Madonna - Whores and the Power of Love & Sex

Like most red-headed freckled faced little girls raised in the Roman Catholic churches of the Midwest, the first discussions of my sexuality and the power it possessed happened within the church. Growing up in the shadows of Virgin Mary herself I could never aspire to such purity and grace as the woman capable of immaculate conception. The Virgin Madonna, the most divine symbol of what it means to be both a wife and mother,
constantly loomed within my deepest psyche of what those images and roles were to
represent. Like most checkered-skirt wearing Catholic school teenagers raised within
the church, it was not soon after my first “girls bathroom” conversation with Sarah
Liberman about our recent developments and impending periods, that I discovered in
the rectory lobby firsthand what that sexual power was really about. His name was
Joseph Michael, which is ironic in itself being that it happens to be the name of the man
who raised Jesus Christ as his own child without ever laying a hand on his perfect virgin
bride. But as I experienced the cold clammy pulse of juvenile hands over my barely
existent newly-forming breasts, I was old enough and aware enough to understand that
there was something...something in Joseph’s eyes..something in the way my heart was
pounding out of my chest that was incredibly...powerful. That something was our
sexuality. That something I would go on to spend days, upon months, upon years of my
life contemplating and examining. First as a wife. Second as the wife of a cheating sexaddict.
Third as a newly single divorcee entering the dating world for the first time in her
adult life. But perhaps the most important and meaningful examination has been as a
newly empowered woman who rediscovered her own sexuality and the power that it
held after many years of burying it deep below the surface. I am fascinated about the
entire subject.
Love and sex.
Undoubtedly, we live in a world of double standards in regards to sexuality among the
sexes. Even in the simplest examinations into verbs used to describe the opposite
sexes in their relational pursuits reveal this gross inequality. If a woman is in her forties;
content and successful on her own terms but without a husband she is deemed lonely,
pathetic, and desperate. One could point to Jennifer Anniston as the perfect celebrity
poster child for this phenomenon. But set her up against someone from the opposing
sex with equal power, prestige, and stature such as George Clooney for example, and
an entirely different descriptor set comes into play. Men are deemed bachelors, studs,
playboys, and free birds. They are hailed as heroes by younger men for somehow
escaping the “shackles” of the balls and chains of marriage. They are free.
There is much research and dedication on this subject; the historical back-story of how
these ideologies came to be and how the same white, male, power-hierarchies that
have worked to keep all women and minorities out of power, have simply reinforced
these double standards.
There is one question that is the perfect example of how these belief systems are still
alive and working today: Should a woman sleep with a man on the first date? First look
at the way that question is worded? Should the woman allow the man to sleep with her.
The question alone infers that the man will and would always consent and engage in the
sexual relations with a woman, where it is up to the woman alone to draw the lines and
create the boundaries in all sexual exploration. In fact, all of the dating books and
advice I encountered when re-entering the dating world were based on this philosophy.
If you give away the milk for free no man will buy the cow. Women are to demand
respect, and the only leverage they have to gain this respect happens to lie between her
legs. Women are responsible for seeking out healthy and committed relationships from
all men and for creating the rules, boundaries, and regulations that men in turn abide by
in order to gain access to the woman’s “prize possession.” The bottom line: sex equals
power: power equals commitment: commitment equals virtue and purity. Virgin
Madonna reemerges.
Two days ago I was engaged in a conversation with my best friend on this very subject.
She felt a tug of that good old fashioned Catholic guilt one morning after a especially
self-indulgent night of passion with a virtual stranger. The ever lingering question came
into play. Would this man buy the cow if she gave away the milk for free? Which brought
up even more questions. Who said it was up to the man to buy the cow anyway? In
today’s day and age; where a woman no longer needs a man to survive, where a
woman is perfectly capable, sometimes more capable of surviving and thriving on her
own, why are we still trying to get a man to buy the cow anyway? Aren’t we now just as
able to seek, find, and buy a cow of our own? If we are actually on equal playing fields,
as we would so like to believe, then why are we still buying into a belief system that was
created back when we were so virtually powerless? And yet we still feel like “sluts” when
the man doesn't buy the cow. When he doesn't abide by the gold standards that tell us
that we are being respected. That we are virtuous. That we have grace.
Must take us to dinner. Must hold our hands in public. Must call us on the way home
from work. Must get a man to do a laundry list of things most men are not really
genuinely and organically interested in in order to feel loved and respected. Must get
man to buy aka: work for the cow. But perhaps the biggest and most profound question
of all; is it better to be an owned cow than a free cow out roaming the pasture? Is it
better to be the wife or the affair? Is it better to be loved or desired?
The Madonna or the whore? And above all else....Can you ever really be both?
Like most Catholic young women graduating college and returning to my Midwestern
home town, I was ecstatic that I had found a young Catholic man of my own who so
clearly adored me and was certain to make me a proper lady. We discussed marriage
almost from the instant we met. The dating rituals looked different for me than they had
my grandmother, yet the rituals were there none the less. There were no pins and
formal dates. I had lured this particular young man into my power through my short
skirts, quick wit, and free-spirited “life of the party” nature. My love and sexuality
emerged only as it can within youth; without much thought or intellectual regard. We
would go on to follow all of the virtuous norms. We were married in the church. Followed
by first dances with our parents and then with each other. We built a small starter home
where we first dreamed of becoming a family. We grew from children to adults and from
free spirits to responsible citizens. With each passing day and month and year came
more pressure, more responsibility, more reality. As the reality of our life set in and
overshadowed our fantasies of love and passion, the light of the passion between us
seemed to blow out over night. I woke up one morning surrounded by two dogs, two
children, two cars, and one hefty mortgage and found myself deeply reminiscing about a
time when I wasn’t falling asleep and waking up daily to my husbands back. When I
didn’t feel so invisible. When I felt more like a woman.
The sex three times a week turned to once a week. The once a week turned to every
two weeks. The every two weeks turned into once a month. Like so many strong,
successful, driven, and ambitious married women, I found myself alienating my husband
out of my passion zone. I, like all woman, yearned for nothing more than being swept off
of my feet, thrown against a wall, and dominated in every since of the word. But the
more I grew into a woman, the more powerful I grew, the less manly the less needed the
less dominating a man my husband found himself able to be. We were locked in a
choke hold. Life simply took over, and I found myself asking my husband to pass the
ketchup much more often then I found myself asking my husband to take his clothes off.
After hundreds of dollars in marital counseling and dozens of sleepless nights, harsh
words, and tears, we were no closer to understanding how two people who were so
close in so many aspects of life and who loved each other on so many levels were so
incapable of reaching out and touching one another. So night, after night, after night, I
found myself drowning in a sea of numb; wanting desperately to feel the fire of passion
in my heart and on my skin, but clinging more desperately to the comfort and love that
marriage provided. With every year that passed, so my sexuality settled deeper and
deeper into my sub-consciousness. I threw parties, filled out school forms, arranged
flowers, and complied grocery lists. I gained twenty pounds. I turned in my skirts for
sweat pants. I turned in my dreams for the dreams of my children. I woke up one day to
realize that I had become the wife and the mother that I swore I would rather die than
ever become. I had become the cliche - the martyr mother. Virgin Mary reemerges. It
happens every day.
So imagine the hurt and shock that followed the revelation that while I was sleeping
alone in the absence such passion, my husband had been seeking out such emotions
elsewhere. Imagine the feelings of confusion and betrayal when I came to learn that
there were so many lust inducing images available courtesy the internet and that a
certain affection for such images has become somewhat of a pandemic amongst the
males of my generation, including my own husband. I am the child of a grandfather who
likely owned a few pin up magazines and could likely count the number of nude women
he had been so lucky to catch sight of on one hand. My father grew up in the playboy
era where glossy magazines ruled and playmates were a far fantasy from your
everyday life and from your living room. But in today’s day and age, where the internet
has no end, where HBO and Showtime’s most popular programming offer nightly N
ratings displaying countless images of silicone enhanced specimens, there is really no
end in sight for a mans desire and for the line we have failed to draw between reality
and fantasy. I myself, have seen hundreds of virtually perfect women within my favorite
programming alone. It seems there are no boundaries when it comes to sex anymore.
All is fair game. So it is no surprise that so many men have become incapable of
monogamy and that my husband too, found himself in the middle of an infidelity crisis.
After the revelation of my husbands affairs and indiscretions came dozens and dozens
of confessions from wives who, like me, are desperately attempting to break free of the
conventions that hold them hostage to these old family values and constructs while the
world around them has so drastically shifted.
Almost every married woman I know had confessed to me within a matter of months of
my own marital ending their similar needs to feel desired and wanted and their failure to
compete with the fantasies so perfectly packaged via the internet. Their husbands are
all off in their “man caves” secretly beating-off to free internet porn while the generation
Y wives are bleeding inside to be bent over the back of the couch and ravished for who
they are all on their own in the absence of their roles as mothers or corporate attorneys
or caretakers. Today, we are not only expected to be the woman, the wife, the virgin, the
Madonna, we are also expected to keep up with our husbands fiscally and domestically
all while competing against some crazy sexual standard that can only be upheld in the
absence of such responsibility. Simply put: you cant be a size two while procreating, you
cant compete with the 21 year old in the itty bitty skirt (that was you only six years ago)
while trying to live in the image of the Virgin you have so come to idealize....
You can’t be the Madonna and the whore all at once.
And yet that is the standard.
It is two weeks post my marriage’s official ending and I am sitting in a bar with three
soul sisters who have made it their entire Wednesday night’s mission to get me over my
ex and on top of someone else as soon as possible. Imagine then, just how intimidating
that mission is, when I could count how many romantic partners I have had up to this
point all on one hand. All five of those fingers being long, virtuous, and monogamous
relationships with boys and men I loved and who loved me in return. But this mission
was not about love. I was an expert on love. Loving selflessly and unconditionally is
essentially what being wife and mother is all about. This evening was about something
else all together. We are surveying the patrons through a good game of kill, fuck, marry
when a very tall, dark, gentleman enters the bar.
He was the very first yes of the evening.
He would be the first man whose lips would grace mine in over six years. This was the
man who would go on to remind me of who I was before I was the wife, the mother, and
the caretaker; and who would walk me down the road of leaving those roles, the only
roles I had known for many years, behind me as I desperately attempted to bridge the
gaps between that woman and some deeply passionate and authentic version of myself
that was reemerging overnight. In the escape from reality that was his bed and his
arms, I found that in the absence of bills and children there was still a young woman
inside of me that was longing, if nothing else, to be adored and desired and who had
thoughts, dreams, and needs of her own that had been lost somewhere in life’s shuffle.
In the aftermath of the pain and the harsh reality where true love ended and fairy tales
crashed, there was a tremendous pull to be free of that shuffle. I wanted out of the
conformity and yet I was absolutely terrified of letting go. I turned away from the Virgin
Madonna and all her selfless virtue and dove into all the self-indulgent escapes of
infatuation. We would stay up until the sun rose and lay in bed, bodies entangled, until
the middle of the afternoon. We would drink, smoke, and fuck in excess and come to
tears while listening to music together. We would exchange books and music and
stories of our pasts. I fought him incessantly as I attempted to push him, kicking and
screaming, into the role and hole that my failed marriage had left. He would teach me
the hard way; in the most brutally heart-breaking and dream-shattering ways possible,
how to let go of all the control that conventions and fairy tales provided. I would grow to
love and hate and detest and desire this man all at once. It was a horribly ugly thing to
watch as I was forced to release the white knuckled grasp I held onto the ways that
things “should be,” and accept that my life may never again look anything like the white
picket fence love story I had dreamed of since I was a little girl. I couldn’t just exchange
out the men in my life and end up with my happily ever after as much as I tried to.
But somehow at the end of five intense and volatile months something rather
miraculous happened….I let go. I freed myself of the rules, regulations, and
expectations that only I was imposing on myself. I gave myself permission to stop
worrying about what “should” happen and what was expected of me, and started
focusing on growing as an individual and making myself happy. I became my “own cow”
so to speak. Focusing on ourselves is not something we are taught as women to do
very well. I went back to college to get my masters and devoured books daily. I woke up
every morning and ran as fast and as long as I could with the sun shining down on my
face and my favorite music pulsing in my ear. I spent the afternoons playing the role of
domestic goddess and single mother to my young child. I spent my free evenings
indulging in smoke filled bars, vodka-sodas, and the company of men. I learned to love
them for who they were and all the gifts they gave me. I built a life for myself in the
absence of a husband or significant other in my life. I learned to take from men the way
they have always taken from women; selfishly and without demand or expectation. I
accepted that I am an immensely conflicted woman in the middle of a total identity crisis
where the two paradoxical ideologies within me are in complete opposition with one
another. I decided to stop apologizing for either side or attempting to marry the two into
some water-downed compromise of myself…these two sides…the virgin and the
whore…are what make me so incredibly complex and fascinating as a woman. They are
both the most authentic versions of myself.
Which brings us back to the power of love and sex. Will I ever find a love that is
capable of both lust and love, passion and security, virtue and total honesty?
That is yet to be concluded and reconciled. I have yet to live it myself or witness it in its
truest and most authentic forms co-existing simultaneously within in a relationship. The
priority you will place on both of those ideals is certain to change over the course of an
entire lifetime based on where you stand in your life and what you have lived with or
without. As a woman who feels lucky enough to have experienced the absolute
extremes of both sides of that equation, I still hold onto the dream and belief in
monogamy. I refuse to close the door on the possibility that the man who is capable of
bringing both to my life is right around the corner. But if I ever come to find that it does
not exist, or if I am ever faced again with the decision to choose one or the other in
order to have a committed and monogamous lifelong relationship with another person, I
know enough about myself now to know that I could never live with just one again.
I would never want to live an entire lifetime tied to the awareness that something as
deeply and profoundly powerful as sex and chemistry was missing from my life. I would
also never want to spend an entire lifetime chasing some passionate love affair while
compromising the deep intimacies that only real unconditional love and commitment can
provide.
In today’s modern love, with all of the independence and freedom that the money and
technology has provided, we are given choices and options that were not available to
our grandmothers The same empowerment of women that has lead to the demasculinity
of men has also worked to create options for women that were once only
afforded to men. “And they lived happily ever after..” is no longer our only route to
happiness. We can, if we chose to let go of the expectation of what marriage and family
is supposed to look like, live a unconventional lifestyle that is filled with just as much
love and passion as the former option. We can choose not to settle, but instead to learn,
grow, and experience as much as we can from whatever and whomever comes into our
lives. We can embrace what is in our lives at the moment and release ourselves from
the expectations that corrupt our ability to appreciate what is. We can find outlets for
ourselves that inspire our greatness, that nurture our souls, that evoke our passions,
and that provide us with security and stability. We can release ourselves from the guilt
we feel when those things come from more than one place or man or when those things
are in conflict with convention.
We can find happiness without needing to use our “prized possession” as leverage to
gain control in order to build false realities that we are safe and secure from infidelity…
from divorce….from ending up alone. We can learn that its not a ring, or a piece of
paper, or a mans ability to follow orders that procures that he will stand by your side
forever; but instead our own development of self-worth. We can embrace our sexual
power and not use it to control others or gain love but to bring pleasure and further self
awareness to ourselves as women. We can then look around from atop our selfdeveloped
mountain and ask who is worthy and deserving of our selfless adoration?
And that answer may simply be ourselves.

In Learning How To Be Single

I Must Learn How To.....

1. Sleep alone.
2. Stop falling in love (must learn the art of dating - just dating ASAP!)
3. Pay my bills on time.
4. Get the licence plates renewed (sadly I never learned to do this.)
5. Overcome my fear of spiders.
6. Sleep alone.
7. Take a vacation alllll on my own.
8. Play the fricking video games if my son is to ever respect me
9. Throw the ball to Slugger
10. Sleep alone.
11. Sit in my own skin
12. Forgive myself
13. Face the three headed ALONE monster
14. Sleep alone.
15. Become completely financially independent
16. Take care of myself and my needs
17. Put ME First
18. Become a whole person (all on my own this time)
19. Enjoy my own company
20. Heal.

The journey continues....

Living My Truth?

I want to live my truth...

If only I knew what it was...

During the fall of B - B and I decided we should go away to Palm Desert to visit his sister and her husband and their new baby.

Imagine for a moment that I am sitting at a dinner table next to B surrounded by married couples and their children. We are discussing ADOPTION. DIVORCE. MARRIAGE. All things these Martians and I have in common.

I am home at this table while B is completely checking out of the conversation - he has no interest in these these topics - he has zero interest in being a "we."

The topics bounce around the table....

"We" went to the park. "We" are practicing attachment parenting. "We" are considering adoption as well.

Like sliding back into an old routine or your old lovers arms - sitting in this land of COUPLEDOM - I am reminded of a Christina I once was.

I begin to feel emotions creep inside of me and remind me of a peace that I had lost somewhere. It was the same peace I felt one Sunday afternoon almost three years earlier when the Good Guy woke up to make pancakes and bacon and vacuum the house with Slugger. He let me sleep in and I sat in bed reading with the windows open and the breeze pouring in. This is peace. This is my truth I had thought to myself.

Back at the dinner table the Martians begin taking turns detailing the sappy proverbial love stories of each couple's meeting. One meeting through friends. Another at a bar. Each couple outlining their own personal well fated luck.

After all had bounced their stories back and forth across the table - the ball got thrown to B and I to catch.

So how did the two of you meet?

I turn to look at B to begin the story - all things considered - its a damn good meeting story - and as I mentioned before - I am a great storyteller. I am proud of the story, and I am happy to tell it. I am happy playing the couple-game and proud of what we have and what we are. I've played this game before - Ive lived this game before.

I am scanning his face for some kind of recognition of those same feelings. I am looking for some revelation of pride within him and wondering what emotions he will emit through his telling of the "story of us"

But there is nothing.

His leg is shaking as he begins...

I was at a bar one night...

We (I interject) were both at this little restaurant in...

He continues on...

I am there with three friends....she gets my keys....etc. etc. etc.

But he is cutting out the sweet pieces - the little spoon and big spoon references. He is including the not at all romantic pieces - my best friend asking him if he likes anal sex (something Martians would never throw on the table - and certainly not while playing the couple-game). He goes into his usual aside about how much he vowed to neeevvvvver date a blonde (* A story involving us that he is proud of) just for fun. His alien antennas have surfaced and I am getting those familiar glances I have grown to know very well....


Like the time we were at a meeting for the non-profit we built together (where everyone only knew us as a couple) and B exclaims proudly, "I am moving to a studio efficiency apartment - at least that will keep the bitches away..." - I think the committee was confused to say the least. Or the afternoon when a mutual friend came to pick us up from B's house and B informed him that "he" was coming and that "he" will be downstairs. Imagine the confusion when two of us walk outside to get in the car.

B was an Alien at heart - he was a "one" - and he was not going to the land of COUPLEDOM anytime soon. I was welcome to join him in SINGLEDOM because he loved my company there. He had never as much as whispered a promise otherwise. He had layed that out on the table as clear as day from day one - but in this moment - for the first time in over a year - this fact was painstakingly clear - painstakingly.

Maybe that was because in this moment and at this table I was happy in the land of COUPLEDOM. I loved the children and the dinners. The teamwork and the calmness. The warm comfortable feeling it was giving me. I was recalling the memories of living there - times I was really happy.

I want to be a "we" - I am really an Alien at heart - and that is my truth - I thought to myself.

BUT WAS THAT TRUE?

These thoughts had been surfacing every now and again since my rock bottom. Up until my rock bottom this train of thinking had disappeared all together. After D-Day there was absolutely zero part of me that wanted anything to do with marriage, babies, settling down, or COUPLEDOM. I wanted to navigate the Land of SINGLEDOM for an indefinite amount of time - quite possibly forever.

Rewind two years.....

Imagine for a moment that I am sitting at the kitchen table with the "nice guy" sobbing. I am wearing my old jogging pants and his blue stained t-shirt. The kitchen sink is filled with dishes and there are toys everywhere. There are magnets on the refrigerator holding up Sluggers paintings. Our two dogs are sprawled out on the back patio baking in the sun. There are framed photos of our family scattered all around the living room - the "nice guy" and I on our wedding day - slugger digging sandcastles on the beach - we had created beautiful photos. It is the American Dream personified .....and everything I thought I always wanted.

....and in this moment I am drowning.

From the outside looking in I am handling all of this perfectly - and maybe part of the addiction to it all was the reflection of myself I could see in others eyes . I seemed to have it all together - the "perfect" Christmas card, the "perfect" birthday dinners, the "perfect" picture of what we were supposed to look like. I suppose somewhere along the line I decided that if I could control my envirment and if I could create a fortress of security around me that I could be safe this time. I could avoid the pain. I was willing to sacrifice passion for stability, personal growth for companionship, myself to become a we. I had made the compromises consciously in an effort to find happiness...

....And I had never been happier.

......And never been more miserable at the same time.

I would wake in the middle of the night in the middle of a panic attack. I was jumping from doctor to doctor trying to figure out why my stomach was in sooo much pain (a sudden onset of Crones Disease) and why I was allllways sick. I gained weight in places I didn't even know my body could gain weight. Sometimes on Saturday morning I would wake up crying - my body was literally aching because I was longing for something. Something was missing......

ME.

I had lost myself somehow. Somewhere between the wedding and moving to suburbia and becoming a mom and focusing so much on taking care of everyone else - I couldn't even hear my voice anymore.

"I feel like something inside of me has died."

....back at the table I am sharing some of these feelings with the good guy.

"I feel like I was this person who had these big dreams for herself. I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to live in other cities. I want to write. I want some space and some freedom. I wanted to be something and do something in this lifetime. It just feels like all of that is gone and I feel like I am dead. "

Fast forward one year.

Imagine for a moment that I am sitting on the edge of the large fountain in the middle of the city park at 11:00 pm on a Sunday. I am splashing my feet in the water as I drink a beer from the cooler I have brought with me. It has been years since I have been out past 10pm on a Sunday. The good guy had aways been a morning person - he was usually asleep before I was even settling in for the evening. But I no longer lived with the "good guy." In fact I no longer lived with anyone other than Slugger a few days out of the week. I was alone and I was free to do whatever I wanted. Maybe I will go back to school. Maybe I will finally write that book. Maybe I will start running again. Maybe I will.....the possibilities were endless and I felt the blood rush through my veins with the thought of it...

I picked up the phone and sent a quick text to B - the boy I had met a few weeks prior...

"Its so crazy that life starts over." - and I smiled with that thought.

"I was not yet done finding myself - now I get to do that." - That is my truth I thought to myself.

And there were a LOT of these moments. The day I moved out of the four bedroom family home in suburban hell and into my two family flat in the chic metropolitan heart of the city. I had thought to myself - this is my truth. The day I registered for classes to begin my masters and walked through the college campus bustling with students I thought to myself - this is my truth. The days B and I would sit in a cafe and drink wine and nibble on food and talk for hours upon hours and then go home and fall into each others arms this is my truth I would think to myself.

So which truth is it?Am I a Martian or an Alien? A One or a Two? What the hell do I want and why am I so confused again? Is it possible to be both?

Strength Training

It is 5:45 when I throw my phone across the bed onto the floor. The damn alarm is killing me. I peel myself off of the covers and across the bedroom floor to the lightswitch.

I have not been up before 7am in years....literally….years. It has been months since I have stepped foot inside a gym.

Twenty five minutes later I stumble to my car in the semi-darkness of daybreak and drive across town to the gym. I find the spinning room and immediately begin to look for the bike closest to the door (in case I begin to die) and furthest in the back (because Mr. Fit adjusting his bike in row three does not need to see me drenched in sweat from the rear view).

After thirty minutes of painstakingly difficult bike riding in the dark and steamy spinning room and I can feel these deepseeded emotions begin to pour from me with the sweat that has left me soaked. In that moment I didn’t know whether or not I wanted to laugh or I wanted to cry but somewhere inside of myself I could hear the smallest voice begin to get louder…

You are finally starting to work it out...
This is how you get stronger…

Pretty Woman

Yes ladies....

We all love this movie.

You know - the one where the fabulously attractive Julia Roberts is broke and overwhelmed and forced to work the streets. That is until meeting the devilishly handsome salt-and-pepper haired Richard Gere - the knight in shining armor who sweeps her off her feet. In this fairy tale - like most fairytales - it is a man that comes out of nowhere - lavishing our heroine with his undying affection and and strings of diamonds in velvet boxes (oh yes we do not forget the diamonds) to save her.

Yeeessss - Pretty Woman pretty much sums up what ever woman has been brainwashed to dream of since age 6.

So imagine my surprise when out-of-the-blue one random Tuesday I receive an e-mail on facebook from a tall and handsome older gentleman complimenting me and asking if he could take me out.

"I heard you were in a relationship, but if you ever were not.
I would love to be on that list.

We'll call this man "Perfect Paper Pete".

We all know one of them. That guy that is PEERRRFFEECCTT on paper.

He totally fit the bill...

Perfect Paper Pete: Handsome, wildly devoted single father of two, independently wealthy - like seriously independently wealthy - pursuing me with the enthusiasm of a toddler on Christmas.

He climbs mountains for Christ sake - literally - climbs mountains - for fun.

He bought my favorite wine, took me to brunch, lavished me with complements, and texted long emotional prose detailing his feelings for me. After our second date he took me back to his PERFECT penthouse suite in the most beautiful building in the city to watch the most romantic movie of all time cuddled up under a blanket.

Only days after meeting this man he threw out the offer - the pretty woman offer I have been wanting to hear my entire life...

"I feel like I came into your life to take care of you."

After falling asleep on the couch and waking to him tucking me in (in the most respectful and gentlemanly way) for the night I did not wake again until the next morning as he was leaving for working and bestowing onto me his keys to the castle so to speak.

"Sleep in, take a bath, watch a movie" - he said.

...And you better believe I took him up on it.

Nose deep into a bubble-filled jacuzzi tub I exhaled the longest, deepest breath and felt (and could almost hear) my heart finally push off of the floor on the bottom of my grief. I had hit rock bottom and was on my way back.

It was the very first tiny glimpse of light at the end of a very dark and dreary winter-long tunnel. I could feel the knot of anxiety that had been throbbing in the bottom of my stomach for weeks begin to release. Exhale. Exhale. Exhale.

Before leaving I left a note on Perfect Paper Pete's Bathroom counter that read...

Thank you so much for taking care of me. You will never really understand how much this was exactly what I needed. You are an angel.

And that was the last time I would ever see Perfect Paper Pete....his beautiful open heart deserved someone with a heart to give - not someone whose was scattered in a million pieces on the floor.

And my heart and my head was a thousand miles away - and there was not as much as a crack in the door to let him in.

Bottoms Up

Its hard to imagine in this moment how I had ever convinced myself six months post D Day that I was really ok.

Three months post D Day, still riding the waves of infatuation and the thrill of new found freedom, I could remember my good friend looking at me dead in the eyes and saying with absolute certainty that it was going to get much much harder before it would ever start to get better. And in that moment I thought I would prove her wrong. In that moment I thought I had the worse behind me. I believed that if I could just run as hard and fast as I could away from the life I had lead before that it would simply stay put behind me - a small speck in the rear view mirror I only had to acknowledge when I chose to turn around.

But almost exactly one year post D Day...the engine somewhere inside myself shut down.

I could not run anymore.

I was EXHAUSTED....

I was....

Broken.
Lost.
Misguided.
Terrified.
Aching.
Alone.
Done.

The straw that broke the backbone of my spirit happened to come in the form of my bipolar mothers' first manic episode in six years.

Now there is so much that can be said on this topic. So much paradoxical back history - so many vulnerable wounds left behind - so many beautiful complex stories that need a proper voice - and so much more compassion and awareness that is needed for the individuals that suffer through the absolute brutal hell of that disease. To even skim the surface that story would require a completely separate blog. It is a story all on its own, a story that I hope to give the time and energy to someday.

But in the context of my journey and this story - and in the interest of protecting my mothers privacy - I will just say that watching someone you love - especially someone as profoundly important as your mother - navigate through a manic episode is without a doubt one of the most painstakingly brutal experience one can have in life.

Even in my life's most grounded and stable enviorments, this experience was and is enough to unravel me into a puddle of panic, anxiety, and neediness. But as I stood in the middle of the tsunami that was my life for the past year, without as much as a single two by four below me to stand on, I simply sunk lower, lower, and lower - and before I knew it I was no longer running, no longer walking, no longer standing.

I found myself on my knees - literally - begging and pleading B to not walk out the door.

There was nothing attractive about the reflection of myself I saw in his eyes that morning - I was meek, needy, desperate, and clinging. Clinging to a man whose own person hell was being played out right before his eyes. A man who had spent years of his life feeling so responsible for so many people's emotions he had decided sometime in the years before me that he would prefer to be an island than than live with the guilt that came with the pressure of someone needing him.

In a drunken haze I had shown up at his house the night before in a rambling tirade of anger and blame. I was already knee deep in the quick sand of the emotional sinking and I was furious that after all of the lasagnas, love letters, and promises he was not able to pull me out. He left me alone in it. He was waging his own wars on his own battlefields - dying grandmothers, family crisis, and complex business decisions. He someone to pull him out - or at least someone who would leave him alone in it - what he didn't need was dead weight. I thought if we could hold onto one another we could get out of it together. Instead we just sunk faster - at warp speed we were sinking - drowning - in the sand of it all.

I am fairly certain that Cosmo would say shouting out "PLEASE DONT LEAVE ME" is pretty much a sure fire way to get someone to walk out the door.

And as much as a voice inside of me said you are so much stronger than this and have some self respect and find that bone inside of your back to get up off of this floor, stop your sobbing and go home - There was a much louder voice inside my head screaming I dont have anywhere to go - and please dear God dont make me sit in this alone. Please someone just pick me up, hold me and take care of me. I cant do it anymore.

And within three hours - after the sobbing, pleading, a canceled road trip, and what was certainly the most emotional exhausting conversation I have ever had in my life - I walked out the door of B's apartment and went back to my empty apartment to finally face it.

It is amazing how much you can hate yourself.

This was my very first trip down the road of insecurity.

I sat in the kitchen as the sun was setting, chain smoking Parliament Lights and desperately struggling to pull out something about myself I loved to rest my heart upon. Instead I just beat myself into the ground...

What do you want with your life? You dont have a job you love. You totally fucked up your marriage. You have been a horrible horrible mother. You have driven away the one you love with your emotional baggage. You haven't been there for anyone this past year because you are an endless hole of need. You are unlovable. You are alone. You are alone. You are ALONE.

And finally I went there.....

As I sat shaking frail and broken I was staring the three headed monster in the eyes.

This time I wasn't running.

The voice was screaming....

FEEL IT CHRISTINA.

The Land Of B

I lost entire months in the Land of B.

The landscape of the Land of B consisted mostly of a large white room with tan curtains and white sheets. In the Land of B days fell into nights and I lost track of hours - lost track of days - lost track of time all together.

In that bed lay a four legged, four armed, two bleeding-heart creature.

B and I's limbs intertwined - conversations that started with talk of music or relationships that took asides into loves history and heartbreak - it was difficult to decipher where he ended and I began. Lips - breath - bodies - emotions - energy - exchanging back and forth as the hours slipped by with little but whispers, fights, laughter, and tears to show for it.

Intimacy at it's finest.

Soul Mates

Passion

A million tears I shed upon those pillows. My heart opened and out poured every detail of myself at age 7, every memory of my college sweetheart, every fear and insecurity I had ever had. We both are great story tellers - and never were there two people with more complex and polarizing stories than ours.

It was..

Heavy

Deep

Intense

It was like having the music turned up on full blast on your life.

And with that comes the most profound INTIMACY

An intimacy that was the byproduct of the tremendous amount of baggage we both carried. An intimacy that made you feel ALIVE. An intimacy that brought out the very best - and very worst FIRE within you.

That kind of passion is a double edged sword.

With the LOVE comes the HATE.

It was not peace like an old pair of blue jeans - it was not simple - like the marriage I had just walked away from - it was not easy - like so many say a relationship should be. It was incredible, and life-changing, and LOVE - but it was certainly not easy....

But the real frightening question was...

Could I survive it?

Rebounding

"The fastest way to get over your ex is to get on top of someone else"

- My best friends divorce advice for me

There is nothing like sex - lots and lots and lots of sex - to move you forward from a broken relationship.

I would love to say that I spent the months following the end of my marriage eating organic homemade cooking, working with a therapist through my emotional baggage and taking Yoga retreats.

Nope.

That is not really what the months following my divorce looked like...

Let me preface what I am about to say with one VERY important DISCLAIMER:

Being a single mom is quite possibly the most difficult thing in the world to do. And I thank God every day that I had a love for my son that grounded me enough that I was able to pull it all together when he was with me. And I thank God every day I had the ridiculous amount of family support / worlds best ex- husband to love him when we was away from me - and that I had that time and freedom away from him so that I could fall apart. I don't know how any single parent without a serious support system does it - I am in awe of all of those who do it everyday.

After sharing six years of my life, my body, and my lips with only one person - I knew very very little about dating or breakups, and I certainly knew nothing about divorce. I had been advised by the women in my life that the best plan of action in getting over my failed marriage was to find someone to REBOUND with.

The cute Boy from the Bar with the business card - the who put out the offer of spooning - seemed as good of a candidate as anyone to help me with my BIG plan.

Little did I know, or could I have known then, just what I was getting myself into. It is Wednesday night and I pick up my phone to send out the very first sext of my life.

Text messaging didn't even exist the last time I was single.

"Big Spoon its little spoon
... Going out tonight?"

Less than six hours after that initial text and I am lying on a couch in a strange apartment with this strange boy whom I met less than one week ago.

It has been over five years since I have as much as felt another mans lips against mine.

After looking down the barrel of forever and truly experiencing what it is like to commit to never again experiencing a first kiss - there is nothing more awakening than the moment before that option presents itself again. My heart is racing at the thought of it. I am going to kiss this man. I am allowed to kiss this man. Beat. Beat. Beat.

He is in his bedroom pulling a t-shirt and pants out of a drawer for me to sleep in. He walks back into the room as I have sprawled myself out over his couch.

" Come Here " - I usher him into me.

Without as much as a word he walks over to me, kneels on the floor next to the couch and kisses me. His lips taste foreign. His rhythms and his touches feel alien.

Argh I cant do this.

This person was not my husband. These lips were not home. It all feels strange and uncomfortable. I pull myself away from him and look into his unfamiliar face.

"Come Here "

He directs me into his back bedroom. I am leaning against the door frame of his bedroom where he lifts the bottom of my dress above my waist and shimmies my panties down to my ankles. He brushes his hand between my legs. I want this.

I want more.

He is caressing my bottom lip with his tongue and primal moans and breaths are passing from my lips. Every nerve ending on my body is on fire.

FIRE. FIRE. FIRE.

The birth of an addiction.

Parenthood - 1 is the lonliest number

My son Slugger was adopted at age two. 

He has this magnificent resilience embedded somewhere deep inside his DNA that has made him virtually immune to unhappiness. 

He is the kind of child that smiled the entire 28 + hour long plane ride to America from his homeland of Africa. He is the kind of child that embraces change with complete and total enthusiasm completely removed of fear. He is the kind of child that loves people so deeply that he extracts the best in almost everyone who is lucky enough to encounter him. 

He is the warmest and happiest person I know. 

I once heard a quote... "Every parent has a dream for their family" 

.....and that is most certainly true for myself. 

There was an entire previous blog about the dreams I had for myself and my family. Most would say that it was the American dream. Two parents, a few children, a couple of dogs and some land we could build a life upon. I spent a good amount of my youth chasing that dream and found myself most settled and content once I landed there. 

But like the title of this blog - we make plans - and God laughs. 

....and that dream came tumbling down around me. 

It was in the weeks and months following the downfall of the dream that I should have been watching my son the most closely. I should have been pouring my attention into him and his needs as a way of escaping the pain. And all I could feel was how much I was letting him down and how terribly I had failed him. 

I would remind my self continuously that this time would pass and that someday (dear God please someday in the not so distant future) I would put myself back together again and he would have many many years of the best of his mother. I tried to talk myself into being gentle with myself even though I simply could not put it all into action. 

Unfortunately we are all human, and there is no such thing as a perfect parent. Especially when we are going through hell. 

In the beginning just being around him hurt me. He was an everyday reminder of what was missing. He has been up to that point a small piece of a much larger picture and a much different life. He was all that was left in the aftermath of that dream, and especially in the first few months following my divorce, I struggled to focus really focus on enjoying him the way I had before. 

Going to the zoo just the two of us hurt. Reading books in bed and saying prayers just the two of us killed me. Keeping the smile on my face and shielding him from the tears (which looking back now I give myself sooo much credit for how well I actually did with this at least) was exhausting. Parenting after divorce is hell. 

I wanted to run away. 

Yes. I am going to put this out there. There are probably a LOT of mothers out there who will judge me for saying this. But I know there are a lot of other mothers out there who have felt, for at least a moment or two in their life, that it is all to much to handle and that if they could just get in the car and drive away for a day, a week, a month - they might just be ok. 

And I was really lucky. One of the perks of staying in my home town (which also happens to be "good guys" home town is that Slugger has four sets of grandparents, an aunt, an uncle, and hundreds of extended family members. 

Luckily my child, the resilient one who embraces change, had already established a tremendously close and meaningful relationship with his grandparents and extended family. So when his overnights with Grandma or Mimi went from once every two or three weeks to once a week, he was anything but upset. And my incredible village stepped in to help me raise him. 

I am still amazed (which most stay at moms are every time I tell them this) that I was able to go from a mother who did not spend a single overnight away from her son in one year to a mom who now had her son only 3 nights a week. Three nights he was with "good guy."  Once a week he rotated his grandparents (so each grandparent got an overnight once a month). Somehow my son has managed an adoption, two working parents, and a divorce without spending ten minutes with a babysitter or a stranger....ever. 

And in those months that I was not really present - atleast not in the ways in which I aim to be - I would rest my guilt within that statement and remind myself that my resilient child was still laughing beside me.  Somehow I had managed to mess up without messing him up. 

And in the worst of it I would crawl into his room after he fell asleep and watch his sleeping face and force myself to focus on that moment as I promised him through a whisper ....

 I will get through this for you. 

The BIG Spoon

Three Amigos.
A Game of Kill. F&*%. Marry.
A Challenge to get me over my ex.
No.
No.
No.
In walks this BIG man.
With big gestures
And a big booming voice.
Yes.
I hate to sleep alone.
Me too.
I am pretty heart broken....
If you ever need a BIG spoon....
A business card is gifted.
A BIG shift just occured...
And I yet have no idea.

The Light

“When you feel
that you have reached the end and that you cannot go one step further, when
life
seems to be drained of all purpose: What a wonderful opportunity to
start all
over again, to turn over a new page.”

- Eileen Caddy

NIGHTMARES

I wake up at four am and my arms are reaching across the bed. Nothing is there but empty space. My fists are clenched so tight there are fingernail indention's in the palms of my hands. My jaw aches from grinding. My whole body hurts.

I am mourning his death.

STILL FRAMES

There once was a two-story brick home with brown shutters that were eventually to be painted black. There was a old wooden mailbox out front in desperate need of a fresh coat of white paint. There was a tall fence in the back yard that was half-stained by the young man who lived there and whom planned on finishing it once the weather warmed up again. The young couple who owned the home were often spotted out in the front playing baseball with a small black child who the neighbors assumed was adopted. He appeared out of the blue the spring prior and had become a stable fixture playing in that front yard ever since.

The young couple, who were by far the youngest couple in the neighborhood, brought June, the eighty five year old woman who lived across the street from them, a great amount of joy. June loved sitting in her front windowsill watching the two of them passing each other in the morning, spreading spider webs across the bushes for Halloween, loading the car with bikes and dogs and picnic baskets on the weekends. Watching this young couple brought her back to when she, herself, was young and in the beginning of building a family and a life with her husband.

Then suddenly, one Tuesday at winters end, she came home from a weekend with her sister to find that the couple was suddenly GONE.

Without as much as a FOR SALE sign in the yard, or witnessing a moving van, the couple seemed to just disappear in an instant.

The only evidence the couple had moved, and not been abducted by aliens, was the heaping pile of trash left out front of the home. There must have been more than twenty trash bags, ten large boxes taped closed, and an assortment of small pieces of furniture.

But the most interesting thing left behind was not the ridiculous heaps trash but the heaping pile of empty photo frames that rested against one of the trash cans. Most of them without glass within them, and a few with staggered pieces of glass still stuck in the corners of the wooded frames; it was as if someone had ripped every last one of them from their place on the wall and launched them with every ounce of furry they had inside themselves onto the floor.

What a sad sight she often thought to herself.

Two days later when the trash man came, he picked up all of the boxes, all of the bags, even most of the small furniture pieces. But the large pile of photo frames remained

And every morning June passed that heaping pile of empty photo frames. And every evening June returned home to see that heaping pile of photo frames. And week after week every time she saw them she thought to herself how sad. She even noticed that the city ordinance notices stuck to the front door informing the owner of the home that they needed to remove the frames from the front of the property were really beginning to pile up. But the notices remained untouched and the frames remained in the exact same spot.

And then one Saturday, almost five weeks after couple had disappeared and those empty frames were first placed on the front stoop of the brick house, something caught June's attention from the corner of her eye. The blonde hair girl, the wife of the couple, was out front of the home across the street piling the empty frames and bits of leftover furniture onto the back of a truck. She was alone and clearly struggling to find more strength. June watched the girl, who looked visibly much more small and fragile than she had looked only weeks before, for at least twenty minutes before she felt absolutely compelled to stand from the windowsill and go outside to ask the girl if she needed any help.

June made it out the door, down her front lawn, and across the street without the blonde girl even noticing her approach. The blonde had gotten in the car and was just starting the engine as June tapped her finger on the window. The girls startled face turned to face June when she realized the young girl was sobbing. There were two streams of black pouring from her eyes and her face was a red and blotchy mess. The blonde rolled down her window as she wiped the runny black makeup from face with the sleeve of her shirt.

Are you ok? June asked

The girl started rambling on about how she was just here to check on the house and was apologizing for the trash and the notices and how she didn't know because she wasn't really in charge of the house anymore. And as she talked she was getting more and more upset and until she was so choked up she could barely get the words out. June interrupted...

Honey, its OK. Its ALL going to be OK.

Thank you.

EMPTY NESTING

I am sitting in a room covered in half-painted pink stripes. There is a crib covered with a fuchsia duvet with yellow flowers on it. Neatly folded pink onsies sit in a pile on top of my son's wooden rocking chair. There are cans of paint, a wall graphic still in the box that reads "Little girls are giggles with freckles all over them." A thousand plans fill the room. New light fixtures. New hardwood some day. Barbie doll houses. Princess costumes. Late night feedings. The room is not yet occupied by more than a dream.

What did I need all this for?

It all adds up to nothing.

WE CAN MAKE IT WORK

I am walking with him hand and hand as we enter the mall. I am determined we can make this work. I can feel him walking next to me. Every stare. Every gesture. Every time our hands brush one another. This is the same man whose presence next to me had become like an extension of my own arm. My body. My heart. Like the burn victim who is suddenly well aware of every square inch their appendages, I can feel every single movement he is making. I am too aware. It’s as though I have suddenly lost control of half of my body.

Flash.
Its five years earlier. He is sitting next to me in the passenger seat and I look down at his hand resting on the center council. He reaches over to enwrap his fingers into mine. I look down at our hands entwined together and I think to myself these beautiful hands are part of me now.

Flash.

Three girls in their early twenties are laughing and walking arm and arm down the corridor together. I am suddenly aware of their beauty. Their hair. Their long tan legs. Their youth. I suddenly feel only inches tall and pathetically aware of my pale skin. My sad tired eyes that have been crying for days on end now. My frumpy sweat pants that are hugging my hips. I look over to his face and watch his eyes. What is he thinking right now?

Love.

Thats the thing about it. When you give your heart away... really give your heart away...you really loose all control. Because even if you believe, even if you believe with every inch of your being that you know that person as well, if not more than you know yourself, you can never really know someone else.

Love is a rug you build an entire life on, and rugs can be pulled right out from underneath you.

It happens every day.

And it happened to me.

And that is love.

--------

I watch his eyes as they meet the girls and make their way from the tips of their feet up their tan long legs to their faces. It feels like every nerve ending in my body is on fire.

Anger, no.... RAGE, begins boiling up within me.

I could reach over and pull his heart out of his chest. I want to…
Run. Scream. Punch. Something.

I am instantaneously one hundred percent aware and assured that I will never again be the same person.

EVER.

I can feel the walls building. There are fifty pound bricks beginning to pile up around my heart. It is happening at lightning speed. Warp speed. It’s no sooner than we reach the car and I look over at him sitting in that same passenger seat with those exact same hands as I think to myself those hands are no longer a part of me at all that I realize it all is gone.

The love.

The faith.

The belief.

The will.

The compassion.

The giving.

The life.

The marriage.

The family.

The dream.

The life as I know it.

It is all completely GONE.

And I all at once I realize that even if I fought with everything in myself. Even if I clawed and pillaged and killed. Even if I gave it everything I had inside myself.
I could not get it back.

I could not fix it.

I was not in control of it.

I was completely powerless over it.

And as I exhaled in the reality that I was completely and utterly alone I become instantly aware that I was never really in control...regardless of how desperately I had clung to the allusions that I was.

And suddenly I was free.

MORE VODKA

Its six am and the sun is shining through the curtains and down onto my face.
I reach for the vodka bottle. I am chugging vodka. Yes. This is me. Chugging vodka at six am. This is the same world and yet everything looks different. This bed. This sun. This world, that once seemed bright and sunny and full of hope and love feels so dark. Too dark. The breathing hurts.

More Vodka.

BLACKOUT

I can the clock ticking on the brown table directly next to me. I realize for the first time in what has probably been thirty visits that it is most likely placed there so that she can inconspicuously glance over to check the time without coming across as if she is fully aware of the hour long discussion time frame. The natural therapy session arc needs to be built around this time constraint. Conflict discussion, breakthrough, solutions. Today is not following such format.

Im not sure why I am here.

Ok.

I have everything I have ever wanted.

She says nothing.

Waits for me to elaborate.

My dad always said there were four boxes to make your life complete. Self, Family, Job, Faith. For the first time in my life, all of my boxes are full. I have the worlds most amazing marriage and child, I have the perfect home, I love my job, I've never had more love or more friends in my life....

And....

And the anxiety is still there. Its like I am still waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Why do you think that is?

...Im not sure I know how...... Im not sure I know how to.....fumbling, fumbling.

I can't find the words. I can't find the thoughts. Why can I just...what? Relax. Lighten up. Worry less. Anticipate less. Let go and let God. Let things just happen.

To just be....happy.

Why do you think that is?

I pause. Dead silence. No thoughts are coming. But I can feel it. I can feel it somewhere deep in the maps of my life experience and my soul....

Because every-time I have ever let myself feel that feeling...the sky falls in.

BLACKOUT

I can hear my heart beating in my ears. No. I can hear my heart exploding in my ears at a thousand beats a minute.

I must be having an out of body experience. Am I having a heart attack?
Wake up.
Clap.
Wake up.
Clap.

Thats it. I swear that is it. There is nothing else.

Liar. You are nothing but a liar. I know you are lying. Dear God make it stop. Please let this be it. Please God, please God, Please God let this be it. Dear God. GOOOODDDD.

I don't believe you. Look at me. Look me in the eyes. Look at me!!!!

Its not it. I know its not it. I for the first time in five years I finally know that all of those feelings, all those pulls in my heart when I looked in those eyes, every time he looked back and me and said that it was nothing, that my intuition was nothing, those pulls were real.

I said there is nothing else.

Liar.

Honey stop. Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep pushing? I told you I have told you everything. You know everything now.

How can you keep doing this to me?

I am screaming so loud the neighbors have to be listening to this. How can you continue to just sit there across from me and act like you haven't been saying to me that “this was it” for the past three days. If you want to have any chance at saving us you have to tell it all. You have to tell me the truth. God Dammit Mark after five fucking years of lying...aren’t you tired of lying. Of deceiving. Of keeping it in. What else is there?

I don’t know.

Fuck.

I was right.

I feel myself pull inwards for the next blow. We have began to develop a pattern in these revelations. Give a little truth. Watch it roll through my head and my heart. Pause and wait for the reaction. See if I will accept it. Can handle it? Can deal with it? Start back at the beginning again. New truths. New details. New lies. I’m standing in day three of the war. It won’t stop. I just need. it. to. stop. I don’t know if I can take much more of this.

The night you were out with Karen. We went to a bar. I met a girl. I didn’t bring her home with me, but I called her later that night. She picked me up out front....

Out front of our house? My mind goes somewhere else as he continues to talk. I begin to imagine that I am pulling my heart out of my body as I rise above our bodies sitting at opposite sides of the couch. I imagine I am looking down onto two of us, two strangers that were once husband and wife, just beginning to move their lives in opposition.

I can’t hear anymore. I can’t.

I imagine this is what it is like in warfare. You check out. You survive. Survive. Survive.

Stand up.
Walk to the door.
Open the door.
Walk to your car.
Get in the car.
Drive.
This is your car.
This is your life.
You are here and this is real.
This is real. Panic. Shit. Shit. Shit. This is real.

I think about letting go of the steering wheel for a brief instant. I feel terror wave over me the minute I think it. What if I can’t survive this? What if I go crazy? I can’t survive this. Shit, I can’t survive this.

Panic. Panic. Panic.

Everything I believed in is all a lie. Its all nothing but a Big. Fucking. Lie.

Blackout.

Meet Christina

1. I am a 28 year old single woman NMM (not-married-mother) extraordinaire.

2. I married the "good guy" when I was basically still a fetus.

3. The "good guy" turned out to be not quite as "good" once I was gifted with the knowledge that he was having sex with co-ed 20 something’s in the driveway of our house.

4. This may have something to do with the marrying as a fetus thing.

5. ...or the fact that we were forcing ourselves to have sex - and that was only once a month.

6. This may have something to do with the marrying the "good guy" thing.

7. But the "good guy" makes a great ex-husband and an even better co-parent.

8. Which is why it’s just not right to call myself a "single" parent…

9. Married couples don't run around calling themselves married parents now do they?

10. D Day = my divorce day = my takeoff to The Land Of SINGLEDOM

10. This has been my very first quest through SINGLEDOM….ever.

11. Its as far away from COUPLEDOM as Mars is from Venus.

12. I still visit COUPLEDOM where I once used to live - and the Marians look at me like I've suddenly become an alien.

13. Most the time in COUPLEDOM I feel like I am one.

14. My tour guide through SINGLEDOM is a man named B.

15. He is the Mayor.

16. Commitment Phobia is the only prerequisite to become Mayor of SINGLEDOM.

17. And in this land I’ve found an entire group of Aliens just like me- Divorced Aliens, lonely Aliens, Raisingkidsalone Aliens.

18. And these Aliens have become my family.

19. They teach me all kinds of new and exciting things in SINGLEDOME. Things the Martians in COUPLEDOM may not even know exist.


20. These include (In no particular order):

Sextmessaging, Match.com, Blacking out, Sunday-Fundays, Mr. Scary, Relationship Induced Anxiety, Mystic Tanning, Hooking Up, and Restraining Orders. DUI’s amd STD’s. Road trips, the morning after pill, Urinary Track Infections, non-responses, and Xanax. Heartbreak and loneliness. Very little sleep. Visitation schedules and mediators.

Drama. Drama. Drama.

Wine. Wine. Wine.

Friendship. Friendship. Friendship.

Growth

It hasn't been pretty but its honest....

This is my journey……