Purge

I'm doing the dishes and thinking a lot about barfing.

"No," my brain corrects me. "Not barfing. It's purging all that awful stuff you just put into you body."

That "awful stuff" includes some leftover mac and cheese and a piece of fried fish from last night's birthday dinner. I also ate a slice of leftover birthday cake and had a glass of wine.

It's disgusting. I'm disgusting.

I can't stop thinking about how good it would feel to get it all out of my body, quickrightthismoment before it gets digested.

I'm fantasizing about it as I write this.

* * *

I spent most of my late 20s blaming my upbringing for my OCD and this never-ending goddamn food fight. With some therapy and a lot of grace, I've managed to understand that genetics and really fucking bad luck are at least as important. And even if nurture has more credit then I'm giving it, how much can I actually blame my folks? They gave me a pretty good childhood. I can understand their own trauma and struggles with anxiety (even if they've never called it that). 

I still spend a lot of time trying to hack my own brain

Tonight I remind myself of All-or-Nothing thinking, and that body dysmorphia lies. I identify other cognitive dissonances. I talk to friends. I do small things that make me happy. I practice self-care as best as I can (tonight that involves a lot of petting my cats). 

I do okay. Better than some nights. Worse than others.

I still think about purging.

* * *

Once, a friend told me a story about how thin her sister got while she had a nasty cocaine habit. Later, I spent hours trying to figure out if I know someone who could hook me up. 

I know. 

What I don't know is if I'll ever get to place in recovery where I don't obsessively think about what I've consumed or the amount of exercise that I've done. The prospect of being able to recognize a cleanse or clean eating fad as immediately dangerous to my mental health seems impossible. The act of eating a piece of cake without crying about it later is so enormous it overwhelms me.

For now all I can do is accept the space that medication and therapy have given me to pause and consider the damage purging will do to my teeth and throat, recognize that getting dizzy from not eating isn't something to be proud of, and that, you know, picking up a coke habit to lose weight probably isn't a good idea.   

Beginning

This apartment is different in so many ways.

To start, it's full of my stuff. My books, my art, and my mother's rocking chair are all out in the open again. Shelves of DVDs are not considered decoration. While it's certainly lived-in, it's also tidy and cozy.

I've only been here for a few weeks, but it already feels more like home than the apartment my ex and I shared for three years.

The biggest change is that there's music in the house again.

It's been over three years since I've been able to turn on an album without first having the check with my ex about whether or not it would overstimulate him. (it would) Or ask if he was planning to turn on television or a video game (he was). Or inquire about whether or not he wanted to talk about anything (he never did).

Granted, a lot of it is Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, and with the occasional interlude into The Smiths when I'm feeling really awful.

It's a start.

* * *

Dating is a wasteland of human sadness. 

It's the same and not the same as it was before I met the ex. The apps are similar enough. The performative woke-ness is excruciatingly worse. Dick pics and gross men still abound. But I'm more comfortable with my sexuality and myself this time through. 

It's a long string of pleasant but not right dates until a friend introduces me to a friend. 

It is the perfect rebound relationship. 

Here's what makes it perfect. It's friendly and has some of of the best and most open communication I've ever had about expectations and sex and feelings. The conversations veer between flirting and arguing, and it's good to stretch those muscles again. The sex is intense and affirmative and helps me start to get over a lot of hurtful things my ex said. The bourbon is plentiful and high-quality. 

And when it's over, it's just . . . over. Friendly notes about Star Trek or careers occasionally, but there's no pining or long-term sadness.

It's a midpoint.

* * *

 I come home after a long and emotionally exhausting day to a clean house, reasonably calm and fed cats, and dinner on the stove. Amy Winehouse is on the radio singing the blues.

The new boyfriend is everything you'd want a new boyfriend to be. He's whattheheck silly and holyshit handsome and ohmygodareyoureal? kind. He tells me I'm gorgeous when I'm running errands in my old baseball hat and a grubby t-shirt. He tells me I'm gorgeous other times, too. He treats my parents to breakfast when they meet him. 

Every moment that I spend with him feels precious.

He gets me a glass of tea and does something to make me laugh. On the radio, Amy is singing about love being a losing game and in this moment, I don't even care if she's right. This doesn't feel like losing game. It doesn't feel like an ending.

It feels like a really good beginning.

I Had to Retitle This Post Because of Facebook

This is a Post About Suicide

* * *

Right after clicking the link, I realize that this is not something I should be reading right now.

The headline reads "I am Not Always Very Attached to Being Alive."

"Oh, boy" I think.

I want to write about suicidal ideation and depression, but in order to do that I need to do a couple other things first.

I am not currently actively suicidal.

Depressed? Uh-huh, but I can see the light. I think. Struggling with an eating disorder? Yes, and it's awful. Only able to write this post because a close friend has fed, walked, and cleaned up after me? Totally. Currently wishing I just didn't exist? Yeah, sometimes.

* * *

A few years ago I was briefly admitted to the ER because of suicidal ideation.

I only ended up there because one of my best friends, who lived nearly 800 miles away, told me that I was not thinking clearly and I needed to talk to someone who was not her. Honestly, not much came of it because I was resistant to treatment and still married so there was, theoretically, someone to keep an eye on me.

After the fact I had a lot of long conversations with my GP and shrink. We were all satisfied with the diagnosis that even then, it had more to do with a really bad obsessive compulsive episode and less to do with actually wanting to die.

This probably sounds like a specious distinction to a lot of people, but I promise that it's one that matters.

* * *

I'm not always happy to be alive.

Much of the time I am tremendously grateful for life, for the ability to know and love the people I do. I adore my job and take a deep sense of meaning from it. I enjoy achieving goals and learning and experiencing moving art. Even on my very worst days, I can still dig deep and find things to grateful for.

Let’s be real, most of the worst days involve knowing that my cats live spoiled, charmed lives because I am here.

I'm still not always thrilled with my own existence.

* * *

Here's what I mean when I say I'm not always happy to be alive.

It's more than just existential boredom. I have dealt with depression as a result of obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety since puberty. Most of the time, I do okay. I train for triathlons. I go to work. My friends make me laugh so hard I almost pee my pants. I kiss babies and snuggle pets and pay attention to the flowers blooming in my neighborhood.

I love a lot of my life.

But even on good days, if I suddenly winked out of existence, I'd probably be okay with it.

This is passive suicidal ideation. For me, it's chronic and that makes it a hard thing to talk about. The second you say "I'd be okay not existing" you find yourself in midst of a bunch of well-meaning conversations where you're suddenly put in the position of having to comfort other people. Of having to explain that you don't actually have plan to kill yourself, and yes, that actually matters and no, you don't need to be admitted to inpatient care. Of having to listen to someone tell you to just eat more probiotics or do a cleanse or listen to some self-help podcast and you’ll feel better.

I really want to punch that last group in the face.

So much of living with whatever we call this is feeling, is a deep sense of disconnection from, well everything. Even when life is good there’s a part of me that thinks, “Meh. This is good, but I would also be okay with not being.” When people’s first reactions are medication or therapy or yoga, I’m not motivated to actually talk about the fact that I often struggle with the idea of being alive.

Of course, all that does is drive the sense of disconnection I feel.

I’m really tired of that. It’s exhausting to try to explain to people why even when I'm not in a depressive episode I'm not always the most fun to be around. There’s no non-intense way to say to someone that the idea of seeing their kids grow up keeps me alive. It’s frustrating to realize that I’m probably not the only person who lives with this, but no one says anything.

So . . . I am often ambivalent about existence. And I don’t want to feel disconnected or alone or like this is something shameful that I have to hide.

There it is.

Just in time for me to take a dose of probiotics.

Screw Perfect

I'm planning out my meals for the next week and crying.

I've just finished a conversation with some friends where I've confided that, right now, the act of putting food into my body is the most disgusting thing I can think of. Going out to brunch with fills me with dread. Dinner frequently looks like a handful of roasted almonds or a bowl of popcorn because I'm "too tired" to cook. I cancel a date with a guy who's a chef because I can't stand the thought of talking about food. I buy a scale and put it in front of the pantry.  

I go to my therapist when the act of chewing starts to make me gag, when I'm so anxious after eating that my stomach cramps and I feel like I have food poisoning.

The friends I've been talking to have all struggled with eating disorders at some point (I'm beginning to wonder if there are a lot of women who haven't). While my shrink was mainly worried with doing an assessment on how bad things have gotten, they offer solid advice. Plan your meals and work your plan. Keep in mind that you can't do the things you love if you're starving. Find a support group a little closer to where you live.

Remember that this is not normal. 

* * *

Mental illness is the most tedious thing in the world.

It is also the most awfully predictable thing in the world. It turns up when things are going really well. Newlywed and deeply in love with your husband? Here's a trip to the emergency room with suicidal ideation. Excelling at work? How about a depressive episode coupled with imposter syndrome so bad that you'll miss a deadline. Feeling healthy and beautiful for the first time since your marriage? Hello again, bulimia. Take a load off, you'll be here awhile.

I've been down this road so many times now that I know the drill. I reach out to my support group. I make appointments with my GP and therapist. I buy a new CBT workbook. I start meditating every day again. I snuggle my cats and drag myself out of the house to do things I used to enjoy because while I don't believe it at the moment, experience has shown that these things help.

It doesn't make doing them--or me--any less boring.

* * *

"You're in therapy?" 

I'm taken aback. 

I've been telling a story to a friend that mentioned the words "my therapist" without really considering that he doesn't know a lot about my mental health. I feel like I present as neurotic enough that everyone assumes that I'm in therapy.

Apparently that's not the case.

"Um, yeah?"

"Oh. I just . . . I never would have guessed."

If I could freeze one minute in time it would be this. This one, perfect moment where I'm passing, or have passed, as neurotypical.

As normal.   

* * *

One of the things you learn in any undergraduate writing class is that you aren't supposed to write Big or Terrible Things until you're well-removed from them. No one wants to read your grief, anger, or sadness while you're still processing it. I like that idea. It appeals to my obsessive need for perfectionism.

Unfortunately, my obsessive need for perfectionism is what keeps me from getting healthy enough to be able to write about depression and OCD and eating disorders from a place of any distance. Every couple years, like clockwork, I have a mental health episode. And while they get less intense and shorter with the passing years, they still happen. I still end up back in my shrink's office, talking to my GP about SSRIs and benzos, and leaning hard on my friends to help get me through another couple months of tedious bullshit. It's hard not to feel like a pest or a burden when I have to send another email saying "Hey guys, I'm having another episode. I could use some company."

It's exhausting and it feels like my life has always been this way. Objectively I know it hasn't, that's just the way things look to me right now. And it's frustrating enough for me to want to say "Screw perfect, just give me normal."

Fat

It's 10:00AM. I'm covered in sweat, hot, and regretting every decision I've made that's brought me to this point.

I'm running a 5K on a treadmill as the final leg of a practice indoor triathlon, something I got up at 6:00 to prep for. It's not the actual indoor triathlon I signed up for--that's three weeks away. I got up early on a Sunday to do a practice triathlon.

I'm being a little dramatic. I was regretting the decisions I had made, but only because running a treadmill is the most boring thing in the world. While I'm running I'll cope by texting bad selfies to friends, asking if they know that treadmills were originally designed as a punishment, and generally being a whiny little bitch.

At the end of the run I'll hop off the treadmill and get hit by a rush of euphoria.

While I didn't win the genetic lottery in . . . basically any other way I'm lucky enough to be a person who gets a runner's high almost every time I work out, regardless of the activity.

I'm feeling even better when I check my watch stats and see I've cut an entire minute off my normal swim time. I've been working really hard since November, cross and strength training and it's nice to see that hard work paying off.

I trade my sweaty workout clothes for a towel and decide to hop on the scale before getting in the shower.

That's exactly the place where the bottom falls out.

"I deserve this" I think, tearing up in the shower. "I had that extra drink on Friday night and ohmygod refined pasta? You slob, what were you thinking?"

"I deserve this."

* * *

I am in the best shape of my life. 

I've lost three dress sizes, my mile times are faster than they've ever been, and my last doctor was thrilled with my progress. When people ask me my secret, I laugh and say "Oh, you know, diet and exercise." 

Here's my actual secret. 

Every morning I get up and weight myself, often more than once. Depending on what the scale says, I'll have Breakfast A (70 calories) or Breakfast B (an indulgent 140 calories). I will go to work and try to keep my total calorie consumption throughout the day to around 700 calories, mostly eaten two hours before I go to the gym, which I visit six days a week. I'll spend 90 minutes Spinning, will shower, and will walk the 1.5 miles back to my house. I'll eat a carefully portioned dinner, ensure that I haven't had more than 1,200 calories in a day and will skip eating back most of the calories burned during my workout. More often than not, I'll halve my dinner so I can have a beer to help me sleep. 

If, say, I've done something egregious like go to dinner at a friend's house and eat more than the calories I have allotted, I will get home, put on my running clothes, and run until I'm at my calorie limit for the day. 

I do this every day for nine months.

At the end of it, a new doctor will ask how I made such progress. When I detail my diet and exercise routine for her, she looks me dead in the face and tells me "That's not a lifestyle change. That's an eating disorder."

"No, it's not. Fat girls don't have those."

She almost slaps me.

I would have deserved it. 

* * *

"I mean, for someone who works out so much, I don't understand how you put on so much weight."

I've heard no fewer than 17 variations of this comment throughout my dating life. 

This particular time I lock myself in the bathroom and cry for hours. 

I am three years and thirty pounds from the best shape of my life. I fell in love and stopped working out so much because I was so happy. I fell out of love and drank too much and ate too much comfort food as a method of coping. Everything about my life feels so out of control at the moment that the constant refrain in my head is "You deserve this. You let yourself go. You're an ugly fat monster."

"You deserve this." 

* * *

It's 10:00PM. I'm covered in sweat, hot, and regretting absolutely none of the decisions that brought me to this place. 

I'm sleeping with someone new. It's the first someone new since my ex-husband and while it's nothing serious, it's been incredibly meaningful for me. He's a genuinely funny, kind, and warm person and I couldn't have written a better first-since-my-ex-husband.

I can't get out of my own head. 

The second my clothes come off, all I can think about is the stretch marks on my boobs, the cellulite on my ass, my disgusting belly. I'm convinced that this is a pity fuck or a meh-I-have-nothing-better-to-do fuck or a I-haven't-had-sex-in-awhile-and-I-can-close-my-eyes-and-imagine-Scarlett-Johansson fuck.

It's not. 

I get a little bit better the more I get used to him (see previous comments about funny, kind, and warm), but I still can't settle down. Every time we eat together he comments on how little appetite I seem to have (It's one of those unspoken fat girl rules. Eat less than you want and try not to enjoy it). Based on the number of times I've said "Oh, I got busy and had a late lunch" he must think I'm the most overworked employee in the place. 

I make a lot of jokes to him about how I'm the incarnation of a goddess of sex, here for his adoration and awe, but the truth is that I'm five years and ten pounds from the best shape of my life. And for as much as I'd like to be proud (and am proud, if I'm being honest) of the fact that I can do an indoor tri for practice on a Sunday morning, there's an extremely loud voice in my head talking about how maybe my fat ass should walk the two miles home and I can probably skip that post-workout bagel and oh, by the way, maybe you should cancel your plans with funny-kind-warm tonight.

Afterall, it's not like I deserve it. 

Men are From . . .

"Oh my goodness, what a cute puppy! Is she yours?"

"If I say yes, will you pull my pants down?"

"Um, I just found out that I have to wait until April for the new Game of Thrones season, so that feels like enough disappointment for one day."

* * *

"This is the song Magic Cock Cake from our new album Smush 25:8."

I'm laughing so hard I'm almost peeing my pants. 

I'm grateful for a lot of things about my divorce. It was reasonably amicable, I got the cats, I lost twenty pounds, and I don't live in a house with anime scrolls and swords on the wall anymore. 

What I am most grateful for is that I seem to have won custody of my ex-husband's ex-girlfriend. 

He introduced us early on and we got on like a house on fire. She's well-read, likes to yell about feminism, loves to drink gin while yelling about feminism, and is a real weirdo. 

Oh, she also makes me laugh so hard I nearly pee my pants. 

I'm hanging out with her while she's on a lunch break and have been talking waaaaaay too loudly about my sex life. She decides to turn a recent story of my misadventures into a death metal album and launches into a rendition of the song on the spot.  

When I can finally stand up again she gets quietly serious. 

"Kel, you seem really happy. Like, really happy." She pauses. "I'm glad." 

Me too. 

* * *

"hey luv the black lipstick like my fav color cuz noone uses it"

"Thanks. It's actually a dark purple. I like my gothiness to be within the bell curve of work appropriate."

"u into latex?"

"I'm sorry?" 

"rubber?"

". . ."

"u goin 2 rubberball 2019? come suck my cock its so gooooood"

"Dude, if I wanted a mediocre dining experience, I'd just go to West End."

* * *

"You don't sound like yourself."

"I agree."

"Me too. "

Over the months, my makeup group chat has evolved into a lot more than makeup. 

It's become a place to talk about work and sex and relationships. I mean, it's also a lot of photos of me trying (and mostly failing, hilariously) to get the perfect cut crease, but it's more than that. 

"You sound mopey."

"^This."

"And most of the time you walk around like 'GIRLS I AM A BADASS AVENGING GODDESS WHO'S GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD."

"She's right. So stop being so fucking hard on yourself."

"Yeah, mope if you need to, but tomorrow get up and be your BADASS SELF."

"And stop being so fucking had on yourself."

* * *

"hey girl. you look so sexxxxxy."

". . ."

"i'm looking for a virgin so we can para-bond without any drama."

"Well, unless you have a time machine, I'm afraid I'm not your girl." 

"well, your sexual partners shouldn't exceed three people."

". . ."

"you look like you'd be good at fucking."

"Know how I got that way?"

"yessssssssssss." 

"By fucking more than three people." 

* * *

There are six different women in four different timezones howling with laughter. 

I've just sent a screenshot of a text that a guy has sent me after ghosting on me two months ago, apologizing for ghosting on me and (we're pretty sure) trying to make a booty call. 

"Honestly," I say, "I'd have more respect if he just came out and said "Hey, I didn't want to date you, but wanna fuck?""

There's a lot more laughter and I am not the only one who decides to pour myself a gin and tonic. 

It's a pretty stereotypical divorcee thing to say, but for the most part I am so over men right now. 

There's a lot about life that is going really well. This is the happiest I've been in probably two years. My life feels like my own again, and almost none of that has to do with men. 

It does have a lot to do with women.

I've always known that female friendships are powerful as fuck. Women in my life have served as mentors and friends and unpaid therapists (sorry for the extra emotional labor).  I thought I knew how special they were and that I valued them enough. 

Yeah, right. 

The past year has been all of the best and all of the worst of my life. I have sobbed over tea and snuggled my goddaughters and vowed that I was never going to date again. I've screamed with laughter over terrible pickup lines and toasted to XX chromosomes and made another woman a cake as a thank you for getting me laid. 

The women in my life have gotten me through the hardest moments of my life. If I could I would bake every one of them a cake.

These dudes, though. 

Here

“Oh, I use “May I be patient, may I be I be strong, may I be kind to myself” pretty often. I like the rhythm of it.”

“That’s a good one.”

“I saw you have another one written on your mirror. What was it?”

“Fear is the mind-killer. I write it on my arm when I’m doing open water swims, too.”

“Isn’t that from Dune?”

“Yup.”

“You’re a weird girl.”

* * *

Everything feels muffled.

My husband has just told me he wants a divorce. While I’m at work. Over text message.

In the coming months I’ll spend a lot of time wondering what I did to deserve this. Surely I didn’t marry the kind of person who ends a four year relationship and a two year marriage via text. I must have done something wrong. Yes, that’s it. This was my fault. I did something to deserve this.

Nearly a year out, I still don’t understand how it happened, but I know that I didn’t deserve it.

What I do understand is how at that moment I felt myself slam something down over my heart.

“No,” I told it. “We don’t have time to fall apart now.”

I don’t remember a lot about the rest of that day. It was like being deeply sleep deprived. Or drunk. I’m reasonably certain I worked out. I know I finished the project I was working on before I went home. I remember that the muffled feeling took awhile to wear off.

When it comes to brain vs. heart, my brain is almost never in control. It spends the rest of the day asserting itself in time with its own beat.

I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.

* * *

“I know it seems like a silly exercise, but for someone who is perennially hard on themselves, it’s an important one.”

I groan. “Fine. I have grit.”

“What else?”

“I’m bright. I’m articulate when I’m not nervous. I’m adventurous.”

When she asks a chirpy “Anything else?” I remind myself that I am paying to be here.

“I care. A lot. All the time, actually. About everyone.”

“Yes. Warm-hearted. And open-hearted. Neither of those are bad things.”

I think about the jar over my heart and its quiet insistence that it exists.

I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

* * *

In the months after the ex leaves me, I reach for everything.

I meditate. I reread my favorite books. I stop drinking and start exercising and eat more vegetables. I belt out my favorite musicals alone in my apartment. I write down things that feel like they’re helping. I consider getting them tattooed on my body and immediately put a one-year moratorium on any permanent body alteration.

Impossibly, I start dating again.

Somewhere in the midst of it, my protected heart finally breaks. And I keep it covered.

“No,” I tell it. “It doesn't matter how handsome or funny they are.We’re going to keep you here forever.”

* * *

I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe.

It’s late and I should be asleep, but I’m up texting and a dumb play on words has set me off.

Life has been like this for a little while. It came on so gradually that I didn’t realize what was happening. I’ve stopped needing to meditate for an hour before bed to fall asleep. I’ve started reading again. While I’m still working out, but not frenetically, twice a day.

I find myself up late, texting and laughing.

One of my goals for myself during my divorce was to come through it with my warm heart still intact. I made that goal even after I secreted it away and told myself no one would ever get to see it again. It sounds contradictory, but I think even as I was falling apart I knew (believed, maybe) that it would happen.

I’m still surprised by how swiftly it did. Handsome and funny with a smart mouth certainly helped, but it's been more than that. Time, likely. Good friends, too. I won't lie, a few liberal applications of gin and jazz standards probably helped me along as well.

What shocks me more than the swiftness is how ready my heart is to try again, even when I know that things probably aren't going to work. It keeps asserting itself over and over again.

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here.

Delicate

"Can we pop in here?"

"Why?"

I feel like screaming. I feel like screaming a lot lately. 

"It's a bookstore I love. We're walking past it. We don't have anywhere to be." 

He's annoyed. He's been annoyed a lot lately. 

Bookstores are one of the few places I can go when my anxiety is really doing a number on me. There's something about tidy stacks of alphabetized books that I find calming. I abandon him to his simmering irritation near the door and browse the stacks. 

I don't actually want anything. I've got a houseful of books I don't have the attention span to read right now. I want a few moments of peace and calm before we head home to ignore one another for the rest of the weekend. When I return to the counter where he's scowling at his phone, I pause for a moment to read a framed print for sale. 

Months later, I'll wonder if this moment in time was a portent. 

For the time being, I start to cry. 

* * *

He has a smart mouth. 

At least, that's what my mother would call it. 

I mainly call it fun. 

It's the kind of sense of humor where a wildly inappropriate joke is out of your mouth before your brain has a chance to realize how inappropriate it is, something that's just happened. He takes a look at my shocked face, realizes what he said, and immediately starts to backtrack. 

I start laughing so hard I start crying. I get out of bed and he immediately reaches for my hand. 

"No," he says. "No, come back." 

I was only getting up to switch on the fan, but there's something in his voice that makes me crawl right back into his warm arms. Our best case scenario is three, maybe three and a half months at the outside, and who knows if it'll even be that much. 

These things are so delicate. 

For the time being, these snatches of three or four hours at a stretch feel impossibly precious. So much so that I treasure even his awfully timed jokes. 

"Next time," I say, "I'll just bring you a warm apple pie."

* * *

"What is it?"

I'm wiping tears off of my face.

"This print. It's beautiful." I grab his hand and pull him over to read it, keeping hold of his hand the whole time. I feel so hopeful in this moment, like he'll read it and whatever this stupid impasse is between us will break up and we'll cry and kiss and everything will go back to normal. 

"Huh." He says when he finishes and turns to me. My heart leaps. 

"Are you ready to go?" 

* * *

I'm midway into a long videochat when one of my best friends says something that stuns me. 

We've been talking about a lot of stuff: tri training and public health and science fiction podcasts. At some point I end up deep in a post-mortem about my love life and she interrupts, something unusual for her. 

"You need to stop confusing what's normal with what's rational." 

"What?"

"You seem to believe that everyone except for you acts perfectly rationally 100% of the time when they're making decisions about romance and love. Most people aren't, ever. Stop believing that you can or should."  

We talk for awhile longer, but I'm distracted. When we finally hang up, I walk off to read something hanging on my wall. 

It's the print from over a year ago. As far as art goes, it was never much. Just a printing of a quote from a book I have come to love. 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

After reading and re-reading it for awhile, my phone beeps. It's the guy with the smart mouth and warm arms. Just seeing his name on my phone makes me break out laughing again. 

Three months or three days, it doesn't really matter to me anymore. Badly timed jokes and all, this is something worth having. 

What the Living Do

“So what have you been doing?”

“What?”

“With all the time you have now that you’re not regularly . . .”

“Oh.” I try to decide if I want to have this conversation, if I have any interest in what’s being offered on the other side of it. I don’t. We’ve been down this road together so many times. After years, I’m finally okay turning it down.

I believe that there's something better, that I'm worth something better.

“Oh, you know, Lost a lot of weight. Cut two minutes off my tri time. I’m kicking ass at work and taking care of myself.”

“I can’t even imagine going that long . . .”

I indulge myself in one long eyeroll before writing back. “Yeah. I know.”

* * *

I’m riding the bus when the first poem comes to mind.

I’m tired, my muscles are sore, and it’s been a long day. The bus is crowded and hot and I usually I would be carsick and annoyed. Today, I open an app on my cell phone and listen to my favorite reading of a Jane Kenyon poem.

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

I’m a little afraid to say it out loud. I don’t want to jinx it, but 2019 has started well. I don’t know if it was the straight up witch cleansing ritual I did on December 31st or (more likely) the fact that a new year just feels like a chance to start over, but I’ve been doing really well for the past few months. Anxiety and depression are still always in the background, but they’re easier to mute than they’ve been in years.

I feel content. Grounded. Happy.

The happiness catches me by surprise, because it doesn’t come as the result of anything tangible. The guy I thought I met ended up being a dud. I’m doing well at work, but that’s certainly never been the root cause of my happiness. I haven’t seen any shattering art or spent time in state parks or even seen my nieces lately.

Regardless, here it is, back at my feet.

Hello, happiness. I remember you.

* * *

“What’s most important to you in a relationship?”

“What?”

“What do you value? What are your goals? What are characteristics you’d like to find in another person?”

These may not standard first date questions, but I’m not really into baffing around these days. I’m trying this new thing where I’m being the person I am and fuck whatever happens.

In shorthand that means that I text when I feel like it, I dress and do my makeup for myself, and I am generally every bit as intense as I am in my work and personal relationships up front.

I go on a lot of first dates.

* * *

I’m half-asleep when the second poem wakes me up.


I’m tired, my muscles are sore, and it’s been a long day. My brain constantly wakes me up with trivia, so it’s not entirely surprising. Usually I’d be annoyed and would pull the covers over my head. Tonight, I let the guy next to me pull me in closer and think about the poem.

What you called that yearning. What you finally gave up.

I’m a little afraid to move, to breathe, to acknowledge my existence or his. This moment feels impossibly fragile. In a few minutes he will get up to leave. In a few days, I will decide that I don’t need this to be anything more than what it was, a moment of kindness and genuine warmth between two people. In a few months, we will have likely forgotten about it and each other. But for now, all that’s in the background. This, perhaps, was my something better.

I feel satisfied. Tranquil. Grateful.

The gratitude is the most striking. When it comes to intimacy I usually, um, give as good as I get. It’s something deeper that makes me think of the poem. It has been so easy to unreflectively give things up over the past years. Standards. Happiness. Independence and satisfaction and tranquility. Warmth and kindness. But more than any of those things, it’s been so easy to give up yearning for them.

Here, in this impossibly fragile moment, I feel it again. And with that feeling comes deep gratitude for the person next to me.

Hello, yearning. I remember you.

It's Still Complicated

"Yeah, I mean, you can do better."

"We always said that we were going to see you, not him."

"I never liked him, but I decided I never saw the him that you saw."

I hear a lot of this in the months after my divorce. People who previously seemed to enjoy the ex-husband's company are eager to tell me that they never understood why we were together, that he was clearly out of his league with me, that they never liked him that much anyway. They assure me things will be better the next time around. I have a canned response:

"I loved him. It was complicated."

Canned response or no, these comments send me waaaaaaay down the rabbit hole. There must have been signs I missed, right? And he was obviously horrible, so what was so wrong in me that I didn't see his horribleness? Did everyone tell me and I missed it?

I fixate on these things for months and spend hours sobbing over what a broken, disgusting person I am to have not seen the things that appeared so obvious to my friends.

* * *

I met someone. 

Just writing that sentence gives me stomach flutters and makes me flush. 

I met someone. 

It's early days, much, much too early to even be writing that sentence, but we live in hope, right?

I met someone. 

I smile when he texts me and get nervous when he doesn't. I spend hours worrying about what to wear, how to do my makeup before our dates. I talk on the phone with him when we cancel a date and don't want to hang up. I imagine sex, long weekends in the woods together, sleepy Sunday mornings with cats and coffee. 

I met someone. 

My stomach flutters. I flush.

* * *

"Jesus Christ, someone actually said that?"

I'm spending a long evening with friends, ostensibly gaming but really pouring my guts out across their dining room table. 

"More than one someone. Everyone seems eager to tell me how much they didn't like my ex-husband."

"Yes, but that's not true."

"What do you mean?"

"They're processing their own shit, Kel. They want to make you feel better, and don't know how. This is their attempt." 

This is one of the wisest things someone will say to me in my grief.

* * *

We're somewhere near hour four of our date when a few words start popping out at me. 

Vaping. Night Owl. Picky Eater. 

When I picked out my outfit for today I was going for something effortless and chic. More importantly, something that didn't require me to carry a bag with me. I look fantastic, but I also suddenly find myself on the edge of a panic attack and my meds are miles away.

He elaborates on each of these and if my lizard brain would stop screaming for long enough for me to listen I'd hear the important things. He takes care of his health and eats well. He's considerate about other people, especially ones he's seeing romantically. He's easy-going and a good listener. 

On the surface, nothing he's said is even a theoretical dealbreaker for me. But ohboy, the ex-husband and I had some knock down fights over those exact things, so now instead of listening, I'm breaking out into an anxious sweat because of those five words. 

Vaping. Night Owl. Picky Eater.

I've been saying for months now that grief is a funny, unpredictable thing. It turns out that trauma is, too. 

To people on the outside, calling the ending of my marriage traumatic probably sounds foolish. Natural disasters are traumatic. Violence is traumatic. Your divorce may have hurt a lot, but it certainly wasn't traumatic. 

It was. 

It's one of those situations where there's a lot I could say about it and not much to be said about it. But the trauma there was real, and I thought I had handled it. 

Until I'm panicking on the sidewalk somewhere around hour four of a good date.

* * *

I may have been out of my husband's league. 

Who knows? The person I am not can't even begin to evaluate who I was then. How things ended throw a pall over how things started, and I don't really see much of a point in examining it anyway. Thankfully, people say things like that less now, and I say what I've always said: "I loved him. It was complicated." 

Oddly, my feelings about this new person are every bit as complex. How can I have stomach flutters and still keep enough distance to watch for those red flags? How can I be sure that I won't make the mistakes I made with my ex-husband? How can I trust that I'm not dating someone who can keep up with me? Can I date someone again and still protect myself? Is that even still love? Am I stupid for wanting love and romance again? 

I don't have a good answer for any of it. My life is seriously lacking in those Public Radio moments of insight these days. 

It isn't that I'm totally without an answer though. 

I met someone. I like him. It's complicated.