Hell of a Coincidence

On January 4, 2015, I chose to divorce my husband. 

Each time I think back on this pivotal decision,  more and more I believe that the date was pretty significant. It happened to be the birthday of my mother, who had passed away a little more than a year previously, so I am sure I was feeling rather introspective and reflective. Perhaps I was more open to making a crucial decision that I had been, until that point, only theoretically pondering. On that particular day, a Sunday, I happened to come across some data that ultimately became the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm done with this, I decided, no more. I'm divorcing Jason. I'm very unhappy and homesick, I know he's unhappy, and I have no business staying in this marriage. 

(Also, here's a good lesson for all of us to remember: if you are suspicious enough about your partner to go snooping about on your partner's electronic devices, you absolutely should NOT be shocked when you find the shit that confirms your suspicions.)

"It's best to step into the future while it's still waiting for you," says Alice Hoffman in a book that was published  a good few years after all this transpired, but there is truth in this statement even prior to the statement's existence. Not only was I going to divorce Jason, but I was going to do it soon, and then I was going to move home and pursue the life I hadn't yet had a chance to live, back in Indiana.  

Making the decision was pretty easy. Acting on it...well, that took longer. It took me two weeks to confront my husband; 10 months to move out of our home, 11 months for me to file for divorce. But I wasted no time in letting my sisters know about this shift in their baby sister's life. And my Eldest Sister decided that, if her youngest sister was moving back to the frozen wastelands of the Midwest, she would be needing a blanket. And so she got to knitting. 

While she was knitting away, I was going through a rather arduous and painful time in California. Divorce ain't easy, even when it's more or less amicable. It was an excruciating time of loneliness and anxiety and depression and the not-unspoken fear of what if I can never find work back in Indiana and move home? It was a kind of hell. I was terrified that things would never change. 

Of course, things did change: A little more than a year after I decided to leave my California life, I was able to actually do so, and moved home to Indiana. 

And still my sister kept knitting. 

Years passed. Generations passed. 

Okay, not really. But six years did pass. Many things happened, as they are wont to do: The divorce came to pass, my grandmother passed away, I earned a promotion, I learned what it was like to live with a mentally unstable (and mean) individual, I lived through a Trump presidency and a pandemic...and all the while, down in the wilds of Florida, my Eldest was click-click-clicking away with her knitting needles, working at the Divorce Blanket here and there. 

And then today, 4 January, 2021--six years to the day that I made my choice--I opened up my front door to see a lumpy, bulky package on my doormat. And mere minutes later,  I was wrapped up in a colourful blanket, a physical manifestation of my sister's loves and hopes for me and a brighter future. 

It's a beautiful creation, knitted together with the yarn scraps of a dozen different strangers--folks who answered the call my sister sent out for some of their favorite textiles, along with hopes and well-wishes. It's soft and wraps perfectly around my shoulders, and on these chilly Southern Indiana nights, it's just the thing. And it's a reminder of my sister's belief in me, which never flagged, even when my own hope and faith did.  

she
has

been through 

hell. 

so believe me when

i say, 

fear her when she looks

into the fire and smiles. 

-e. corona

*Disclaimer: there are many kinds of hell. My hell is not your hell; there are many, many worse hells. The particular hell to which I refer above is probably neither the only hell, nor the worst hell, I will go through in my life, but it's the hell I am choosing to share at this moment. 

Broken Into Better Shape

About a month back, I tried to do a thing.

That thing involved trying be vulnerable, and willing to try to trust someone, in a way that I hadn't done in nearly a decade. It was terrifying and exciting and there were about 5,309,568 times when I almost nope'd out of trying.

And as it turned out, that thing didn't end well. Blew up in my face, spectacularly. The person who I had been trying to trust actually turned out to be a rather cruel, creepy person who did a cruel, creepy thing that thoroughly violated the trust I had been trying to build. And to be left with that, after making the deliberate decision  to push myself out of my comfort zone, to put myself at risk...to be left with that, and with no pay-off but a bitter lesson of Look what happens when you try...see where it gets you...you should have listened to all your anxieties that told you this would happen...well, it wasn't pleasant. At the end of the experience, I was left feeling utterly tricked, misled, and with an unpleasant feeling that I was nothing more than an unworthy bag of damaged, flawed goods.

Well, time does its thing, and so too does the support and love of the family and friends who, as always, have rallied around me and tried to help me see that the flaw was not with me, but rather the person who violated my trust. Nonetheless, there is the lingering, bitter aftertaste of regret, and the useless vision of hindsight, and they have been weighing down upon me. I really didn't need this new crack on my already fractured spirit, acquired in this particular way.

But...we keep on keepin' on.

This last weekend I spent with my friend Jain up in Indy. It was a lovely weekend, and on a sunny Saturday afternoon, as we shared plates of hipster, locally-sourced food, Jain mentioned to me something called kintsugi.

"It's something the Japanese do. It's a type of pottery repair," she explained in her low, soothing voice. (How does she do that? I love her voice.) "The idea is that they repair a piece of crockery with gold or silver laquer, and the cracks aren't hidden, but are visible. And the breakage, and the cracks, become part of the story of the object. They become part of its beauty and function."

Source: Lakeside Pottery

At the time, it probably really seemed like I wasn't paying attention, but I was. It really stuck with me through the rest of the weekend, and it's still on my mind now. It's a beautiful concept, especially when we apply the concept as a metaphor to our life journeys and the sorrows, traumas, and betrayals we endure. This Huffington Post article does a splendid job of summing it up.

This thing that I tried, the unpleasantness that resulted...I still don't know why it had to happen to me. Perhaps it didn't, and I was simply a fool to allow it, and that's the end of it. But nonetheless, it did happen, and it caused another crack to form in my spirit. It was a small crack, given how brief the whole experience was, but significant, given its timing and the effort and courage I put into pushing myself, when all I wanted to do was hide and listen to my fears. I'm not going to pretend tha the crack isn't there. It's part of my story now. Just like all the other disappointments and sacrifices and joys and hopes that I've endured are part of my story. I'm repairing this crack, yes, and the me that will emerge from it will have another few lines of gold where the repairs are. But it doesn't mean I'm damaged goods. I wasn't before this happened, and I'm not now.

I'm whole.

I'm broken into better shape.

On the Edge, and At the Bottom

The adventure through the Yucatan wilderness had been fun. Under the blazing sun, in the humid, cloying heat, we explored temples, drove through the jungle, fondled boa constrictors. Now we stood at the edge of a 30-foot cliff and gazed down at the beautiful, deep waters of the cenote and thought of plunging into them. We were hot and sweaty and exhausted and there was no way we weren’t going in, because the other option was simply to, well, melt to death. The staircase leading down to them would take a few minutes to clamber down, or…

“Okay!” joked the tour guide. “Who’s brave enough to be the first sacrifice to the Mayan gods?”

“Where’s Mel?” asked my recently-wedded husband.

Splash.

Later, my husband and I gazed in equal parts awe and dismay at the bruise that was forming on my backside. Perhaps a cannonball wasn’t the best diving position for an impulsive, bottom-heavy woman to take when jumping off a cliff. Of course, it was perfectly emblematic of the type of thing I do: something absolutely zany, and sudden, with little fanfare, but lots of commitment once I’m in. And afterwards, there are usually a few scars and bruises to show for it.

My divorce happened the same way. I had been pondering it for a while. Inching up towards the edge of the cliff, gazing down into the murky darkness below, I knew I was scared because I didn’t know what lay in the darkness, but I did know the unhappiness that had chased me up to the precipice. The same unhappiness that lurked there when I finally took a breath, closed my eyes, and jumped off the cliff. With little fuss, on an otherwise uneventful night in January a couple of years ago, I stood in my kitchen in California and told my husband that I was done with the infidelities and lies and unhappiness, and that I would be divorcing him.

It took a while before I hit the ground after that leap. There were a lot of dark and lonely nights, a lot of false starts, a lot of sacrifices and some high prices to pay. But it finally ended, perhaps fittingly, on February 14 of this year. While I was drinking margaritas and watching Deadpool with my friends in Indiana, a judge was signing off on my divorce decree in California, freeing me from a life that I had once felt was the only thing left for me. Now, I know that's not true; I've had a year and change of really genuine happiness to know that the only unhappiness that is permanent is the one that we force on ourselves. 

There will be bruises, but they will fade. There will be wounds that bleed, but they will scab over and scar. The fall may be long and terrifying, and the landing may be rough, but sometimes...you just have to jump. 

February: The Anti-Love Lettter

Dear February,

To hell with you.

No, seriously, bugger off. You were a lousy, weird month, and I am not sorry to see the back of you. What you lacked in length, you more than made up for in sheer, ridiculous douchebaggery. Pretty much the best part of the month were the last few hours, in which I hung out with friends and played games and drank all the drinks and stewed in a ginormous vat of rage. The fact that we were under tornado watches and warnings that last evening served only as a metaphor for the chaos you brought down on us.

The Bad

First, my grandmother. February, you took my bright, beautiful, brave Mawga from us, and you broke our hearts. Forget that she was 95 and ready to go; this is on you and I'll never forgive you for that and screw any logic that says otherwise.

Now let's talk about the weather. I mentioned your tornados...now let's talk about the seventy degree weather you saw fit to bless us with over the course of several days. It was damned surreal to be stumbling around in a fog of grief, with a thousand-yard stare, and being dimly aware of the crowds of people walking around in shorts and brilliant smiles, enjoying the unexpected reprieve. Whatever happened to weather to match my mood? And while we're at it...what happened to WINTER?

In what is hopefully the last part of the saga of my Never-Ending Headcold/Sinus Infection/Bronchitis/Costochondritis from hell, I took yet another course of antibiotics. This stuff...it jacked me up but good. Totally suppressed my appetite, made me sick to my stomach, got my heart racing. So I spent 10 days of you feeling hangry, anxious, and vaguely wondering if I was experiencing the world's longest heart attack.

The most ominous thing happened right at the end of the month:

Rest in peace, Beatrice. You were a beautiful glass and you followed me all the way from California and you served me well, and gave me a lot of wine that got me through some bad nights. I'm sorry you died at the bottom of a sink in Indiana. You deserved a better death than that.


Now, the Good. Because, yes, there was some good. 

February, you were a month of friends. There were movie nights and Mexican food and jaunts up to Indy and all sorts of secrets shared and inside jokes created. Making female friends has been difficult for me--absurdly, I seem to have bonded with more dudes this last year--but I'm finally building up some bonds with ladies. My friend Diana has been an especially rock-solid source of support and laughter...even if she is terrified of cats.

After my Mawga passed away, some of my friends risked spending a Sunday afternoon with me, and we went out to Gaden Kachoe Shing, the Buddhist monastery here in our town, and made cookies for the Lunar New Year, and gazed at the extravagant beauty in the temple, and then we went out for a walk on the grounds and I cried at random times. And then we sat down by a lake and gazed out at the stunning afternoon (Okay, fine, the weather was kind of nice and I won't totally hold it against you, February) and made plans for the coming months, and I would occasionally speak of my grandparents and look out at the trees and land and water that were probably very similar to what they saw growing up a couple of hours north of where I live now.

Basically, I have spent almost an entire year trying to embed myself in the community, build support networks, make friends. And in this wretched February, I learned who my friends are: people that I allow myself to feel vulnerable with. People to whom I know I can reach out when I am in a sad and rotten place. I am a lucky, lucky woman, and if all I ever have in my life are friends, I know that it's been a life well lived. 

One other excellent thing happened this month...on Valentine's Day, no less: 

The divorce is final. It's done. It's over. And given the lengthy, rambling nature of this odyssey, and the rewards that have come from it, this deserves its own day in the blog sun. But I had to rejoice here, just a tiny bit. 

Coincidentally (or not), this leads us into...

What the Hell is This Even? Let me Poke it With a Stick and Ponder It: 

Moving along to matters of the heart. Or the hoo-hoo. Or whatever. I have a few friends that are actively trying to pursue this whole dating thing. Generally, I find it more than a little bit horrifying.  I watch them tie themselves in knots over it, and I try to counsel them with probably shitty advice, and shudder at the thought of it all. One of the biggest reasons why I avoided dating since I left Scoots Magoo was because I didn't know what I wanted, and didn't want anyone to be the collateral damage in my fight against myself. But during February, I somehow got it in my head to...experiment? Stick a toe in the water? See what I'd been missing out on? So I did. I stuck a toe in the water. And I actually learned a few things...

First...

• I know my worth way more now than I did even a few years ago. Guess what? I'm an attractive, fiercely smart, honest, funny, loyal, professionally successful kind of gal. And yet...
• I am so very oblivious to if or when a person is interested in me. 
• The longer I go without affection, the easier it gets. That, and the fact that I am not plagued by the biological compulsion to procreate, means that I have the luxury of not feeling the need to "find someone" now now now. 
• Here's the thing about Friends with Benefits: If you don't behave like a friend, you don't get the benefits. 
• There are two kinds of guys that I am afraid of: guys that think they are cute (they were so, so mean to me for most of my childhood and adolescence) and guys that I might like. (If I like them, they have the ability to hurt me.) So I react to my fear by preemptively turning into a defensive bitch. That's something I should probably work on if I ever seriously decide to start dating again.
• I do not want or like anxiety in my life, and "dating" (I use those quotes because I'm honestly not sure if anyone ever actually dates anymore)/sex/feels gives me BAD anxiety. 
• The longer I am single, the more possessive I am of my life, my physical space, and my emotional resources. I like the life I have, and I am not at all convinced that dating would integrate well into it. Which means...
• I still don't know what the hell I want. 

It makes me so very grateful that I spent most of my first year back not dealing with this dating insanity nonsense shit stuff. It's just so...so...well, when I don't have words for what it is, you know it's something altogether...something.

So that's it. February, you really packed a wallop. It wasn't nice knowing you. You weren't the worst month of my life, but you sure as shit gave it your best shot. You didn't kill me. You put me through a little bit of hell in a few ways, and I guess maybe that's the final good thing: when I go through hell, I survive every goddamn time.

No Love,
The Indy Grrl

Deep in the Ages

This is the tenth time I've tried to sit down and write something. Each time I try, it devolves into this constant wallowing in self-absorbed ruminations of my grief, and the anxiety and depression that caught a whiff and decided to pay a little visit. But I really, really want to try to get away from that and just take a moment to say why I grieve.

My grandmother, my Mawga, passed away last week.

It really wasn't unexpected--she's been in a decline for years, although her mental skills were strong almost until the end. But she lingered and failed and rallied so many times, my sisters and I simply weren't sure when (or even if)  the end would come. My grandmother was, as Middle Sister put it,
"a bookie's nightmare." Or, as Eldest Sister said last year, possibly a vampire robot.

But last Wednesday, her oxygen tank went quiet, and her heart finally stopped beating, and the woman who raised me left this world. Her gossip magazines are now piled up, no longer read. The lipsticks we bought her just before Christmas (she loved to look pretty) no longer used. The junk food she gobbled down--the Cheetoes, the Fritoes, the chips--no longer eaten. Even just looking over those words, it occurs to me--my Mawga lived life and enjoyed it until so very close to the end. In the last few years of her life especially, she was surrounded by people who loved her, and who were a reflection of the love she gave out.

She raised me--my earliest memories are of her. All through my childhood, I was her shadow. Until I was an adolescent, I had no friends but her. My mother, for reasons that I didn't question then and don't really understand now, sent me to live with Mawga and Boppa when I was 10, and these grandparents, who should have been enjoying their retirement, instead took me in. I was their youngest granddaughter, a strangeling, awkward thing, and they simply accepted me, loved me, gave me a home.

Boppa passed away during my annus horribilis in 2015, and Mawga soldiered on for almost another two years. In all honesty, that woman was as tough as fucking nails.

Mawga was a remarkable woman, not just for having lived almost 100 years. She was the only daughter in a household filled with boys, in a family that desperately tried to keep body and soul together in Depression-Era Indiana. She got pregnant before she was married, but she and my grandfather did marry, in 1942, and she outlived all of her children. She hated Christmas and all of its attendant work and expectations and disappointments, but that didn't stop her from working hard to give us a magical holiday each year. She was prone to streaks of melancholy and negativity, and that left its mark on me. As Eldest has pointed out, depression doesn't exist in a vaccuum--and apples don't fall far from the tree, or tears don't fall far from the eye, or something. All of the women in my family have a melancholic streak as wide as our hips, and I think our Mawga was Ground Zero for that sorrow. She loved to have a Beefeater Gin and Tonic, and quite often more than one. We watched Golden Girls together every Saturday night when I was younger, and when I was older, we enjoyed many an episode of South Park in each other's company. Every time she would bring me some treat--some new poster paints or drawing paper, or a library book that she thought would appeal to me--she would present it with an impish, generous smile of anticipatory pleasure.  She took such a keen interest in people, both celebrities on TV and common folk that she met every day. She was nosy and curious, and never seemed to be particularly scandalized by the various questionable life decisions and highly unsuitable men my sisters and I would hitch our wagons to over our young adult years. She never seemed to pass judgement on us for our dumbass mistakes, and while I'm sure I haven't mastered this, I do try.

It seemed like, as much as she liked folks, she was perfectly content on her own, reading through a huge stack of books, munching on the junk food she loved, and sometimes gazing out the window and thinking hundreds of thoughts that she probably never shared, and now never will.

"You are deep in the ages, now, deep in the ages

You whom the world could not break, nor the years tame."

-Sara Teasdale