanite.

Just before I officially moved to New York City (after college in 2001), I spent a weekend hunting for a place to live on the magical island of Manhattan. It was a whirlwind two days touring neighborhoods with which I was not yet familiar, popping into internet cafes to check the Village Voice listings (this was a pre-craigslist era, after all), reading e-mails from prospective roommates, and stopping into various restaurants to find nourishment and a place to rest my weary feet.

After two days of looking, I’d narrowed my choices down to three apartments. One was a tiny two bedroom above a Chinese fish market in the neighborhood the young, blond male professional lease-holder had advertised as Little Italy. Aside from the close quarters, I wasn’t sure my vegetarian olfactory nerves were ready to face the pungent smell of seafood every day. Next was a warm, nicely decorated apartment with a seemingly friendly girl outside Tomkins Square Park in a neighborhood I had been warned was a bit seedy. Or maybe I was just thinking of the two girls from Ronkonkoma in the movie 200 Cigarettes who were told never to go east of Avenue A. In any case, the vagrants in the park made me a bit wary. Last was a modern high-rise apartment in Midtown with a tennis instructor who seemed a bit too old to be recruiting a twenty-two year old female as a roommate. I think even then I sensed that this apartment’s proximity to Times Square would over time become an annoyance.

Exhausted and hungry, with the sun setting on my weekend in New York, I debated ditching my last appointment of the day and settling on one of the places I’d seen. Instead, I gathered up my last reserves of energy and headed out to 28th Street to view that final listing. The building housed a restaurant on the ground floor and was walking distance from my new office.

The neighborhood, I came to learn, was called Rose Hill. It is a small area sandwiched between Murray Hill to the north, and Gramercy to the south. On the maps inside taxi cabs, it is not identified or brightly color-coded like the rest of the city, so it is known to some as “the grey box.” Others, because of its abundance of Indian restaurants (and the scent permeating the air), call it affectionately “Curry Hill,” a play on the name of the neighborhood to the north.

Upon reaching the second floor of the walk-up, I was greeted at by a short guy with spiky hair. He immediately welcomed me in to what, compared to the closets I’d viewed all weekend, seemed like a palace. The apartment was on two levels, and after offering me a cocktail, my host Joey showed me around.

On the first floor was the kitchen (with a dishwasher!) that opened up to a large living room (with a working fireplace!). Off the living room was a small powder room and beyond it was a nicely furnished balcony. The stair led up from the living room to the second floor where there were four bedrooms and two bathrooms (one with a washer and dryer in it!). Joey’s bedroom even had a ladder that pulled down to allow access to the roof.

The room I would be renting was small, but given the spacious common areas, it was adequate. Joey took me out to the balcony and described the other tenants: two twenty-something women, one who worked at a fashion magazine and another who was a Greek model from Australia. Joey worked in the commercial production and film industries as a camera man.

~ The living room on 28th street, after I'd painted ~

I was dazzled by the prospects of this living situation and the glamorous careers of the roommates. As we chatted, I peered over the balcony at the street below and tried to imagine my life in this apartment. It was late at this point, and when Joey asked if I was hungry I realized I was actually famished. We walked to the Mexican joint down the street, and when he insisted on picking up my burrito tab, I knew the decision to move in was in my hands. And so on September 1st, 2001, I did.

The two girls ended up moving out shortly after September 11th, and were replaced by two guys. The four of us had a good run as roommates for about a year, throwing parties, watching movies, and just generally enjoying each other’s company. I sometimes compared living with those three guys, with all of our friends cycling through, to living in a fraternity house. But I enjoyed every minute of it. When the two guys moved out and were replaced by a new set of roommates, it seemed like the end of an era.

Throughout this time I was romantically involved with Joey, a relationship that grew increasingly strained as his depression stemming from the terrorist attacks began to take over his life. By the spring of 2003, deeply unhappy with the way thing with Joey were going, I made the difficult decision to move out. While he was away promoting a movie he had worked on, I began looking for a new place to live.

I don’t remember much about my second foray into New York City real estate, but perhaps that is because I located a new apartment with relative ease. I had grown accustomed to the square footage of my old place, so was pleased when I found a good sized two bedroom apartment that was within my budget. No longer a wide-eyed recent college-grad, I was not afraid of this apartment’s Harlem address. My two former roommates had also paved the way for me, having each moved about a hundred blocks north of our shared 28th Street apartment.

My new bachelorette pad was in a neighborhood of Harlem called Sugar Hill, whose name derived from the moneyed residents who enjoyed the “sweet life” there during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, while looking down the hill to the east at the poorer residents below. Pre-war buildings lined the street and a few blocks away was a little jazz club where luminaries like Wynton Marsalis, Olu Dara, Savion Glover and even Stevie Wonder were known to drop in for a jam session. I could walk to Yankee Stadium, just across the river in the Bronx, if the mood to watch some baseball struck.

~ The bed I built in my Harlem apartment ~

I was excited that for the first time in my life I would be living on my own. Sure, I had a single for three semesters in college, but never before had I had a bathroom all to myself or the ability to walk the halls in the nude, should I so desire (well, I suppose the guys in the dorm might not have minded, but I would have!). I moved quickly to buy furniture to fill the place and even designed, built and upholstered some of the pieces myself. Having a spare room meant I could house out-of-town guests, as infrequent as they might be, or even rent it out to those seeking temporary housing. In time I developed a roster of rag-tag roommates, and had begun to refer to my apartment as “Katie’s Home for Wayward Children.”

The weekend after I moved in, I set out to take a stroll around my new neighborhood, to get a lay of the land. It happened to be Mother’s Day, and I’d never seen such commitment to the holiday. Every male on the street was carrying something to bestow upon his mother, or perhaps the mother of his children. Helium balloons, flowers, stuffed animals, and those oversized greeting cards could be seen up and down the avenues of Sugar Hill. Everyone was dressed in their Sunday finest, and the mood was overwhelmingly jovial.

As I walked, I was exposed for the first time to the running commentary from the peanut gallery of those loitering on the street. I smiled at one man, flowers in hand, when he wished me a happy Mother’s Day. I then giggled to myself, however, when after he’d passed me, he called over his shoulder “And if you’re not a mother yet, I’d be happy to make you one!”

Later on in my stroll, I approached a guy who was washing his car in the street. He looked up from his chore as I passed and greeted me with the line, said rather incredulously, “Hey there… white lady.” Thinking of his cadence and tenor in saying that one line still makes me laugh today.

In the years that I lived in Harlem, I never found these comments to be akin to the catcalls of a construction worker, nor did I ever feel threatened by my observers. Rather, I felt that they were in a way looking out for me and appreciative of my presence in their neighborhood. As there were residents on the street most hours of the day, I took comfort in knowing that if something were to happen to me, there were people around to intervene.

So what were the people doing out on the street all hours of the day and night? There were the young girls playing Double Dutch and the old men playing dominoes or spades. There were the teens smoking weed, flirting and shooting Cee-lo against the stoops. In the summer there were families barbecuing in halved fifty gallon drums while the children ran through the fire hydrants. They listened to their music from boom boxes plugged into lampposts or from the stereo of a car with its doors left open. It may sound stereotypical, but these were the people in my neighborhood, the people that I met each day.

Or didn’t meet, as was more accurately the case. While I never learned any of their names, I would take note of all the people who I observed each morning on my way to the subway: my gay neighbor whose derrière, enhanced by too-tight slacks, wiggled in front of me as we walked, the white, bohemian mother taking her uniformed multi-racial son to school; the overweight super who inexplicably wore sleeveless mesh shirts to sweep in front of the building in his charge; the tidy businessman who lived in the stand-alone house next to the former Bailey (of Barnum and Bailey fame) residence, who kept his white sedan impeccably clean; the dreadlocked fellow festooned in an ever changing array of Rastafarian hats; the Mennonite and Mormon missionaries; and finally the pair of old men who talked about their dogs while leaning on the fence outside the grocery store adjacent to the train station.

I had discovered that contrary to my family’s initial concern, the neighborhood was in fact extremely safe. St. Nicholas Avenue, the street I called home, was primarily residential, so the only foot traffic consisted of people going to and from their homes (and those loitering outside theirs). Absent were the transient drunks, pan-handlers and hookers that frequented 28th Street. Because of my limited housing budget, I was an inadvertent pioneer in the gentrification of this historically black neighborhood (gentrification is probably not the correct term given my economic status, perhaps “white-washing” is more apropos. In the years I lived there, many downtown chain establishments moved in, including a Duane Reade drug store, a New York Sports Club, and yes, even a Starbucks).

The two ladies who lived in the ground floor apartments flanking the elevator in my building took a keen interest in this new white interloper, and seemed to make it their mission to look out for me. They had dubbed themselves the President and Vice President of the Tenants’ Association, and in those roles monitored the comings and goings of the building. The would caution me to be careful when they saw me stumbling in after a night at the bars, encouraged me to attend the building’s Christmas party and informed me of their ongoing disputes with the management company. They also signed for my packages, which I appreciated, as it saved me a ten block walk to the post office.

My favorite anecdote to recount to those who question Harlem’s safety as a habitat for a pasty white girl occurred one snowy evening around Christmastime. I returned home in a taxi late at night after my company’s holiday party downtown. I was bundled in my winter coat and was laden with parcels filled with Christmas gifts. After paying the driver, I stuck my wallet under my arm and fumbled in my purse for my keys before exiting the cab and heading up to my apartment (any street savvy city girl knows you don’t want to be caught unawares by your front door searching for your keys).

The next morning, having overslept following the previous night’s festivities, I couldn’t immediately locate my wallet, so rushed out the door assuming I’d find it later in one of the shopping bags I’d been carrying. Upon returning home from work that evening, I looked for my wallet with no luck. I hesitated to cancel my credit cards because I knew I’d had it the night before so figured it must be around the apartment somewhere, especially since no charges had shown up on the missing cards. Calls to the taxi lost-and-found line the next day were fruitless, and I headed home from the office prepared for an evening on the phone with Mr. Visa and Ms. Master Card.

Trudging up the stairs to the elevator, I bumped into the self-proclaimed Association President.

“Girl, I’ve been looking for you!” she said. “Where’ve you been?”

I mumbled something about being busy with the holidays. She replied, to my surprise, “I’ve got your wallet!”

She then recounted how a woman in the next building over had found my wallet in a snow bank by the curb while shoveling out her car. Knowing I didn’t live in her building, she asked my neighbor if she recognized the face on my driver’s license. Being the busy-body she is, of course she did! She handed me back my billfold, and I opened it up to find its contents intact. If I had dropped my wallet on 28th Street, it would have quickly become the property of some passer-by, and I likely would have had to dispute ungodly fraudulent charges on my credit cards.

“Sometimes it’s good to be the only white girl in Sugar Hill,” I thought.

Needless to say, I was happy in Harlem. I had become an uptown girl, living in my uptown world. In 2006, a few months after I started dating James I renewed my lease, signing on to a fourth year in my apartment. Following his graduation that year, James moved in with me. We had debated the merits of cohabitating versus James setting up his own place. In retrospect, he probably would have been better off living on his own for a while to gain some responsibility and independence, but at the time we were spending every night together so the practicality of living together (transit time, financial savings, not having to transport toothbrushes and underwear, etc.) seemed obvious.

When James moved in he brought with him little more than his clothing, a Don Mattingly bobble head and a wok. I tried to make the apartment as welcoming as possible for him, proudly framing and displaying Jamie’s most recent class photo. But there was no getting past the fact that the apartment had been mine and not ours, so after we were married it was clear we should move in to a place that we selected together. Upon returning from our honeymoon, we began searching in earnest.

We compared our requirements for a new place. My ideal living situation would have two bedrooms, laundry in the unit, a dishwasher, and an outdoor space. I of course would have preferred to stay in Manhattan, but to have the amenities I desired, I didn’t mind living in Brooklyn, Queens or New Jersey, as long as it was near public transportation.

James would only consider living in Long Island or certain parts of Queens (the two areas where he grew up). He also wanted a parking spot off the street, ideally room for a pool table, and most importantly to be closer to his job. James had spent the year and a half we’d been together commuting by car, first to his college more than an hour and a half away in Stony Brook, and later to his work, about 45 minutes from Harlem. While my subway commute was also 45 minutes from home to work, he held a grudge about all the time he’d spent driving out to his classes. He felt it was a sacrifice I had not matched and did not appreciate (he somehow conveniently forgot all the weekends I would take the Long Island Rail Road to meet him at his weekend bartending job). He insinuated that it was my turn to sacrifice when it came to our living situation, so I let him filter the apartment listings based on locations he deemed acceptable. I was in newlywed bliss, and the thought of setting up our idyllic semi-suburban life charmed me.

~ Whitestone Apartment ~

After a few weeks of online apartment hunting, we set out to see some places in person. And that is how after looking at only three apartments, I found myself in Whitestone, Queens agreeing to sign a lease on an apartment in a house on a residential street further east than I’d ever ventured in that borough. Whitestone is a racially mixed area in the north east corner of Queens, past Shea Stadium and past La Guardia. The landmarks in the neighborhood are the New York Times printing plant and the shopping center containing a Target and a Costco. It was worth it to live in this pseudo-suburbia, I told myself, as I began to envision myself as the happy homemaker.

~ James' pool table ~

The apartment had two big bedrooms, a dining area, a linen closet, and even an attic. It had an open floor plan, new windows, a full-size fridge, a washer and dryer, counter space and built-in air conditioning in the living room (the last item turned out to be invaluable because James had been too lazy to help remove my fancy A/C unit from the bedroom window when we moved out of Harlem). There was a living room and a dining area, allowing James to get the pool table he wanted. Outside there was a private driveway and garage and not only a balcony but a backyard to boot! I didn’t get the dishwasher I wanted, but James promised he would make up for that by taking care of the dishes (which turned out to not be the case and would later be a huge point of contention).

The other downfall was the new apartment was not near the subway. While James’ commute was cut to five minutes, mine was effectively doubled. I was required to take a bus ride to the extremely busy 7 train terminal in Flushing, ride the entire length of its track, oftentimes standing up the entire way, to Times Square (which I have already mentioned I detest) and transfer to the 1 train heading downtown to my TriBeCa office. James shaved about 15 minutes off my trip most mornings by driving me to the train on his way to work, but when he had an early meeting and of course after he moved out, my door-to-door trip was an hour and a half, twice a day, five days a week.

If I stayed out late at night with friends in the city, I could end up in Flushing waiting in the cold for a bus for thirty minutes rather than take the twenty minute walk home. The streets in the area were not well lit, and for whatever reason I never felt as safe walking them as I had in Harlem. Some nights I would get so frustrated waiting there, I would call James to pick me up, but I don’t recall him ever coming as he would either be out somewhere with his friends and not want to leave or the bus would happen to come just as I was calling. On these late nights I tried to remind myself that it had been worth it to hang out with my friends in the city, but was intensely jealous that they all had been whisked home in ten minute taxicab rides to their husbands’ loving arms while I was still endeavoring to get home two hours after we’d parted ways.

When I was actually at home, however, I was generally content. At Christmas we joyfully decorated a tree and strung lights on the front porch. We prepared a New Year’s feast for a group of friends and included James’ mother. I channeled Martha Stewart when setting the table that night, laying a table cloth over our pool table’s ping pong surface, placing the dishes on chargers, arranging a festive centerpiece, lighting candles and setting each place with one of those old-fashioned poppers (as my grandmother always does).

~ My Garden ~

When spring rolled around, I planted flowers, herbs and vegetables in the back yard. I enjoyed watching the earthworms, absent in Manhattan, aerating the soil in my bit of earth. We hosted regular backyard barbecues for our friends on the weekends. James would mow the lawn, a chore that after he left I had to take on for the first time in my life. (It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.) James would often cook dinner for me, as he’d promised in his wedding vows, usually a vegetarian stir-fry of some sort.

On the surface it must have seemed like a charmed life. I surely wanted it to be, but I was short one picket fence and one loving husband. When James left, the house felt haunted by his presence. I spent many nights on the sofa, not wanting to retire to our marital bed. I looked around the apartment’s bare walls and realized I’d never hung up any of my art. More shockingly, I had not displayed in the bathroom any of my extensive rubber duck collection, perhaps the most “me” decoration there is.

Maybe I didn’t want to make my presence overtly felt, to ensure he felt that this was “our” place. Maybe I grew to busy tending to my new husband or too complacent in my new life to make the effort. Or maybe I knew deep down that my stay there would not be long enough to warrant putting everything up only to take it down again.

Whatever the reason, upon his departure I ventured up in to the attic to swap out James’ possessions for my stowed décor and displayed them around the house. It comforted me somewhat to see my things around me and knowing that there was an definite expiration date on my lease helped get me through those months.

This time when I set out to find a new apartment, Craig and his list were not too kind. Despite the housing bubble having supposedly burst, my budget for a rental was equal to, if not less than, that with which I set out to find an apartment in 2003. Plus I had two cats, so my future landlord had to be amenable to that. I looked at apartments in western Queens, despite my newfound distaste for that borough, but found nothing. Brooklyn had been overrun by privileged hipsters and I was priced out of that borough. Many of the apartments in New Jersey I saw were in seedy areas or required a bus ride in addition to a train trip, and I had grown allergic to the concept of commuting on buses. The apartments that were near the train were generally linoleum-clad basement dwellings that appeared likely to have been previously inhabited by a middle aged serial killer. So Jersey, it seemed, was out. I toyed with the idea of looking in the Bronx, but even there found little of interest.

Deep down, I wanted to move back to Manhattan anyhow, with all of its beautiful wood-floored pre-war buildings and city-so-nice-they-named-it-twice mailing addresses. The gentrification of Harlem that I had been a part of all those years prior was now pretty much complete, and the same apartment I lived in before would have rented for at least fifty percent more than I had been paying. I found that the line above which I could afford apartments had moved about fifty blocks north. I kicked myself for giving up my old bachelorette pad.

I looked at about a dozen places before finding the perfect place. Or at least it was perfect given the circumstances. I would be downsizing to a one bedroom unit, but it had several closets and was a decent size. It had interesting moldings and windows in every room. A previous tenant had installed some mirrors on the walls of the foyer and living room, which at first seemed a bit odd but which I have now grown to appreciate as an opportunity to give myself a quick once-over before heading out the door.

The neighborhood, called Inwood, seemed lively. There were the restaurants and all-night bodegas that I’d grown accustomed to in Harlem but were absent in Whitestone. It was near two train lines that brought me closest to my office. Even if the commute was still almost an hour, the idea of getting a seat on the train and not having to transfer seemed like bliss. And since my stop on the express train was its terminus, if I were to fall asleep on the ride home (as I often do), I knew I would never accidentally wake up in the Bronx.

The kitchen in this new apartment was perhaps the main selling point. In my old Harlem apartment, as in many New York City dwellings, the kitchen was tiny. It was so narrow you would have to turn sideways to allow a person to pass by you. The fridge door would hit the opposite wall before it could fully open, rendering the crisper door useless. The counter space was only wide enough for a toaster and the cabinetry included exactly one drawer. I have seen closets bigger than that kitchen, but it was the only detriment in that apartment so I lived with it.

~ Big Kitchen ~

This new apartment had a kitchen at least twice as wide and quite a bit longer. I could fit my little café table in the kitchen itself, along with a bookcase for my cookbooks. The countertops, while not extensive, could at least fit my microwave with room to spare. The cabinet space was ample enough to stow away all the wedding gifts I was in turn ashamed and pleased to have ended up with. I was still without a dishwasher, but I had to leave something to aspire to!

I signed the lease and moved in on December 1, 2008. I was a little disappointed that all of my friends did not rally around me to help me move, but was extremely grateful for the one friend who braved the cold on my moving day. I had hired some guys (off craigslist, natch) to assist, and the move went relatively smoothly.

~ Some of my charity donations ~

Knowing I would be downsizing, I took a hard look at my worldly possessions when packing up. I tossed what was junk, sold what I could, and donated the rest (35 kitchen trash bags worth, plus furniture) to charity. Gone were the clothes that I hadn’t worn in years, most of the childish tchotchkes my mom sent me over the years, the furniture used to fill the second bedroom, my college textbooks, and immeasurable detritus that had been cluttering my life.

I tried to get rid of everything that reminded me of James from his pool table down to the apron I bought him with his initial on it (that he of course never wore). I wasn’t sure what to do when it came to the sentimental things, like my wedding dress, wedding rings, jewelry he’d bought me, and the photo albums and mementos from our time together. These I brought with me when I moved, though they have remained hidden away in drawers and closets since that time. I am just now, six months later, preparing to free myself from the bad juju they embody.

I am hoping to extract some value from that “diamond ring that doesn’t shine for me anymore” and maybe even the polyester dress I wore just once. It’s a hard thing to figure out, but I am inspired by those advertisements on television promising cash for gold or witty eBay listings posted by jilted husbands selling their exes’ dresses. I can’t bear to just chuck it all, as enticing as a giant bonfire seems, as it was a chapter in my life that I may want to share or reflect on in the future. So some items will remain, albeit out of sight, and hopefully for the most part, out of mind. The only thing displayed in my new apartment that has any overt connection to James is a portrait of me, sketched on a Drury Inn notepad, drawn by Jamie during our last visit to see him. I keep this little keepsake on my fridge as a reminder that we were once almost a happy family, and that one day I will create a happy little family with somebody else.

Despite my major purging, when I loaded everything into my new apartment, I realized I still had a lot of stuff, but I justified this. Much as hanging my artwork on the walls at the old place gave me some peace of mind, having my things around me at my new place made it feel like home. At a time when I needed comfort, being able to gaze on relics from my childhood or the smiling faces gazing out from picture frames offered me that sense of well-being. I worked hard to make the new apartment a cozy sanctuary. There are two simple things I have done in every apartment I’ve lived in that have improved my quality of life immensely and made each feel more like home. If I leave you with nothing else I hope you heed these two nuggets of my interior design wisdom.

~ Dual Showerhead ~

The first is to swap out the showerhead, a task that once you know how to do it is as simple as screwing in a light bulb. Older New York apartments typically come standard with a rust- and lime-encrusted piece of crap that was probably installed in the seventies. In my quirky apartment, the showerhead was awkwardly installed along the length of the tub rather than at its end. Obviously when the building was designed, they wanted to save a few bucks by running the plumbing for the kitchen and bath inside the same wall, so I was left with this difficult to use set-up. My solution was to install a diverter that allowed for a shower head to go where one had always been and another, of the hand-held variety, to snake along perimeter of the tub to its mount where a showerhead ought to be. My improvised dual massaging showerhead is a luxury my clients pay dearly for, and I am unendingly pleased with my DIY result.

~ My Living Room ~

The second is to paint the walls. While the white-on-white aesthetic works for some, I find that looking at stark white walls renders a place institutional. I had selected the color palette of my new apartment before I had even found one, which felt a bit like naming a baby before it is born. I was about to turn thirty, and I wanted my new place to reflect that. While my previous apartments had been decorated with saturated colors out of a child’s crayon case, this new apartment would be a bit more subtle. When executed, the paint on the walls had exactly the effect I wanted. A lemony yellow on the kitchen wall made it warm and inviting. Latte and China blue in the living room rendered it more mature than my previous habitats. And the teal on the walls in the bedroom was both chic and exotic.

After the paint was dry, I began to decorate in earnest. I selected a few photos showcasing the people I loved and framed them along with the miscellaneous artwork I’d collected. I carefully laid out my furniture and mounted all of my artwork as it pleased me. I hung curtains on all the windows and placed my rubber ducks in their place of honor in the bathroom. I filled my shelves with books and knick-knacks. Above my desk I mounted a bulletin board and tacked up all the clippings I had collected over the years in my “inspiration” folder. Above it I applied a laser-cut vinyl appliqué that reminds me to “be inspired.”

~ Peacock Lamps ~

For Christmas my dad rewired a pair of his grandmother’s lamps that I had long coveted and my mother had long since relegated to the basement. Their bases are ceramic peacocks, and I’d always been too afraid that I would break them if I brought them home. In my new place however, I felt that my maturity and responsibility would prevail, making me a conscientious keeper of these precious heirlooms. They now reside in a spot of honor on my dresser, flanking my ten dollar IKEA mirror.

When Mother’s Day came this past weekend, I walked through my new uptown neighborhood amidst the balloons and flowers being paraded about and reflected on the places I’ve called home, from under my own mother’s roof to Harlem, where mothers are goddesses in their sons’ eyes. I am an uptown girl again, seemingly right where I belong. Yet I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that my time in Inwood is limited. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I felt that way until just now.

As independent as I like to think I am, it’s always nice to know there is someone looking out for me. In my life there has been a succession of protectors: my parents whilst growing up; my hall tutor or academic advisor in college; my roommates on 28th Street; the little old ladies on the ground floor or the men ogling me in the streets in Harlem; and then supposedly my husband. As a place to live, Inwood has offered me no protection and no connections, and oftentimes I find myself isolated from the important people in my life when I am up in the great (not) white north. Despite my best efforts to make my new apartment into my refuge from the storm (and despite my best efforts to avoid an overly cheesy metaphor), I ultimately can’t shake the feeling that my little craft is dangerously adrift in a rocky sea and the port that is my apartment is not the ultimate safe haven that I seek.

Chapter 5: Choosing Sides

2009-05-09T02:08:00.005-04:00

After James left, I felt very alone. Too ashamed to share what was going on with the people I was closest to, I turned to the only people who knew the truth – James’ friends and family.

The first people who found out about our split were James’ brother and sister-in-law, Matt and Cammy. The first night back from our trip to Chicago, James packed a bag and went to stay with them. They had been through their own share of marital strife in their ten years together, and were working through their differences in individual and couple’s counseling. The four of us sat down on a few occasions so they could try to help us work things out, but James was adamant that he was leaving. When he tried to explain his reasons, it became harder and harder for Matt and Cammy to stay neutral. It was clear they found his explanations and accusations as absurd as I did, and tried to no avail to convince him to give me another shot. In some ways I found our talks with them more therapeutic than our sessions with the professional therapist.

After our impromptu therapy sessions, I felt closer to Cammy than I did the rest of the time I had known her. She and her husband were pretty private people, and quiet to boot. I called her regularly, and she was able to offer me great insight into my estranged husband’s actions, as her husband was definitely same cut from the same cloth as his brother. The treatment the boys received growing up verged on (or perhaps actually reached) psychological and physical abuse, and this had a similar effect on the brothers.

James once recounted an incident in which his father locked the boys out of their Queens apartment in their underwear as punishment for some misbehavior. James’ father was the youngest of many sons, and in his native Philippines he was regularly chained to the fence in front of the house or denied food while his older siblings were not. James attributed his father’s treatment as some sort of retribution for, or reenactment of, these past abuses. Despite being aware of the causality of his father’s actions, James (along with his brother) was profoundly impacted by them.

James’ mother was no picnic either, having fully emasculated her husband and run her eldest son out of the house for dating a black woman, she was left with only James to rely upon her. Her apron strings were a bondage to which James was only too willing to submit, as it meant never having to be accountable for his actions. James’ relationship with his mother was clearly in sharp contrast to his brother’s lack of one. Yet Matt and James remained close over the years because they shared the fraternal bond built in their turbulent formative years.

Cammy commiserated with my anecdotes about James’ behaviors and treatment of me. James, Matt and their father were all born under the astrological sign of Aries, which accordingly makes them all very headstrong. This trait seemed to be evident in their relationships with each other. It is also said that the Aries’ motto is “Ready, fire, aim,” meaning that those under this sign are prone to action without forethought. It is this curse of the impulsive Aries that caused Matt to up and leave his familial home in the first place and stubbornly stick with that decision for the following decade. As an Aries myself, I can think of many instances (with James or otherwise) in which I wished I could take back words or actions. Certainly with James I said things that, had I thought about it first, I should have realized would wound him.

As I talked to Cammy, who was successfully navigating a difficult relationship with my husband’s brother, I began to have hope that James and I could reconcile our differences. At my lowest moments, she offered me support and suggestions. I began to naïvely run “if only” scenarios in my head.

If only I could get him to see how sorry I was. If only I could apologize enough. If only I could start being nice to him. If only I didn’t get riled up when he picked on me. If only I could learn which of my actions triggered his anger, I could refrain from them. If only I could lose weight. If only I stop drinking. If only we could hang out and start creating new, happy memories. If only he would come and hang out at the apartment. If only we could have sex. If only I could change. If only these things could happen, I could get him back.

Cammy was as hopeful as I was, and at the time she was all I had so I went on believing it was possible.

Then I discovered the other woman in James’ life, and that was the tipping point. I told Cammy, and she was surprised, but not shocked. It helped explain to both of us that a line had been crossed and James would not be coming back to me, no matter how many “if onlies” I actualized. It meant that while something I did (or didn’t do) may have made James want to leave, nothing I could do (or not do) would bring him back. I slowly came to realize that by marrying a narcissistic Eeyore like James, I had set myself up for failure. Nothing I could do would ever be viewed as supportive, kind or loving. At some point in our relationship I had broken his trust, and unable to come back from that, he allowed every perceived slight to compound until I was the enemy.

Upon understanding this, I finally felt ready to begin outing myself to my friends and family as a future divorcée. In part I had held out because I hoped I could keep our troubles secret until they blew over. That now clearly was not going to happen. Less than a year before I had proclaimed before my friends, family and, yes, even God that I would be with James until “death do us part” and I still had a difficult time admitting to everyone that neither of us were in fact dead. I told my city girlfriends first, a pair who I am close with but were not amongst those who stood up for me in the wedding and therefore had a bit more distance and objectivity. Soon I told a few more friends, and eventually my family found out (when I removed “married” from my Facebook status, sorry Mom!).

It shouldn’t have surprised me, but of course all of my family and friends were extremely supportive. James had been so toxic as to convince me my friends and family were not the kind of people who would be there for me. James was generally on his best behavior around my friends and family, so they were certainly staggered by my news. James’ friends, however, weren’t nearly as taken aback. They had seen James’ true self, especially the way he’d been treating me.

In the months between my twenty-ninth birthday and James’ decision to move out, his treatment of me became so blatantly abusive that even his best friends felt the need to reach out to me. James worked as a bartender at his best friend’s family restaurant on the weekends. Dennis and James knew each other from high school, and Dennis was James’ best man at our wedding. One night after their shift ended at the restaurant, the three of us went out to some bars, along with Dennis’ girlfriend Shelly.

On the way home I called in a pick-up order to our favorite late-night Chinese spot. When the four of us arrived back at our apartment with the food, James realized I’d ordered him a roast pork soup instead of the roast duck soup he’d requested. It was an honest mistake on my part as both were menu items he was likely to order, but it was an error that drove James into a rage. He began one of his typical rants about how stupid I was, how I didn’t care about what he wanted, and so forth. I offered to call the restaurant and have another soup delivered at my own expense and was on the phone trying to do so when he told me not to. He ate the other dishes he’d ordered, but didn’t touch the same soup he would have happily tucked into on any other night.

On another evening when the four of us were hanging out, Shelly pulled me aside and told me that Dennis had initiated a conversation with her about James’ treatment of me. The soup incident was just one example they’d seen, and they didn’t understand why he reacted so strongly. She wondered how I was holding up. I shrugged my shoulders and wrote it off, as I tended to at that time, as just James being James. In some ways I felt callous not taking his complaints seriously, but if I did drink his Kool Aid, it meant I was in fact a mean, stupid, uncaring, fat bitch who was not loved by her husband. It was easier to assume that these words, like so many uttered by an Aries, were in the heat of a passionate moment and forgotten in the next. However their concern touched me and reassured me that I was not crazy for thinking that James had become a bit unhinged.

I don’t know what Dennis and Shelly should when they found out James was leaving me. He failed to mention to them that he’d met someone else. He was upset with me when I told them as much myself. He claimed to be taking the high road by not badmouthing me to his friends and was upset that I was “gossiping” to them. My response was that it wasn’t gossip, it was the truth, and if he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, why would he be bothered if his friends knew about it? And frankly, I don’t think it would have mattered if he had debased me to his friends. Their opinion of me was formulated, and they had witnessed first-hand how he behaved. He was only insulting their intelligence if they assumed they would not judge him for his actions

In the months following James’ departure, I kept in touch with his friends and family. Cammy would check in via text message every now and then. James’ friend José, whose bachelor party was when James met Jacinta, lived near our marital apartment. When I was moving out, he gladly came over with his wife to help carry a few heavy things out. While they were there I plied them for information about my ex-husband. José had little to offer, telling me that James had all but disappeared. José and Dennis had tried getting in touch with him, but James didn’t respond. Bruno, James’ accomplice at the bachelor party had similarly been absent. I could only assume that James was in part so wrapped up with his new girl that he didn’t have time for his old friends and in part that he was so ashamed by his actions that he didn’t want to face them. I felt bad for an instant that I had in some way broken up a ten year friendship, until I checked myself. James made his own bed, and now he was lying in it (with another woman).

The last time I spoke to James’ mother when she came to collect a few remaining things from the apartment, she reassured me I would always be her daughter and if I ever needed anything, or wanted to visit the Philippines, to give her a call. I can’t say the same is true of my family. I was talking to my brother recently, and he recounted a conversation he’d had with my father. The two were talking about how disappointed they were in James, and my dad said that if he ever saw James again he couldn’t be responsible for his actions. My brother said he agreed with my dad, and the two used words like “lynching,” “broken kneecaps,” and “tied up and tortured in the basement.” My dad is not the most outwardly affectionate man, but I never felt more loved by him then when I heard he would handily rearrange my pretty-boy ex-husband’s face on sight.

Similarly, none of my friends have any interest in reaching out to James to inquire how he is doing. While he may have played a victim with me, they certainly don’t see it that way. To them, he is a villain to whom karma will come full circle.

José’s wife and Shelly regularly reach out to me to say hello, and while we have not met up in person, their electronic messages reassure me that I am not in fact a mean person, as James would like me to believe. José’s wife and I share the same birthday and traded wishes for happy returns on the day. When Shelly had her birthday party recently, she invited me and reassured me that James was not invited. It may be petty, but I feel vindicated that in our divorce I was left with all of our shared possessions, all of our friends, and most importantly, my dignity while his prize was the freedom to be with his female Doppelgänger.

The irony is that as I was writing this, Shelly instant messaged me, saying how she and Dennis missed me and we had to get together soon. After a few volleys of catch-up, my curiosity got the best of me, and I enquired after James. She told me she had seen him a few weeks prior when he went by Dennis’ restaurant to invite them to a party James was having at his place in New Jersey. That’s right, the same guy who refused outright to move to New Jersey, where I wanted to live, because he claimed his commute would be too long now lives even further away then I would have even wanted to. Shelly went on to tell me that James had moved into Jacinta’s place, which was no surprise to me. It made perfect sense that instead of getting his own place, as he told me he planned to do when he left me, he would move in with someone else who, like I and his mother before me, would take care of him.

Right about now James is getting ready to celebrate one year together with Jacinta. In that time, it took me five months to mourn the loss of our relationship and another three months for my heart to heal enough to let me open it up to someone else. In the process, I have learned so much about myself and who the most important people are in my life. When faced with the choice, I feel like the people I cared about sided with me. With their support, I am finally feeling optimistic about my prospects and beginning to believe what they have been telling me:

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“You are better off without him.”

“You seem like you are in a good place now.”

In my life I always find exes coming out of the woodwork at the most random times, so it will probably be my luck that since I, like James, am now dating a New Jerseyan, I will run into him in a mall or something. I hope when that time comes I am wearing my hottest new size 6 jeans, with my amazing boyfriend on my arm, and a smile on my face. I will be able to look James in the eye as I brush by him, knowing that I am improving my life not because of him but in spite of him.

Inspirational Memoirs

2009-05-04T10:14:00.009-04:00

I have been reading memoirs over the last few months in part to be personally inspired by other people's stories, but also to learn how a successful memoir is written in the hopes of one day having mine published. I will list here the ones I have read, along with a few words about each.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Read: July 2008
Source: Linked off Margaret's blog
Review: I haven't actually read this book, but I watched the video of the lecture itself. It was really inspirational, and the one thing that really resonated with me was an insight he shared. The professor broke the world down in to two kinds of people: Tiggers and Eeyores. This struck me as so profound at a time when I was trying to figure out why my marriage had failed. In the end, perhaps it came down to the fact that I am a Tigger, and the guy who had just walked out on me was an Eeyore. This is a really poignant lecture, and if the book reflects that, it has earned a well-deserved spot on the best-sellers list.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
Read: December 2008
Source: Picked up at the airport bookstore on the way to China.
Review: This book had been recommended to me by a few people and was on the NYT best-seller list. I figured reading a book about a thirty-something woman travelling the world after her divorce would be apropos as I travelled to China months after mine. I enjoyed the book well enough, although the author seemed to lack introspection in many sections and often seemed a bit too whiny for someone so privileged to be travelling the world on a book advance. I found out later than many reviewers felt the same way, and the book even spawned a parody. The portion set in Italy was just okay. I almost felt like I'd had more revelations while living in that country as a nineteen year old than she did as a thirty-something. The Indian portion inspired me to pursue yoga and meditation. And the Indonesian portion, when she falls in love again was hopeful but closed the book with many unanswered questions rather than tying up her story with any meaningful conclusions. It spoke to me at a time I needed to know I was not the only one who felt lost and alone, but I wouldn't describe it as "life-altering"

People Are Unappealing: Even Me by Sarah Barron
Read: March 2009
Source: A gift given from Ian, with the intent to go to a reading together
Review: This was a funny memoir of a girl my age from the Chicago suburbs who became a waitress in New York City while pursuing her real dreams. Her anecdotes about her childhood were very humorous - every other sentence read like a punch line. While the book follows her life from childhood to womanhood, it does not read as a coming-of-age story but rather hits touch points in her life that shaped who she is today. Again this book ends abruptly. For someone so enamored by Jerry Springer, I would have hoped that she would have at least included a "final thought" to sum up her hilarious existence.

When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win: Reflections on Looking in the Mirror by Carol Leifer
Read: April 2009
Source: A birthday gift from Ramon
Review: Ramon knew this was the book for me when he saw that Chapter 2 consisted entirely of a list (and I love me some lists). The narrator is a woman who reflects on her life as a fifty year old woman. She is a divorcee-turned-lesbian, animal hater-turned-dog rescuer, and later-in-life mother. The moral of her story, told through anecdotes and observations, is that old dogs can learn new tricks and leopards can change their spots. While the narrator of this novel may have superficially had the least in common with me, her book was so charming, insightful and funny that I think it may have resonated with me the most.

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell Tucker Max
Read: May 2009
Source: From Ramon who found it so funny, I had to know why
Review: My brother had recommended the book to me years ago, and recently the man I am dating was laughing so hard he was crying while reading this book. I kept asking him to relay the anecdotes that had him cracking up, so eventually he just bought me the book. I have to admit, the author's tales of drunken debauchery were funny (I even laughed out loud at a few anecdotes). However, I think you have to be a guy to fully appreciate the extent of the pleasure and pain this guy was privy to.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
Read: Started in January 2009, but have not picked it up in awhile
Source: Airport bookstore on the way to China
Review: I am not finished with this book yet, but I enjoy that it is both narrative and educational. The author describes a year of eating locally, with food sourced from their own land or neighboring farms and green markets. The fact that all of the family members contribute to the book gives it a chorus of voices that tell a bigger picture than a regular memoir. I wish I could follow in their footsteps, but it's not that easy to raise a goat in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.

Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter by Steve Dublanica
Read: online for years
Source: the internet
Review: I read this anonymous blog starting when I was a waitress, and when it became a book the author revealed himself. I attended a reading at the Barnes & Noble at Columbus Circle to satiate my curiousity of who this guy was. I enjoy his anecdotes and insights, both about life as a waiter and just life in general.

My Bucket List

2009-04-23T13:55:00.007-04:00

After the movie The Bucket List came out, I began thinking of what would be on mine. But why should a person wait until they are about to kick the bucket to do all the things they want? I am lucky to have had many amazing experiences in my life, but here are some I still hope to accomplish. Feel free to add your bucket lists in the comments!

See the Grand Canyon
Get my motorcycle license
Visit Morocco
Stand up on a surfboard or waterskis
Raise a child
Complete a catch on a trapeze
Publish a book
Go to all 50 states (9 to go!)
Ride in a hot air balloon
Run a marathon
Visit Machu Picchu
See the Northern Lights
Own a pair of Christian Louboutin high heels
Go paragliding
Have a surprise party thrown for me
Learn to meditate
Become an architect
Visit Stonehenge
Make stained glass, or learn to blow glass

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I'm a
Lifelong Learning Traveling Tree Hugger

Chapter 14: Out of the Blue

2009-04-22T21:07:00.010-04:00

I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. At my darkest post-divorce moments, I sometimes thought it never would, or maybe that I didn’t want it to. All the cliché song lyrics reverberated in my head (“I am a rock, I am an island;” “once bitten twice shy;” “here I go again on my own”) reminding me to be a strong, independent woman. But now a different type of song lyric calls out to me because:

I have a boyfriend!

Yup, it’s true. I am dating a guy who comes complete with a bona fide title and Facebook relationship status. As silly as the term “boyfriend” (and frankly the significance I attach to the Facebook proclamation) seems at thirty years old, what else am I supposed to call him? My “suitor?” My “significant other?” My “friend?” My “lover?” The “guy I’m seeing?” Problem is, he is all of those things, and they are all embodied in the term “boyfriend,” so that’s what he is.

This whole thing may seem to have come out of the blue given the nature of what I have been writing. It certainly caught me by surprise, all starting with an e-mail message I received last Monday.

I am no stranger to an e-mail (or now text or Facebook message) popping up now and again from a “blast from the past.” I have remained cordial, if not friendly, with many of my exes, so it is not uncommon for them to check in with me once in awhile (or vice-versa). These messages are always unexpected, but are sometimes pleasing and other times jarring. One example of the latter springs immediately to mind. On the eve of our wedding, James was checking his e-mail, which he did only sporadically. In his inbox was a message from an old flame of mine, congratulating me on my upcoming nuptials. It had been sent weeks before through our wedding website, and the sender did not realize the e-mail address on the site carbon copied both of us. James was furious that someone from my past would still be e-mailing, asking why we were no longer friendly. It took quite a bit of soothing and reassurance on my part to diffuse the situation, and I questioned whether it was worth it to have these exes lurking in the background when I was about to commit my life to one man. But you can’t control who contacts you, I decided.

On the other hand, hearing from an old friend, whether it was a romantic relationship or not, can be incredibly gratifying. The advent of social networking sites has certainly helped further that cause. I have found over the years that these olive branches seem to come in bunches, without any discernable correlation. The last few weeks were one of those clusters. The week before my birthday, I received a message from Owen (of baby mama drama fame), asking if I wanted to meet up. Interested to hear what he’d been doing since New Year’s, I agreed and we went to an industry event together. It was nothing remarkable, but just interesting to see my old buddy after months of exile.

Then a few days after my birthday, I received a Facebook friend request from someone I had relationship with years ago. It was a long distance thing (he lived in Florida), and ended up not working out despite my best efforts to the contrary. During our time together I traveled to visit him, called often, e-mailed and instant messaged, but there was little in the way of reciprocity. I was at a time in my life when I was willing to come up with hypothetical situations to give a guy the benefit of the doubt (“Maybe he didn’t call because his phone battery died.”). After a particularly fervent bitch session about my absent beau, my friend Lauren once commented to me that, “your back must hurt from carrying this relationship.” Lauren’s words stuck with me, and when the phone calls from Florida started becoming fewer and farther between I realized there really was no relationship to fight for. I ultimately chalked the failure up to the distance and the fact that he probably just “wasn’t that into me.”

His friend request caught me by surprise, but the message that came shortly thereafter really threw me for a loop. In it he explained how sorry he was for how our relationship ended and filled me in on the successful path his life had taken since we’d last spoken. He then added that he was “very thankful, because it was the motivation of messing up our relationship that forced me to move forward with my life.” He said he’d thought about be over the years, which surprised me since I felt like I’d been written off. Reading his side of the story, and hearing his reverential tone, put salve on that old wound and reassured me that putting ones heart on the line was not merely Pickwickian foolishness.

Also in that cluster of “blasts from the past” was a birthday message from my high school sweetheart, checking in to see how I’d fared over the years. This was in addition to various social events I attended with old flames who were now shelved in the “friend” category.

Perhaps the most shocking of all was the birthday e-mail from Ramón (whom I had called “Andres” in previous posts but am using his actual name now, with permission). Ramón is someone I knew at MIT. He lived on the same floor in my dorm freshman year, and had a relationship with a friend of mine towards the end of college. For the last two years he drove me from New York to Boston for my annual trip to attend Suzanne’s birthday party. I didn’t know what to expect going in to that first trip in 2007. I would see him occasionally in mixed company, but I’d never spent time with him one-on-one.

During the drive, our conversation flowed relatively easily and we all had a great time in Boston. Ramón and I repeated the trip the following year. He seemed to be much different than the guy who had hurt my friend in college, but that side of him was all I had previously heard about as she didn’t tell me about their relationship until after it was over. Post-collegiate Ramón seemed kind, responsible, sociable, generous and complimentary. The last trait took me by surprise when he directed his compliments towards me, about the outfit I was wearing or the joke I cracked. I wasn’t sure at the time if he was just trying show how much he’d changed or if he was just being himself. Either way I began to understand what my friend may have seen in him years before.

Ramón joined Facebook in early February of this year and sent me a friend request. I hadn’t seen him since he showed up to my joint birthday party with James the previous April. He worked a block from my office, so we agreed to meet up for a drink in the neighborhood. As we sat chatting in the café, he inquired about James, not knowing we’d been divorced for months. I cleared that up quickly, and our night continued on (and on, and on). While both of us had gone into the evening with intentions to simply hang out as friends, by the end of the night a spark had been ignited.

Ramón and I began dating, seeing each at least once a week and speaking on the phone regularly, and I was having a great time with him. Suzanne’s birthday was in early March, and Ramón invited me to stay with him at the hotel in Boston, which I gladly accepted in favor of Suzanne’s sofa. We had an amazing romantic weekend with one glaring exception. On Saturday night we hit the town, with drinks followed by dinner followed by more drinks. When I woke up in the hotel bed in the middle of the night, disoriented and drunken to find Ramón watching television across the room… one thing led to another and, well, as they say, “nothing good happens after 2am.” It was our first disagreement and I felt horrible that I’d instigated it. It wasn’t a blowout, but it put a damper on an otherwise perfect weekend and made for a quiet drive back to New York.

We continued seeing each other and things seemed to be back on track. I took him out for his birthday, which fell a few days after Suzanne’s, and gave him several gifts that I had put some real thought into. I tried to tell him and show how much I appreciated and respected him. I went out with him to meet his friends, and I told mine about him. Oftentimes it seemed like we shared a brain. The phrase “I was just about to say that” was constantly being uttered by one of us.

My grandmother, while driving me to high school one day, told me to seek out a companion “who has a shared background.” For her it was her childhood friendship with my Grandfather’s older sister. She became my Grandfather’s third wife when I was ten years old, and while they had not seen each other for many years it was that formative connection that provided the basis for the relationship that will last them through their twilight years.

I have taken what she said to heart, and understood it to mean the shared background could be anything that shapes who you are as a person, such as hometown, culture, religion, or in my case with Ramón, getting our asses kicked by the same university for four years. MIT is a very self-selecting school, and the kinds of people who get accepted and choose to attend are a certain breed in and of themselves. An MIT student’s innate thirst for knowledge is generally a much stronger character trait than any other, and in that regard I found a kindred spirit in Ramón.

With James, our common ground was much more superficial, and I tried to use all those little commonalities to fill the mold cast by my grandmother. I realize now that liking the same song, for example, should merely be the drywall standing atop a strong foundation, and not the foundation itself. By mid-March I was beginning to feel that Ramón and I had built a strong foundation.

Then one night we were out on a date. We’d had dinner and shot a game of pool before heading to another bar for some beers. In our conversation, he mentioned that he didn’t like how I frequently compared him to James (like I just did above, for example!). In my mind Ramón had many similarities to my ex-husband, but to show how much I appreciated him, I tried to tell Ramón the ways he was the better version. This was especially true in regards to their relationships with their respective children. Ramón feared that I was only with him to make up for my past mistake. I tried to explain that I was intending to be complimentary and let him know that given my history my craziness and insecurities were bound to surface. Yet the more I spoke, the deeper I seemed to dig myself into a hole.

When I arrived home from that frustrating date, I received an e-mail from Ramón. He had decided that our conflict resolution styles and views on relationships were too different, and that there was “somebody out there better for each of us.” He felt that we would have lasted either “two more dates or at least two more decades,” with the same negative outcome either way.

I was so shocked and hurt that I couldn’t imagine carrying on from there as friends. I decided to stop communication with him, which was extremely difficult. I would walk down my block and hear the cars blasting the songs he played on our drive to Boston. I worried that I would run into him on the street near our offices and not know what to say. I reflected on our relationship in my writing, and just couldn’t understand how a person could go from so enamored to dumping someone over e-mail in a matter of hours.

About three weeks later, on the eve of my birthday, a message from Ramón popped up in my inbox. In it he wished me a happy birthday and wrote, “After everything you did for me on my birthday I thought it would be rude for me to ignore yours,” and signed it using the moniker I’d given him in my writing. It was one of those jarring re-emergences, and it left me flummoxed.

I wrote back, saying:

I'm not really sure how to reply to this... Hearing from you is like ripping the scab off a nearly healed wound. I've been trying to move on and learn from all my past experiences (in part by writing a bunch, which I see you've read) so that I don't repeat the same mistakes in the future. It's been hard because over the past couple weeks I have had a few dreams with you in them, and I wake up happy until I realize they were just dreams. So while my conscience understands where you were coming from and that I have to accept it, my subconscious is still in denial or something. I guess it's a little ridiculous to have taken it so hard, but that was the first time I'd really opened my heart up to someone since my divorce, and now I feel pretty foolish for doing so.

He responded to my reply with some kind words, and I left it at that. I was turning thirty the next day, I was single, and I didn’t want to stir up more drama. Just weeks before I’d envisioned he would be the one with whom I would celebrate my birthday. Instead, a line from a Whitesnake song skipped on the turntable in my mind: Here I go again on my own... I knew it was time to move on.

Then last Monday evening, again out of the blue, another e-mail from Ramón graced my inbox. It’s subject? “Egregious error.” Curious and excited, I opened it. It was the kind of note any jilted woman would hope to receive from a man she cared about, a request for a second chance.

I immediately thought, “This is the sort of thing that would happen to the leading lady in a movie, not to me!” And so, in shock, I read and re-read his message.

He wrote that one of the main reasons he called our relationship off was fear. When faced with our conflicts, he was afraid, in part, to revert to the guy he was when he dated my friend. He indicated that his fear oftentimes resulted in bad decisions, and wrote, “The choice I made to end things between us feels like the worst of those bad decisions.”

I thought about his note the rest of the night and into the morning. Ramón’s timing was perfect in one respect. The night before I received his message, I decided to get on the wagon in terms of drinking because I didn’t want to have it influence any relationship I had in the future. He indicated in his e-mail that he had done the same, for the same reasons. He also said he understood if I weren’t willing to just take him back, but he simply wanted another shot. I decided that since the only thing he did to hurt me was cut me out of his life, I would meet up with him if only for coffee to see what he had to say. In case I needed another indicator, while I had been pondering what to do, I continually caught myself smiling. That was a good sign, right?

We met that afternoon at a coffee shop near our offices, ironically called “Peace & Love.” The conversation started off a bit awkwardly, but soon we fell in to our old familiar banter. Ramón invited me to dinner, and then followed that up with the suggestion we grab a drink somewhere. That drink consisted of sparkling water for him and fruit juice for me, of course, given our new teetotaler status. We held each other’s hands at the bar and discussed what was transpiring between us. I went home that evening feeling very optimistic.

The next day I told Ramón that I was “all for forgive and forget and second chances and fresh starts” but needed reassurance that he wouldn’t suddenly bail on me again. His reply was extraordinarily endearing and very much in character:

I once saw a Military Channel show about pilot training. It was talking about airplane ejections. Apparently in fighter jets an ejection is nothing more than a controlled explosion, and is therefore quite violent and excruciatingly painful. As training potential pilots are strapped into a device that mimics an ejection for two reasons: 1) to practice survival techniques for ejecting (the forces are so great about 1% of the candidates have a leg bone snap in the training), and 2) to understand exactly how bad an ejection is and therefore fundamentally understand it's an option to be avoided at all costs.

I wish I could have had similar training. But now that I understand what it means to pull the emergency lever on somebody I care so deeply about, I am supremely confident I will treat that action with the apprehension and respect it deserves.

After receiving that explanation, I felt confident I could safely pursue a relationship with Ramón. We discussed how to approach our rekindled romance. Everyone (from my best friend to my Gram) who heard about us warned me to take things slowly. Yet that didn’t seem to be our style. We followed up our “second first date” with lunch one day last week, spent practically the entire weekend together, and then had dinner yesterday. We have already made plans for this weekend and for various events in May. The past week has been filled with stories, like-mindedness, canoodling and laughter to the point of tears.

There are moments we look at each other in bewilderment, wondering how it took us this long to get to where we are now, and how quickly we got there once we started down this path. The other day over coffee, he joked that he is the kind of guy who waits three days to call a girl after getting her phone number. But since he’d had mine for three years, I joked that he’s gotten the units wrong in my case!

Things with Ramón seem much different this time around. Our conversations, in addition to consisting of the interesting topical fodder we’d always shared, have gone to a deeper level. I like to attribute some of that openness to the fact that Ramón has been an avid reader of my blog (Hello, darling!). I have been so honest with the public, and myself, that I think it has helped him understand me better. In turn he is much more open and compassionate with me (He showed up this weekend with a birthday gift for me, the sentimentality of which a thousand times over made up for the fact he wasn’t there on the actual day). Plus, to add even more support to our foundation, he now knows pretty much my whole history and I, his – both the good and the bad.

People always cite the importance of communication in a relationship. Speaking for myself, as a socially awkward nerd trying to reform, communication isn’t my strong suit. I think because we were forced to be open with each other to rebuild our mutual trust the second time around, communication now comes much more effortlessly. In fact I feel this newfound transparency has entirely compensated for the time we lost while we were apart, and as a result spending time with him feels both so comfortable and yet still so new.

Several months ago I saw two teenagers in the subway station making out and staring deep into each other’s eyes, as if they were the only people on the platform. Feeling cynical at the time, I thought to myself “Well, I will never feel that way again.”

There is something about young love, like that I witnessed, which can never be replicated. But when I am with Ramón those charming stirrings are brought forth (mostly in the form of butterflies in my stomach, which I can safely say I have not felt in many, many years). I have renewed faith that a relationship can be honest, exciting, safe, caring, and passionate. This feeling was only augmented when I walked out of my apartment building this morning and saw a pregnant alley cat weaving amongst the budding tulips in the garden, and I thought:

Life can begin anew, especially in the springtime.

So that is how, out of the blue, I went from a sullen, single thirty year old to feeling like a giddy teenager. The idiom “out of the blue” originated in1837 in Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution, in which he referred to something as being “sudden really as a bolt out of the Blue,” referring to a bolt of lighting that come out of the clear, blue sky. While our burgeoning relationship may have been reinstated as instantaneously as that lightning strike, I take comfort in knowing that when I look up to the sky, the sun is in fact shining down on me.

30 things about me

2009-04-22T15:41:00.006-04:00

I like lists. I am not super goal oriented, but lists give me something to strive for and a sense of completion. I published this list on Facebook on February 2, 2009 - 30 random things about me as I was about to turn 30.

I have been a vegetarian for over 13 years. In that time I have intentionally eaten meat on 3 occasions: French onion soup in Paris in 1999 with Lara, and then last year I had octopus and a mussel at Las Ramblas with Lucia, Cathy and Aisha; and ate random meats in China, including duck heart, feet and tongue; shark fin soup; sea cucumber, etc.
I have had the same cell phone number and provider since I got my first phone in 2000. My number spells 61-PALM-TREES (leave off the last S for Savings)
I have never broken a bone, but have had surgery on my lazy eye twice (at ages 2 & 12). That eye is a little far-sighted, and the other is severely near-sighted.
I have truly been in love three times.
I have been to 41 of the 50 states (plus DC and PR), and hope to get to the rest soon! I have also been to 13 countries.
I have funky thumbs that look like toes (Caroline dubbed them my thoes)
I am very sensitive to high pitched noises. I can if the TV is on (but the cable box is off) from the next room.
I get great joy knowing that my ex-husband’s friends still want to be friends with me, but my friends and family would only ever want to see him again to cause him bodily harm.
Easter is my favorite holiday because it symbolizes ducks, bunnies, chocolate, Spring, and the approach of my birthday (twice in my life they were on the same day; one of those times I had the chicken pox).
I have traveled by car, sailboat, bus, ferry, U-Haul, motorcycle, ferry, airplane, helicopter, bicycle, taxi, parachute, toboggan, motorboat, innertube, chair-lift, kayak, subway, paddle boat, monorail, elevator, ice skates, skis (cross-country and downhill), foot, commuter rail, canoe, cable car, trolley, cog railway, wave runner, moving walkway, el, catamaran, big wheel, light rail, zipline, coach, limo, whitewater raft, tram, escalator, regional rail, party bike, vaporetto, mine train, red wagon, rollerblades/skates, pontoon boat, skateboard, people mover, wheelchair, hovercraft, high-speed train, gondola lift, rubber-tyred metro, Town Car. I have never traveled by Gondola, horse & buggy, jet-ski, rickshaw, pedi-cab, jet pack, magic carpet, balloon, dirigible, hang glider, hydrofoil, or rocket.
I am a terrible housekeeper. I hate doing dishes and laundry especially.
I drink my coffee (and tea) black.
I recently lost 30 lbs, and weigh about what I did in Junior High. I also have bangs now for the first time since then.
I am fully confident that the Cubs will win the World Series in my lifetime.
I am sometimes ashamed of my career given my education. I know certain family members are disappointed in me, but I am happy in my new career.
I am a Jane of all trades, but a master of none.
I don’t think I am as good a person as I was when I was half my age. I would like to write a memoir about my quest to get back to that person. It would be called “From Nerdy to Thirty”
Life is too short for single-ply toilet paper.
I have been to 202 restaurants in the2009 NYC Zagat’s Guide, and am going to #203 tonight.
My first memories, around the age of 2, are of being told I couldn’t do something that I felt I was capable of; being nervous I couldn’t do something expected of me, or being afraid of getting in trouble for something I did.
I moved to NYC on September 1, 2001. I didn’t know the buildings I saw burning 10 days later were the WTC until I got up to my office on 26th Street and was told by coworkers. I thought they were apartment buildings.
I get grey hairs *and* pimples. WTF?
I have had several people tell me I am like Deb from Napoleon Dynamite. And truth be told, about 16 years ago, I was!
My favorite color is turquoise.
I have a tattoo of a rubber ducky, and am thinking about getting a second tattoo. Pretty much everyone in my mom’s family has a tattoo, including my Gram, who got hers (a whisky logo) just shy of her 80th birthday.
My feet have very high arches, and I am both flattered and uncomfortable when people notice.
I have two cats, Boo (my fat black pussycat) who is 8 or 9 years old and kinda mean and Duke (el tigre) who is about 6 and very needy but empathetic.
I am not really the kind of person to get nicknamed, but people in my life have called me kJ (Dad), KK (Doug), Mush (Carol), Kitty (Tudor) and Katie-Kates (Anna)
I am very loyal to, and willing to pay extra for, Dove deodorant, Aveeno moisturizer, DVR, and my unlimited MetroCard.
Two items on my bucket list are learning to ride a motorcycle and taking trapeze lessons.

Chapter 12: This Jane-of-all-Trades Marches to the Beat of Her Own Drummer (part 2)

2009-04-20T19:31:00.009-04:00

MIT is known for recruiting “well-rounded” students. The campus does have its share of geniuses who would prefer to stay in the laboratory or in front of the computer all day, but the majority of students become involved in the wide spectrum of activities at MIT. I can’t think of anyone who did not join any organizations while on campus. My college counselor in high school told me that I would like MIT because “the students play pranks on each other and if you wanted to start a club, even tiddlywinks, they let you.”

I wasn’t much for pranks or tiddlywinks, but I understood what she meant. The students were not only intelligent, but also playful, creative and interesting, making “Word Hard, Play Hard,” the most enduring campus maxim. Basically, anything an MIT student puts his or her mind to will be done to the extreme, whether it is a prank, a children’s game, classes, a night at the bar, or anything else.

During the summer before heading off to Cambridge I received a packet in the mail with flyers from the various organizations on campus. I spent a sunny afternoon perusing the sheets, developing my plan of attack to break out of my adolescent shell and jump right in to all college had to offer. I had decided to take this school by storm. I signed up for a leadership retreat held just prior to orientation with 75 other incoming freshmen, hoping to start my collegiate career off on the right foot.

I arrived on campus for the retreat with an ankle sprained the day before on my brother’s backyard trampoline. Suzanne was the first person I met, and we ended up sitting next to each other on the bus ride to the camp. Suzanne and I hit it off from the start and now more than ten years later, we are still extremely close. By the time we returned to campus, the students from the retreat were already a pretty tight group. I had guys giving me piggy back rides around campus because my ankle was so gimpy (in fact, I even had a nickname – Gimp – which was a first). My introduction to MIT was such a far cry from my initiation at my high school.

The dorm I chose to live in had an “open door” policy, meaning anytime your door was open, people could stop by and say hi. Most freshmen ended up in quads that flanked either end of the halls. These rooms with their sofas and ample space to sprawl out often became gathering places for the upper classmen, and my room was no exception. My roommates and I enjoyed playing hostess to the many visitors who stopped by, and the camaraderie of the dorm helped pull me out of my shell.

During orientation week I rushed the sororities. This was a different experience than simply joining a club as it was a mutual selection process. Not only did you want them, but they had to want you back. Though I didn’t know it during rush, the sorority I pledged, Alpha Chi Omega, had a reputation on campus that matched my personality: “Nice girls who like to have a good time.”

I popped into the campus newspaper office during my first week and sat in on their production meeting. I was assigned an exciting story about the Air Force Secretary returning to MIT. Inexperienced in the newsroom and uncomfortable cold-calling people, I prepared my questions in advance of the interview. Over my time at The Tech this skill was honed, as was simply walking up to a stranger in the student center and asking for a quote for that week’s story.

My editor at The Tech always told us to “keep your fingers on the pulse” of the university, and I think that’s why I enjoyed working there so much. As a reporter, it was my job to be a little nosy and to know what was going on. As Features Editor I had even more freedom to discover interesting things that had happened and were happening at MIT; to interview amazing students, professors and alumni; and to share my findings with others. I never felt more connected to the ‘Tute than I did during that time.

So I had the leadership folks, I had my sorority sisters, I had my dorm friends and I had the newspaper staffers. I had built myself a strong network and, for the first time in a long time, I was genuinely happy. I dated boys, went to fraternity parties, shopped on Newbury Street, and hung out in my dorm room with my roommates skipping classes in favor of watching Sesame Street and Jerry Springer. It was college life, and I loved it.

I am not sure what the made the most difference. Maybe it was the independence gained from living on my own for the first time. Maybe it was because the students at MIT are very self-selecting and have inherent similarities. Maybe I took advantage of the opportunity to reinvent myself. Even though I’d changed throughout high school, I was already and always pigeon-holed by my classmates into the first impression they had of me during my freshman year.

My four years at MIT were not easy, but were bearable because of the people who surrounded me. My activities varied from year to year. To earn money, I tutored children in reading for the first two years of college and kept the students caffeinated at the 24-hour coffeehouse during my last two years. That job was fantastic – I could play whatever music I wanted, work on my problem sets and meet and greet the patrons of the shop. I fielded just about every behind-the-scenes role offered by the musical theater club, and I dabbled in student government. I worked hard to keep a balance of work and play, science and art, solitude and company.

I was also proud that my friends hailed from every dorm. MIT’s “East” and “West” campuses are divided by Massachusetts Avenue. West Campus was where you would find my dorm, the on-campus fraternities, the cultural houses, and the dorm with suites. West campus was the “normal” side of campus. East campus is where you would be more likely to find those pranksters my college counselor spoke of. Residents there were likely to be extremely intelligent, sporting all black and a funky hairstyle. The two sides of campus didn’t face off in some West Side Story showdown, but inasmuch as MIT was already an inherently self-selecting community, it was even more so internally. I was proud of how often I found myself crossing these barriers.

I decided to declare Environmental Engineering as my major. Chemical Engineering as a career sounded good in high school, but in Boston I realized I was more curious how chemistry works in the real world, not in a test tube. I was (and still am) a bit of a tree-hugger, so I figured after graduation I would go out and save the planet. My high school AP classes earned me enough credits that I was able to take whatever electives interested me. I focused on poetry and Victorian-era literature classes. I took as many classes as I felt I could handle, five or six a term.

I quickly realized if I kept up that pace I could easily pull off a double major in Literature. The best part of choosing that major was their leniency in deciding what a “Literature” course was. History, Art, Writing and Theater classes all counted towards the degree. My poor, confused brain was thrilled. It meant that my junior and senior years I could study just about whatever I wanted (or whatever gave me a schedule with a three-day weekend!) and walk away with two degrees from MIT.

It took a little convincing to get my advisor and the department chair to sign off on my double degree forms. My advisor questioned whether I could handle it; I suspect she did not think I was a very strong student. She knew I only passed my fall term freshman physics class because the professor, upon realizing I had the lowest test scores in the class but the highest homework and lab scores, took pity on me and encouraged me to learn how to study better for tests.
The chair asked me, “Well why don’t you just take the classes for your own benefit? Why do you need the degree?”

Why? Because I am paying for an MIT education, and everyone loves a good buy-one-get-one!

Plus, I argued, these humanities classes were all that kept me sane amidst the rigors of my technical classes. In fact, my poetry writing class and my sex roles and relationships class were downright therapeutic!

Senior year I focused on recruiting for a post-collegiate job. I still didn’t have a clear idea what an “Environmental Engineer” was exactly let alone what I wanted to do with my life! So, I interviewed with any company that would see me and also applied to graduate school. I knew I wasn’t cut out for finance (my supervisor at my summer internship at Ford told me I “lacked business acumen”), but thought consulting might be a good fit for me. I also interviewed for industry jobs. After what felt like hundreds of interviews, I received four offers and two graduate school acceptances. They were all wildly different career paths, and I’ll always wonder where those paths would have taken me, had I chosen differently.

I was accepted to both the MIT and Stanford Masters of Engineering programs but decided another year’s tuition was not worth it when I wasn’t sure how fervently I wanted to pursue environmental engineering. I had offers from Schlumberger and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad doing environmental work in the field. But the locations were in the middle of nowhere and I wasn’t sure wearing a hard hat was what I wanted. I had an environmental consulting offer with Malcolm Pirnie, a large firm in White Plains, New York, but the job description primarily included overseeing wastewater treatment plants, and after the first time I set foot in one, I vowed never to again.

Lastly was an offer from a supply chain consulting firm in New York City. The job was interesting to me because I liked the idea of increasing efficiency. One of my favorite books growing up was Cheaper by the Dozen, about an efficiency expert with twelve children. I loved the idea of using logical systems to minimize the amount of time, money and energy a company wasted. Plus, the people where culled from the best schools, the salary and benefits were great, I would be able to travel, and the office had a foosball table! Best of all I would be in New York City where many of my classmates were also landing after graduation.

I spent the summer after graduation working in Venice, Italy doing FORTRAN models of environmental systems, before moving to Manhattan on September 1, 2001. I would be renting a room an amazing four bedroom apartment on 28th Street. It was a great neighborhood, and I was excited to be living with three complete strangers with interesting careers. I started at my new job, which was walking distance from the apartment. I was on my way to work ten days after I moved to the city, when I saw people looking down Sixth Avenue at a building on fire. I thought to myself “Gosh, I wonder how people in those big apartment buildings get out when there is a fire.”

It was only when I made it upstairs to my office that I was informed those were, in fact, not apartment buildings but the World Trade Center. We watched from our office window as the towers crumbled and debated whether it was safer to stay put or go home. I ended up heading home and after a failed attempt to donate blood at St. Vincent’s Hospital, returned to my apartment to seek solace in my new roommates.

Everyone was in shock that day, and I couldn’t help think to myself that I had asked for this. Raised in a blasé MTV generation, in college I couldn’t help but feel that we didn’t have an event that defined us. I would look through the old editions of The Tech and wonder what it would have been like to be at the sit-ins staged on campus in the late 1960s. Activism seemed to be dead as we entered the new millennium, but in a few brief moments on September 11th, 2001, all that changed. We had our Pearl Harbor, and one day I will tell my grandchildren that I was there, but to be honest I would have preferred to just put flowers in my hair and rolled in the mud.

The tragedy that was 9/11 made New Yorkers more compassionate, thus easing my transition to the new city. Because we had an apartment well-suited to entertaining, friends of all four roommates, who were seeking to “nest” in those hectic times, would come over to our apartment. Amidst the chaos, the dot com bubble was also bursting and the economy was unstable. As a result, only three months after I started, my company declared bankruptcy and laid off our entire staff.

I had moved to the city with certain expectations (financial, career path, etc) and suddenly found myself in a completely different situation. I hadn’t even worked long enough to be eligible for unemployment. I returned home for Christmas, and regrouped back in New York in the New Year. I was lucky to land a job at a restaurant that January – I had a little experience, but the manager hired me because he “liked my vibe.” And thus began my third job and third field since graduating six months earlier.

I continued applying to jobs while I was a waitress, eventually landing one at an environmental engineering consulting company doing precisely what I’d tried to avoid when choosing my job out of school. The company had over-hired, and as last one in I was first one out. In short-order, I landed another similar job with a similar firm. And sure enough, I grew to despise that job over my year there, and tried to seek the balance in my life that I had enjoyed so much in college. I had started watching home decorating shows on cable and redecorated the apartment I lived in, to much acclaim. I even registered for a few evening classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

One of my only regrets in life was my decision not to major in Architecture. For years I have held on to an article from Elle Magazine in which business woman Barbara Roberts was quoted as saying, "The secret to success is remembering the Girl Scout Badges you were most proud of ... they'll tell you what you should be doing in life." The badge I earned for the model apartment I constructed from a cardboard box with bits and bobs from around the house was always the one I remembered most fondly. Somehow my eight year old self had more foresight than her eighteen year old counterpart.

All signs clearly pointed to the fact that I was in the wrong career. I pinned the quote up in my cubicle, continued taking classes, and waited for the opportunity to make the career switch. I began applying for interior design jobs, even though I was wildly under-qualified for most of them. Entry level interior design jobs are oftentimes unpaid internships, and part of me actually hoped I would get laid off from my engineering job so I could go on unemployment to pay the bills while I started out in interior design.

In March of 2004 I finally got my wish. I make an annual pilgrimage back to Boston to celebrate Suzanne’s birthday. I made plans to go up for her birthday weekend as always, but also to support her following a break-up. The Wednesday before her party my boss told me I needed to work on Saturday at a job site. I told him I was unavailable as I had to be in Boston on Friday night, but he told me nobody else who could be there. So, reluctantly and angrily, I cancelled my plans.

I awoke to pouring rain Saturday at five in the morning. I called my boss who confirmed work was still on. I put on my steel-toed boots and Gorton's Fisherman rain suit before hopping on the train for the hour-long commute to the job site. I arrived at the site where my boss said they were scheduled to be working, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. I checked in at the field office, and learned my client was at a different location on the property. When I finally reached him, he was surprised to see me. It turns out the area I was scheduled to oversee had been taken care of the weekend prior, and I wasn’t needed for that day’s work.

I stormed back to the train, furious at the miscommunication. Not only had my boss ruined my planned trip, but I was schlepping around the city in the rain at the crack of dawn. Adding insult to injury was that until two weeks prior, I had coordinated my schedule directly with the client. My boss, in some sort of power play, decided he had to act as middle man and began telling me when I needed to be there. And he screwed it up - royally.

Luckily, the next week I had jury duty so was able to cool down a bit. When I returned to work, I asked around the office to see if there was any new work to be done, but everyone seemed hesitant to give me a project. I knew in my gut that the end was near, and even told some friends I thought so. Sure enough, that Friday, I was called into the conference room and let go.
For most people getting laid off is a disaster. For me, it was exactly what I wanted and needing to begin my career transition. They asked the office manager, a friend of mine, to escort me from the premises. As we rode down the elevator together he asked me, “Why are you smiling?”

Because this is the beginning of the next phase in my life!

Now, every year when Suzanne’s birthday rolls around and I head back to Boston, I am grateful for that singular year I was forced to miss her party, because it meant I could re-invent myself.
The career change wasn’t easy. The owner of the first interior design company I worked for hired me much like my former restaurant manager did. He only cared that I was smart and had a good vibe. He put his faith in me, and I learned more from that job than I had in all my classes at FIT. After my unemployment ran out, I bounced around quite a bit and ended up back in restaurants for a few years while trying to get my footing in design. A recent count revealed that I’ve held twenty-four jobs in the last fifteen years, and fourteen of them were after graduating college. I challenge any of my classmates to top that!

The upside to switching careers is how much happier I am in my current job than I was at any one previously. I work for a small interior design company (it’s only the owner and I who do the design work) as a project manager of sorts for high-end residential and hospitality projects. I shoulder most of the responsibility for making sure the projects are completed, and oversee a half a dozen projects with budgets ranging from half to a million and a half dollars. I generally work independently, and have learned quite a bit as a result. I have been with this company longer than any other – almost two years. However, I am looking for a new challenge because even this position is flawed. For one thing, I don’t get to do as much of the actual designing as I’d like, I hope to work for myself.

The downside to bouncing around so much is I haven’t really had the chance to advance in my field, especially when it comes to financial compensation. Over the past six years I have been on unemployment more than once, and even on public assistance for health care. I am still paying off my student loans, have credit card debt, no retirement savings (or any sort of savings for that matter), and must live an hour commute from my office to have a place I can barely pay for. My current job doesn’t even offer affordable health insurance, and because design jobs generally start at a lower pay scale than consulting, I make less now than what I was offered out of college.
People always tell me how much they respect and admire me for following my dreams, going my own way, marching to the beat of my own drummer or doing what makes me happy. I think from the outside, when you have a job in say finance or consulting, my pseudo-bohemian lifestyle is easily idealized. I think people think I am brave for bucking the stereotypes of MIT and doing something in a creative field that I enjoy.

The truth is, I don’t think it’s bravery at all but quite the opposite. I think after a string of bad luck coupled with unhappiness, I just gave up trying. I spent so much of my life striving to be the best, to satisfy myself and others, that I think I just grew weary. I was not used to being laid off, and certainly not fired. I was used to success, whether it came easily or through hard work. I have let myself internalize my post-collegiate failures to the point I believe them, and am afraid to ask for the responsibilities and compensation that I feel suit my abilities. My desire to switch careers was genuine, but I have also let myself take the easy path instead of pushing myself towards excellence. With that has come a string of jobs that I am vastly overqualified for in some ways and a novice in others. Ultimately, I think my current situation is much more the result of cowardice than the so-called bravery people credit me with.

I am on a certain career path now, but sometimes wish for the strength to just jerk the wheel and send my jalopy careening off that path and into the unknown wilderness. I haven’t been brave enough, and haven’t had the means or client base, to incorporate my own business and strike off on my own in interior design. I’ve developed three different business plans over the years, but never fully followed through on any of them. I looked into a dual masters program at Yale that would leave me as, essentially, a “Green Architect,” but the four years of time and tuition was daunting. I don’t apply to any of the corporate jobs that would have hired me out of college, because how would this MIT graduate explain the last six years of my resume?

Because I have been, for whatever reason, unable to see any of these dreams through, I have devalued myself to the point I accept my current situation as the best I can do, almost as if I were “settling” in a relationship. Ironically, I would never let a boyfriend speak to me the way my boss does, yet I put up with it willingly in the office. The downturn in the economy could not have come at a worse time. Just as I’d learned everything I could at my current firm, after spending enough time there to show on my resume that I could actually hold down a job, when I finally grew tired of my boss’ condescension, and came up with the ideal job for me, suddenly there were no jobs to be had. I feel trapped at my current company, where I am trying to make the best of it. I hoped to have a backup offer to use as leverage my two-year review rolled around, but that doesn’t seem likely at this point.

Lest I sound like a Debbie Downer, I know the future holds great things for me. I just don’t know what they are. Part of the problem with having so many interests is that no one thing dominates my passion or skill set so I haven’t had one clear road to travel. I remember when I interned at Ford; they had something called a “Six Sigma Black Belt.” I have no idea what that means, but every manager wanted to be one. I realize today that I am not the kind of person to have just one black belt. I have, and always will have, a closet full of yellow, orange and green belts. It leaves me feeling as if, even at the age of thirty, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Sometimes I think it would be easier just to chop up my credit cards, chuck my cell phone in the trash, pack up a sarong and some seeds and go practice sustenance farming in a village somewhere.

In that vein, for several years I considered moving out of New York. I visited Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Tucson, Las Vegas, Orlando, Miami, Charleston, and San Juan, taking each one into consideration as my next home. But nothing stacks up against New York, especially for a Jane-of-All-Trades like me who wants a taste of everything.

When I moved to New York, a city with a much stronger pulse than that at MIT, I still strived to keep my finger on it. I started a mailing list, dubbed “Hot Times: Summer in the City.” Each week I scoured the web for free events happening in New York and compiled them into an e-mail I would send to all my friends. I didn’t actually attend many of the events I wrote about, but just knowing they were going on made me feel more connected to the city.

In an effort to take advantage of all the city has to offer, I worked hard to cultivate relationships and establish a clear work-life balance. That balance is what resulted in my layoff from the environmental consulting company. Friendships and cultural pursuits are great but as Liz Phair sang, “It’s nice to be liked, but it’s better by far to get paid.”

Getting divorced and turning thirty have motivated me to better my situation in all aspects of my life including career, finances, and relationships. It is a tug of war though between the investment and the potential gains, and I have been trying to feel my way out of this quagmire. The Catch-22 presents itself as such: if I don’t have a good job, I won’t have money. If I don’t have money, I won’t have the means to be social or look good. If I don’t look good and socialize, I will never meet someone which whom I can share the rest of my life. If I am alone, I will be unhappy. If I am unhappy, I will not be confident enough to seek out a better job. Let me explain.

When I was depressed from the break-up, all I wanted to do was be out amongst people rather than cooped up in what I referred to as my “haunted house.” But going out cost the money I shouldn’t be spending, but did anyway. I figured without insurance to go see a therapist, a friendly face on the neighboring barstool was the next best thing. That lifestyle is tiring, and I became distracted from my job which in turn may have endangered my chances of a positive annual review. Just in case that were true, I started thinking about finding a new job, in a happy, safe corporate environment where there was middle management, a 401K, and the occasional Excel spreadsheet. I began fetishizing my friend’s careers they way they had mine.

The stress of the split also resulted in significant weight loss, so my old clothes look ridiculously baggy. As they say, “dress for the job you want,” so unless the job I want is the “after” model in a Dexatrim ad, I need some new clothes. I have slowly begun replacing my wardrobe, but feel like I need a second opinion on what looks good on my new body before investing money on clothes. The only pants in my closet that fit properly right now are two pair of jeans unsuitable for my current dream job of “Sustainable Design Consultant.”

Another motivator to improve my life stems from the realization that as I get older, so do my relatives. My grandfather has been showing his years lately, and had a stroke recently. I truly hope that I can turn my life around before his ends, because his approval means the world to me. He provided the financial support that allowed me to attend and succeed at private high school and MIT. At my graduation from college, I remember thinking that this man who shows so little emotion seemed proud of me. I know he disapproves of my current career. His sister was an interior decorator, and I don’t think she spent four years at a technical college to become one. I would like him to know I am in fact directly using my education, and hope there is some job description out there that allows me happiness and an intellectual challenge.

My grandfather also disapproved of my ex-husband, something he made very clear throughout our relationship by giving him (and me!) the cold shoulder whenever we visited. When I went home for Christmas after my divorce, we celebrated the holiday at my grandparents’ house. At the end of the night, as my grandfather tottered off to bed, he said to me, “Next time, ask me first.” This abrupt and pointed comment from a man of few words shocked me, as I didn’t realize just how fervently he disapproved (and I still am not sure why exactly he did). It’s like when Silent Bob speaks in a Kevin Smith movie. You are so shocked to hear his voice that you just have to listen. I guess there is something to be said for a guy asking a girl’s family for her hand in marriage. Mine probably would have said no, and I mightn’t be a divorcée today!

My abnormal desire to please others may have waned over the years, but my need to show my grandfather I am, and always was, a worthwhile investment, has only increased. It all seems quite daunting, but that is the hurdle I am seeking to overcome before my next birthday. If you wouldn’t mind sending your drummer over for me to march to, I’d appreciate it – I fired my own.

Chapter 12: This Jane-of-all-Trades Marches to the Beat of Her Own Drummer (Part 1)

2009-04-16T14:16:00.011-04:00

For as long as I can remember I have had the desire to experience everything life offers. My right and left brain battle for control, leaving me, in turns, both logical and emotional. I enjoy science and art, the symbols of math and the words of poetry, the big picture and the tiny details. It means that my interests are varied and that I have a passion for learning. I don’t know if this balance (or is it an imbalance?) was hard-wired in me, or if I should credit my parents.

My dad is an engineer who designs elevator button panels. My mom has held various jobs throughout my life, including in publishing and as a custom drapery fabricator.

Dad would take me to his wood shop in the garage to help me make a car for the sisters’ race at my brother’s Boy Scout Pinewood Derby. Mom on the other hand would sit with me at the kitchen table as we made jewelry for me to sell at the grade school craft fair.

I played with dolls, but I also built with Legos and played G.I. Joe with my brother. I was constantly reading, but I also enjoyed the logic puzzles in crossword puzzle books (who knew both would later prove to be helpful when taking the GRE!). Even though athletics were conspicuously absent, I led a balanced, curious childhood. And if I’d had my way (and if my parents had the money), I would have been an aspiring ballerina or gymnast, too!

My interests continued expanding as extracurricular activities became available through school. In junior high, high school and college I was definitely a joiner. At various points I was in student council, newspaper, yearbook, ski club, bike club, environmental club, Girl Scouts, tennis, track and theater. Every year I loved counting up how many times my photo appeared in the yearbook. I think this mattered more to me than how many people signed the darn thing!

Mom used to chastise me, asking why I thought I was the center of the universe, which I never understood. To me the center of the universe was the center of attention; outspoken, arrogant and flashy. In my head I was shy and awkward, just trying to keep my head down. Mom usually used these words to scold me while I was loitering in the kitchen, listening to my parents talk about their day. I don’t think I even cared if they paid attention to me; I just wanted to know what was going on. So maybe she was right. I did want to be the center of my universe in that I wanted to be in tune with everything going on in and around it, so I got involved everywhere I could.

Joining so many activities was probably a defense against loneliness. You didn’t have to be pretty or outgoing to meet the people in a club, you just had to join. Something I quickly discovered in junior high was how much more socially challenging it was than I remembered grade school being. I went in naïve, but what I saw there worked to quickly change that. Oversexed thirteen-year-olds in body suits and Cross Color jeans talked openly in class about what parts of their body they shaved; tough Mexican girls with bangs sprayed to stick six inches in the air threatened me with violence in the locker room; my partner in Home Economics patted my leg suggestively under the table; and the overweight, greasy-haired, pimple-faced girl next to me on the bus mockingly asked me if I thought I was popular.

“I am popular amongst my friends,” I answered. Truthfully, that was all that mattered to me. We had our inside jokes, cultivated while sitting at “our” lunch table. We hung out on the weekends or after school, and did many school activities together.

In high school I was still a complete nerd. I accept that fact now with nerd pride, but because of it, I never felt like I fit in at my high school. My grandparents provided me the opportunity to go to a private school on the north shore of Chicago. The school was a K-12 private, non-denominational school whose wealthy students were in sharp contrast to those at the public school from whence I came. Many students in my freshman class had known each other since grade school. Each grade consisted of only about 25 students, so by the time they reached high school; it was a pretty tight-knit bunch.

Orientation week at my new high school was very eventful, in some ways shaping the future of my whole high school career. In that one week my braces were removed, I was fitted for a slightly less hideous pair of eyeglasses, got my period for the first time and joined the tennis team. I was excited and optimistic to start at this shiny new school. If my life were a movie, my make-over would have landed me Freddie Prinze Jr. and a homecoming crown. The reality was, by joining the tennis team I had pretty much insured my exclusion from the group that ruled the school.

Before the school year started, my grandmother had taken me to meet two of my classmates whose parents were friends of hers. Both girls played field hockey, a sport I had never even heard of. One girl showed me her field hockey stick, and it looked nothing like the sticks my brother and I used to play roller hockey in the street. Intimidated, I decided tennis would be a much safer bet. Ostensibly to encourage physical fitness but in reality to ensure enough bodies to populate a team, every student was required to play a fall sport their first two years. Maybe I had never picked up a racquet in my life, but at least I’d seen the sport on television and had some clue how it was played. Plus it was more or less an individual sport, so if I messed up too much on the court, I was only letting myself down.

The girls on the tennis team were great, but we were a bit of a rag-tag bunch of misfits - The Bad News Bears of Cook County tennis. In contrast, the girls on the field hockey team were a unified force to be reckoned with. I am not sure if outgoing individuals naturally seek out team sports or if teams bring out a latent extrovert, but those girls had a confidence and bravado I envied.

The movie Mean Girls is set at the fictional “North Shore High School,” a name pretty darn close to that of my school. While it was actually modeled after the large private high school down the street, our two schools drew from the same populations. I am not saying the field hockey girls were ever the antagonistic “Plastics,” because they were never mean like that, just that they clearly comprised the power clique in our small school. And I was an outsider.

So instead I threw myself into extracurricular activities outside of sports, and made friends with others like me. The tennis girls or the guys whom the field hockey girls had deemed unworthy of their company became my circle of friends. My friends were also the lonely musicians, theater geeks, poets and nerds who could never be confused as constituting any sort of “clique.” I must admit, it was never quite as black-and-white as I’ve painted it. It was a small school, so there was some inevitable overlap between these groups, but what I described is generally what I felt.

In addition to filling my schedule with activities, I made it through high school by throwing myself into my studies. Whether required or elective, I enjoyed most of my classes. Subjects as varied as US History, Photography, Calculus, English, Computer Science and Theater all held my attention and an equal place in my heart. I strove to do well and genuinely enjoyed learning.

This was something even the people I considered to be my friends ended up (literally) throwing back in my face. I recall one night I was at a slumber party with a bunch of girls. We were settling into our sleeping bags for the night when someone came in and threw something at me, food if I recall. Upset and confused, I asked why she would do something like that. Her response boiled down to the fact that she didn’t like how I bragged about my grades.

I was in shock. I didn’t think I was a braggart. I couldn’t remember ever asking how someone else did, and if asked I don’t recall rubbing my success in anybody’s face. If someone asked how I performed, and I happened to do well, did she expect me to lie? I will never understand how she took that impression of me because the contrast between her words and my self-perception could not have been greater. How could I be arrogant and hate myself at the same time?

My rampant high school insecurities were rooted in my perpetual feeling of being out of place. For four years I knew I didn’t belong to the “popular” clique. I felt overweight, unattractive and – apparently – so unbearable I was worthy of having a bologna sandwich thrown at my head. While I never wanted for anything, my family did not have the kind of money most of my classmates enjoyed. And I liked school; whereas I felt many of these privileged kids laughed it off, viewing it little more than a stop-over to daddy’s money or their next bong hit.

I had the distinct impression that few people actually liked me, not even the people who were supposed to be my friends. It had to be an act, and there was a period of time when I set out to test this. I would intentionally hide when I knew I would be needed backstage in the theater to see how long it was before someone came looking for me. I would sit in conspicuous but strange places (the railings on the landing of the arts building was one favorite spot) and see how many people would walk by without even acknowledging me.

With every minute that passed in hiding and with every person who passed noiselessly, I grew increasingly morose to the point that any positive reinforcement in my experiment was rendered moot. I gained no esteem from these exercises which served only to bolster my feelings of isolation and invisibility. I turned to writing volumes of angst-ridden teen poetry and listening to Nirvana Unplugged on repeat while burning a séance-worth of candles in my bedroom.

High school is only four years and I tried to pack those years with interests and activities. Because I was exposed to so many new and different things, I developed into a sort of Jane-of-all-trades but a master of none. When senior year rolled around and the prospect of college loomed near, I was at a bit of a loss. I wasn't sure what I wanted to be when I grew up. Architecture crossed my mind, but engineering, even though I couldn't actually tell you what that was, seemed to be where the good jobs were. My parents had attended a local community college and had little advice to share and no expectations. They wanted the best for me however, and opened up the door for me to pursue an degree anywhere I wanted. The combination of my own ignorance about higher education, a complete uncertainty about my future professional hopes, the lack of strong guidance at home, suggestions from my college counselor and several school visits, resulted in my application to eleven schools. I didn't know what would be a reach and what would be a safety for me, so I selected a wide range of schools:

Case Western Reserve University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
Rice University
Rose Hulman Institute of Technology
University of Illinois
University of Virginia
Washington University St. Louis
Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Few of my applications overlapped with my classmates, who applied mostly to small Midwestern or East Coast liberal arts schools. Nonetheless, we attended a small school, and nobody was sure where various colleges set their quotas. I knew nobody else in my class was applying to anything with “tech” in the name. In fact, I held a bit of a grudge against the two people from my school who, in recent years, had headed to MIT. These two guys were the nerds of their years, both classic computer geeks. When one was a senior and the other a junior, my school’s Calculus teacher taught them the advanced portion of the AP Calculus class.

Then when I was a senior, I approached that same teacher to set up my own AP Calculus BC class. Imagine my shock when she looked at me as if surprised I was interested and said she would not be teaching it to me. She suggested that I take art instead. So, I took that art class, which only added to my left brain-right brain confusion. I wish I could say that was the only outright sexism I felt in my four years there.

Each year my school arranged for a week off of classes during which students could explore topics of interest outside the classroom. I did a theater production at a shelter one year and shadowed my uncle, a television news reporter, another. When my senior year rolled around, I had saved up enough baby-sitting money to take one of the exciting trips some of the teachers sponsored.

The one that caught my eye was a hike down and out of the Grand Canyon. I had always wanted to see that marvel of nature, so I signed up with a girlfriend. At the last minute she had to bail on the trip, which left me as the trip’s only female. The sponsor, our male gym teacher, pulled me aside one day. He asked if I minded going on the other trip to the Southwest being offered, a van tour of Native American ruins and geological highlights, a trip that did not include a stop at the Grand Canyon. As “the only girl on the trip and it might make the guys uncomfortable if you have any ‘girl issues,’” he explained. I was disappointed then, and now realizing that my lack of external genitalia was his reason for excluding me, I am embittered. And I have yet to see the Grand Canyon. Yet sexism wasn’t the only thing about my high school that made me doubt my ability to pursue everything I wanted in life.

Aside from what I read in US News and World Report, I had no idea how my college applications stacked up against my classmates, or the rest of the students in the country, for the matter. The leaders of my school (who were primarily Quakers) boasted a philosophy of “non-competition.” As a result we were not assigned GPAs until senior year, we were never ranked, we had no prom kings and queens and we had no class valedictorian (our graduation speaker was chosen by a vote).

The “non-competition” philosophy in the classroom never truly bothered me, but I never understood why, then, it did not extend to the playing field. Participation in athletics was not only encouraged but mandatory, annual awards went to the top-performing athletes of each sport, and their games were announced in morning assemblies. Not only did the school encourage sports, the most fundamental form of competition, but they were also pushing the athletes to compete internally for top individual honors and recognition.

It was acceptable for the captain of the football team to celebrate a victory over University High, yet touting academic success was recipe for ridicule. Does this go back to the notion of teams versus individuals? Is it that the difference is getting an “A” on a paper was only my own arrogant success whereas the volleyball team making it to state is a shared victory? In my rebellious teenage mind, I wondered why I would have to conform to such a group mentality to fit in. The theater department with which I was involved did give recognition at a private year-end banquet for the theater folks and their families, so that was some solace.

Yet I remained baffled at my school’s seeming distaste for academic accomplishment (or was it just distaste for me?) At the end of each year a ceremony was held in which the school awarded a handful of academic “book awards” to juniors. After three years of hard work, I finally received one award (The “Wellesley College Book Award,” which proved to be ironic on several levels). Yet any pleasure I might otherwise have found in my award was, over the years, overshadowed by another incident. Or should I say lack of an incident.

I took AP US History senior year, and throughout the year the teacher would comment on how many years it had been since one of his students had earned the highest mark (5) on the test, and how he hoped this was the year. I never needed his encouragement; I just wanted to pass out of some basic core college class and get on to the fun electives. So I took the test, and I earned that 5 he had pushed for. For whatever reason, he never once acknowledged it. That 5 did help me down the road when I wanted to squeeze in a double major, but I sure would have liked some recognition then. Maybe everyone in the class got a 5 so I was nothing special, and he only made a big deal about it all year to ensure our successes. I would never know, because by this time I’d learned my lesson about sharing grades with my peers.

It took me years to fully recognize the hypocrisy of my school, and how easily I accepted being made to feel like a lesser person. Eleanor Roosevelt famously declared that “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Maybe if I had heard that quote back then I would not have let them.

It is with all of these high school experiences under my belt that I faced the decision of which college to attend. I had applied to eleven schools, and was excited and surprised to be accepted to eleven schools, but this did not make the decision any easier. I think being overwhelmed by too many options is one of the reasons I enjoy being a vegetarian. When looking at a menu at a restaurant, there are generally only a handful of vegetarian options. But when I go to a vegetarian restaurant, it takes me a very long time to decide what I want to order! I like to weigh all my options and want to make an informed decision.

By the deadline to accept offers, I was able to narrow my choices down to three: Rice, Northwestern, and MIT. I had visited all three and was really torn. I had decided I wanted to study Chemical Engineering since I liked chemistry and the money would be good after graduation. All three schools had good engineering programs. Northwestern was a close to home, but I thought maybe a little too close. At Rice I would spend much of the year sweating, but it had a beautiful campus. When I visited MIT I had so much fun with my hosts, but it was a city school which scared me a little.

The day the replies were due, I filled out the paperwork and dropped them in the mail, telling nobody that I’d made my decision. Later that night, I revealed to my parents that I had selected MIT. When I told my grandfather, who was helping to foot the bill for my college education, he replied “You made the right choice.” So I scooted off to college knowing that while joining the tennis team in high school may have secured a certain fate for those four years, choosing to go to MIT ensured the next four would be entirely different.

Chapter 6: Margaret

2009-04-13T18:24:00.010-04:00

I remember exactly when I learned that Margaret was sick. On Saturday, January 12, 2008, I went to see a concert with my girlfriends and their husbands. The show consisted of a variety of bands revisiting Bob Dylan’s 1966 concert at Royal Albert Hall in London, in which he played electric instead of acoustic guitar. It was held in the atrium at the Winter Garden, across the street from the World Trade Center. The room was very full and seating was limited, so after awhile we all claimed seats on a set of steps behind the crowd. My friend Cathy was seated behind me, and as we listened to the hippie music she told me rather matter-of-factly that our friend and sorority sister Margaret had a cancerous brain tumor.

I asked the initial questions anyone would ask when presented with that news: Is it operable? (No) Is she doing chemo and radiation? (Yes) What is her prognosis? (I don’t know) Cathy didn’t know much more than that, as she’d only heard a few details from another sister of ours over lunch one day. I knew Margaret to be a pretty private person, so I didn’t really feel comfortable asking her or anyone else for more information.

For some reason, the news really shook me. For Margaret to be sick, of all people, was just unfathomable. She was my age, a vegan and an athlete who did triathlons, for crying out loud! How does someone like that get sick? Add to that the fact that someone that intelligent should get a tumor in their brain of all places just seemed cruel. She and I were not the closest friends in college, but she had earned my respect. A quiet girl, she always struck me as the kind of person who made good choices in her life. Her brother, one year her senior, lived in my dorm, and we did a group project together in a class one semester. His demeanor was very much like his sister’s, and he also gained my respect for his kindness and intelligence. The fact that he had to go through this made the situation even more difficult.

For the next couple months I dealt with the news without knowing any further details. I knew Margaret had to be fighting this with everything she had. In college, Margaret was the type of girl who, if you dared her to do something, could not say no. I remembered one time someone dared her to hold her breath for two minutes. Two minutes later, despite a purple face and an involuntarily shaking leg, she won that bet. In my head, I dared her to beat this tumor. That had to work, right?

Our sorority pledge class had planned a reunion in Boston at the end of April, and I was excited to catch up with everyone and eager to see Margaret. We gathered for dinner on the night of the reunion, and as we settled into the large table, someone suggested we seat Margaret in the middle. She had been intubated during a biopsy, and the tube caused scarring of the vocal chords, causing her voice to be reduced to a whisper.

Seeing Margaret for the first time in years was a bit of a shock. She was always a thin girl, what with all her running and biking, but she definitely seemed frail. Her cheeks were a little puffy from the chemo, which made her look healthier than she actually was. Her appetite was definitely strong. She and I ordered the same pasta dish, and she finished hers while I only managed about half. Our group’s conversation at dinner was light, and included a few of the girls’ significant others, including Margaret’s. Her boyfriend, named Igor, was another MIT graduate who I’d never met before. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him much that night, but learned that they had been together about four years and were living together in Cambridge which made me really happy for Margaret.

~ Out to dinner: Margaret, me, Evelyn ~

After dinner we retired to the hotel everyone was staying at to have a “fireside.” This is the AXO term for when everyone sits in a circle and takes turns giving updates on their lives. When Margaret’s turn came, she started off by saying something like “Well, I guess I’ll talk about the elephant in the room,” to which some of the girls protested. They wanted to hear her good news, about the man in her life. So she filled us in on Igor, and then talked about her job, which she was on leave from at the time I think, and the races the she was running that spring. (Yes, she was still running races!) But she never got back to talking about her illness.

As we were leaving, I felt I had to say something to her. The elephant was still sitting in that hotel room. My words were “I just wanted to let you know that you being sick really pisses me off,” to which she responded “Yeah, it pisses me off too.” And then she started to cry. As I hugged her, I was shocked that this strong woman would cry, and of course felt badly that I was the one who brought her to tears. We shared a cab from the hotel because I was headed out to meet a friend near Margaret’s apartment. On the way we talked more about non-cancer topics and I was happy to have had a few minutes alone with her.

~ Margaret and I right before I made her cry :( ~

During the rest of the weekend I gingerly asked some of the girls who were closer to her for more information. I learned that in true Margaret fashion she was seeking the best treatment at the best hospitals. The tumor was not shrinking, but not growing either. I also learned that she had started a blog, which was a bit of a surprise to me, and I joined so I could follow her progress.

Through the blog updates, I learned about her day-to-day life as well as her medical treatments. She approached her illness with unfailing optimism and humor because the alternative seemed pointless. For example, she nicknamed her tumor “Larry” after an episode of one of her favorite cartoons, Pinky and the Brain, in which when asked what the two mice will do that night, the Brain says, “Try to take over the world... without Larry!” That was Margaret’s plan too, but first she had to get rid of Larry. She would also write parodies of songs replacing the words with ones about battling cancer. There is the saying “as serious as cancer,” but Margaret showed that a few moments of not taking it so seriously could provide a completely new outlook.

Over the course of the summer, I read about Margaret’s symptoms as she had course after course of Chemo, trying any and every combination of drugs the doctors could think of. Her brother researched homeopathic remedies, and she supplemented the drugs with herbal medicines. Her vision grew blurry and it grew more and more difficult for her to swallow and walk, but it was uncertain if the symptoms were due to the drugs or the tumor, so there was still room for optimism. Margaret tried to stay as active as she could, and developed her own regiment of physical therapy in her apartment. She wrote on her blog “we figure it's better to keep me fighting like this than to just give up and stop walking altogether. If I stop, then I've given up, and I can't do that, no matter how hard it gets.” Despite her worsening condition, she remained optimistic and posted that her goal was to run the half-marathon in Philadelphia in September 2009 on the Tug McGraw team. The foundation raises money for brain tumor research and was founded in honor of Tim McGraw's father, an athlete who died of a brain tumor, so it seemed apropos. Margaret’s best friend, one of my sorority sisters, suggested that we start training as a pledge class and run with her the next year as a surprise, as sure as she was that she would be be there. Many people agreed, including me.

At the end of July, Margaret received the devastating news that the tumor was in fact growing. The next day she found out that Professor Randy Pausch (of “The Last Lecture” fame) had passed away. She had found him inspiring, and by sharing the link on her blog I was then inspired not only by the professor, but Margaret’s shared positive outlook. By August, Margaret wasn’t posting much to her blog and the posts that did come made me really sad. Her tone had changed, and while she still professed optimism, it was clear that the reality of her situation was very grave. On August 18 she wrote, “I'm not doing so well. But I'm surviving, and I think that's all I can do right now.” One week later, there was a new post to the blog, but this time it came from her boyfriend Igor.

He wrote about a setback Margaret had faced while at Duke University Medical Center that had landed her in the ICU. She had developed difficulty breathing and was put on a breathing tube. As her breathing improved, she began yet another course of Chemo. Slowly over the course of the next month, with her brother and boyfriend by her side, her condition began to improve.

Hearing that she was hospitalized was a bit of a wake-up call for my friends and me. We felt so helpless, and in my case felt like I just needed to do something. I emailed Margaret’s brother and Igor asking if they thought she would like an individual from the Tug McGraw foundation to run the New York City Marathon in her honor that fall. I was a bit flummoxed when the guys declined, but understood that she wanted to keep her life somewhat private. In fact even in writing this, I wonder if I am revealing too much.

Shortly thereafter, overnight, her condition worsened. She had developed an infection, which over the next few weeks was followed by a seizure, a blot clot in her leg, sepsis, tumor growth and pneumonia. She kept bouncing back and remained alert and responsive through most of it, astounding the doctors. But on October 26th Igor posted that Margaret was fading, and was no longer very responsive. Two days later he announced that she had been pronounced brain-dead. And yet, in his words, “in her infinite generosity, Margaret had wanted to be an organ donor. Sometime tomorrow they may take a part of her to help someone else, and I hope that person will someday appreciate how remarkable the original owner really was. That someone who's undergone so much chemotherapy is still a candidate for organ donation is a further testament to Margaret's resiliency.”

By the time the announcement came, I was somewhat expecting it. The news had been mostly bad for such a long time that despite Margaret’s optimism, I had begun to give up hope. But that doesn’t change the fact that I was deeply affected by her passing. She was my age, so healthy, and then fought so hard. I decided to go to her funeral in Pennsylvania, with many of my other sorority sisters.

I am blessed, I guess, to not have had death in my life much. All of my relatives who have passed away were past retirement age, and had lived long happy lives. When I was very young my father’s stepmother died, but I barely remember her aside from riding in her lap in her wheelchair. I also remember riding (in a limo, I think) with some family members and being upset that I could not go with them to her funeral. When I was a few years older my great-grandmother died right before Christmas, and only my mom flew down to North Carolina for her services. A few years after that, my Grandfather’s new wife’s stepmother died, and I attended her memorial service.

Then my Grampa passed away after a long battle with cancer. I had the chance to visit him in Florida, so had the chance to say good-bye. Only his wife and children were present to scatter his ashes in the ocean. Last year my mom’s uncle Fred passed away, which came as a great shock. I was really upset by it, but was unable to fly home to Chicago for his funeral. So the only service I had ever attended was for the one person to whom I was probably the least close.

As for my peers passing away though, the only one I knew closely was a high school classmate. Katie was a senior and the captain of my tennis team when I was a freshman. She always wore a huge smile on her face and had very pretty, intense, deep-set eyes. She came back to our school the year after she graduated to tell us she had cancer. The school held a memorial for her when she passed away, but I don’t remember going to it. I had always admired her for her good-natured attitude, and hearing of her death saddened me. Maybe it was true, only the good die young, I thought.

So I think that it was that I have been so insulated from death that Margaret’s hit me so hard. Couple that with the fact that she had so much to live for and was such an inspiration in her battle and it’s even more understandable. I wanted to go to the funeral to have some closure for myself by saying good-bye, as well as support her brother, Igor and my sorority sisters who were her best friends. Death, after all, is hardest on the living.

The wake was a really sad but lovely affair. Igor (I think) had put together a collection of photos of Margaret and had the slideshow playing on electronic picture frames throughout the funeral homes. Looking at those photos gave all the guests something to talk about in that awkward moment. We reminisced and laughed about the good times we’d had.

~ My favorite picture from the slide show: Jen and Margaret in costume for a skit in college ~

After the ice was broken, we decided it was time to go through the receiving line and view the body. Given the fact that I had never been to a proper funeral before, perhaps it goes without saying that I’d also never seen a dead body before. I knew that she would not look like herself, but to me Margaret looked like a tiny china doll. On her finger was the ring Igor had given to her when he proposed to her in the hospital at Duke in her final months.

After a moment’s reflection, we moved on to greet Margaret’s relatives. Her parents were so appreciative that so many of the AXOs had come. I had never met them before, but they and other family members engaged us in brief conversations. I think maybe seeing Margaret’s friends was like having a piece of Margaret back. Greeting Margaret’s brother and Igor was one of the most difficult things I had to do. I wasn’t really prepared for that moment. Did the occasion call for a hug or a handshake? Would the words “I am sorry for your loss” suffice? The next few minutes were a blur and I can only imagine what sort of expression I was wearing. My sorority sisters and I left the wake shortly thereafter, and gathered for dinner to remember Margaret and catch up on each other’s lives since our reunion in April.

The next day was the funeral. It was a Catholic service, and Margaret’s brother and mother gave eulogies. Margaret’s brother’s was so extraordinarily touching. It was written as only an MIT alum would write a speech – in the form of a list. He described six ways in which she managed to cram a full, fun, “first class” life into her twenty-nine short years. I am going to paraphrase his eulogy here to be more general, because I think living by these six rules would improve anybody’s life.

Make the most out of the talents God gave you
Live a balanced life
Use your life experiences to develop your own code of values
Cherish your relationships
Challenge yourself and strive for excellence
Never take yourself too seriously

Seeing all the mourners and hearing Margaret’s brother’s words made me really take stock in my own life. My divorce had been finalized four days before Margaret’s death and I was feeling extraordinarily alone. Sitting in the church that day, I wondered, if I were to fall ill now, who in my life would put everything on hold to stay by my bedside for months? Who would travel across the country to say good-bye? If I were to die tomorrow, what sorts of words would people use to describe my life? And if I lived by Margaret’s mantras, would I find a happiness that was so absent at that time? These questions continue to plague me and I hope to use that list to inspire me this year as I seek to make my life better.

There was a memorial service in Boston, and the room was packed with college friends and colleagues. In leading up to the service, I wondered if there was a sorority ritual for the passing of a sister. I knew the one for engagements, marriages and babies, but what do you do when someone dies? I contacted the AXO national headquarters, and the woman there suggested reading “The Symphony of Alpha Chi Omega.” It was familiar to me, and upon re-reading it, I really thought its words described how Margaret lived her life. The memorial turned out not to be the place for a reading such as this, but it brought me a bit of inspiration to further bolster the eulogy list.

The Symphony Of Alpha Chi Omega

To see beauty even in the common things of life,
to shed the light of love and friendship round me;
to keep my life in tune with the world that I shall make no discords in the harmony of life;
to strike on the lyre of the universe only the notes of happiness, of joy, of peace;
to appreciate all that is noble in another, be her badge what it may;
and to let my lyre send forth the chords of love, unselfishness, sincerity.
This is to be my symphony.
- Celia McClure

Margaret touched many people’s lives, and I hope she knew how inspirational she was. On what would have been her thirtieth birthday, an announcement was made that a memorial fund had been set up in her name at MIT. When it reaches its minimum endowment, it will provide an annual scholarship for female student-athletes. Additionally, Igor and one of my sorority sisters, Jane, are running the Boston Marathon next weekend in Margaret’s honor to support the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, respectively. If you are interested in donating to any of these causes, click on the links above. While her goal of being there may no longer be acheivable, my pledge class and I still plan to run the half-marathon in Philadelphia this fall in Margaret’s memory. Her spirit will be there with us, I am sure, keeping the wind to our backs as we run. (It is for these fund-raising purposes that I have used everyone's real names in this piece. I apologize in advance if any of this is not okay, please just let me know)

Bob Dylan, whose songs were being played as I found out the news about Margaret, sang:

When you're sad and when you're lonely and you haven't got a friend
Just remember that death is not the end
…
Oh the tree of life is growing
Where the spirit never dies
And the bright light of salvation
Shines in dark and empty skies
When the cities are on fire with the burning flesh of men
Just remember that death is not the end

Margaret’s spirit will never die, and her death is not an end.

Chapter 13: Turning Thirty

2009-04-10T18:51:00.005-04:00

I am officially the big three-oh. Honestly it doesn’t feel much different than twenty-nine. Some little things that have happened since my birthday have set me off a bit. For example, I watched the movie Baby Mama in which the main character has to hire a surrogate to carry her baby because, at thirty-seven, she is unable to conceive. A week ago I would have seen the character’s age as nearly a decade more than mine. But now at thirty, it is as if we are peers, and her plight could soon become mine. Plus I realized that I will have to check the “30-35” box when my demographic information is collected, and that just stings. But these are just little twinkles of frustration that pass quickly as I remind myself that I have decided that thirty is going to be my best year yet. It certainly can’t be worse than twenty-nine.

All-in-all I had a pretty great birthday. It started off early when I went to my favorite restaurant, Zoë on Friday. When I told the bartender I would be celebrating my birthday that weekend, he surprised me with a scoop of gelato with a candle in it. It was coconut, which I don’t usually like, but this one was delicious. It was so sweet of him, and it reminded me why that is one of my favorite places to go.

Because my actual birthday was on a Tuesday, I had my celebration on the Saturday prior. A dozen of my friends joined me for dinner at Spitzer’s Corner on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Another seven joined us for drinks after dinner at a bar called The Skinny. We had a big communal table for dinner, and a private area at the bar, so everyone was able to mingle and chat. I have several different groups of friends and I love when they can meet and interact. A couple friends came bearing gifts, which was a huge surprise and I was very thankful.

Despite being surrounded by such a large group of great friends, it was a little bittersweet. This may come off as really trite and ungrateful, but in the moments as we left the restaurant I thought to myself, “I would trade all these friends for one person who thought to tell the waitress it was my birthday so she would have sent over a little dessert.” It’s not that I wanted the sweets or for the whole restaurant to bust out a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday to You.” It was just a bit of a realization (one that I’ve felt often in the bustle of New York City) that amidst the crowd, I was alone.

Growing up I was never the kind of person who needed a huge circle of friends. My mom always thought it was weird when, as a child, I would have only one really close friend at a time: Sara, Devon, Erika, Lindsay, Becky, Erica. When one of us would change schools, or if we had a falling out, I would eventually find a replacement. When I got to high school and discovered boys, my one-track devotion often turned to the guys I dated. I was not part of any clique in high school. My (mostly male) friends were all very different from each other and not really friends with each other, like spokes on a bicycle, with me as the axis. Yet I was fiercely devoted to these individuals in rotating succession.

One prime example of this stands out to me to this day. In the spring of my junior year, I turned down an invitation to prom from a guy friend of mine because the girl who I considered my best friend at the time disapproved. Later that summer, she and I had a big fight. At the time, I had summer job working with the guy who’d asked me to prom and we had gotten very close. I realized that my ex-best friend’s opinion had really clouded my judgment, and immediately after the fight with my girlfriend I let the guy know I had been interested in him. We were together until I went off to college over a year later. To this day I still consider my relationship with my “high school sweetheart” to be the easiest and most successful I’ve had. But even with him, our relationship was pretty much the only one I needed.

I think it’s pretty common for couples to “drop off the face of the earth” and enter their own little world of two. I don’t really know what co-dependence is, but I’d have to think it’s something along those lines. I have tried to learn over time how to balance aspects of my romantic relationships, friendships and my Self, but it a struggle. I am a passionate person, and when that passion endears me to another, I focus in on that individual and give them my all.

For a time in college I became somewhat of a serial monogamist. I would stay in a relationship well past its expiration date, until someone new caught my eye. I would quickly end the first relationship and jump headfirst into the next. I think this stemmed from the fact that I was shy in relationships and did not want to stir up drama. So if something annoyed me, I would let it fester until I was so bothered that I was ready to move on. I knew it was not healthy and by the end of college had broken the pattern. However, now I have been told I am “brutally honest,” which I think is a good thing because I am putting my feelings out there. However, I have had my heart broken every time I’ve worn it on my sleeve.

In sharp contrast to my somewhat shy, loner childhood, I decided to join the Alpha Chi Omega sorority during my freshman year of college. I hoped that this group of girls would help me in part be able to develop better friendships with women and also have a group of friends to rely on, rather than one individual. It turns out that is exactly what happened. While the guys came and went, and as I developed friendships with various groups of people across campus, my sorority sisters were the one constant in my life. It is because of them, I think, that I gained any sense of confidence in social settings and interpersonal relationships. It is many of these women, some who live in New York and some who are scattered across the country, whom I still consider my dearest friends today. In fact, now that I think about it, the three AXOs who were at my party were the same guests who came with gifts in hand.

Given that my party was a few days before my big day, I had been really worried about how I would spend my actual birthday. I didn’t want to pester everyone who came out on Saturday to go out again on that Tuesday. Luckily, two of my best girlfriends here in the city were away on weekend trips the day of my party, so offered to take me to dinner on the seventh. It was a huge relief to me, to know I would not be wallowing alone on the sofa with my two cats on my thirtieth birthday.

The three of us went to a cute wine bar called Terroir in the East Village and sat at the bar. When we finished our meal, my one friend made a huge scene, having me pick out a dessert and telling the bartender very blatantly that it was my birthday. That totally made my day, and made me feel like an asshole for thinking what I did at my party on Saturday. Maybe everyone in the group of 13 assumed someone else would say something. Who knows. In any case, by the time I was blowing out the candles on my desserts, I had reverted back to my optimistic approach to being thirty.

In addition to my two evening get-togethers, I had many other occasions to feel blessed. On my birthday, my boss picked up a fruit torte and gathered the office together for a mid-afternoon fête. Throughout the week I received and overwhelming number of phone calls, e-mails, packages & gifts, e-cards and greeting cards from friends and family. I had about 50 messages come into my Facebook inbox or posted to my wall. For this latter surge of birthday wishes I was pleased for entirely kooky reasons. As an admitted Facebook addict, I had set (and reached) the random goal to have four hundred Facebook friends by my birthday. I also hoped that on that day, ten percent of my friends would write to me. I don’t know why exactly. Perhaps it harkens back to the notion of feeling alone in a crowd. Maybe I just need to feel connected.

On my thirtieth birthday, I definitely felt connected. The love poured in from across the country in forms electronic, tangible and physical. I am blessed to know more than 400 people – old friends, new friends, friends who aren’t even on Facebook, and of course family – who care about me and support me. I may not have seen some of them in half a lifetime, but I think our shared experiences connect us by gossamer threads across time and place. And for that I am truly, and forever, grateful.

Chapter 4: The Other Woman

2009-04-09T18:12:00.009-04:00

James and I had hit a rough patch following (though not because of) the incident after our birthday party in April. We were fighting quite a bit, and James had begun regularly telling me that he didn’t love me anymore and that I was always mean to him. As I write this I am trying to remember what life was like at that time, but very little comes to mind. It’s almost as if my brain has blocked it out, like those people who have selective amnesia after a traumatic event.

I think I fooled myself into thinking everything would work out, because on the surface we had what seemed like an idyllic life. In December 2007 we had moved to Whitestone, a suburban-like area in Queens near La Guardia airport and Shea Stadium. James wanted to be closer to his job in Queen after a year of commuting from my Harlem apartment. Doubling my commute to an hour and a half was a sacrifice I was willing to make in exchange for the amenities of our new place. Our apartment had a backyard, and as winter turned to spring we began having regular barbeques for our friends. We would head over to the neighborhood Costco and pick up jumbo packs of Bubba Burgers. I had planted a little kitchen garden, and loved serving our guests roasted potatoes with the rosemary I grew or Caprese salad with tomatoes from my vines.

~ My Garden ~

I got a Queens Library card and started checking out books. James’ mother came to live with us for awhile before she retired and moved back to the Philippines. James would drive me to the subway on his way to work every morning and at night we’d come home and he would cook dinner. It was all so grown-up feeling, and normal and, well, suburban.

James would bring me home gifts, right up until the end, like little gnome for the garden (because I love the movie Amelie with its roaming gnome) or a pinwheel (I had once told him that when I was little my mom would let me get one at the checkout at Kmart if I had behaved on our errand). While I thought these gestures were signs that he really did love me despite his words to the contrary, maybe they were in fact to make up for the fact that his love had faded.

As much as I had been in denial as to how bad our relationship had gotten, by June I couldn’t deny it anymore. We were at a housewarming party for one of James’ friends and I admitted to the fiancé of another of James’ friends, Carlos, that things were pretty rocky. She had moved to New York from Chile to be with Carlos and was having a rough go of it. We commiserated on how tough relationships are. Later on that night, one of the party’s hosts invited me up to his bedroom to look at a sculpture he’d made. It occurred to me later that James was not at all bothered by this, whereas earlier in our relationship he would have been enraged with jealousy. It was a sign that he really just didn’t care anymore.

James and I went to Chicago to celebrate the Fourth of July with my family. As I mentioned before, he made it known while we were there that he was not happy about being there. He had wanted to stay in New York and shoot off fireworks with his friends. They had been talking about driving to Pennsylvania to get a trunk full of explosives. By mid-June they had still not made that trip, so I asked James if he wanted to come to Chicago with me. I was going either way, as I hadn’t seen my family since the wedding the prior fall. He agreed to go, and I purchased our tickets.

James told me that I “forced” him into going and that it was another example of how I never cared about what he wanted. He would also say that I never supported him. And he thought that I felt that I was smarter than him (Early in our relationship I joked to my friends that he was my arm candy because I thought he was so good looking, and he held that against me for the rest of our time together). In time I came to decide that all of his complaints stemmed from his narcissism, and I wondered if the diagnosis was accurate or just a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Thinking back to my vows to him, nothing I could say or do would be viewed as supportive. If something was amiss and I suggested a solution, he would see that as lack of support. It was a leap I did not comprehend. Why would you want to wallow in misery, when the opportunities for a solution were plentiful? For example, one Friday night I decided to stay in while James went out after his bartending shift with a couple of his guy friends. He called me from the bar to say that the money he earned that night (around $150) had been stolen out of his pocket.

My immediate reaction was to ask if he had inquired with the bartender, who was a friend of his, if anyone had turned it in. He said no.

I asked if he was sure he had taken it with him from the restaurant and was he sure he’d had it at the bar. He said yes, he definitely had it with him at the bar.

I then asked if he had retraced his steps or looked in the car to see if it just fell out of his pocket. He said no, and if it had fallen out at the bar one of “those assholes there” would have just taken it.

I asked if he wanted to file a police report. He said that wouldn’t do any good.

As I tried to help him he grew more and more frustrated and the phone call ended in an argument. I don’t know what I could have said to be more sympathetic. “Oh sorry, baby, that’s too bad” just isn’t the way I approach life. It is like the serenity prayer says:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

I guess James would have felt that losing his money was something he was powerless to do anything about, whereas I would try to do whatever it took (especially when it was a simple thing like asking the bartender a question) to try to make the situation right. James continued to be mad at me the following day until he headed off to work. Imagine how my eyes rolled when he called me from the restaurant to tell me that he had, in fact, left his money clip there the night before and the owner had set it aside for him. One phone call, as per my suggestions, would have saved him (and me!) so much agitation.

At the suggestion of a friend, I watched the YouTube video of Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture. In it, the professor says that in this world there are two kinds of people: Tiggers and Eeyores. That line hit me instantly and intensely. It is one of those observations that is just right. I realized that I am most definitely a “fun-loving Tigger” and James was pretty much a “sad-sack Eeyore.” I have come to learn about myself that I have little patience or room in my life for Eeyores. I mean we all have our days to be down in the dumps, but the people who have an overall negative approach to life are really hard for me to relate to. It is such a drain to coddle them and deal with their dramas.

And there was plenty of drama with James. When he told me he was leaving me, while standing in the same yard we’d been married in just ten months earlier, it came as a huge shock to me. Of course I asked why, and he told me that he just didn’t love me any more, and probably never really loved me in the first place. He said that I coerced him into marrying him. He told me that marriage vows are just a contract which can be broken. And he told me that he could find someone better. The last statement he later denied, saying he meant he could find someone better for him, not better than me.

Recently, a guy I was dating sent me an e-mail to break things off. As one of the reasons why, he quoted Neela from the television show ER who said, “I think there is somebody more right for both of us.” Hearing that reasoning again was really upsetting. How many Mr. Wrongs to I have to go through before the right one comes along?

In our discussions he said that he (with his Bachelor’s in Psychology) had "diagnosed" me with Borderline Personality Disorder. When I looked it up, I couldn’t help but agree. I recently asked a friend if it sounded like my personality, and he replied that it sounds like everyone. But if I do in fact fit the BPD criteria, it would make sense that I would try to make something work that is not meant to be. I have long known that I have an extreme fear of abandonment. I can even pinpoint a singular incident as either the cause of this fear or the first time the fear became actualized.

In eighth grade we took a class trip to Washington DC. In an effort to keep track of one hundred pubescent students, the chaperones said we were to remain in our hotel rooms until they came to knock on our door to take us to the tour buses. The hotel’s corridor was shaped like a T and my room was at the intersection. In the morning, the chaperones were sitting outside my door, watching for teenagers skulking the halls. My roommates and I grew a little stir crazy and asked the teachers if we could come out of our room. After being reprimanded and denied our request, we settled onto the floor for a game of cards while we waited.

Eventually we heard the teachers knocking on the doors of the rooms down each hallway. And then it grew quiet. My friends and I were generally the goody-two-shoes types, so getting yelled at by the teachers was enough to scare us straight. They said we couldn’t come out of our room until the came for us, and so we waited. And waited. Finally we heard a knock at the door and an angry looking teacher stood there ready to take us downstairs. They had realized when they did the headcount on the bus that they were missing four students.

Walking on that bus and having the teachers and students stare at me like I’d done something wrong was mortifying and confusing. Were we being punished for acting up? And even despite causing a stir, the chaperones were able to so quickly forget all about us? From then on I knew that I hated being forgotten, ignored or abandoned.

So when James told me he was leaving me, it was the worst nightmare I could imagine. He packed up most of his clothes and moved into his aunt’s basement apartment. I insisted that we do counseling. The counselor we met with first was a little to rainbows and unicorns for us, we both needed a firm straight-talker. The next session we met with a woman who was much more in-your-face. She basically told me if James wanted to leave, and his mind was made up, nothing I could do would change that. We met with her twice and were not making much progress. I tried to get James to come around so we could talk about things more. I was in so much pain and in such shock that I needed to talk to someone. I couldn’t bring myself to tell any of my family or friends so James was it. The counselor told James that by continuing to see me outside of our sessions, he was giving me false hope. I went home that night feeling really alone, depressed and pessimistic.

When I arrived home, I sorted through the mail and opened up the phone bill. The two of us were on a family plan. Sprint cell phone bills list every incoming and outgoing call, and I was shocked to see hundreds of minutes of calls to a New Jersey number (528 minutes spread over 52 calls in 16 days). The calls had started on the 24th of June and continued to the end of the billing cycle on July 10. There were many calls made while we were in Chicago, at times when James said he was talking to his father. To put it in perspective, during the entire month shown on the bill, he called me for 205 minutes, his dad for 58, his mom for 8, his brother for 41, and his son for 2.

I stared in shock at the bill with my heart racing. I knew immediately what that mysterious number implied. When he said he thought he could find someone better (with or without the “for me”), he meant he already had. After a few glasses of wine to calm my nerves and get up the courage, I dialed the number, making sure mine was blocked. It went to voicemail, and the girl on the other line identified herself as “Jacinta.”

I was confused by this because one of James’ friends had a girlfriend with the same name, but I knew her phone number had a Long Island area code. I wondered if they’d broken up, Jacinta had moved to New Jersey and changed her number, and maybe she and James were just supporting each other in their respective breakups. I have the tendency to run scenarios in my head, as in this case, to give people (guys who don’t call when they say they will for example) the benefit of the doubt. But deep down I knew this scenario was far-fetched, and the horrible truth was that he was leaving me for another woman.

It also explained why James had suddenly been so eager to get a new phone with a different provider. Our family plan was with Sprint, which had been my provider for years. James resented me for “making” him switch, and would cite it as another example of how I wouldn’t let him do what he wanted and forced him into things. We had also been fighting about how I felt I was the responsible one who paid the bills and such, and that I thought he was too much of a mama’s boy. So, in an effort to claim some independence he got a phone whose bill he would be responsible for. And one whose call log I could not see. Neat trick there – make it seem like the change is him punishing me or be high and mighty, when in reality he was just trying to cover his tracks.

I held on to this newfound kernel of knowledge for the week until our next session. As I asked James if he could explain what I saw when I opened the phone bill, I began to feel lightheaded, the room swam in front of me and my whole body seemed to vibrate. His explanation came out in a very nonchalant manner. He’d met her in Atlantic City while at Carlos’ bachelor party. He was acting as wing man for his friend Bruno and Jacinta was the friend of Bruno’s conquest. His only other explanation was that she was “nice” which I guess stood in great contrast to how mean her perceived me to be. He tried to blame Bruno and me for his actions, and my response was “Neither of us stuck your dick in some Jersey slut.” At least now I had an explanation for why he suddenly made the decision to leave.

I ended up texting Jacinta to tell her James was married (to me) and that her friend should be wary of Bruno because he is a scumbag. She replied “Ok thanks.” Over the next couple months I could see that he was spending an inordinate amount of time with her. On the EZ-Pass statement there would be tolls listed for bridges and tunnels to New Jersey, about three times a week. I also gleaned from his credit card statements that he was also filling up his car with gas from gas stations in New Jersey on a regular basis. The fact that he could jump headfirst into a new relationship and just cut me out of his life was unconscionable to me, especially since I was still reeling from the shock and seriously depressed.

After I found out about the “other woman,” I was finally able to work up the nerve to start telling people what was going on in my life. I started out telling a couple of my close girlfriends, and they were shocked. But for the longest time I couldn’t bring myself to tell my parents. They had just shelled out so much money, and worked so hard to plan, my dream wedding. And now this. My mom had even had a dream in January of 2008 in which James and I were divorcing. She called me up the next morning and asked if everything was going okay between the two of us, and I reassured her it was. Little did I know that six months later all that would change.

My parents finally found out by accident. I wanted to change my Facebook status to not show any relationship status, even though I was still technically married. It was just too painful to see his name every time I logged in. I didn’t realize that when I changed the setting, it would pop up a note on everyone’s feed saying I was no longer married. When my mom logged into her account that day, she got the shock of a lifetime. As soon as I realized what had happened, I gave them a call. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Despite the fact that my guilt and shame were subsiding in light of the whole cheating thing, I was still really upset that I couldn’t make my marriage work.

The saddest moment was when my dad told me how disappointed he was in James. He recounted that at the wedding he had told my new husband, “Take care of my little girl” and James shook his hand and replied “I will, sir, I will.” Even just writing that now is making me cry. I hate that I’ve disappointed everyone, especially all the people who came out for the wedding, bearing gifts.

In September of 2008, almost a year to the day after we were married under it, the weeping willow in my parent’s neighbor’s backyard was struck by lightning. When my mom told me I took it as a sign, and doubly so when I returned home for Christmas that year and the neighbors chose that week to have the remaining portion of the tree cut down and hauled away.

~ Sad Tree ~

The day after the tree was struck by lightning the symbolism became real, as that was the day James finally visited a lawyer to file for divorce (I only just realized this after comparing the dates of the divorce papers and the date my mom emailed me the photo. At the time James didn't know about the tree, and I didn't know he'd seen a lawyer). In the state of New York there is no uncontested divorce, so he had to choose the grounds for divorce from Abandonment, Three Consecutive Years Imprisonment, Adultery or Cruel and Inhuman Treatment. Since he was clearly the one who was cheating and leaving (and was the one of us who’d spent any time in prison), he was left with Cruel and Inhuman Treatment. Once I confirmed that him claiming I mistreated him would not come back to haunt me in any way, I signed the papers and was single once more.

I was still living in our marital abode as the lease did not expire until December. James was still paying his half of the rent (I guess he felt a lease is more binding than wedding vows). Just after the lease ended, James changed his Facebook status to “in a relationship.” I imagine he figured since his commitment to me was now officially over, he could go public with his girlfriend. When I saw the update, I also noticed that he had posted a picture of them together.

~ James & Jacinta ~

Seeing that picture, two things struck me. First, I don’t think he ever put a picture of the two of us as his profile picture. His photos would be of just himself or him with Jamie. Thinking about it, I decided that he probably didn’t think I was attractive enough to show off to the world. Yet this new girl was. This brought me to my second observation about her. She looks just like him! Narcissism is of course being like Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection. So it made perfect sense to me that James would fall for someone who could be his twin sister. I understand that the conventional wisdom is that we seek out the image of our parents in our romantic partners. However, both Jamie's mother and I look nothing like James, so who knows.

Over time he continued to post pictures of the two of them. I could tell one of them was taken at his office Christmas party, and I wonder how he explained bringing a different girl to the party when his wife had accompanied him to the company barbecue that summer. Eventually he “unfriended” me on Facebook, the EZ-Pass was returned, and his mail stopped coming to my address. It is nearly a year later and James is at last physically out of my life. It makes me a little jealous that he so seamlessly moved on to this new life while I am left to pick up the pieces.

I try not to be too jaded or cynical, but have only just begun really opening myself up to trusting someone with my heart again. And so far, that hasn’t really worked out so well for me. I have taken to heart Gloria Steinem’s words: “There are many more people trying to meet the right person than to become the right person.” Right now I need to focus on finding myself and not as much on finding my next beau. And as they say, he will probably fall into my lap when I am not looking (though truth be told, having a man on my lap right now would be just fine with me!)

If I had known back in the beginning of our relationship what I know now, I could have either A) Ended things before they turned ugly or B) Learned his triggers and how to best handle a situation with someone like him. I think choice B is overly optimistic. I have come to realize that while I am no way perfect, it was not a specific flaw in me that drove him away. It was this other thing, his narcissism, which was the third entity in our marriage, well before the other woman entered the picture.

The Nerd Through the Years

2009-04-08T15:03:00.013-04:00

I realized that the basis for my blog title has not been fully explained. Anyone who knows me knows I am a nerd girl. Heck, I went to a college that sells pocket protectors emblazoned with "Nerd Pride." My nerdiness exhibited itself over the years not only in my academic pursuits, but in fashion and lifestyle choices. Allow me to list some attributes of my nerdiness:

Glasses (contacts now)
Braces (throughout junior high)
Acne (still battling that one)
Collection of toys (Ducks instead of Star Wars figurines)
Out of shape/Bad at sports
White
Engineering major
Bookworm
Have had a website since 1996
Know some programming languages
Have a blog (obviously)
Don't dress very well (please somebody get me on What Not To Wear!)
Awkward in certain social situations

According to a "How Nerdy are You" quiz I found online:
18% scored higher (more nerdy), 1% scored the same, and 81% scored lower (less nerdy).
What does this mean? Your nerdiness is: High-Level Nerd. You are definitely MIT material, apply now!!!

Well, that seems a little redundant at this point. I guess it means I made the right choice after all! So, without further ado, I present to you a pictorial history of a true nerd's evolution.

~ Halloween at age 2 (1981) ~

~ I started off as a pretty cute kid (1981) ~

~ Why are we dressed like Pilgrims? ~

~ I sure did love my CPK. In fact, in this picture my head kinda resembles the doll's ~

~ Bliss ~

~ So not sexy. Love the uneven socks (1986?)

~ Why do I have a mullet? At least the lederhosen I can explain. (me on the right, maybe 1988?) ~

~ I sure did love earning badges (me in the middle, 1988?) ~

~ Book in hand, of course ~

~ Still playing with dolls ~

~ This one is classic. The mullet returns, add in crimping and tie it up in a side-tail with a pink satin scrunchie to complete the style. Toss on some friendship bracelets and coordinating scrunch socks and I'm ready to go. Clearly the writers of Napoleon Dynamite must have known me back then:

~ Family reunion. That's awfully frizzy hair! (I'm in the striped shirt in the front row, 1989 or 1990?) ~

~ Trapeezing. Those are pretty sweet hand gestures ~

~ My giant red glasses, sported throughout junior high and some pretty awesome elastic waistband pants and matching top (1993) ~

~ This was my "My So Called Life" phase. Note the slightly less hideous, albeit still atrocious, glasses along with the fact that I had no idea how to use a blowdrier. Throw on a cheesetastic smile and the nerd is in full effect. Poor Gramps didn't sign up for that! (1995) ~

~ I think I look like Becca Thacher in Life Goes On here. ~

~ The family that picks out outfits together stays together. Check out the clunky shoes on me! ~

~ Vintage shop t-shirt and these fugly Converse sandles I loved (1997) ~

~ Oversized sweatshirt (1997) ~

~ At this point I was a big fan of the plaid short sleeve button down. I had one in every color combination imaginable. (1998) ~

~ Again with the sweatshirt, an MIT one even! But at least the glasses are gone. (2003) ~

So there you have it folks, the nerd through the years!

Chapter 8: A Single Girl in Single Digits

2009-04-07T18:35:00.020-04:00

One of the first things on my list of changes I wanted to make in going from nerdy to thirty was to lose weight. My list was comprised of many things that I told myself I was doing for me, but in reality many of them were to try to win back the husband I felt I was losing. My weight was the one thing that my image-conscious husband would get on my case about the most. His narcissism manifested itself in such a way that as he put on weight over time, he became self-conscious. Because he was insecure about his own appearance, he made himself feel better by belittling me. Or rather, not pointing out how little I was not.

Over time, his actions became increasingly hurtful. He would pinch the roll of fat around my midsection, make comments about my inactivity, and fight me on the foods I ate. One time, I grabbed a slice of individually-wrapped American cheese from the fridge, and he flipped out. He insisted that me eating cheese on its own as a snack was the cause of my gaining weight. It disgusted him, and from that point on he would comment any time I repeated the action. Sometimes I did it just to prove the point that I didn’t care if he thought I was fat.

But in reality, I did care. I have always cared. I came into the world a healthy seven pounds fourteen ounces and started packing on the weight from there. I was always a chubby kid. Perhaps it was the Midwestern meat-and-potatoes diet or the fact that I never really played any sports as a kid that caused me to keep my baby fat well beyond my baby years. In grade school, when we had to do those presidential physical fitness tests, I generally scored in the bottom percentiles of every activity (with the exception of the “sit-and-reach,” on which I would score off the charts. I guess despite the layer of blubber that endeavored to get in the way, I was really flexible.)

~ Chubby youngster ~

I was first made aware of my weight in first grade when my mom commented that my protruding belly made me “look like I was six months pregnant.” She does not recall telling me this, but it sticks out very clearly in my mind. I remember going to school the next day and looking at all the girls’ stomachs and realized that yes, mine did in fact stick out more than theirs. As the years passed, my penchant for comparing myself to other people did not wane. In every group of friends I have had over the years, I always felt like the “fat friend,” and I hated it.

I never understood why my size 4 friends were on diets or how they could complain about gaining two pounds. I never had to unbutton my pants after a meal because once you have that much fat stuffed into your jeans, another couple pounds of food don’t really make much impact. My friends would think twice about lending me their cardigan if I was chilly because I would probably stretch it out. One night I was hanging out with Sara and a gay guy we had recently met. The two of them decided to swap jeans because the guy happened to have on women’s jeans, and the guy made a pointed comment to me about how I was too large to play along.

~ The fat friend ~

My girlfriends in the city are all very petite and while they are curvy, they are all thin. Going to the beach with them was always embarrassing. I felt like the proverbial beached whale next to a row of dainty mermaids. When I would go out with my friends, I always felt like they were the ones who would be doted on by men. I can’t say if it was because I was heavier, or simply because I was insecure about being heavier, that deterred the admiring throngs, but I often felt like I was on the sidelines.

It didn’t help that so many of my friends are knock-outs. Next to them I feel very, well, average. I have the kind of face that has people asking me all the time if they’ve met me before or telling me that I look just like their cousin. I am not so down on myself to think I am repulsive but I don’t think I am exactly “cute” or “pretty” either, and certainly not “beautiful” or “gorgeous.” I realize that Vanity Fair is not knocking down my door to do a cover for them (especially since I am so very un-photogenic: in every picture of me I have a double chin and red eye).

Despite the fact that my face looks like everybody’s cousin’s, I know what assets I have, and these are the things that have brought me attention from the opposite sex. The high arches of my feet, my shapely calves and my blue eyes have all garnered unprompted comments from male passers-by. But I have one asset that has brought me more attention than any other.

~ I think this skirt was a "Units" piece! ~

I was blessed around the age of eleven to start developing what I have to say are a fine pair of bosoms. When I was young, it was embarrassing. One year for Christmas, my aunt Crystal had made me a set of clothes that mimicked the “Units” brand of clothing (which no one but me seems to remember). It was basically a collection of separates that you could mix and match. One of the pieces was a tube top, and it was too small for me. My aunt joked that I could give it to my mom to wear. It made me feel a little awkward that my chest was quickly eclipsing my mother’s!

By the time I got to college, my chest and I had made peace. My discovery of underwire for support and slight padding to prevent the “smuggling raisins two at a time” look helped me feel more at ease with the girls. I was never uncomfortable with guys commenting on my chest (well, except for this one creepy guy on the street in Paris). Instead I kinda felt, “Well, if they are looking at my chest, maybe they can’t see down past it to my big belly.” Over time my breasts have developed magical powers: the ability to turn ass men in to boob men. I don’t know how or why, but I have heard that claim a number of times and find it quite amusing.

The attention I received from guys went a long way to improving the way I felt about my body. If I couldn’t completely love my body, at least I knew other people appreciated it. I felt resigned to the skin I was in. I mean, no amount of dieting would make my pelvis bone narrower for example. I grew content with the fact that my body was pretty well proportioned: waist smaller than hips, shapely legs, the white girl ass. I relished the fact that I could eat whatever I wanted and just enjoy food, rather than stressing about how many calories were in something. When I found a man who wanted to marry me just as I was, I thought I must have hit the jackpot.

~ Senior Year ~

I reached my heaviest point around our wedding. I had amassed over 160 pounds on my five and a half foot frame, meaning my body mass index (BMI) had edged from simply bordering to firmly in the middle of the “overweight” category on that scale. I had weighed that much once before, during my senior year of college. Between doing out drinking with friends, eating our sorority chef Mike’s delicious cooking, or gorging on multi-ethnic takeout in the newspaper office after staff meetings, my diet choices were not the best. Add to that the stress of a double major, part-time job managing the 24-hour coffeehouse, and holding offices in several extracurricular activities and well, I just ballooned. Luckily the summer after I graduated I spent the summer working in Venice, Italy.

~ In Dublin ~

The lifestyle there is such that you have to walk everywhere and most of what you eat is fresh and healthy. I dropped quite a bit of weight this summer, probably around fifteen pounds, and it stayed off until around the time I met James.

~ Muffin top ~

I didn’t really notice that I had started putting on weight at first. But the next thing I knew I wasn’t fitting into my pants anymore. Admittedly, muffin top is not the sexiest look, and James was quick to remind me of that. He had gained weight too, and again I think about our lifestyle at that time and figure it, like in college, is mostly to blame.

~ Check out the rolls! ~

After James would get off his weekend bartending shift, he and I would go out in Long Island with his friends. After a couple hours of cocktails, we would retire to the local diner or White Castle. At the diner I would regularly get what we affectionately called “Sticks-n-Sticks,” which was a giant platter of fried mozzarella sticks and zucchini sticks. We also joined a Tuesday night billiards league together, which meant another late night and more drinking. All the late nights and empty calories added up. When we weren’t going out, James enjoyed cooking for me. However, his style of cooking was often a heavily sauced stir-fry which undoubtedly was calorie-heavy.

~ Big belly ~

So by the time James blew up at me for eating a piece of cheese, I knew I weighed more than I should. I think it was just the way he approached the situation that really irked me. Rather than be supportive, he was critical. It may sound a little selfish, but if he thought I needed to lose weight so badly, why didn’t he cook healthier foods? He did try to encourage me to exercise, but usually with disastrous results.

Our one rollerblading excursion ended two blocks from home when I completely bit it on a hill. During our one jog he left me in the dust and out of motivation. The one time we played basketball, we had fun until he decided he wanted to shoot around by himself. We played tennis a few times, but as we learned with billiards, competitive sports really weren’t good for us.

So, on my birthday last year I set out to lose the excess weight I had put on. I tipped the scales that day at around 163 pounds. I didn’t have a goal in mind, but what I used to weigh, and what I would have listed on my driver’s license, was 145 pounds, so that seemed to be a good starting off point.

~ 29th Birthday Party ~

On April 8, 2008 I jumped up on the wagon. My experiment with sobriety lasted about a month. James’ friends didn’t understand why I’d suddenly turned into a teetotaler, yet still went out to the bars with them. To be honest, I didn’t trust my husband out on his own. If I had stayed in those Friday and Saturday nights knowing he was out drinking with his friends, I would have probably been on the one hand nervous for his safety and on the other hand really lonely. Don’t get me wrong, we both had our respective girls- and guys-nights out. But I am talking till six am every weekend night. I never would have seen him if I didn’t tag along.

Sober me did just fine in the bar scene, and was a welcome designated driver. And, at the end of the month when I fell back into drinking (it started with “just one”!), I had dropped about ten pounds. I felt so thrilled about it and thought I was looking better too. But James did not notice. We had an argument one night, who knows what about. He was criticizing me about some behavior of mine I brought up my plan and how I wanted to improve my, nay our, lives. James couldn’t register that I had put thought into self-improvement. And he didn’t seem to care. His lack of interest in my efforts was disheartening and I shortly thereafter abandoned my project (until now!).

However, I did meet my original goal of being svelte on my thirtieth birthday. When James told me he was leaving me, I insisted that we go to marital counseling. James had already moved out of our house and into his aunt’s basement apartment. After our counseling session one evening, I returned home and was flipping through the mail. I looked over our cell phone bill (we had a family plan) and was shocked to see hundreds of minutes worth of calls to a New Jersey number. As I quickly came to the realization that the “Jacinta” at the other end of the line was likely a woman he had met and was in fact leaving me for her.

Our next counseling session was not until a week later, and for those seven days my heart did not stop racing. I had never known what was meant by the phrase “my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest,” but that’s surely what I was feeling then. And how could I eat when just opening my eyes was too painful. That week, in the process of losing my husband and nearly losing my mind, I also lost another ten pounds.

Over the course of the next several months the weight continued to melt away. Maybe it was my bachelorette suppers of ramen noodles or maybe it was Jared’s subway diet to which I subscribed on many a lunch break. Somehow, without dieting, exercise, or even really trying, another ten pounds melted away. The same pants that had once rendered my midsection into a parody of a baked good were now literally falling off my hips. I tried to belt them, but the holes on my belts didn’t reach far enough to do any good. The bras that I had bought when I put on the weight could not be filled by my smaller chest, and hung off me, sagging and puckered as if they were the breasts of a hundred year old woman.

~ My too-big pants ~

I marveled at my new body, being able to see my ribcage when I bend just so, My stomach flatter than it’s ever been. Even when I pooch it out, I wouldn’t say I look six months pregnant. My collarbone, which I have always thought was an elegant part of my body, has come back to the surface. It makes me happy now to look at myself, and just as happy to look at the scale. The number on the scale on the morning of my thirtieth birthday was thirty-five pounds less than that on my twenty-ninth. I think the last time I weighed less that 130 pounds was in junior high.

~ 30th Birthday - feeling svelte ~

I get a kick out of shopping for clothes now because I have no idea what size I will be. Before I was usually a size 12, with the occasional 10 or 14 thrown in. Now I am a size 6, with the occasional 4 or 8 thrown in. I have never in my entire post-children’s-clothing-life owned an item of clothing that had a size with a single digit. I remember being in sixth or seventh grade and getting hand-me-downs from a neighbor girl who was probably in high school. I rummaged through that bag of clothes and found a fantastic pair of acid washed jeans. I was so upset when I realized I would not be able to zip up her size 8 jeans.

But now, a lifetime later from that awkward teenage self, I probably would be able to rock those tapered monstrosities (and I've heard they are actually in style this season – yikes!). And I hope to not only lose weight but become healthier and more fit by training for a half-marathon in September. That is one of my big goals for the spring. Right now I still don’t feel skinny per se, and I don’t feel all that different, but I feel good. If only James could see me now.

Breakup Playlist

2009-04-06T12:59:00.006-04:00

This is a list of songs that when I was going through my divorce made my life a little better. Some of them are of the “I am thinking of you and missing you.” persuasion, many of them are more in the genre of “Fuck you, you cheating jerk!" and some are just reassuring "Everything's gonna be alright." I also put some of my favorites in bold, and called out some of the lyrics that mean the most to me. As Martin Luther King, Jr. Said “My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.” I have linked the songs to their Amazon mp3 download pages, in case you want to duplicate this playlist for yourself.

So, in no particular order:

Belinda Carlisle – Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Willie Nelson - Always On My Mind

Maybe I didn't treat you
Quite as good as I should have
Maybe I didn't love you
Quite as often as I could have
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
You were always on my mind

Johnny Cash – You Are My Sunshine
Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald – Let's Call The Whole Thing Off
Nelly McKay – I Wanna Get Married
Roberta Flack – Killing Me Softly With His Song (Remastered Version)
Amy Winehouse – Wake Up Alone

It's okay in the day I'm staying busy
Tied up enough so I don't have to wonder where is he
Got so sick of crying
So just lately
When I catch myself I do a 180
I stay up clean the house
At least I'm not drinking
Run around just so I don't have to think about thinking
That silent sense of content
That everyone gets
Just disappears soon as the sun sets

Jordin Sparks – No Air duet with Chris Brown

But How
Do you expect me
To live alone with just me
Cause my world revolves around you
its so hard for me to breathe

Alanis Morisette – Hand In My Pocket

I'm broke but
I'm happy
I'm poor but I'm kind
I'm short but I'm healthy, yeah
'm high but I'm grounded
I'm sane but I'm overwhelmed
I'm lost but I'm hopeful baby
What it all
comes down to
Is that everything's gonna be fine fine fine
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is giving a high
I feel drunk
but I'm sober
I'm young and I'm underpaid
I'm tired but I'm working, yeah
I care but I'm worthless
I'm here but I'm really gone
I'm wrong and
I'm sorry baby
I'm free but
I'm focused
I'm green but I'm wise
I'm shy but I'm friendly baby
I'm sad but I'm laughing
I'm brave but I'm chicken shit
I'm sick but I'm pretty baby

Alanis Morisette - You Oughta Know

And every time
you speak her name
Does she know how you told me
You'd hold me until you died
Till you died, but you're still alive
And I'm here,
to remind you
Of the mess you left when you went away
You seem very
well, things look peaceful
I'm not quite as well, I thought you should know
Did you forget about me, Mr. Duplicity?
I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner
It was a slap in the face
How quickly I was replaced
And are you thinking of me when you fuck her?

Jewel – You Were Meant for Me

I got my eggs and my
pancakes too
I got my maple syrup, everything but you.
I break the yolks, make a smiley face
I kinda like it in my brand new place
I wipe the spots off the mirror
Don't leave the keys in the door
Never put wet towels on the floor anymore' cause
Dreams last for so long
even after you're gone

Belle & Sebastien – Family Tree
Phil Vassar – I Would

If I could take it all and
change it
Take the past and rearrange it I would, baby, yes, I would
If I could figure out the reason
Go back in time and change the season I would
Baby, yes, I would

Leona Lewis – Better In Time

It's been the
longest winter without you
I didn't know where to turn to
See somehow I can't forget you
After all that we've been through
Thought I
couldn't live without you
It's gonna hurt when it heals too
It'll all get better in time
Even though I really love you
I'm gonna smile cause I deserve to
It'll all get better in time
I couldn't
turn on the TV
Without something there to remind me
Was it all that easy
To just put aside your feelings
Since there's
no more you and me
It's time I let you go
So I can be free
And live my life how it should be
No matter how hard it is I'll be fine without you
Yes I will

Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy

You can trust
me not to drink
And not to sleep around
And if you don't expect too much form me
You might not be let down
Cos all I
really want's to be with you
And feel like I matter too
If I didn't blow the whole thing years ago
I might be here with you

Sara Bareilles – Love Song

I'm not gonna write you a
love song
'cause you tell me it's a
Make or break in this
If you're on your way
I'm not gonna write you to stay
If all you have is leaving I'm gonna need a better
Reason to write you
A love song today
Today, yeah
I learned the hard way
That they all say things you want to hear
My heavy heart sinks deep down under
You and your twisted words,
Your help just hurts
You are not what I thought you were
Hello to high and dry
Convinced me to please you
Made me think that I need this too
I'm trying to let you hear me as I am

Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten
Jason Mraz – I'm Yours
Lisa Loeb – Stay

And you say I
only hear what I want to:
I don't listen hard,
don't pay attention to the distance that you're running
to anyone, anywhere,
I don't understand if you really care,
I'm only hearing negative: no, no, no.

Everything – Time Will Heal Me

Time will heal me, time will save my soul
Time will heal me, time will make me whole

Demi Lovato – Get Back

Don’t look at me that way
I see it in your eyes
Don’t worry about me
I’ve been fine
I’m not gonna lie
I’ve been a mess
Since you left
And every time
I see you
It gets more
And more intense

Lily Allen - Fuck You [Explicit]

Look inside,
look inside your tiny mind
and look a bit harder
cause we’re so uninspired
so sick and tired
of all the hatred you harbor
do you get, do
you get a little kick out of being small-minded?
you want to be like your father
it’s approval you’re after
well that’s not how you’ll find it
do you, do you
really enjoy living a life that’s so hateful
cause there’s a hole where your soul should be
you’re losing control of it
and it’s really distasteful

Regina Spektor – Ode To Divorce (Album Version)
John Cale – Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above,
all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who out drew you
And it's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Carly Simon - You're So Vain

You had one eye in the mirror
As you watched yourself gavotte

Lily Allen – Smile [Explicit]

When you first left me I
was wanting more
But you were fucking that girl next door, what cha do that for (what cha
do that for)
When you first left me I didn't know what to say
I never been on my own that way, just sat by myself all day
I was so lost back then
But with a little help from my friends
I found a light in the tunnel at the end

Alice DeeJay – Better Off Alone
Shontelle – T-Shirt

nothing feels right when im not with you, sick of this dress and these Jimmy Choos.
taking them off cause i feel a fool, trying to dress up when im missing you.
ima step out of this lingerie, curl up in a ball with something Hanes.
in bed i lay, with nothing but your T-shirt on.
oh, with nothing but your T-shirt on.
hey, gotta be strong gotta be strong but i'm, really hurting now that you're gone.
trying to decide, trying to decide if i, really wanna go out tonight.
i couldn't even leave my apartment, i'm stripped down torn up about it.

Liz Phair – Divorce Song

And the license said you had to stick around until I was dead
But if you're tired of looking at my face, I guess I already am

Pink – So What [Explicit]

I guess I just lost my
husband
I don't know where he went
So I'm gonna drink my money
I'm not gonna pay his rent (nope)
I got a brand new attitude
And I'm gonna wear it tonight
So what!
I'm still a rock star
I got my rock moves
And I don't need you
And guess what?
I'm havin' more fun
And now that we're done
I'm gonna show you
Tonight...
I'm alright
I'm just fine
And you're a tool
You weren’t there
You never were
You want it all
But that’s not fair
I gave you life
I gave my all
You weren’t there
You let me fall

O.A.R - Shattered [Turn The Car Around]

But
I'm good without ya
Yeah, I'm good without you
Yeah, yeah, yeah
How many times can I break till I shatter?

The All American Rejects – Gives You Hell

Truth be told I miss you
Truth be told I'm lying
When you see my face
I hope it gives you hell, I hope it gives you hell
When you walk my way
I hope it gives you hell, I hope it gives you hell
If you find a man thats worth the damn and treats you well
Then he's a fool you're just as well hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell

Green Day – Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)

Another turning point, a
fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time
It's something
unpredictable, but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

Carrie Underwood – Before He Cheats

Right now, he's probably
slow dancing with a
bleached-blonde tramp
And she's probably getting frisky
Right now he's probably buying her some Fruity little drink 'cause she can't shoot whiskey
Right now, he's probably up behind her with a pool-stick showing her how
to shoot a combo
Maybe next time he'll
think before he cheats
I might've saved a little
trouble for the next girl
A 'cause the next time that he cheats
Oh, you know it won't be on me

Puddle of Mudd - She Hates Me [Explicit]
4 Non Blondes – What's Up?

And So I cry sometimes
when I'm lying in bed
JUST To get it all out what's in my head
AND I, I Am feeling a little peculiar
AND So I wake in the morning and I step
Outside AND I take deep breath
AND I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
What's goin' on
And I try, oh my God do I
try
I try all the time
In this institution
And I pray, oh my God do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution

Violent Femmes - Kiss Off

I need someone, a person
to talk to
Someone who'd care to love
I take one one one 'cause you left me
And two two two for my family
And 3 3 3 for my heartache
And 4 4 4 for my headaches
And 5 5 5 for my lonely
And 6 6 6 for my sorrow
And 7 7 7 for no tomorrow
And 8 8 8 I forget what 8 was for
And 9 9 9 for a lost god
And 10 10 10 for everything everything everything everything

Kelis - Caught Out There [Explicit]

I hate you so much right now

Beyonce - Irreplaceable

Everything you own in the
box to the left
In the closet that's my stuff, yes
If I bought it please don't touch

Justin Timberlake – What Goes Around.../...Comes Around Interlude

You know I gave you the world
You had me in the palm of your hand
So why your love went away
I just can't seem to understand
Thought it was me and you babe
Me and you until the end
But I guess I was wrong
Don't want to think about it
Don't want to talk about it
I'm just so sick about it
Can't believe it's ending this way
Just so confused about it
Feeling the blues about it
I just can't do without ya
Tell me is this fair?
Is this the way it's
really going down?
Is this how we say goodbye?
Should've known better when you came around (should've known better that
you were gonna make me cry)
That you were going to make me cry
Now it's breaking my heart to watch you run around
'Cause I know that you're living a lie
That's okay baby 'cause in time you will find
What goes around, goes
around, goes around
Comes all the way back around

Rolling Stones – You Can't Always Get What You Want
Beth Orton – Ooh Child (Alternate Version)

Ooh child things
are gonna get easier
Ooh child things will be brighter
Someday, yeah,
we'll put it together and we'll get it undone
Someday when your head is much lighter
Someday, yeah, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun
Someday when the world is much brighter

Bob Marley – Three Little Birds

"Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be alright.
Singing': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be alright!"

UB40 – Red Red Wine (12'' Version)

I have sworn every time
Thoughts of you would leave my head
I was wrong, now I've found
Just one thing makes me forget...
Red red wine
Stay close to me
Don't let me be alone
It's tearing apart
My blue blue heart

Blu Cantrell – Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops!) (Remix Radio Mix)

(Oops) There goes the dreams we used to say
(Oops) There goes the time we spent away
(Oops) There goes the love I had but you cheated on me
And that's for that now
(Oops) There goes the house we made a home
(Oops) There goes you'll never leave me alone
For all the lies you told
This is what you owe
While he was braggin'
I was comin' down the hill and just draggin'
All his pictures and his clothes in the bag and
Sold everything 'til there was just nothing left
And I paid
All the bills about a month too late
It's a shame we have to play these games
The love we had just fades away, away

Whitney Houston – It's Not Right But It's Okay
Kanye West - Heartless
Cher – If I Could Turn Back Time

If I could turn back time
If I could find a way I'd take back those words that hurt you and you'd stay
I don't know why I did the
things I did I don't know why I said the things I said
Pride's like a knife it can cut deep inside
Words are like weapons they wound sometimes.

Cher - Believe

Do you believe in life
after love
I can feel something inside me say
I really don't think you're strong enough now,
What am I supposed to do
Sit around and wait for you
Well I can't do that
And there's no turning back
I need time to move on
I need love to feel strong
'Cause I've had time to think it through
And maybe I'm too good for you, oh
Well I know that I'll get
through this
'Cause I know that I am strong
And I don't need you anymore

Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone

But Since U Been Gone
I can breathe for the first time
I'm so moving on
Yeah, yeah
Thanks to you
Now I get
What I want
Since U Been Gone

Whitesnake - Here I Go Again

Tho' I keep searching for an answer
I never seem to find what I'm looking for.
Oh Lord, I pray you give me strength to carry on
'cos I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams.
Here I go again on my own
goin' down the only road I've ever known.
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time.
Just another heart in need of rescue
waiting on love's sweet charity
an' I'm gonna hold on for the rest of my days
'cos I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams.

Bananarama – Cruel Summer

It's a cruel, (cruel,) cruel summer
Leaving me here on my own
It's a cruel, (it's a cruel,) cruel summer
Now you're gone

Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse Of The Heart
Janis Joplin - Piece Of My Heart

Didn’t I make you feel
like you were the only man —yeah!
Didn’t I give you nearly everything that a woman possibly can ?
Honey, you know I did!

J. Geils Band - Love Stinks
Air Supply - All Out Of Love
Three Days Grace - I Hate Everything About You
JoJo - Leave (Get Out)
Weird Al Yankovic - One More Minute

Well, I heard
that you're leavin',
Gonna leave me far behind,
'Cause you found a brand new lover,
You decided that I'm not your kind,
So I pulled your name out of my Rolodex,
And I tore all your pictures in two,
And I burned down the malt shop where we used to go,
Just because it reminds me of you.
That's right, you ain't gonna see me cryin'.
I'm glad that you found somebody new,
'Cause I'd rather spend eternity eating shards of broken glass,
Than spend one more minute with you.
I guess I might seem kinda bitter.
You got me feelin' down in the dumps.
'Cause I'm stranded all alone in the Gas Station of Love,
And I have to use the self-service pumps!
Oh, so honey, let me help you with that suitcase.
You ain't gonna break my heart in two.
'Cause I'd rather get a hundred thousand paper cuts on my face,
Than spend one more minute with you.
I'd rather rip out my intestines with a fork,
Than watch you going out with other men.
I'd rather slam my fingers in a door,
Again and again and again and again and again.
I'd rather have my blood sucked out by leeches,
Shove an ice pick under a toenail or two.
I'd rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with my tongue,
Than spend one more minute with you.
Yes, I'd rather jump naked on a huge pile of thumbtacks,
Or stick my nostrils together with Krazy Glue.
I'd rather dive into a swimming pool filled with double-edged razor blades,
Than spend one more minute with you.
I'd rather rip my heart right out of my rib cage with my bare hands
and then throw it on the floor and stomp on it till I die...
Than spend one more minute with you.

Sheryl Crow - My Favorite Mistake
Sheryl Crow - No One Said It Would Be Easy

No one said it would be easy
But no one said it'd be this hard

The Beatles - Yesterday
Katy Perry - Hot N Cold
Gloria Gaynor - I will survive

At first I was afraid, I was petrified!
Kept thinkin' I could never live without you by my side
But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong,
and I grew strong, and I learned how to get along.
It took all the strength I had not to fall apart,
And tryin' hard to mend the pieces of my broken heart.
And I spent oh so many nights just feelin' sorry for myself, I used to cry
But now I hold my head up high,

Eamon - Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back) (Georgie's Anthem Mix) [Explicit]

I told you, I loved you, now thats all down the drain
Ya put me through pain, I wanna let u know how I feel
Fuck what I said it dont mean shit now
Fuck the presents might as well throw em out
Fuck all those kisses, they didn't mean jack
Fuck you, you hoe, I dont want you back
Now its, over, but I do admit I'm sad.
It hurts real bad, I cant sweat that, cuz I loved a ho

Eminem - Puke [Explicit]

You're a fuckin' coke-head slut, I hope you fuckin' die
I hope you get to hell and Satan sticks a needle in your eye
I hate your fuckin' guts, you fuckin' slut, I hope you die
Di-ii-ii-ii-ii-ii-ie
But please don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter or mad
It's not that I still love you, it's not 'cause I want you back
It's just that when I think of you, it makes me wanna
Yack-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-ack
What else can I do, I haven't got a clue
Now I guess I'll just move on, I have no choice but to
But every time I think of you now, All I wanna do
Is pu-uu-uu-uu-uu-uu-uke

Pearl Jam - Better Man
Joss Stone - You Had Me
Michael Bublé - Feeling Good

Birds flying high
You know how I feel
Sun in the sky
You know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by
You know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
Stars when you shine
You know how I feel
Scent of the pine
You know how I feel
Oh freedom is mine
And I know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me

Places I've Visited

2009-04-03T15:07:00.002-04:00

Below is a map showing the places I've visited in my life

New York City, NY, USA

Chicago, IL, USA

Venice, Italy

San Francisco, CA, USA

Brussels, Belgium

Los Gatos, CA, USA

View my profile

Create your own travel map or travel blog

Travel Info at TripAdvisor

Little Things That Make Me Happy

2009-04-03T14:53:00.008-04:00

As long as I've posted my pet peeves, I may as well post those little things that make me happy. In one of my favorite movies, Amelie, they describe what the main character enjoys:

Sometimes, Amélie goes to the movies.
-I like to turn around in the dark to see the faces of the people around.
And I also like to spot the little detail nobody will ever see.
But I don't like it when the driver doesn't watch the road.
-Amélie doesn't have a boyfriend.
She tried, but it didn't live up to her expectations.
On the other hand, she enjoys all sorts of little pleasures,
putting her hand in a bag of seeds,
piercing the crust of crème brûlée
with the tip of a spoon.
And play at ducks and drakes on the Saint-Martin-canal.

I thought I would follow suit. Like Amelie, I enjoy cracking the crust of my crème brûlée. Here are some other things that make me happy. Hopefully it will grow as I am reminded of all the things that are beautiful in this world.

Tow trucks towing other tow trucks
Putting on thick dry socks after coming in out of the rain
Just making it onto the train before the doors close
The feel of cold water in my belly when I am really thirsty
Young kids who look like they should be thugs giving up their seats to ladies on the subway
The scalp massage when getting a haircut
The alley cats outside my apartment building
Randomly pulling out just the right number of items for what you are doing (like dealing cards, for example)
The feel of pussy willows
Backrubs

Pet Peeves

2009-04-03T14:50:00.004-04:00

I have a whole bunch of pet peeves, and I am wondering if writing (typing) them out will held me be less peevish. Most involve things I have observed people doing on the streets (or public transportation) of NYC. I don't know if this will make me look, but there are just so many things that bug me about the 8 million people in this town!

Litterbugs
People who don't cut the little thread "X" off the split on the back of a Coat, Jacket or Skirt.
Signs that use quotation marks "incorrectly"
People who cut their fingernails on the subway
People without any sort of obvious disability who shuffle their feet
Black people who wear white tights, and white people who wear nylons that are too tan.
Really loud, wet throat clearing.
Noisy eaters.
Saying "You know what's funny?" then proceeding to tell a story that is in no way funny.
Saying (or moreso writing), "could of," "would of" or "should of." (should be "have")
Men who sit on the train with their legs spread way too wide. I am sure it's not that big, buddy!
That horrible plastic packaging that requires a chainsaw to get into!
People who only speak in movie quotes.
Really long voicemails with an incoherant callback number at the end.
Toilet paper under the roll.
People who randomly stop in the middle of the sidewalk, walk 3 abreast, or generally having no concept of their surroundings.
People who run for the bus or run in a backpack.
When you are walking with someone, and they walk ahead of you, not noticing you lagging behind.
When I am walking in heels alongside someone and they make me walk on the sidewalk grates.
Bad tippers
Honking

Chapter 10: The Patron Saint of Baby Mamas (Part 2)

2009-04-03T14:11:00.006-04:00

In the process of moving on after the divorce, I have tried many ways to combat the sadness I associate with long, lonely evenings at home. I go to industry events with coworkers. I hang out with my core group of girlfriends, and have reconnected with several friends who had fallen out of touch. If nobody is up to hang out, I will go out to eat by myself and sit at the bar for its more convivial atmosphere. The exposure to all these people has been very helpful in suppressing the pain. However, by casting a wide net socially, I’ve invited a fair share of drama into my life. And I don’t mean just any kind of drama, I mean baby mama drama.

Urban Dictionary defines a baby mama as “The mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved.” That pretty much sums it up. I suppose as I enter into my thirties, I should be cognizant of the fact that the men (and women) who make up my peer group are increasingly liable to have children, just as they are more likely to be divorced or, say, have back problems and grey hair. So coming across the occasional baby mama should be par for the course. Except it kinda isn’t, because you can’t always see the drama coming. There is always some sort of issue to work out with these women. Some back story that hasn’t been told. But once that story is told, and once they realize I am a decent person who is not trying to step on their toes, the drama is dropped and everyone carries on like the civilized adults we all are. And in the end, there is a certain camaraderie that is felt.

Let’s take a case in point. In September 2008, shortly before my divorce was finalized, I went to an event after work with a colleague. The next day, I received a Facebook message from an old flame.

Hey
Between Owen Van Dam and You
September 9 at 8:39pm

I think I saw you in TriBeCa. I was having a beer at Anotheroom. Hope all is well

Imagine my surprise to receive such a message after three years or so of nothing. We had casually dated on and off until shortly before I got together with James. Turns out Owen worked down the block from me. I had no ill will towards the guy, so after a few volleys of Facebook banter, and sensing some sort of kismet, I offered:

Re: Hey
Between You and Owen Van Dam
September 10 at 7:08pm

Ok, this is weird. I Googled your company to see what kind of stuff you
do, and one of the first links that came up was about a bakery your company had done... The event I was going to last night was on 5th and 79th, and I walked by that bakery, stopping to peek in the window because the design was cool! Funny!I work over on Hudson, and moved to the 'burbs (Whitestone). Long story, perhaps one I could tell you over a drink sometime...

His reply read “A drink after work sounds good. And I've got a story of my own.” A story of his own? How mysterious! My thoughts jumped immediately to the possibility that he had procreated in the three years since I’d seen him last. I had to wait patiently through several cocktails before Owen spilled the beans (I hadn’t gotten up the nerve yet to share my sordid past). Turns out he had gotten a girl pregnant whom he was rather casually dating (sound familiar?), and they were having the baby together. After going over the details of how he got in that situation (well, not the details that were covered in sixth grade health class), I couldn’t help but feel a little relieved that I’d dodged that bullet when we were seeing each other.

We saw each other a couple times over the next few weeks, and our conversations revolved primarily about Owen’s impending fatherhood. He was nervous about being a dad so I filled him in on what I knew (“No one ever warns you about the pooping during childbirth”) One night we agreed to meet up to go see a show on the Lower East Side. A musician we both like, Davíd Garza, was in town from Texas for a series of performances at my favorite music venue in the city, The Living Room. Owen and I met up near our offices to walk over together. As we were walking, he casually mentioned, “By the way, Lacey is coming. I’m excited for you two to meet.” Lacey is the baby mama, and I was a little startled to know she would be there. What the heck would I have to talk about with a very, very pregnant woman whose baby daddy I used to date? And did she even know that we had dated? I wracked my brain trying to remember what Owen had told me about her, but all I could come up with was the color of her hair, her previous profession and that she was apparently fertile!

When we got to the venue, she was waiting outside. We made awkward conversation for a few minutes until the show started, and that was a bit of a relief. Afterwards, we all decided to go to dinner together. Maybe it was the couple of drinks I’d had at this point, but I felt much more relaxed by this point. As we perused the menus, Lacey and I chatted about our mutual love of macaroni and cheese and how she was a vegetarian (like me) until she developed pregnancy cravings. Our dinner conversation then turned to a discussion of the upcoming election. This topic, while sometimes one might avoid amongst new acquaintances, was actually the thing that broke the ice. It turns out Lacey, like me, is a Democrat, and the two of us took great pleasure in mocking Owen, a rare New York City Republican.

The next week, we went to the final show in the performer’s series. Lacey came again, along with some of Owen’s other friends, including the girl who had originally introduced us. We had a great time, and even had dinner at the same restaurant as the week prior. Being in a crowd like that took much of the pressure off me. Seemed like everything was going to be fine.

Owen and Lacey’s baby was born shortly thereafter. The first time I saw Owen after the baby was born was at a Halloween party. After that we saw each other a couple times, once for lunch, and I think a few quick drinks after work before he headed home to his daughter. I was happy to have him back in my life, as a friend (a point I had made abundantly clear to him). We work in the same field so having someone to talk about work stuff with was good. But generally, our conversations were still mostly about his fatherhood. One day I called Owen to see if he would be interested in doing some freelance work on the side for my company. I figured with the new baby in the house, he could use a little extra money. While we were chatting, I asked if he wanted to meet up after work. He said he could, but only for one as he had to get home. We met, chatted, and called it a night.

The next morning I was grabbing a bagel while I waited to go to a meeting with my boss. As I sat there munching away, I pulled my phone out and saw I had a voicemail. I was not prepared for what came next. The missed call showed Owen’s number, but when I listened to the voicemail it was a woman’s voice. The message was from Lacey, who had seen the texts I had exchanged with Owen the night before while coordinating when and where to meet up. She was really emotional and said that she couldn’t understand why Owen would be going out with me when he should be home with his daughter. She mistakenly assumed that one of us was “pursuing” the other, and basically told me to lay off her man.

I was not prepared for this bout of baby mama drama coming in out of left field. When I got back to the office later that day, I told Owen about the message. He was obviously upset and talked to Lacey that night. The next day he told me that she didn’t want him seeing me anymore, and Owen felt he had to respect her wishes. I asked if he wanted me to contact her, but he said it was probably best not to stir the pot. I was bummed to lose his friendship (for which would now be the third time), but felt powerless to do anything about it and certainly did not want him to get in more trouble. I knew from an experience James’ friend Bruno had that men have very little legal recourse when it comes to custody, and I did not want to jeopardize his future with his daughter.

The latent unease I felt about the situation lingered for the next couple weeks as I busied myself with my move back to Manhattan on December first. A few days later as I was getting ready for a two-week business trip to China, I decided I wanted to clear the air. Christmas and the New Year were around the corner, and I didn’t want Lacey feeling stressed and I certainly could have used a little peace of mind. I looked Lacey up on Facebook as it was the only way I could think of to reach her, and I sent her a message. I wrote out my perspective, as I’ve just described it, pressed send, and hoped for the best.

About an hour later, I received a response. Lacey said she was glad I had written, as she’d been feeling bad about making that call. She wrote, “Most of the problem wasn't that you guys were hanging out, it's just that he never told me.” This led her to be suspicious, which combined with the hormones and lack of sleep, resulted in her “snapping” the morning she found the text messages. She apologized and I hoped in time we would all be able to hang out again.

I attended a New Year’s Eve party with a guy I had met at the Halloween party that fall. The thought didn’t even occur to me that since it the same group of people hosted both parties there would be a chance Owen would be there. I saw him across the room when I first walked in, and thought, “Oh shit.” What was I supposed to do in this situation? We had not had any communication since the day after Lacey’s call, per her request, but then she had also apologized for her actions. So was I allowed to speak to him? I decided the best course of action was to pretend I didn’t see him and try to hide.

Sure enough, a short time later Owen walked by. What I didn’t expect to see was Lacey trailing behind him. I had just assumed she’d stayed home with the baby, as she did on Halloween. They came over to say hi, and we chatted for a bit. My date had become rather drunk and went running off hugging people. Owen headed out to the balcony to have a cigar with his cronies. This left Lacey and me alone amidst this raucous party. Neither of us knew many other people there, so I guess awkward conversation with each other was better than the alternative.

Lacey started off by apologizing again for the crazed voicemail. We talked for a bit about what it was like to me a new mother, especially one in her situation. As I had with Owen, I tried to lend a caring ear, and to offer perspective from my past experiences (with James, Bruno, etc.). Our conversation then went to our respective dating histories with Owen. We were each left shaking our heads over the other’s tale, but in the end had found mutual ground and a resolution to the drama. She said she didn’t mind if Owen and I restarted our friendship but that he would have to take the initiative, she was not going to encourage it. The two of them left shortly thereafter, and I went to find what had become of my suddenly affectionate date.

The next day she added me as a friend on Facebook.

Over the following months, Lacey and I traded comments on each other’s Facebook status. It’s not an easy path she is on, and I know from personal experience that a friendly “How are you doing these days?” can be a great support when you’re struggling. She and I had even planned to meet up for a cocktail one evening after she had posted her status as being, essentially, “I need a drink and some grown-up conversation!” But I had not heard a peep from Owen since New Year’s Eve.

Then out of the blue, one day in late March, I received an email from Owen that read, simply:

From: Owen Van Dam
To: Katie Jeffreys

Date: Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 11:41 PM
Subject: hey there

You up for a drink after work sometime next week?

I figured, why not? We settled on a day on which I happened to have an invitation to an industry event which meant free drinks. He called during on the day we were to meet up to confirm the time, and it was really surprising to hear his voice after all those months (compounded by the fact that I had recently gotten a new phone after losing mine, so did not have his number saved).
Our reunion was not as awkward as I thought it might be. We caught up a little, talked about our jobs, and I regaled my now homebody friend with tales of the single life. I was curious however as to what prompted him to look me up then, of all times. The answer was simple: he had hoped to come to my birthday celebration, but didn’t want to show up out of the blue and not be able to catch up because I would be distracted by all my other guests.

Lacey is not the only baby mama to enter my life since my divorce. As I said, I often go out to dine by myself now that I am single and would rather sit at the bar than a table. I learned during my solo travels around the US and Europe that a woman sitting alone will attract attention from men (and sometimes other solo women). Sometimes that attention is unwanted, but generally I find I would rather meet an interesting person that re-read the same magazine over and over. In the months following my divorce I met many people while out, young and old, professionals and journeymen, attractive and not. Most were simply a diversion while tucking into a veggie burger and a beer. Some I would give my number to with the hopes of going on a date. And fewer still I actually did see again.

One night I was at one of my favorite after-work spots, Zoë, a SoHo institution with a happy hour offering half price pizzas and half price wines at the bar. The bartender there is one of the best I’ve encountered in the city. He remembers the drink you had on your first visit when you come in for your second, and can recommend something new for you to try and enjoy. Anyhow, I was there one evening chatting with an older gentlemen who was convening with his friends at Zoë before heading off to a wine tasting. Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the gentleman’s friends, so another guy at the bar took that opportunity to strike up a conversation with me. Jeremy seemed like a pretty easy-going kind of guy who was into eco-tourism and had gone to the same hippy college as the daughter of my dad’s best friend. We chatted for awhile before I had to run off to meet a friend for a show we were seeing. As I was leaving, Jeremy asked for my number, so I scribbled it down on a napkin.

He called a few days later and we agreed to meet after work one day. I called Jeremy when I finished up with a client and he said he was eating dinner. I thought that was weird, but we picked a location to meet and would decide our plan from there. By the time we met up I was starving, so we went to a restaurant he knew of that has good vegetarian options and a happy hour special. I order my food and we each order a drink. We caught each other up on the past week or so since we’d met. When the waiter came by to ask if he could freshen up our drinks, Jeremy asked “Is it still happy hour?” I caught the look of dismay on his face when the waiter replied that happy hour was only at the bar. There had been no seats available at the bar, so I had rightly assumed we had forfeited the specials when we took a table. Besides, the beer Jeremy was drinking was already half the price of the one I’d seen him drink at Zoë. That was strike one against my new suitor.

We had met up really early in the evening, so by the time dinner was done we weren’t really sure what to do. We ended up going back to his place to hang out for a bit, which he took as an invitation to make a pass at me. While Jeremy pawed me, he kept repeating “This is so hot!” which made the whole situation so much less hot than I already thought it. He then put on some travelogue television show which I thought was a rather lame activity to introduce on a first date. So that whole scene was strike two.

Finally Jeremy suggested we go back out and have some wine. On the night we met we had discussed wine at some length, as I am a fan and his hippy college was in California wine country. After wandering the neighborhood for awhile we landed in a wine bar and shared a bottle of Viognier. He wouldn’t shut up about how delicious the wine was and what a good selection I’d made. I thought to myself that either he was a really enthusiastic person with all his “hot”s and “yum”s, or he was just really desperate and/or inexperienced. I settled on the latter and that was strike three. He was out.

A few weeks passed, and I was at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center to set up for an event my company helped sponsor. I had to pick up our things after the event, but didn’t want to go all the way home just to have to turn around and come back. So, as is my norm, I went looking for a place to hang out for a couple hours. I knew that the T.G.I. Friday’s in the city have half price appetizers during happy hour, and I am a sucker for their spinach artichoke (or as I call it “spartichoke”) dip. So I headed over to the Friday’s by Rockefeller and sat at the only empty seat at the bar. The guy sitting next to me turned around and I was shocked to see it was Jeremy!

For the two of us to have met in one neighborhood and then bump into each other in a completely different and random one was a shock. I had been avoiding his calls and texts for several weeks and now had to cover my ass. While I had zero interest in this guy he still seemed intrigued and kept reminding me how “hot” our date was. A younger, less jaded me would have thought it was fate and tried to make something come of it. But the post-divorce me was much more cynical, and this guy had already struck out. I didn’t mind the company however, as the remainder of the bar patrons looks like a rag tag bunch of old drunks, tourists and friends of the bartender.

Finally about an hour before I had to head back to the event, Jeremy decided it was time for him to go home. He had a meeting at ten the next morning, so wanted to get to bed since he had to be up early (leaving me wondering on what planet ten am is early). Before he left, I asked him to watch my things while I ran to the ladies room. Upon my return, he had his coat on and we said a quick good-bye. A few minutes after he left I thought to ask the bartender if Jeremy had paid his tab, which in fact he had not. I was left paying for not only my spartichoke dip, but his drinks and even the one that he had offered to buy me! At this point I’d lost count of the strikes against this loser.

The next day he sent me a text saying that he couldn’t see me for awhile because he had to go to Virginia. I was confused at this sudden turn of events but shrugged it off as no love lost. I thought it a bit peculiar when he sent a similarly worded message the following day. Again, I shrugged it off.

I was at my desk, about a week later, when my caller ID showed an incoming call with a “Blocked ID.” I answered, but there was silence on the other end. About an hour later, another call came in from a “Blocked ID” and again I answered.

This time a woman’s voice said, “Hi, I am sorry to bother you, but do you know someone named Jeremy?”

I had to stop and think for a second. “Did I? I have 400 friends on Facebook, how many are named Jeremy? Wait, it’s probably someone I met recently… oh yeah that freaky kid!” I told her I did and she said, “Well this is his girlfriend!” She had looked at his phone and seen the texts he sent me (again with the suspicious, snooping woman!). She interrogated me about the details of our relationship. I told her there wasn’t much of a relationship at all and that she should probably be speaking to Jeremy, not me. She thanked me and we hung up.

Another couple days passed, and I received a text message from a Virginia number. It was the girlfriend asking for more details about my time with Jeremy. I told her I didn’t really feel comfortable sharing that information, but in the end she convinced me that there was no reason not to dish. I explained how we met, the one date we’d had, and our chance encounter. I told her that we didn’t have sex and that if not for that run-in at Friday’s I hadn’t planned on seeing him again anyhow.

Over the course of our text exchange she revealed that they had been together for three years and that his parents hated her because she was not Jewish and had two children. Jeremy’s parents had brought him up to New York in an effort to break the two of them up. So once again I was smacked with the baby mama drama. Granted, these weren’t Jeremy’s children, but the story was the same. I mentioned that she must have had doubts to be looking through his phone in the first place and she admitted that he’d cheated on her once before but she forgave him his indiscretion. This time was another matter.

After hearing my side of the story, she decided to “kick him to the curb.” Turns out my intuitions about him were pretty spot-on. She described him as a cheap loser who moved in with her because he had no job and basically just wanted a Mom 2.0. I empathized with her, having been in her shoes and having recently dealt with a similar situation with Owen and Lacey. I felt bad for her kids, who had gotten to know Jeremy over the course of their relationship and would now have him abruptly yanked from their lives. I wished her luck and she thanked me for my honesty. Given that I didn’t even know her name, she and I are not Facebook friends. In fact, I never even learned Jeremy’s last name, and that’s just fine with me. After recounting this story to my girlfriends, they dubbed me “The Patron Saint of Baby Mamas,” a title I am proud to hold.

The final anecdote is about another baby mama I never actually met. In early 2009, I began dating Ramón, a guy I had known since college. In fact, he had dated a good friend of mine, Suzanne, while we were still in school. This shared history was in part what created the baby mama drama, as Suzanne told me some of the things that had gone on while the two of them were together. Before he started dating Suzanne, Ramón had gotten a girl pregnant and she had the baby. Suzanne was never sure of what his relationship was with the baby mama. She mentioned that while she was with Ramón, he would buy the baby mama gifts, and I think that made Suzanne insecure.

At the time I was seeing Ramón, it was my understanding that his daughter lived with him and the baby mama had another apartment in the same building. However Suzanne seemed to think that they all lived together, which disconcerted me. I didn’t know who in this situation I could trust: myself (clearly I have issues figuring out who to give my heart to), Suzanne (who has her own issues admittedly), or Ramón (who had probably changed in the nearly ten years since my friend dated him)?

I was able to clear all this up with him, and it turns out I had nothing to worry about. He was really doing right by his daughter and her mother, supporting them both. This support was, in my eyes, the grown-up, real-world version of the gift giving that so irked Suzanne. And I respected rather than abhorred it. I think the three of them were a happy little family, with the two parents able to lead separate lives outside of their shared parenting duties.

Ramón's relationship with his daughter was something I saw as a huge contrast to James’ relationship to his son. In fact the two of them had several similarities in addition to their children, and inasmuch had many polar differences. These were made more obvious by the fact that Ramón seemed to be doing right all the things that James was failing at. It is like those Goofus and Gallant cartoons in the old Highlights magazines. “Goofus gets a girl pregnant then only sees his son once a year. Gallant makes sure he can see his daughter every day.” Unfortunately Ramón didn’t take too kindly to these comparisons, and so because of this and a few other issues, I was unceremoniously dumped. But the whole thing left me with a new perspective on what dating life in my thirties will be like, and how one would successfully have a relationship with a single father.

Ramón one time mentioned that no woman would meet his daughter until a ring was purchased. I know some single mothers who bring men in and out of their children’s lives as if their home has a revolving front door, and I could see how that would be difficult for the child. Ramón's approach seemed a bit far in the opposite direction – and it raised a slew of questions in my mind.

What if the woman and the daughter hated each other? If Jamie were a rebellious teenager instead of a sweet six year old when I met him, maybe he would have resented me in some way.

Or for that matter what if the daughter’s mother hated the woman? If Lisa had thought I was a bad influence on her son, for example, she easily could have restricted me or even James from seeing Jamie.

And how can you know what the woman would be like as a stepmother unless you see her in action? I think when James saw me relate to Jamie, it endeared me to him in ways that just knowing me hadn’t.

So where did that leave me? Four very different situations. Four identical outcomes. Is it worth it to date a man with a child in his life, or would I be better off un-checking that box when searching those hypothetical online profiles? How would I feel if the tables were turned and someone didn’t want to date me just because I was a divorcée? And finally, what good was my status as the Patron Saint of Baby Mamas going to do me if I couldn’t hold on to and of their men?

While all this was going on, I had been speaking to my aunt Crystal about it, as she has been seeing a man with a teenage son. Crystal was recently divorced and is back out on the singles scene for the first time in thirty years. Many of her dating experiences are in unfamiliar territory. Meeting her new beau’s son was a major milestone in their burgeoning relationship, and she was nervous he wouldn’t like her. I told her there was no way the kid could not like her. Her response was, “Everyone has told me that, but that’s what I thought about my ex-husband’s children, and now they hate my guts.” Luckily the teenager did in fact like her, so much so he gave my aunt Crystal a hug good bye, which according to his father, “he never does.” Crystal's situation is made easier by the fact that I don’t think there is a baby mama in the picture with which to contend.

I have enjoyed being able to compare notes with Crystal, even if she is twice my age and was married about as long as I’ve alive. I think in my thirty short years I have learned some important life lessons, and being able to share those with my newly single aunt makes me feel hopeful for us both.

Chapter 10: The Patron Saint of Baby Mamas (part 1)

2009-04-01T16:32:00.004-04:00

When we first met, James did not tell me outright that he had a son. Maybe Sara had mentioned it once and it lodged in a corner of my mind, or maybe I just suspected, but somehow I just knew he had a child. I listed previously all the things that “on paper” probably would have prevented me from clicking through to James’ online profile. It was not any one of these things, including having a child, which would have been a potential deal-breaker; it was all of them in concert.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love kids. I babysat neighborhood children starting when I was twelve years old. I was at various points a nanny, tutor, teaching assistant, camp counselor, and mother’s helper. I love to teach kids things, color with them, pretend, get down on the ground and play, run around and be silly, everything that it is to be a kid. As a result, little kids tend to warm up to me pretty quickly. I want my own kids one day, hopefully sooner rather than later. I may be old as dirt, but for now at least, the ground is still fertile.

However, I had never dated a guy with a child (that I knew of anyhow). I suppose it might have been different if the son lived in the same town or if there were any sort of shared custody agreement. But as it was, the child lived with his mother Lisa and stepfather Erik in South Carolina. Going down to meet him for the first time was both exciting and nerve-wracking.

I have already described my reaction to meeting my first in-the-flesh baby mama (or is it momma? I never was certain). I expected her to be wary of me, as the “new her.” I also anticipated that her husband and I would somehow be friendlier, sharing a certain bond as the two outsiders to the product of their (failed) relationship. That was in no way the way things played out. Lisa recently expressed that she had pretty much the same reaction to me as I did to her. She expected me to be the “anti-her” but found the two of us eerily similar. She seemed nice and was eager to have her son’s father in his life. I didn’t get the impression that she worried about me muscling in on her territory in any way.

Erik, on the other hand, came off as a bit of a prick to James and me. During our visits he was the epitome of a military man: firm, commanding and regimented giving us rules, schedules and boundaries. When we were away, he would tell Jamie things that were a bit off-putting. For example, imagine James’ reaction when his six year old son called him from a thousand miles away saying, “My daddy says you’re not my real dad.” Well, needless to say, my husband was not a fan of the man filling his shoes.

The whole truth is that Erik was likely just trying to be a good dad: the kind who raises and emotionally supports the child, not the kind who just happens to have contributed some sperm. I imagine Erik must have worried that we would whisk this little boy away to New York, never to be seen again; that we were irresponsible and Jamie would end of hurt; that we would talk badly about Erik behind his back; or simply that having a father like James, who would come in and out of his son’s life whenever he felt like it, would somehow damage Jamie down the road.

I spent only a few weekends with the boy who I suppose was my stepson, although my husband would never let me say so. I don’t think James felt like a full-fledged father, so why should I have the right to be any sort of parent? We had two visits to South Carolina, the trip to Chicago for the wedding, and another visit to San Antonio after the military moved their family. Perhaps it was only because we would come bearing gifts, stay in a hotel, eat out at restaurants and do exciting things every day that made each visit seem magical. Jamie was spoiled for those couple of days, away from his baby sisters, singing Johnny B. Goode in the car with his dad from New York.

It was all so surreal that I had to remind myself that James and I were in charge, and to remember to feed him healthy food or make sure he used the bathroom before bed. Simple things that a full-time parent (or even a part-time nanny) would have hard-wired in their brains. While I was a little out of practice, I also didn’t feel one hundred percent comfortable telling Jamie what to do, with James, his father, right there. I didn’t want to end up being the evil stepmother! Luckily, Jamie is a good kid, and knows right from wrong. In fact, he had to instruct us that he is not allowed to have caffeinated drinks. While picking up some groceries during our Texas visit, we purchased a local red soda that we figured was just a carbonated punch. It wasn’t till after Jamie had consumed one or two of the (albeit mini-size) cans that we realized it said “contains caffeine” on the side. So despite all of our best efforts to the contrary, we managed to subvert his parents’ rules. (Sorry guys!)

My favorite memory of our time together, aside from singing Chuck Berry ad nauseam, was a spontaneous game we came up with in the hotel room one night. I was straightening up all the clothes strewn about before bed. At one point I had a t-shirt and tossed it over my arm, like a waiter in a fancy restaurant. In a snobby British accent, I asked Jamie, “Can I take your order, sir?” and the kid just cracked up. This evolved into me taking his and James’ supposed dinner orders, walking to the other side of the room to prepare the “food,” then coming back and serving the imaginary meal to my patrons, repeating back the dishes as I did so. The guys took their turns as the waiter too.

As we went on, the orders would get longer and longer, with more bizarre items. It evolved into a memory game that even I, a seasoned waitress, found challenging! We laughed so much that night, and I was pleased that our impromptu game involved imagination and education. It relieved me to see that Jamie could have as much fun with a t-shirt over his arm as a simulated napkin as he could on a roller coaster or with a video game controller in his hand.

Jamie was such a pleasure to be around that our visits always seemed too short. After those whirlwind, surreal weekends, it was back to New York City. Upon our return, James seemed to try to put his son out of his mind. They would talk on the phone maybe once a week, but Jamie was always in the middle of a video game or television show, or heading off to an activity or meal. I think this discouraged James greatly. For the Christmas of 2007, we had purchased a few gift items and a card. I had left them sitting out for my husband to mail his son, but he never did.

Looking back I realize that I really did make a concerted effort to be a good semi-step-mom. I sent out care packages, inquired after him, and encouraged our visits. Lisa told me recently that before I entered his life, there was “little to no contact” between father and son. What shocked me was that since James met that “other woman” in late June, according to Lisa, “he has made zero effort to contact Jamie.” I shouldn’t speculate that there is any correlation between me being in James’ life and the increased contact with his son, or the other woman being in his life and his lack of effort. But in a way it kinda feels good, because it means I am probably a better woman than that “other woman.” Unfortunately it is the child who suffers.

In late November, 2008, I was preparing to move from our marital home to my new apartment back in Manhattan. In the divorce papers, it reads something to the effect of “all marital possessions have already been divided.” I took this to mean that what belonged to each of us were the items located in the residences that we called our own. Yet many of James’ possessions still cluttered that wretched closet in my bedroom (talk about bad feng shui!). I had to admit a slight shiver of joy came over me when James asked for a good time to come by and pick up the remainder of his things, and my reply was that they weren’t his anymore.

In the end, my sentimental side won over. So while his coats were easy to give to charity, there were several heirlooms or collectibles that I thought James might want. So, I gave him a window to claim them before the lease was up, but he never did. One of the things I had come across was an old photo album of Jamie’s baby photos that I remember him telling me Lisa didn’t know he had. I also found an album into which I had lovingly put a bunch of loose baby photos that had been floating around. These two albums, along with the waylaid Christmas gifts, were sent to the Jamie’s mother. At that point, if James wasn’t concerned enough to make the effort to get those things back, I felt like he didn’t deserve to have them. So off they went. A few days later, that potential nemesis - the baby mama - added me as a friend on Facebook. I did not know it at the time, but I was on my way to sainthood.

A Character List

2009-04-01T16:26:00.025-04:00

A list of characters who appear in this story in alphabetical order, so I can keep their pseudonyms straight, and you can keep the characters straight! This will be updated as new people are introduced.

Bert - Crystal's ex-husband
Bruno – James’ friend from high school & a groomsman
Cammy – James’ sister-in-law, Matt’s wife
Carlos - James' high school friend
Cathy – one of my close girlfriends in New York City
Chuck - Crystal's new man
Clancy – James’ friend from the CD shop he worked at
Crystal - my recently divorced aunt
Dad - Dad
Dennis - James' best friend from high school & best man
Erik – Lisa’s husband/Jamie’s stepfather
Gram - my mom's Mom
Gramps - my mom's Dad
Grandfather - my Dad's Father
Grandmother - my Dad's Father's wife
Jacinta - the girl James started seeing as he was leaving me
Jamie – James’ son
James – my ex-husband
James - awkwardly the name of one of Crystal's suitors
Jeremy - a freak I met while out one night
Joey - my former roommate and love interest
José - James high school friend and groomsman
Katie – me!
Lacey - Owen's baby mama
Lisa – Jamie’s mother/James’ ex-girlfriend
Margaret - my college friend & sorority sister
Matt – James’ older brother
Mom - Mom
Owen - a guy I once dated who is now a friend
Ramón - my boyfriend
Sara – the hostess at a restaurant I worked at and James’ college friend, our matchmaker and one time roommate
Shelly - Dennis' girlfriend
Suzanne - my best friend from college