Signed, Sealed, Delivered. I'm Not Yours.

Today I got a phone call at work. I get a lot of phone calls at work. So many, in fact, that if I see on my caller ID window that it is from an outside line, and not coming from somewhere inside the store, I will often let it go to voicemail. Today, however, I answered the phone. It was Sharon, my lovely, if somewhat grammatically inarticulate, paralegal. She had called to tell me that my final "Marital Settlement Agreement" had been signed off on by the Judge. I was officially divorced. I could hear papers rustling in the background, as she informed my that my formal copy was going into the mail at that very moment. I started to cry...And suddenly I stopped. My heart started to speed up its rhythm, and I smiled. It was a fleeting moment, but in that moment, I felt every emotion that I have felt during the 10 years spent with my now ex-husband. I felt nervousness, sadness, anxiety...then joy, elation, and finally, peace.

Several months back, when I knew for certain that this day was coming, I debated whether or not I would blog about this actual day. Whether or not it was in good taste. What would people think...Then it occurred to me, nobody is forced to read this blog. It is my free therapy. Mine and mine alone. Yes, I am pleased that people have enjoyed reading this blog, and I am pleased that people have been able to use my voice to find their own, when they have felt muted. So I have decided, tonight, to write. And for the first time, in a long time, I don't have much to say. But I do know that it is important to chronicle this day. So years from now, when this is all a monochromatic memory, I can be reminded of just how real, and how painful this has all been. Not because I am a masochist, but because I believe the memory of pain can help to make you stronger, to help you heal, and to make you whole. I am on my way to healing, but I have a long way to go. I am happy with the direction my life is taking. More than happy, in fact. But I know that I am not whole yet...I am still broken, and searching for all the missing pieces. Some I will never find. Some pieces of me I gave away 10 years ago and I don't want them back. I know he probably doesn't want them either, but they will always and forever be his. I have taken everything else that has mattered away from him, I don't have to snatch these shards of me, too. And he may try to throw them away, but I know that they will always be embedded in his brain in the form of memories; a song, a smell, a shadow...And I know this because those same slivers of someone else's life will live within me, too. And for me, that's okay.

My new life is beginning. It is rising up like a phoenix from the ashes of my past. There was a time, before I set fire to my life, when I would wake up everyday and felt like I was just waiting for the day to pass so I could go back to bed...And that's just sad. But those days are gone. Now I will wake up, each day, grateful for whatever goodness is in store for me. I may not know what it will be from one day to the next, but I know that it will be there in some form. And that, my friends, is a very good thing. A very good thing indeed. So...As I stated previously, I don't have much to say. So I guess I will just say "good night". Tomorrow is a new day, and the first day of my new life. I should try to get a good nights sleep.

Engrish!! Cause You Asked So Nice!!

Do wha?

see funny english mistakes


This could be said about my heart...

see funny english mistakes


I know a few people who might really benefit from this service!

see funny english mistakes


Uh...So, I may be ugly, but can I borrow your ninja? Please?

see funny english mistakes


Hello, Space Flyman! My number is...

see funny english mistakes


Oh, hello Mr. Pizza...Space Flyman who?

see funny english mistakes

Preparing for D-Day

Many years ago, in what seems like another life, I sat on the couch in my soon-to-be husband's "bachelor pad", and watched what has to be one of the most depressing movies of all time. We watched What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams. If you have never seen it, you should consider renting it, downloading it, YouTubing it, or whatever method you prefer, and set aside two hours. An hour and a half to watch the movie, and another half hour to sop up the pool of tears that will collect at your feet after you have watched the movie. The basic premise is, there is a happy couple with two children (and a dog, I think) and through a series of sad and somewhat violent events, they all die. They go to Heaven (except for the wife, who gets stuck in purgatory because she offed herself in a period of deep depression) and have different forms and different struggles than they did on Earth. Through the struggles, they learn about who they really are, and that the undying love of a family can overcome anything...Even the physical limitations of the body. In the movie, the husband and wife refer to an anniversary as "D-Day". It is the anniversary of the day their children died. Yeah, I know that's absurdly morbid, but as I prepare for my own "D-Day" of sorts, I can totally get the need to anniversary the macabre. My divorce is almost final. All of my dreams that I had for this family that I have created, have died, or are dying. Even the last vestiges of hope are all but gone. And even though this is what I have wanted, I cannot help but feel sad. Although I know that nothing can erase the past, make things better or worse, I feel like somehow I have failed at this segment of my life. I have decided that, for me, divorce is a lot like death. It seems akin to the death of someone who has been gravely ill: Even though everybody knows it is better that the ill person passed away...no more pain, no more suffering...it is still sad. Deeply sad. And I have been saddened by the end of my marriage, the death of it, as it were, and I am still mourning it. If you see me on the street, I look perfectly calm and at ease, but in my heart I am still mourning.

The mistakes that I have made over the past decade continue to haunt me like so many lost souls...The spirits of the dreams that I have had a hand in slaying. Their time for exorcism is drawing ever closer, but it is not here quite yet. So I will continue to mourn and give the death of my marriage a proper and respectful burial. But like all things that grieve the heart, this too shall pass. Time will continue to push me forward into a new life. I am older, perhaps wiser (although the Jury is still out on that), and definitively more sure of who I am and who I want to be. One day, I will wake up and the anniversary of my "D-Day" will come and go with out so much as the flicker of a candle on a carrot-cake cupcake. For an anniversary like this is not one to celebrate...Better to allow it to remind you of all the reasons you celebrated in the first place: The first kiss. The first date. The first child. The first time you said goodbye, and then, the last. Because even though I am sad and I am mourning, even in this death I can still celebrate all of the beautiful things that made up this life. And that, my friends, makes me happy.

Chasing Happiness

I have some friends...crazy friends...that are preparing to run a marathon in just a few weeks. They have been training for months. I never gave too much thought to why they ran, I just knew that they did, and that they were crazy. Running has given them nothing but grief. One of them has pulled a groin muscle so severely, she will sit on her couch in front of her family, and massage it with her electric "back massager"...While her are kids in the room for Christ's sake! Another has actually run herself into such a state of physical degeneration, that she limps everywhere she goes, hand on hip, moaning "oh, my aching hip". She is only 31. There are twisted ankles and collapsing arches and increasingly large thigh and calf muscles (although a very enviable reduction in body fat is also quite apparent). So, why, then? Of all the fun things you could be doing with your time (like poking out your own eye, shopping for shoes, or eating bacon), why run?

But I get it now. They run because it frees them from their lives. When they run, although they may have pain and suffering and anguish and loss, they are free. They focus on the thing that forced them to get up at an ungodly hour, lace up the Nikes, and run. For 12 freaking miles, no less. Sometimes it is easy to look at the life of someone else and think that everything is easy for them. "Oh, look", we think...Look at how pretty her hair is, look at how clean her house is, look how well behaved her kids are...What we fail to see is that nothing is easy for them. Nothing is easy for anyone. My crazy running friends have all had hardships in their lives. Some will talk about it, some wont. Both are okay. I have subjected them all to sharply contrasting periods of verbal diarrhea followed by stone cold silence...no e-mails, no texts, no calls. It's all pain, just the same, like a great equalizer between myself and my crazy, running friends. It may be death of a loved one, loss of a career, or the end of a marriage. And to run...to run as fast as you can, away from the pain...the things that are hard...even if it's only temporary, sounds like freedom to me. And later on, the physical pain is just another row to hoe in the eventual harvesting of happiness. We all have to run after happiness, it simply does not run to you.

I had dinner the other night with one of my crazy running friends. It was such a wonderful evening, very simple, very needed. And as I sat at the table and looked around at our two families, I thought, "this is easy, this is happiness". To look at my friend, with her pretty hair, her clean house, her well behaved children, you might think that her life is easy. But I know better. I know that she has pain and loss heaped upon her in ways that can be too much for one woman to take...Maybe that's why she runs, but we don't really talk about it. And that's okay, cause when I am with her, we don't have to talk about any of the things that are hard or any of the things that caused us pain. Sometimes we do, and that's okay too. As I scroll through the mental inventory of all the various and sundry things we talked that night, the thing that stands out the most was the moment when she asked me very simply, "how are you doing"? It was dark and I was tipsy, but I could see in her eyes that she really, really wanted to know. And it occurs to me just now that sometimes you don't have to chase after happiness. Sometimes it does run to you. Even if it has a severe groin pull...It still runs to you.