My “ta-da” list

(as opposed to “to do”)

Things I want to do now that I don’t have to put so much energy into making a bad marriage work . . .

Nurture my inner artist
Learn to draw
Work on one-stroke painting
Work on felting the fibers I bought
Decorate my home with my work
Use the Gocco
Learn more about zen photography

Nurture my home
Finish refinishing the nightstands
Paint
Replace the family room couch (why do I call it the family room? No family. But den sounds so dark)
Redo the downstairs bedroom
Take care of the leak in the roof
New window treatments

Design the journal “How I survived my divorce”

Take a class (improv?)

Sew:
Clothes using hand-painted fabrics
Quilts for the 5 girls using fabrics from my mother
Pillow covers
Finish J’s tallit

Ta-da!

Pass me a margarita

My day today began with fishing a dead mouse out of the pot that was soaking in the sink. I don’t know whether to be grateful that it was (a) dead and that (b) I didn’t have to dislodge it from a mousetrap or grossed out. Or both.

Then, after I discovered that I washed – and destroyed – two checks to me totaling over $500.00, two checks that I had written and put in envelopes to mail, and one certified copy of my mother’s death certificate in an envelope to a life insurance company, I went to let the dogs out. Right outside the back door was one dead bird. Right there, on the ground, waiting for me to pick it up and dispose it in my garbage can which is beginning to take on a morgue aura.

So now I feel like I’m living in a Stephen King novel.

Pass me a margarita.

Going up . . . alone

Blessing the Torah before a public reading is called an aliyah, which is translated as “going up.” We read Torah every Monday and Thursday, as well as on holidays and other festive days. Today happens to be Rosh Chodesh Elul – the beginning of the Jewish month Elul, so at services this morning we read Torah. I was asked to take an aliyah and recite the first blessing. It’s an honor to do so, so I accepted (and, well, you aren’t supposed to decline anyway).

I was nervous for a few reasons. The first is that I was with all my colleagues, many of whom speak Hebrew natively. The second reason was because I have never, ever done this by myself. I’ve done it with groups of people and oftentimes with Mr. Ex. But never alone.

So there I was, alone, blessing the Torah. I was lucky to be surrounded by my friends and colleagues, as well as my beloved former boss/principal, who was the rabbi for the service. I whispered to her that it was the first time I had done this alone, which was pretty significant because of my divorce earlier in the week.

A. Powerful. Moment.

I made it through the aliyah just fine; no stumbling or anything. After I was done I totally indulged myself and said that it was the first time I had done it alone. The group spontaneously responded with singing a mazel tov to me – kind of a Jewish “for she’s a jolly good fellow.”

Another milestone.

Three days later . . .

I referred to Mr. Ex today as my ex-husband. I think this was the first time. It didn’t sting, but I had a moment of “that’s a new phrase in my vocabulary.”

Naming things and putting them in categories is so important. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of stuff in the bible about Adam naming the animals, and we spend a lot of time in sixth grade teaching about categorizing and labeling.

I remember the first time I referred to Mr. Ex as my husband – and how weird but exhilarating it felt. Or the first time I said “my daughter,” or “my son-in-law.” Or the first time I referred to myself as a wife, or mother.

It almost bothers me more to have lost those two distinctions as it does to have lost a husband. Not that I really lost the mom distinction, but I do miss the “caregiver of young children” distinction.

That got me thinking about labels and the labels we use with ourselves. Cook, homemaker, teacher, salesperson, girlfriend, wife, mother, husband, lover, partner . . . How they fit for a while and then they don’t.

I guess I need to figure out what the other labels I have for myself are. Especially the ones that have been left in the drawer for a while. Time to dust them off and give them a try again. More on that to come.

Also – thank you to everyone who commented or wrote me offblog about Monday. Your support – whether you are someone whom I know in the outside world or not – is incredibly appreciated and I feel blessed to have you in my life/cyber life.

Today

Tomorrow’s D-Day

9:00 am tomorrow. Courthouse. It’s over.

I must have some anxiety about it. I had the most vivid dream last night that my school hosted a divorce event for me, which was attended by scores of people (including Mr. Ex) and featured a band (which included out-of-towners as well as my older daughter’s BIL on bass). It was held in advance of the actual hearing, and I stayed so late that I almost missed court.

The food was good, though.

My, I’m trendy

Me and Courtney Cox. Uh huh.

I’m sure you’ve seen the TV ads for Cougar Town, the new ABC show starring Courtney Cox. Other than the fact that she’s looking at 40, and, for me that’s a somewhat distant memory, it’s a little spooky. ABC bills it as “a single-camera comedy that dares to tell the truth about dating after divorce.”

Nice to know that I’m in a common enough demographic that I rate a TV show.

So, what’s up with the dating stuff?

I’ve definitely put that whole endeavor on the back burner. I just stopped worrying about whether or not I was going to find someone. I guess I just realized that it’s too soon (for me, since it apparently isn’t too soon for Mr. Ex – but I digress), and that there are other things on which to concentrate. You know; things like where I live, my own interests and rediscovering what makes me happy and fulfilled.

Having said that, I have gone out with E fairly regularly for the last month or so. Nothing serious; dinner, walking the mall. I insist on paying for myself – that way I feel like it’s no strings attached. He’s very nice. He’s smart, stable (he’s been an engineer for the same company for 25 years), financially secure, and Jewish. And I feel no chemistry. None at all. Not a beaker, not a test tube of chemistry. But I still go out with him to remind myself that I’m capable of talking to (a) men and (b) people I haven’t been friends with for 100 years. It’s fine. If he stopped calling tomorrow only my ego would be bruised.

I still check JDate occasionally, as well as several other free sites. I did get a really interesting email the other day from someone on OKCupid. The only thing it said was are you submissive? Wow. I just don’t even know where to go with that. I checked the guy’s profile. It says that he makes a million dollars a year. I dunno, for that kind of money I might be willing to be submissive.

Then there’s the man who wants me to come visit him in Starved Rock. I was really hoping for someone who didn’t require a 2-hour drive.

Meh. Whatever.

In the final analysis

So, with August 17th looming in front of me, staring me in the face like the combination of a dreaded dentist appointment (painful, yes, but a certain end to a lingering problem. And f’ing expensive) and spending three hours cleaning out closets (loved it once, don’t need it any more), I find myself going back to the ol’ marriage evaluation thing. I actually didn’t go there for quite some time. I guess I figured that I’d spent enough time doing that and now I needed to get into moving on mode. But here, in the 11th hour, it sneaks up on me unbidden and unwelcomed. But sneaks up it does, and it immediately lodges itself into some of my brain real estate.

For some reason, this morning, as I was pouring myself a cup of coffee (I’m still trying to get the dogs to do that, but they’re just not getting it. I think it’s the whole “1 packet Sweet’N Low, 5 drops Stevia, a little fat free half-n-half” regimen) I had an image of Mr. Ex and me using the Cusinart early in our marriage to chop vegetables. That was really early in our marriage, because it didn’t take long to figure out that vegetable chopping was way easier with an, um, knife, but the Cusinart was a wedding gift and we were going to use it, damnit. By the way, I still have the Cusinart, so it’s one more thing that lasted longer than my marriage. But I digress.

I remember it well, for some reason. We were putting cucumbers into the Cusinart, and Mr. Ex pretended that he was the vegetable, and started screaming something like “no, don’t do it.”

I also remember laughing like that was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. Seriously? Was I high?

You know how sometimes you see parts of your life like they’re scenes from a movie? Well, that was how I saw that scene. I saw us, young (and I mean young – my youngest is several years older than I was at the time), learning to be a married couple together. I saw us playing in the kitchen (stop that – get your mind out of the gutter. I mean playing, like with kitchen appliances). We were barely adults, playing at being married. And it was fun. Like playing house. And I remember being happy.

Happy. What on earth does that mean? I went to the doctor yesterday to refill a certain anti-depressant that I started in September the week that Mr. Ex moved out. The doctor was actually looking to see if he should up the dosage, and asked me if I was happy. Now, I’m not generally a person who gets stumped, but I just couldn’t answer that question.

I don’t know.

I think I’m content.

But happy – meh, not so sure.

More importantly, I didn’t think I could really remember what happy feels like.

But, looking back at the cucumber murder scene in the kitchen (and, by the way, it’s WAAAAY easier and less messy to slice cucumbers with a knife), I distinctly remember happy. Happy that we were cooking together, compatible, enjoying each other’s company. Happy in the moment.

Ah – there’s the rub. Happy in the moment. Like a child is happy with a new toy, until it falls under the couch and is then forgotten. Like an teenage girl with a new shirt, until the newest style comes out. Fleeting happiness.

At some point during the marriage, happy in the moment ceased to be enough. I wanted more. I wanted security. I needed security like a baby needs a swaddling blanket. I wanted respect. Not just the polite respect of conversation – “please pass the salt,” “thank you,” “you’re welcome” – but the deep down, unspoken respect shown by a husband taking care of things, being a partner, caring enough to put aside his own momentary happiness aside and get down to the business of being a responsible adult, husband and father. And doing it without nagging and constant reminders.

And as I realized that just being happy in the moment wasn’t enough, I became anxious. I became a worrier. And, somewhere, security became so elusive that it turned into my Holy Grail. Like Indiana Jones I dodged bullets, changed courses and avoided certain death. But I never got there. Oh, in the beginning it would look like it was there. I could see it. I was still an optimist and would believe that it was in my grasp. But the music would change, the pacing would speed up, and . . . it would be gone.

So now I don’t have any of it. I can’t remember happy and I don’t have security. I imagine it’s unlikely that I’ll never really have security. Seriously. I’m too old to amass the kind of retirement security the “experts” keep telling me I need, and, in the current economy, I just can’t see I’ll ever get there. I’m guessing that my standard of living in retirement will be lower than it is now, which is an accurate expectation for my generation. So I guess it’s a future as a Wal-Mart cart person for me. Oh well. Whatever.

But happy – that’s probably a more realistic goal. I can still get there, I suppose. And, unfortunately, I’m truly convinced that it requires the demise of my 30-year marriage. What a shame. What a waste. What a loss – really.

You’re fired . . .

Image by late night movie via Flickr

I just finished watching Tory Johnson on GMA (Good Morning America. I guess I just negated the use of the acronym). She’s their getting back to work features person. Tory started a successful company running recruiting events for women after being fired from a lucrative position in PR. Well, she held a couple of intermediate jobs, but then decided to go after her passion and start the company she was meant to create. In addition to running her successful company, she’s also featured on GMA (ah – now the acronym has merit) and writes columns for a number of media outlets.

Anyway, as I was watching Tory and checking out her bio, it occurred to me that getting divorced – especially in my case, where I did not initiate the split – is quite like getting fired. I mean, there are the obvious similarities such as sending out resumes, signing up for online job resources and networking. But I’m also interested in the whole reinventing yourself angle. Tory talks about that in her quest to become an entrepreneur.

I’m going to explore this more over the next few days, but what first hit me was the whole living with passion thing. Whenever I read anything about people who successfully started their own businesses it strikes me that it’s all about passion. Quite often it’s a story about women who faithfully dragged themselves (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating with ‘dragged’) to mediocre jobs that didn’t give anything back to them besides a paycheck. Then one day – whether it was because they were fired, the company went under, or they just had that “I can’t do this any more” epiphany – they went out on their own. And succeeded. And now, looking back, they can’t believe that they stuck it out in that crappy job as long as they did.

I realize my imagery – and my attempt to connect getting fired with getting divorced – isn’t exactly subtle. But it’s early and I haven’t had enough coffee yet. Sorry.

So . . . here you go. My goal is not just to survive being divorced, but to use this as an opportunity to reinvent myself, find the passion, and to look back one day and think, “I can’t believe I stuck it out as long as I did.”

See ya later.