Wild World

When I started this blog, it was about being a newlywed and a newly-stepmommed. Then there was deployment, and it became many musings and tribulations on that. A home was bought, and I figured out by trial and error all the home-related stuff I was passionate and moderately talented at. Now I am getting unmarried, and I write a lot about unmarriage, single parenthood, grief and surviving this sh*tstorm with heart and a laugh. Eventually, I'll be selling my house and moving somewhere, so I'll be back on the discussion of dwellings, where my heart sings, one day. Someday I'll date. But let's keep going with unmarriage for now. Because, really, this blog is life evolution.
 

I have kept very distracted from the gone-ness this summer. The batsh*t crazy of trying to sell a house when people are too busy to buy houses and running two children from one week of events to another keeps me laser-beam focused on Making It Work. I've temporarily settled into that uncertainty. School starts in 2.5 weeks. All we're missing is new shoes and pants for Jake. My mind's free space is unwelcome.

 

It's been quiet without the boys this week (again). Last night I tried a new red wine while I made myself some risotto (leftovers for days) and caught up on The Newsroom. Pandora keeps me company while I do the dishes and clean up my cooking mess, and I don't even like Cat Stevens, but there he was, telling me "now that I've lost everything to you..." The words "he left" flashed marquee-style in my head, so my wine and I had to sit on the floor. Not to cry. Or feel broken. Perhaps it had been shoved out of the things I stay aware of for so long that I needed to remember that. An electric shock of reality. I just lost the energy to stand up. So I sat on my cold kitchen floor and drank my wine for five or six songs. I stood up, smashed the wine glass into the sink, scooped out the glass and finished with the kitchen. Because that is just necessary behavior, especially when it's quiet.

 

 

Jake has taken an interest in Paul Revere, so I've become an uncertified expert on Paul Revere. During that weekend I consumed that generous distribution of casino cheap red wine, I decided that Paul Revere did important things for unmarrying ladies. Because wine makes me smart like that. Paul Revere warned everybody to get the hell out of the way and cause as little disruption as possible, else you must confront someone you'd just rather be free from.

 

Follow me down the rabbit hole for a minute:

 

There's a person from my past who never wanted my back-and-forth relationship with my wasband to be successful. The word "delighted" comes to mind. For the sake of anonymity, though that's blown if you went to high school with me, let's call him Seymour Butts. Once I started telling people that my marriage was ending, I often lamented that Seymour Butts was not only going to be giddy when he found out, but that he was going to get to wander the Earth until the day he dies saying he was right and he "tried to tell me time and time again." I just hoped that I never found out when he found out, or what his reaction was. We still have friends in common. And, you know, I write, so it's not the World's Best Kept Secret.

 

The other thing I dreaded was the day where running into someone sans husband prompted them to inquire into the whereabouts of said husband and I would have to find a way to disclose my separated status in a way that did not make them feel sorry for me. I had not had this experience, because I have a) either only been with friends and family who already knew; b) been with friends and family who warned people, a la Paul Revere, that the husband was not accompanying her, no more, not ever; or c) been around people who had never met him.

 

Baby Jesus decided to have a twofer and leave Paul Revere at home.

 

Because there I am, standing at the bar line in the casino, an hour from my hometown, when Seymour Butts walks right by me. And because twelve months ago I became someone without the sense God gave a goose, I tapped him on the shoulder. FIRST QUESTION out of his mouth once he recognized me was about the location of the person who, last time he heard, I was married to. I shrugged, smiled, held up an empty ring finger and said "Not here!" I would describe the face I was looking at as smirking, but no matter.

 

It took sixty seconds for me to plow straight into two things I could not have avoided long enough - Seymour Butts finding out my marriage had failed and having a clueless person ask me where my husband was. There was no one to run ahead and warn him not to ask, and no one to tell me that Seymour Butts was in the building. My dad says "if you have to eat sh*t, there's no point nibbling."

 

Baby Jesus also timed this moment to happen near a bar. Outside a room where 80s music, wild dancing, and fun family were holding a spot for me.

 

The sh*t was eaten, and when I got to the bar, I ordered a double to wash it down.