Some random things I learned about myself last night…

I cry easily, I didn’t used to be a crier but somewhere along the line, over the course of the last few months, I’ve become a crier.

I need my big brother to beat up the bullies for me sometimes.

I have the amazing ability to turn ordinary toaster waffles into hockey pucks…that’s right folks, I even mess up toaster waffles.

I’d rather spend the evening hanging out with my 11-year-old watching Disney movies than just about anything else I can think of.

I can do a Kung Fu single legged stance.

I have good girlfriends.

Contrary to what I’d thought previously, the phone isn’t too heavy to pick up when I want to push the self destruct button.

God has my back, when I was really hurting yesterday, the first thought that popped into my head was to lean on my AA sisters. At first I thought I should get props for that but that’s all JC because left to my own devices, I head straight for one of Dante’s circles of Hell in a manner and at a speed that can break the laws of physics, as well as several state and federal statutes, I’m sure.

I have the entire script of the movie Drop Dead Gorgeous memorized.

I have a tendency to workout at my problems.

I can speak my truth.

I can actually feel my heart hardening…it’s feels a little like heartburn with some nausea mixed in case you were wondering.

I still remember how to add fractions with different denominators…take that 7th grade math.

I’m glad I’m alive.

Superman, AC/DC, little girls and Kryptonite...

I Think About You -Don Schlitz and Steve Seskin Everytime I see a woman on a billboard sign I think about you Saying "drink this beer and you'll be mine" I think about you When an actress on a movie screen Plays Lolita in some old man's dreams It doesn't matter who she is I think about you When I see a pretty woman walking down the street I think about you Men look her up and down like she's some kind of treat I think about you She wouldn't dare talk to a stranger always has to be aware of the danger it doesn't matter who she is I think about You eight years old big blue eyes and a heart of gold when I look at this world, I think about You and I can't help but see that every woman used to be Somebody's little girl, I think about you Everytime I hear people say it's never gonna change I think about you Like it's some kind fo joke, some kind of game I think about you When I see a woman on the news who didn't ask to be abandoned or abused it doesn't matter who she is I think about You eight years old big blue eyes and a heart of gold when I look at this world, I think about You and I can't help but see that every woman used to be Somebody's little girl, I think about you When I look at this world I think about you

So this is how my day is going so far…I’ve spent most of it in tears, with my office door closed. At times, I’ve considered crawling under my desk, yes, it’s going that well today. I had a restless night of sleep last night and sleep deprivation is my kryptonite (sidebar…when kryptonite didn’t come up as a misspelled word, I looked it up on dictionary.com and this is the definition they have…”any surviving fragment of the exploded mythological planet Krypton, home of Superman.” Please find that as entertaining and ridiculous as I do…). Like most other folks in the Twin Cities, I could blame this poor night’s sleep on the 65+ mph winds that shook us all night long (see what I mean about kryptonite, somehow I went AC/DC there), but I won’t. My restless night was due to feelings of overwhelming helplessness. Now, when I say overwhelming, I’m not talking I’m-stressed-but-nothing-a-little-yoga can’t handle, I mean holy-shit-life-is-coming-at-me-at-the-speed-of-an-incoming-missile-and-there’s-no-cover.

I hesitate to even broach the subject of why I’m feeling so overwhelmed, but seeing as I’ve already admitted to seriously considering crawling under my desk today, what the hell. Here’s the deal, I just want to be left alone. I don’t mean I want to isolate, I mean I want men to just back the hell off. At the risk of sounding like that don’t-hate-me-because-I’m-beautiful shampoo commercial, I’m tired of being approached by men, wherever I go. I’m tired of getting messages on facebook (which isn’t a word according to spellcheck, someone better get on that because I’m pretty sure society is moving to the place where marriages and divorces will be considered official if announced on there, but again, I digress) from men I hardly know. I know the score, none of these guys really knows me, they know what they see, and for a woman who has been through what I’ve been through, to be viewed merely as a body…well, honestly, I don’t have the words to describe what it does to me. I’m not a personal challenge or a conquest, I’m a mother, I’m a daughter, I’m a sister, I’m a friend. I’m also a survivor of rape who has a hell of a time saying no. For months now, the running joke with my circle of friends is that I’ll accidently get married again because some guy will say “let’s get married” and I’ll say, with resignation “ok.”

I’m also a person going through a very painful divorce, a person who needs some space to breathe, a person who needs to learn about herself, a person who needs to be alone. Apparently, I’m also still a work in progress. I completed Rape Trauma Counseling earlier this month so I should be good, right? Wrong. When “I Think about You” came up on my iPod this morning, it literally brought me to my knees in such emotional pain that I could hardly breathe for a minute. I’m not Lolita for some old man, I’m not “some kind of treat,” I’m still my dad’s little girl, all women are. When I was 8 years old, I was stubborn and willful, and my dad’s little girl. I insisted on doing things my own way. When I was raped, I lost that sense of myself, I no longer knew what my way was. I’m starting to learn what that is again, but I need some time to figure that out and I can’t do that if I’m dating, or kind of dating, or “it’s just lunch”ing.

I need time, I need space, I need sleep and, in attempt to bring this full circle, sans AC/DC, I need my fortress of solitude…

Save second base...

The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits. -Rocky Balboa

So Monday I had, and failed, my first mammogram. I guess I should have studied. The irony that this news comes to me in October, Breast Cancer Awareness month, has not escaped me. So now what, I get to go to the breast center (which I'm pretty sure is not nearly as sexy as the name would suggest) for another mammogram and an ultrasound. As I've been waiting and worrying, it has occured to me that maybe this is God's way of putting my present circumstances into perspective for me. Yes, I am a survivor of rape. Yes, I was a virgin when I was raped. Yes, I destroyed my first marriage because I was in so much emotional pain over the trauma of my past that the only way I knew how to cope was to pull the pin on my self destruct grenade. Yes, I've spent so many years running away from that pain that all I was actually doing was helping it with its conditioning so when I did I finally stop running earlier this spring, I found a much stronger opponent than I was expecting. Yes, I'm alone and that scares the shit out of me most days. But I'm still alive, none of these "yes's" have taken me out of the game.

But breast cancer might. I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, the reality is that it's most likely nothing and I will be fine, but this has been a wake up call. Though I look at the above quote from Rocky Balboa multiple times, every day (it's next to my bed, on my bathroom mirror, above my sink, next to my desk, you get the picture) it has taken on new meaning for me this week. Nothing is going to ever hit me as hard as life. I've walked through hell and survived, no one in this life can throw anything at me as tough as that journey, but life itself might hit me hard enough to knock me to my knees and keep me there permenantly this time. I've also realized that if the news isn't what I want to hear, I am strong and I will fight. I'm willing to take the hit and keeping moving forward.

So here's where saving second base comes in. Because it is Breast Cancer Awareness month, there is an app on Facebook that allows you to post a bra on your page in honor of the cause. One of my friends did just that and a comment from another friend was "Save second base!!!!" That got me thinking that my greatest ally in every fight has been my sense of humor so while I wait this one out, I've decided to embrace that ally by putting that sentiment on a...wait for it...t-shirt. Save second base.

When you’re going through hell, keep going…

Last weekend sucked. Actually, most weekends suck these days. Those are the times when I’m alone and I’m not a fan of that right now. I tend to think too much anyway and if you give me a quiet apartment, I could make overthinking into something that could rival an Olympic event. This past weekend, had I been competing in the trials for said event, I would have totally nailed it, with not only a personal best, but a new world record, I’m sure.

Backing up a step, things actually started to go off the rails on Friday morning, when I went to workout and found the gym at my apartment complex completely trashed…a perfect set up for a PTSD episode that brought me literally and figuratively to my knees. I called Jim, because that’s what I do. While he was supportive as he talked me back to the safety of my apartment, the conversation ended with him saying that while he loved me and always would, I needed to stop depending on him. I get that, really I do, but it still hurt to hear. For the last 16 years, even though he has rarely known how to combat the demons that haunt me, his presence has given me a feeling of safety and security.

The next day, after an amazing AA meeting (sidebar, I owe my Saturday morning chicks big time. I will never be able to repay them for their wisdom and love) which primed the pump for crying jags that lasted throughout most of the rest of the day, Jim and I had the first heart to heart talk we’ve had in a long time. I won’t go into details, they are still too close to home that even now, as I’m thinking back on it, I can feel the tears creeping up, but it ended with his holding me while I cried. Through my tears, because, as anyone who knows me at all can attest to, I can’t remain serious for too long, I said “have you gotten taller?” because he seemed taller standing there, holding me in my living room. His response was “why, yes I have.” We both laughed as he wiped the tears off my cheeks. What I will say about that conversation is that I talked about being scared to go through this alone and he talked about how I was stronger than I realized.

There’s just something so heartbreakingly sad about this whole situation. It overwhelms me at times to the point where I feel like I can’t breathe. I love this man and he loves me and yet we can’t seem to work it out. Too much has happened, while I love him more than I can express, I don’t trust him and without trust, it just doesn’t work. As I’ve been wrestling with feelings of existential dread lately (remind me to tell you about my ill advised trip to the hair care isle at Target last week that culminated with me blonde for about 24 hours sometime) I’ve gotten love and support from wonderful friends. A woman who is particularly dear to my heart, mostly because I’m convinced we’re twins separated at birth, sent me this quote from Winston Churchill: When you’re going through hell, keep going. I’ve thought a lot about that the past few days. There was a time when I would have done anything to avoid the pain I’m feeling right now, and I did. I've tried to drink it away, I've tried to starve it away, I've tried to exercise it away, all to no avail. The difference now is, while the pain hasn’t diminished, I’ve grown stronger. With love, support, and the sometimes unscathing honesty of my friends I’ve grown strong enough to walk through this pain. There is no way around it, there is no way over it, there is no way under it, my only choice is to go through it. Avoiding it keeps me in it, moving through it will one day get me past it. So today, as I go through this hell, I'm going to keep going.

Always be prepared…

This is not a motto I subscribe to...apparently. I wish I had learned that motto somewhere along the line because this morning I asked a question of my husband and was only prepared for one answer…and you guessed it, that was not the answer I got. Maybe it’s because I was never a Girl Scout…I was a Blue Bird for a little while, but that’s as far I got in Campfire Girls and I don’t remember learning that motto. I do remember learning how to read a compass, in fact, I still have the one I got in Campfire Girls 35 years ago. Even when I’ve lost everything, which has happened a couple of times in my life, I’ve still managed to keep that compass. My obsession with making sure I never lose track of it is both ironic and perhaps pathological. But I never did learn that whole “be prepared” thing.

“Can’t it just be us? Please say your mom will be out of the picture so I can come back home…I want to come back home.” Can’t it just be us was my question, “no” was the answer. It seems ridiculous that this has hit me so hard. I moved out nine months ago, we’ve been to a couple different lawyers, we’ve talked about custody and financial settlements…the fact that our relationship is really over should not come as an earth-shattering-cut-me-to-my-heart-how-am-I-ever-going-to-get-over-you shock, but it has. There is no going back, there is no fixing it, there is no “us” anymore. That’s really what this is about, there is no “us” anymore and without an “us” I don’t know who I am.

When I asked the question, I wasn’t expecting a “yes”…but I wasn’t prepared for a cold as ice “no” either. So now, as a friend has told me time and time again recently, the healing can begin. I’m not sure I’m prepared for that either. Healing hurts. It’s messy, it’s full of tears and stomach aches and sleepless nights. It comes with insomnia, bad movie marathons, the requisite non-working hours uniform of flannel pajamas and his old bathrobe that I took when I left, and headaches. It comes at great cost. You will no doubt tell me the payoff is worth it in the end but please spare me that nugget of wisdom for the time being because I’m not at all in a place to believe you. Not anywhere close. The truth is, I don’t know where I’m at. This is uncharted territory for me. So maybe, just maybe, this is why I’ve kept that compass all these years…

Does this relationship make me look fat?

I’m better off on my own, I’ve known this for a long time. Whenever I’ve gotten myself out of a relationship and the emotional riptides that go along with seeing the light, giving up, letting go…breaking up, subside, I realize I’m centered, productive, happy, and well, just more alive. For years as I’ve felt this freedom that comes with moving on when a relationship has run its course, I’ve told myself it was just because I wasn’t with the right person and that somewhere out there, Mr. Right was still waiting for me and when I found him, I’d finally experience a relationship in which I could share my life with someone and still be centered, productive, happy and alive. Recently though, it has occurred to me that this lack of balance hasn’t been about the person or the relationship, it’s been about me. I could be in a relationship with a man that is a dead ringer for Matthew McConaughey in every way from charm, to humor, to abs and I’d still end up in the same place I always do when I’m in a relationship. I’d end up in that place where I’m insecure, unhappy, a little bit crazy (but I’ll only cop to a little bit) and well, lost. I’d end up down the rabbit hole.

As my husband and I have been working through some boundary issues and figuring out how to untangle our now separate lives, my eating disorders are taking me to the mat. It started earlier this week when we were discussing our son’s schedule for the weekend. “I’m going to a friend’s house for the game on Sunday.” Now, this sentence shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. I immediately wanted to know who the “friend” was. Was it someone I knew, male or female, if female was the answer to the last question was this a party or just the two of them… And then it hit me, this Sunday didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, the truth is, he will move on, if not tomorrow, someday, and it will rip my heart in two. I’ve always known he’d move on, though I’d like to think he’d spend the rest of his life missing and wanting me, and earlier this week, I finally understood that at a deeper, visceral level. As I found myself sitting on the floor of my apartment eating pork fried rice so fast I didn’t even taste it, I suddenly connected the dots for the first time. Sitting there with my messenger bag over my shoulder, with my coat still on, pounding down Chinese food I knew would make me sick, I had a moment of clarity. I was trying to ease the pain of losing my marriage and quiet the fear of the unknown I now find myself in…with fried rice.

I went through treatment for anorexia 15 years ago last month. I’d first joined the ranks of those diagnosed with an eating disorder back in 1986 by an ER doc when my parents took me in after they found an empty box of laxatives in my bathroom trash can (yeah, I never said it was a glamorous disease so if you think it is, think again). A quart of activated charcoal later, and after a promise that I’d eat “like a good girl” I was released. Time marched on, the dark side of life intervened and that promise proved to be a lie. Eight years later I found myself so in love with this man that I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with, that I could hardly breathe. The problem was, he wasn’t in love with me. Not only wasn’t he in love with me, someone else had caught his eye. She was more his “type” he had said at the time. The more-his-type comment sent me full throttle into starvation mode. Because I’m neurotic to the core (again, yeah, the line forms to the left boys, don’t all rush me at once) I wanted to know everything about her that was different…better. She had a job in an office, she rock climbed, she didn’t have an ex-husband and a son, she had long, beautiful curly hair, and she was, well, smaller. That last one was what I latched onto. Losing as much weight as I possibly could became my sole mission, I wasn’t going to lose this man without a fight. For weeks I allowed myself lettuce, but only if I was about to pass out and nothing else. I got up early so I could workout both before and after work. I pushed myself beyond my breaking point and still kept going. Finally, one morning on the way to work, we had a fight over his new interest that culminated in my anorexic bottom. After unsuccessfully pleading with him to either walk away from her or walk away from me (I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to walk away from him at the time, it is true what they say about hindsight) I went into work and immediately collapsed. The emotional stress of the situation had proved to be too much for my beaten, broken, staved body. When I came to, there were a couple of firefighters leaning over me. They explained that they weren’t able to find my pulse and that I had to keep talking to them until the paramedics arrived. “Stay with us, everything is going to ok.” When the paramedics arrived, they were able to find my pulse at a jaw dropping 60/40, knowing nothing about medicine, I’ve since been told that’s bad. Later at the hospital, I was given fluids and forced to eat. To this day I can still taste those hospital pancakes if I close my eyes and think about it. Once my vitals were stabilized, the doctor on duty pulled a chair up next to my bed and said “Before I release you, I need you to understand that you will die from this if you don’t get help.” There wasn’t a “might” or a “maybe” in there, only a “will.”

The following Monday, I had an intake evaluation (scored 100% for all the warning signs and symptoms, take that Mr. Gimple for that comment to my parents at parent/teacher conferences about my lack of work ethic) and by Tuesday, I had entered day one of 28 at Fairview Riverside. During our first group therapy session that day, my blood pressure bottomed out again and I had to be transported up to the ER. Since I was already in the hospital, there were no cute firemen this time…damn, only one of the counselors from the ED unit holding my hand and making small talk while a clumsy nurse poked around my arm looking for a vein for the IV. Once I was stabilized, I was able to rejoin the unit and continue with treatment. At the end of that first week, we were saying good-bye to a young man that had successfully completed his 28 days. As part of that session, the counselor that was facilitating the session brought out a ball of yarn that we were to pass around. When we passed the yarn to the next person, we were supposed to say one thing we admired about them. I got the yarn passed to me several times but the only comment I remember came from that young man. He said “I admire that you’re a fighter. You got knocked down the first day in here and you came back.” At the end of the exercise, we cut the yarn and each kept a piece. I still have it 15 years later.

He was right, I am a fighter, I do get knocked down and so far, I’ve always gotten back up. But lately I’ve been thinking maybe I need to stay down this time, at least in terms of romantic relationships. For some reason, those push all the ED buttons that will eventually kill me. Earlier this week, while I was sitting on the floor literally (ok, not literally) inhaling that pork fried rice, the question “does this relationship make me look fat?” came to mind. The thought of it made me laugh…and then cry because I was laughing so hard, and then eventually cry because there was so much painful truth in it. Relationships put me through hell, they send me down the rabbit hole, they bring out the absolute worst, most insecure parts of me…they turn me into a Michele that I don’t like. Now, before you argue with me, let me assure you, I get that it’s not really the relationships that do this to me, it’s me. It’s my lack of trust and complete insecurity (if I had a superpower, it would be heroic, almost epic levels of insecurity) within intimate relationships that put me through hell and send me down the rabbit hole. I don’t know if that will ever change, nor do I wish to spend any more time worrying about that. For now, this is a fight I haven’t trained for so I’m staying down.

I’m not the light in the refrigerator…

Shortly after we were engaged, my future mother-in-law showed up at our apartment door with her youngest son in tow. Her plan, which was executed perfectly, was to distract my future husband with an afternoon of video games with the little brother while she straightened me out. The boys disappeared into the other room, determined to save some distant galaxy via Nintendo 64 and we settled in on the couch for a “visit.” Amidst the hoots, hollers, laughter, and in-your-face’s coming from the other room, my future mother-in-law proceeded to outline, in great detail, everything she thought was wrong with me, and laid out for me exactly what I would need to do to be good enough for her son. Her issue with me was, well, me. She didn’t like anything about me or my personality. Her solution was simple, I needed to step into the shadow of her son and let him shine…that, after all, was now my job as his future bride. Like a deer caught in the headlights of a oncoming vehicle…a rather large, loud, obnoxious, exhaust spewing vehicle (come on, I know that was petty but the woman’s made my life a literal living hell for 16 years so just give me this one, ok) I sat there, frozen. I didn’t know what to say…I had never been talked to like that before in my life.

As soon as they left, I told him about our “conversation,” expecting that he would be livid over the fact that she had been so insulting, cruel and judgmental, but he wasn’t…he agreed with her. Sensing that this was a losing proposition, I dug in and worked for the next several years to stay in his shadow. I adjusted my life to revolve around his. I took on all the responsibility of raising our son, paying the bills, scheduling the cable guy, calling Service Plus, doing the grocery shopping, cleaning the house, you get the picture, so that he could do his thing. For our entire marriage, he spent most of his vacation days on trips with the guys, while I waited at home, the dutiful wife, keeping things running, and pretending we were the perfect couple and family. In the process of being the dutiful wife, I lost myself, I became a shadow. I became the light in the refrigerator, just sitting there, in the dark, waiting for him to come open the door. Always there, always waiting for him, always trapped. Since I moved out, I’ve come to realize I’m not the light in the refrigerator though. I don’t have to wait for someone else to open the door, I don’t have to spend my life creating light for others while I sit in the dark alone…

Rock, paper, scissors…

I really probably shouldn’t do this whole dating thing, period. I’m not good at it, I don’t like the whole getting-to-know-you dance, and frankly, most of the time it makes me want to puke. That said, I’ve met three guys very recently that I should be interested in, but the truth is, I’m just really not…ok, well maybe I’m interested in the Firefighter…and possibly the Professor, but not really the Greek. What a difference a week makes. Last week I was feeling heartbroken at the prospect that I would never find anyone and that I was more than likely doomed to spend my days alone, but this week, I have a lunch date with the Professor on Thursday, breakfast with the Firefighter on Sunday, and am busy dodging emails from the Greek because I don’t want to be mean.

It’s like a dating version of rock, paper, scissors… All these guys are very different: the Firefighter is older, has rugged good looks that rival the Brawny paper towel guy, is down-to-earth, is incredibly interesting and just plain nice, and appears to be very comfortable in his own skin…plus, he’s a firefighter, how hot is that (pardon the pun)…the Professor is a little younger, is incredibly cute, seems very sweet and genuine…plus, he’s got a PhD in Chemistry, and I don’t care what anyone says, smart is sexy in my book…the Greek is established in his career, is also cute, and seems nice enough, so what’s wrong with me?

I know I could fall hard for the Firefighter (moment of disclosure, when he sent me a text out of the blue yesterday just to say he hoped I was having a great day, the first knee-jerk thought that came into my head was “I’ve been waiting for you all my life, thank God you finally found me”) so I’m really resistant to even getting to know this guy better. I’ve been disappointed so many times, my heart has been through enough and I don’t want to fall hard for anyone, ever again. The Professor is smart and seems nice enough, I could probably fall for him too, given some time, but ever since I agreed to lunch, I’ve had a stomach ache. Not the butterflies-in-the-stomach kind, the kind that makes me want to puke. And the Greek, well, I’m becoming less inclined to even give this guy a chance. We have very similar interests and I think we’d probably hit it off, but I can’t see myself falling for him and I’m done adding men to my roster of friends because that never seems to work out for me when they’re single.

So why the resistance and stomach ache? Is it because I’m not ready to date? Is it because I don’t want to get my hopes up again, only to be hurt and disappointed in the end? I’m asking because I really don’t know. I do know that rock beats scissors, the paper beats rock and that scissors beats paper…hmmm, maybe this is much more like a game of rock paper scissors than I originally thought. I don’t want my heart smashed, covered up, or cut to pieces…maybe I need to forget about the Firefighter, the Professor and the Greek and just take my Rockem Sockem Robots down off the shelf instead…

Whoever said “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” lied…

“Maybe I should have asked my younger, hotter friend instead…” Those words were said to me last Saturday by someone I really cared about and they are still ringing in my ears. I’ve tried everything to silence them, throwing myself into work, exercising to the point of exhaustion, watching The Endless Summer over and over again (the last screening was at 3:00 this morning when I work up from a dream in which this someone was saying those hurtful words over and over) but nothing works, I hear them all the time…maybe I should have asked my younger, hotter friend instead…

The backstory to this hurtful comment is this…early last week this friend called and asked if I’d be willing to go to a party with him. He was very upfront about the fact that while I was funny and had a great personality, the specific reason he was asking me was because I’m “hot” and he wanted to take someone hot with him seeing as his ex-girlfriend was going to be there. I considered this person a friend and agreed, wanting to help him out but as the week went on, I began to feel uncomfortable with this arrangement. For the last 22 years, I have hated my body because it’s been a constant reminder of my rape. Over the last six months as I’ve been taking risks and rediscovering my inner-athlete, I’ve learned to appreciate my body and what it can do. Last week, with the words “there’s a reason I’m not taking my sister or my cousin to this party” those feelings of self loathing I’ve wrestled with for better than two decades came creeping back in. To him, I am just a body, something to be exploited. In the aftermath of my rape, I defined myself as just a body, a piece of meat, something less than human. In the end, my friend had a moment of clarity and decided that he didn’t need a “hot date” and went to the party alone, which is a very good thing. Had I gone, I’m sure these feelings I’m wrestling with now would be much, much worse.

So why the maybe-I-should-have-asked-my-younger-hotter-friend-instead-total-douche-bag comment? On Saturday I was trying to explain to him that it hurt that I’m not the friend he calls to go to the farmer’s market with or wants to have lunch with, I’m the friend he calls when he wants to use me. Our friendship has always been very one sided, I do the cheering when he races, I ask about his training, I do the calling and the texting the vast majority of the time. If we see each other outside our group of friends, I’m the one doing the asking. I’m not someone he wants to get to know individually, I’m not someone he wants to have a deeper connection with…I’m just the one he makes suggestive comments about. I get those comments from other friends in our group but those friends invite me to lunch to celebrate 6 months of sobriety, those friends ask me how my training is going and plan to be at the finish line when I run my first race later this month, those friends call or text at random just to see how I am... Earlier this summer I thought I was more than just a body to him but it looks like that’s not the case, why else would he say something so hurtful. Backing it up a step further, why, after knowing the trauma I’ve been through and how it’s affected me, would he even consider asking if he could use me like that?

The worst part of this whole thing is that I trusted him and he intentionally said something to hurt me. I have trust issues to begin with and now I’m plagued with the thought that I should give up on trusting people, period. I’m literally exhausted by disappointment. I worry that I no longer have enough fight left in me to try to trust again because I don’t have the energy to regroup when I take another sucker punch to the gut. At this point I honestly don’t know what to do, I would much rather take a rock than ever have something so hurtful said to me again. If I had my choice between sticks and stones and hurtful words, I’d choose the sticks and stones…

Belay is off...

Rock climbing safety is all about communication with your partner. There are the basic commands, “Belay on?” “Belay is on.” “Climbing.” “Climb on.” “Belay off?” “Belay is off.” And before these commands, you always check your tie-in with your partner. While it may be tempting to shortcut checking your knots and the basic commands, especially with a partner you’ve climbed with before, that is not advisable…these are disciplines that keep both climber and belayer safe. These are disciplines that instill trust in one another and climbing with a partner is all about trust. I used to love climbing, which is surprising because I fall, a lot. The falling never bothered me because I always trusted my belayer to catch me and he always did.

That said, I’m seriously thinking about getting rid of my climbing gear. These days I’m gravitating more toward surfing, running and snowboarding, all solitary sports. The first time I took my board out on the lake by myself, part of the rush was that I was out on the water, alone. When I run, it’s just me and my thoughts, I don’t run with partners and I rarely participate in the exercise of nodding at fellow runners, or walkers or cyclists that I pass. And snowboarding, much like surfing, can be done alone. Climbing isn’t a solo sport, you need a partner and I’ve given up on partners of any sort. Partners require people and I’m learning (albeit it painfully slowly) that people can’t be trusted. A few entries ago I wrote about my trust never being breached when trust chose me…I was wrong. In the last week, my trust has been ripped to shreds. In the last week I’ve come to realize that someone I thought I could trust, someone I shared my deepest, darkest self with, was not at all the person I thought he was. It’s my fault, really, I shouldn’t have trusted, I should have known better. I should have kept myself locked away in my safe little world. I won’t make that mistake again. Lately I’ve been ruminating about the fact that I will no doubt spend the rest of my life alone and I’m hoping the rumination is part of the process of acceptance because I don’t have any desire to meet anyone new, ever again. Again, people just can’t be trusted and while I may be slow in learning this lesson, this time it’s been painful enough that I won’t forget it. It’s been painful enough that I never, ever, ever want to hurt like this again and I will do anything to make sure I don’t. I have enough friends that I’ve managed to keep at arm’s length, I don’t need any more. And I will never again let anyone get closer than arm’s length.

So I’ll stick to solitary sports, I will close myself off from the people I share this world with. I won’t rely on someone else at the end of the rope to catch me when I fall because no one can be trusted. My climbing gear has been pulled out and is ready to be disposed of and I will be glad to see it go. “Belay is off,” there is no one at the other end of the rope to trust anymore.

God stole all the trash cans…

So this is how my day started: I woke up with a lack-of-sleep-too-many-waffle-fries-last-night headache, an hour after I usually get my workout in. Today was supposed to be a rest day, so I brushed my teeth, decided I didn’t care what my hair looked like, pulled on my workout clothes, grabbed my iPhone and hit the street for a three mile walk. While I was walking, I became aware that I not only had the previously mentioned headache, I was also feeling a little crabby…OK, a lot crabby. The women’s AA meeting I attend is on Saturday mornings so by the time I hit the half way point, I had come to the decision to skip my meeting and just sit on my deck being crabby and smoking all day (don’t try to understand me, I sure as hell don’t). At about the two mile mark, I got a text from a friend that I met at my Thursday night meeting. All it said was “off to get my caffeine fix...” but that’s all it needed to say. There’s a saying in AA that goes “Whenever anyone, anywhere reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA to be there, and for that I am responsible.” “off to get my caffeine fix…” was the hand of AA reaching out to me so I took that hand and went to my meeting, even though I was crabby and would have much rather been smoking on my deck.

At my meeting, a woman came in a little late and barely 24 hours sober. As she told her story, I became acutely aware that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. After the meeting, I approached her and asked her how she was doing. She burst into tears so I hugged her and told her she was in the right place. We sat and talked for awhile and while I won’t go into the details of her story, she said something that brought tears to my eyes. She too had been the victim of sexual assault but unlike me, she was victimized by a family member. As she told me about the last time she saw this man, she said she reacted by asking him what had happened to him in his past, how had he been abused that made him think what he had done to her was ok. It humbled me to sit with this newcomer. She has a strength and grace that I can only aspire to. “Who hurt you?” That’s what she asked him. She didn’t say it with anger, she didn’t say it with rage, she said it with a sincere desire to understand what had happened to her. She went on to say “nobody that hasn’t been deeply wounded thinks behaving that way is ok, so he had to been hurt like he hurt me. He’s a victim too.” He’s a victim too, the humanity in that sentence gave me pause. She went on to tell me she realized the moment she said that to him that he wasn’t ever going to change, that he would go on thinking what he had done was ok and that she would do everything in her power to make sure he never saw her children, but that she needed to forgive him for her own peace of mind. Wow, that’s the only word that comes to mind as I have been thinking about this today. I have a degree in English so I should be able to come up with a better word than “wow” but that’s the only thing that comes to mind. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the place where I’m ready to forgive the man who raped me, but this newcomer made me realize that I probably need to be open to that possibility.

So here’s where God stole all the trash cans. When she was sharing her story, she said the reason she was at the meeting was that she had been trying to get sober and had told her husband she was going to a meeting Thursday night. She got as far as the parking lot but freaked out and couldn’t bring herself to go inside. Instead, she drove to the liquor store, bought a bottle of wine, went to a park where she usually drank alone, and downed it. When she got out of her car to throw the bottle away so her husband wouldn’t find it, the garbage can that was usually there was gone. She said “it was like God stole the garbage can.” She took that as a sign that she couldn’t hide from the fact that she was an alcoholic anymore and went home and told her husband that she had been lying about being sober the last month and that’s how she ended up at my meeting this morning. There are signs all around us, everyday that point us in the right direction, if we’re open them. God stole her trash can and got her to the meeting this morning and the hand of AA reached out to me and got me to the meeting so I could then reach out the hand of AA to someone else. Maybe wow is the perfect word after all.

To nice…hmmmm…..

Earlier this week I woke up with an amazingly wicked headache. Drama does not do good things for me. I had a fight with STBEH the night before that got UGLY. We’re talking the kind of ugly that makes me look like I fit right into this ‘hood. I like to be able to sleep at night so I try to conduct myself in a way that’s conducive to that. I’m a ruminator. If I behave in a way that is contrary to who I am at my core, I lose sleep over it. I’ve been told I’m being too nice as I’m going through this divorce process (I’ve also been told that the gloves are off and this is the UFC, but boxing ain’t my style so I’m rejecting that reality and substituting my own) and maybe that’s true, but it’s me. Don’t get me wrong, I can go from zero to bitch at a speed that could break the laws of physics but just because I can, doesn’t mean I should.

So what to do…go against who I am and lose sleep, or dig in, tough it out and work through this process in a way that honors the 16 years I’ve known this man, even though they weren’t all good. Zero to bitch would definitely be easier, but digging in would be more productive at the end of the day (besides, digging in is more my style anyway). Now, how to do that without losing my serenity…hmmm…as with most things in life, that’s gonna be easier said than done. Since my best thinking usually gets me into trouble, I decided to ask Therapist Chick about this today during our session. She validated that the knock-down-drag-out fight style of divorce is the easy way out and the honorable style of divorce is the tough, but doable option. She also reminded me that harder still is the honorable/knock-down-drag-out hybrid style that you get when one person has thrown down the gloves and the other still wants to choose honor. Finally, she gave me marching orders to get us back on the honorable track, but if I thought it was going to be that easy, I was wrong…

As she always does, Therapist Chick challenged me to think about why I went from zero to bitch so quickly earlier this week. The answer wasn’t rocket science, I don’t trust. I haven’t been able to willingly trust anyone for the last 22 years. I don’t choose to give my trust because my rapist was someone I knew. There have been less than a handful of men that I’ve been able to trust implicitly in that time and when that trust has come, it has chosen me, not the other way around. I simply can’t explain why I’ve trusted these men, but I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it either, the fact is when that trust has chosen me, it hasn’t let me down…my trust has not been breached. Unfortunately, STBEH isn’t one of those men. I also don’t spend a lot of time thinking about if I’ll ever be at a point where I can choose to trust, I’m putting that one in the hands of the universe…like I said, my best thinking usually gets me into trouble.

So am I too nice, I don’t think so because what we’re working on here is the honorable style of divorce. What we’re working on here is a better life for each of us and our son. What we’re working on here is ending things in a way we can both be proud of. So, I guess that 75 lb body bag he gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago will have to stay in the garage. Oh well, I don’t have anywhere to hang it anyway…

I’m not the guy carrying the bumper…

Last week, I was sitting on my deck smoking when one of my neighbors stumbled into the parking lot carrying his car bumper. He had no car, just the bumper. This seemed odd (ok, well more entertaining than odd, don’t judge) so I lit up another cigarette and watched him, in his drunken swagger as he went from garage door to garage door, trying to figure out which one was his. Finally, he hit the jackpot. He went inside, shut the door and I didn’t see him again, until this morning. I had just come back from the first walk I’ve taken without pain since sustaining an overuse injury (if tomorrow's the same, I get to start running again Monday-yea me!)and had spent last night with friends having the time of my life so I was in a pretty FANTASTIC mood. Meditating on how nice it was that I had a great time last night and didn’t have to worry about what I had said or done, or that there would be photographic evidence of some epicly regretful decision, I was again sitting on my deck smoking (yeah, yeah, I know, running and smoking don’t mix, cut me some slack, if I give up all my vices at once I’m pretty sure my head will explode) when Mr Bumper drove up in a car that was, surprise-surprise, missing a bumper, had the left rear corner panel smashed in, and had been marked for the impound lot. He had less trouble this morning finding his garage, opened it, put the bumper in the back seat and drove away.

When I moved out last winter, I’d never lived alone so the idea scared the shit out of me. I only looked at one apartment before I signed a lease. My strategy was simple, move into the same apartment complex my parents had lived in briefly in the 90’s when they were between the home they had just sold and the new home they were building. I knew the complex, it was familiar and that was comforting as I stepped out onto this new ledge. I had actually slept on my parents loveseat in that apartment for a about two weeks because I’d been tossed out on my ass on Thanksgiving and had nowhere else to go (again, another story for another time, and that one’s a doozy so don’t miss it). Everything seemed normal here for the first couple of months but then the snow thawed, peopled opened their windows and sliding glass doors and I realized that I had actually moved into what I can only describe as one of Dante’s seven circles of Hell (and yes, like with gregarious, I’m hoping this is the first reference to Dante you’ve read in a blog). You see, Mr Bumper isn’t an anomaly here. Two flights down, I have neighbors that apparently smoke dope for a living so at least once a week I wake up in the middle of the night with the munchies, have no idea why, and my apartment smells like cannabis central (sidebar, spellcheck will automatically add to n’s to cannabis if you only spell it with one…feel free to use that piece of trivia in the future if you’d like, I’m a giver), I’ve had to close my windows and turn on the air conditioning on a couple of occasions to block out the sound of drunks puking in the dumpster outside so my 11-year-old doesn’t have to hear that fantastic sound, and don’t even get me started on the toothless guy at the pool that thought “hey sweet thing, where you live at” was a good opening line.

Anyway, I’ve been feeling increasingly frustrated with the neighborhood lately until I saw Mr Bumper this morning and a light bulb came on for me. I’m getting the rare opportunity to see what an alternative existence would be like for me if I continued to drink, kind of like my own It’s a Wonderful Life, only without the gym floor that opens up into a pool and the snow. As long as I stay sober, I don’t have to be the guy carrying the bumper. No matter what challenges I face right now as I figure out this whole creating-a-single-life deal, I can rest in the knowledge that I know what I did last night, I can be there for friends (another sidebar, as I’m writing this, I just got off the phone with a friend whose daughter had some tough questions for him about his ex and her new “friend” so I told him the bumper story and hopefully it gave him a moment of levity in an otherwise difficult situation), and I can look in the mirror each day and at the very least say “I’m not the guy carrying the bumper.”

6 months, woo hoo...

I got my 6 month medallion last night at my AA meeting. It’s customary to say a little bit about how you stayed sober so here’s what I said to the best of my recollection…

6 months, woo hoo (insert sarcasm here). I have more of these than probably should be allowed but you guys kept telling me to come back so I did. I started drinking again about 5 years ago and because I lived with a recovering alcoholic, I knew the ground rules, “if you’re going to drink, fine, but don’t come home drunk or you’re outta here.” I was able to follow those rules so I thought I had this thing under control. When I moved out in December, there was no accountability, no rules and I found myself alone in my apartment, drunk almost every night. I call myself an anti-social drinker because I drink alone. I’m the kind of drunk that cries and says stupid shit like “why doesn’t anyone love me” and “I just want to be loved.” Know what happens to a woman in a bar that’s that kind of drunk? All the losers that want to “help” her out with her low self esteem issues line up. No thank you. Six months ago yesterday, I was drunk in my apartment alone talking to a friend on the phone. He began to call me on my shit and, well, I don’t like that so I told him I was hanging up. His response to that was “let me say one last thing before you do…Michele, you don’t have to lose it all this time.” My response was “thanks” and a dial tone (although I’m pretty sure that’s not accurate because he was on his cell and those don’t have dial tones. It would be nice if they did so you don’t spend time talking to no one when a call is dropped but I digress). “You don’t have to lose it all this time” was my moment of clarity and I properly thanked him for it by promptly deciding I’d never talk to him again. The next day, I called a friend of my mine in the program and said I needed help. The advice I got was, go to women’s meetings for a while. The answer to my “why on earth would I do that?!” was this…”You like the boy/girl mixer meetings because boys think you’re cute and don’t make you do any work. Women don’t think you’re cute and it’s about f**king time you did some work.” I followed that advice so here I am. For the first time, I have a sponsor I actually call and I’m working the steps…

What I didn’t say was that I called my friend back a couple of days later and thanked him for calling me on my shit rather than running away. Yesterday I got a text from him that said in part “I am happy to have been there for you and will always be there. You are such a special and unique person. The world is a better place with you in it.” The fact that someone can see good in me still amazes me, but thanks to the gift of sobriety, I GET the chance to work on that.

True Athletes….

The first time I heard the mantra “true athletes bear excruciating pain,” I was in labor. It was four-something in the morning, there was a raging blizzard happening outside the delivery room window, I had refused any pain meds, the contractions were one on top of another, and our son was making his world debut…eight weeks early. At some point, hunched over the edge of the bed, Jim whispered “true athletes bear excruciating pain.” With a fleet of nurses and two doctors for each of us standing by, the room wasn’t filled with the usual excitement that you see in movies like 9 Months or Father of the Bride Part 2. There simply wasn’t time to slow my pace so none of us knew how this was going to turn out. Why four doctors? Because it was determined early on that the OB resident and the pediatrics resident might need back up in this situation so the seasoned veterans were summoned from their beds in the middle of the night (did I mention the blizzard?) to take over in the event things went terribly wrong. At 6:14 AM, our son was born. All I really remember from the moment he was born was that they took him away without letting me see him, he didn’t cry at first, and when he finally did cry, the whole room erupted in applause. That is one cool birth story if you ask me and I handled it like I handle most of the challenges in my life, I pushed down and emotions I was feeling, dug deep, and did what I needed to do.

It has occurred to me lately, as I’ve been plagued with overuse injuries this summer, perhaps I take that mantra too far. Patellofemoral pain when I decided to run 12 miles within a 36 hour period in June, a sprained ankle in July because I kept running for days after the pain started…all the while saying to myself, true athletes bear excruciating pain. I’ve always known this about myself, I’ve always pushed myself physically beyond what’s probably reasonable so this Oprahesque Ah-ha moment isn’t really about what will no doubt go down in the books as the Injurious Summer of 2010. This Ah-ha moment is about how, while I battle through physical pain, I run away from confronting emotional pain as fast as I possibly can.

The second I see trouble on horizon, I bail. If I think you’re going to hurt me, all you will see is my back as I run away. And we’re not just talking a break or a cooling off period, we’re talking a clean burn. I rip up pictures, I throw away cards and letters, I delete numbers from my phone, I delete emails, I even cut out others that could remind me of you. I’m constantly on the run, looking for a fresh start. Until very recently, I thought this strategy was working for me. But Saturday I found myself battling epic hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-woman-scorned anger that I took out on a friend I’m having a difficult time with right now. After I sent an admittedly, ill-advised good-bye-you’ll-be-sorry-you-schmuck email, I had that Oprahesque Ah-ha moment…my anger wasn’t about my friend, it was about the collapse of my marriage. Shortly after that catharsis, I had an Oprahesque Ah-ha-ha moment (I blame therapy)as it dawned on me that this is precisely why people shouldn’t run from relationship to relationship…or at least I shouldn’t. If I were to jump into another relationship right now, that poor bastard would be the lucky recipient of all the unresolved feelings I’ve kept at bay while I’ve been logging hours on the treadmill…gentlemen, don’t all rush me at once.

So where does this leave me? I guess it leaves me with the knowledge that when I have to, I have the skills to push emotion aside, dig deep and get the job done. It also leaves me with the knowledge that sometimes I need to take that mantra to a new level and stop running from the people closest to me simply because I don’t want to deal with the pain that can come along with any relationship. I have the time to slow my pace. True athletes…finish it for me people…

Bad calls are a part of baseball…

When I first moved out at the end of December, a good friend told me I was rushing the process of getting on with my life too much and that I should just “do nothing” for a while. I didn’t want to feel what I was feeling going through this separation and divorce so I was looking for the next person, place of thing that would numb the pain. “Michele, you just need to do nothing for a while.” That was sound advice that I didn’t heed and am finally in a place to admit that I should have. Over the last month or so, I’ve made some bad calls and rushed my heart before I was ready. I have lost my way and made decisions that are contrary to who I am at my core. Specifically, I gave away my trust way too easily, my bad. The truth is, I’ve had brief moments of peace in the last seven months, peace I haven’t felt for the last 23 years, and those moments of peace only come when I’ve been working on accepting that I will never be in a relationship again. I’ve been getting “don’t give up on love” a lot lately from well intentioned friends that really care for me, but I have to. I have to give up on love and the thought that I might actually find someone that I want to say “yes” to someday for my own well being.

Sometimes the third base coach is waving you home and you get thrown out at the plate. Sometimes the best call is to stay on the bag. Sometimes the best call is to do nothing and wait for the perfect play. But bad calls are a part of baseball and the best you can do is brush off the dust from your uniform, head for the dugout and wait for the next inning.

It’s all about Bob…

Earlier this evening, I had a gut wrenching conversation with my soon-to-be-ex-husband (let’s just shorten that to STBEH from now on) that left me wanting to crawl into bed and watch surfing movies all night. The problem with that plan was that I recently went back to my former AA home group that meets on Thursday nights. Needless to say, that was the last place I wanted to be, but I went anyway because they say if you don’t want to go to a meeting, you should get your ass to a meeting. The conversation was about how he doesn’t want to get divorced and the gut wrenching part was about me wanting to honor his feelings and not cause him any more pain than he’s already feeling. So this is how things went, I got into my Escape (fitting name for a vehicle I own, believe me, the irony is not wasted on this girl) pointed it toward Bloomington and drove, all the time saying to myself “don’t think, it’ll only hurt the ball club” (which is my all time favorite movie line because it works in so many different situations, try it, you’ll see).

I made it to the meeting and felt better just walking in the door. Afterwards, I spent some time catching up with an old friend and getting to know a new friend. During the meeting I had shared about how that was the last place I wanted to be because of the conversation I had with STBEH so this friend kindly reminded me that while I am fantastic, I am not responsible for STBEH’s feelings in this situation. My part is to take the 10th step of AA seriously, “continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.” In other words, my part is to make sure I treat STBEH with dignity and respect and be done with it. In other-other words, it’s not my part to ruminate over his pain if I’ve treated him with dignity and respect, which I feel I did tonight.

Here’s where it becomes all about Bob. My old friend introduced me to a new friend (Bob) and during the course of our conversation, Bob made a comment that alluded to his desire to believe he’s the center of the universe and I, in my admittedly wiseass way responded “Ya know, I’ve heard it’s all about Bob” to which both friends laughed and said “yep, it’s all about Bob.”

On my way home, it hit me that this seemingly casual conversation had much deeper meaning, which often times happens when you throw drunks together and get them talking about life. I realized that the gut wrenching part of my evening was not caused by STBEH, or his feelings, it was caused by me making it all about me. It was all about me taking responsibility that isn’t mine because, as a general rule, I like to make it all about me. Long story short, I will definitely get my ass to a meeting the next time I don’t want to go to a meeting…and for today, I’m going to make it all about Bob because I’m kind of over myself and don’t want it to be all about me anymore…

...ha, ha. I don't think so...

My therapist isn’t your typical headshrinker. First, her name is the same as my soon-to-be-ex-mother-in-law (which I initially took as a sign from God that this process would not be a walk in the park). Name aside, she’s a tiny little thing with amazing tattoos on both of her arms, a nose ring, and purple highlights. She’s a fan of hippiesque flowy skirts (and yes, I know neither hippiesque or flowy are real words, spellcheck, which incidentally is also not a real word, has already alerted me to that fact, what with it's squiggly red lines and all) and black tank tops. She is, in a word, FANTASTIC.

Today, I was debriefing on a conversation I had with a friend about my inability to say “no.” I have difficulty with this word in a variety of situations…when my parents want me to come down for Thanksgiving, which is, in fact, the anorexic’s equivalent of Hell; when my son wants anything from the endcap at Target when we’re checking out; when those kids that are selling newspapers, magazine subscriptions, candy bars, you know the drill, to support their class trip to fill-in-the-national-treasure here; or when any guy, nice or not, asks me out. The truth is, Thanksgiving is not healthy for me, period; my son has broken more toys than I ever owned growing up; maybe I should give to those kids but I just don’t want to; or, and this is the most important one, I’m not ready to date anyone at present, and may never be ready.

Because I’ve recently taken a blow to the heart, I’ve been thinking a lot about the choices I make, either with intention, or by default, so today my therapist insisted we talk about my biggest default choice, my inability to say no. If you’ve never gone the therapy route, here’s the drill…

Therapist Chick: How does it make you feel when you say yes and you mean no?

Me: Angry, sad, sick…mostly sick.

Therapist Chick: What do you think would happen if you said no?

Me: I don’t know.

Therapist Chick: Yes you do. What do you think would happen if you said no?

Me: I don’t know.

Therapist Chick: Yes you do. What do you think would happen if you said no?

Me: I wouldn’t be listened to.

Therapist Chick: Why don’t you think you’d be listened to?

Me: I don’t know.

Therapist Chick: Yes you do. Why don’t you think you’d be listened to?

Me: I don’t know.

Therapist Chick: Yes you do. Why don’t you think you’d be listened to?

(sidebar, we can play the what-do-you-think/I-don’t-know/yes-you-do game for entire sessions)

Me: Because I don’t deserve to be listened to.

Therapist Chick: Why don’t you think you deserve to be listened to?

Me: I don’t know.

Therapist Chick: Yes you do. Why don’t you think you deserve to be listened to?

Me: I don’t know.

Therapist Chick: Yes you do. Why don’t you think you deserve to be listened to?

Me: Because I wasn’t listened to the night I was raped?

Therapist Chick: I knew you knew the answer.

It was at this point today when the requisite tears that always seem to work their way into our sessions made their appearance and I got yet another opportunity to sit with the pain and shame and grief that also seem to come along with unpacking this, well, crap for lack of a more precise term while Therapist Chick watched me. That’s what she does, she sits and watches, until I’m ready to talk some more. There are no words of comfort, but that’s part of the rape trauma process. In order to get past this, I have to fully feel every crappy feeling without any intervention. It’s part of the deal. The journey from victim to survivor needs to be a solitary one when it comes to the feelings thing. While we’re still in survivor mode, we spend all our time avoiding our feelings because we think we can’t survive feeling them. We numb out by starving, drinking, drugging, you name it, if it can mask feelings, we do it. As part of our recovery, we must feel the feelings fully, without anyone or anything to soften the blow because when we finally stop crying and are ready to talk again, we realize we lived through it. We realize we’re still alive.

Now, back to my friend, whom I will cherish forever because he’s still my friend, even though I’m difficult and complicated. As we talked about my latest heartbreak, somehow our conversation turned to my inability to say no. He said, “here’s what we’re going to do, I’m going to ask you out and you’re going to say I don’t think so in that way you have of laughing while you talk, you ready?” He then proceeded to say “hey baby, you wanna go out” to which I responded, “ha, ha, I don’t think so.” And a new mantra was born. I may not be there yet and who knows how many times I’ll stumble before “no” becomes comfortable again, but I’m told I’m right where I’m supposed to be and while it’s uncomfortable a lot of the time, I trust that the payoff will be worth it in the end. And also, I'm pretty sure that will make a fantastic t-shirt.

Why I’ll Never Do Stand-Up…

I’ve been told by a few people over the years that I should do stand-up and my answer has been and always will be “I’m not going to do stand-up.” While I appreciate the suggestion and will readily admit that I’m pretty quick with one-liners…and well, that my smart ass reputation tends to proceed me wherever I go, my humor, like my gregarious exterior (and yes, I’m hoping that’s the first time you’ve ever seen the word “gregarious” in a blog entry so I feel like those student loan payments for my English degree are paying off) is all smoke and mirrors. Call it a defense mechanism, a mask, body armor…it’s a way of hiding the real Michele from the rest of this big, sometimes bad world.

A few entries ago, I mentioned a traumatic event in my life when I was a teenager but that was a story for a different day. Well, here it is folks, today is the day: I am a survivor of acquaintance rape. When I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota, a friend of a friend held me captive for a night in his dorm room and sent me down a rabbit hole that I’m still trying to find my way out of. The thing about rabbit holes is that they are dark, dirty places that are fit for, well…animals, not a place fit for a human being. Dark, dirty places will warp you, trust me on this one.

I’ve always had a sense of humor (my mom blames my dad for that). Over the years, in order to combat the darkness and dirt in my life, I’ve honed that sense of humor…to make myself laugh (yes, I crack myself up and always have. If you doubt me, look up my senior yearbook quote)…to deflect the hellish feelings that come along with the trauma of rape…to protect the real me from being seen by the rest of the world.

What I mean by that last one is that as long as I’m fake, funny, disingenuous Michele, no one, especially me, gets hurt. My biggest fear in life is that if I open up to anyone about those battle scars I received that night that left my spirit battered and broken, I will be rejected and all the horrible things I think about myself as a result of my rape will be validated…and I will be found guilty of someone else’s crime. The crazy deal is that if I had reported this crime at the time and if he would have had to answer for it, he would have completed his time long ago, while I will be doing time for that experience for the rest of my life. Fake, funny, disingenuous Michele doesn’t do hard time down the rabbit hole. She lives in the light…above the dirt. She’s also, well, fake, there’s no getting around that one. So therein lays the paradox, I don’t get hurt, but I’m also not known, by anyone. Whether I’m in the dark, dirty rabbit hole, or in the light, I am alone.

So, the next time it’s suggested to me that I should give stand-up a shot, I will say, like I always have “I will never do stand-up.” Why? Because while I can appreciate a good sense of humor (believe me, I’m my biggest fan) I don’t feel right about seeking the spotlight (even if it’s just at a crappy comedy club in Minneapolis)for my body armor. It has kept me closed off but it has also kept me safe…and that needs to be honored.

Life is a series of tradeoffs so I’ll keep my humor and leave the stand-up to others.

Lucky Pennies

Little known fact about me, I collect lucky pennies. It was something I started after I moved out of our home and I’m not sure why. Maybe I felt I needed all the luck I could get, maybe it was because I was anxious about being my sole source of financial support, or maybe it was because for the first time in 16 years, I began to notice things around me in this big world of ours. When you’re wrapped up in work, raising kids, paying bills, keeping the house clean, and trying to get a marriage on track, that well, let’s face it, was never on track to begin with, you don’t notice much beyond the periphery of your circumstances. When the first real test of our marriage came 10 years ago, I reacted by staying in bed, in the same pajamas, for three days straight. I was a stay at home mom so I would get up when Kelly needed me, but as soon as I’d get him settled, back to bed I went. It got ugly toward the end, figuratively and literally. I’m sure I would have stayed there longer, in those red plaid flannel pajamas, listening to the Williams Brothers “Can’t Cry Hard Enough” were it not for a small miracle (and yes, I realize how pathetic taking to one’s bed to listen to sappy music on repeat sounds). On the third day of my self-imposed exile from life, Kelly wasn’t having any of it anymore and insisted on moving us to the living room in his one-year-old way. So I took to the couch while he walked around the coffee table over and over again, a practice he had recently started. Lying there, I contemplated moving back into the bedroom. We had baby gates and there wasn’t really anything he could get into. I wasn’t sleeping during that three day stint of Tennessee Williamsesqe depression so I knew I’d hear if he was in trouble…but then it happened, a small miracle that broke me out of the small world of my heartbreak: Kelly took his first steps. He had been leaning against to coffee table watching Arthur when he let go of the table and just walked over to the TV. Once he got to the TV, he must have realized he had done something pretty amazing because he turned around and smiled a smile at me that said “check me out, look at what I just did!” Had I moved back into the bedroom, I would have missed one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had as a parent. I’d like to think that was a lucky penny moment, a moment in which my heart was quiet enough to notice the amazing things going on around me in this world that really is so much bigger than I am. So maybe I collect lucky pennies because I feel like I can use all the luck I can get these days, or maybe it is a type of financial security (albeit a pretty poor type if that’s the case, just sayin), but today I choose to believe it’s because my heart if quiet enough these days to notice the lucky pennies when they appear.

Round One...and so it begins...

We had our first meeting with our lawyer today…I’m pretty sure that in the history of the world, no good has ever come from a sentence that starts with that statement. The lawyer seems like a nice enough guy, in his my-job-is-to-help-you-two-identify-what-you-want-this-to-look-like-in-the-end kind of way, but at the end of the day, we aren’t in this together. We’re on opposite sides of the table negotiating how we’re going to divide up the life we’ve shared for the last 16 years. We might smile at points, and I think I may have even laughed once, but at the end of the day, we’re on opposite sides of the table. I moved out on December 26, 2009 and it took everything I had that first month to not call him and beg to come home because I was afraid I’d made a horrible mistake. I’ve come to realize that just because I was in pain so profound that sometimes it felt like I couldn’t breathe, that didn’t mean I had made the wrong decision. I’m still very much in love with my husband and I’m not sure I’ll ever get to the point where I don’t love him anymore. We just don’t work as a couple. I thought I had made strides in the last few months. I thought I was through the worst of the pain. I was wrong. The pain is still here, in fact, I’m pretty sure as it was waiting for me, it was doing push-ups. What I came to realize tonight as I was curled up in the fetal position listening to Pink’s “Who Knew” was that I’m hurting because my best friend in the world, the man who knows me better than I know myself, the one man that I can’t fool, doesn’t have any faith in me. My character is a question mark in his mind. That stings. How did I get here? When I was a little girl, my dad would tell me I could do anything I set my mind to, and I believed him. How did I become this morally suspect woman? I’ve been known to say that my gregarious exterior is simply smoke and mirrors because I’m actually a very shy person, but is my character all smoke and mirrors too? If he knows me better than I know myself and he has no faith in me, what does that say about me?

Who gets custody of the dreams?

A person can create a lot of dreams in 16 years and if you get a couple that has similar interests and sensibilities, I think the number of dreams you can dream is exponentially more. When I first met my husband, I was up for adventure, I just didn’t really know how to dream big anymore. I think trauma at 19 took the ability to dream big right out of me, but I digress, that’s another story for another day.

Over the last 16 years, I did learn to dream big again thanks entirely to my soon-to-be-ex-husband. The girl that refused to scale the ladder for the high dive has climbed Taylors Falls, Barn Bluff, and countless indoor routes. I’ve fallen, I’ve gotten scraped, I’ve twisted body parts that the good Lord never intended me to twist…and I’ve loved every second of it. I’ve parasailed (refer back to the high dive comment) and I’m not ashamed to admit that I tried to talk the 8 year-old-boy in our tour group that was a little tentative into letting me go up again in his place (ok, maybe I’m a little ashamed of that, but it didn’t work anyway, he went up and had a ball). I’ve also jumped into camping with both feet with my inaugural camping experience being nine (count them, 9) days in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (yes, my husband planned the trip, and no, that’s not when things started to go South in our marriage). Believe me, you don’t know what personal empowerment is until you’ve built your own latrine. While I’m on the subject of camping, I’ve also winter camped, and you really don’t know what personal empowerment is until you’ve built your own latrine in -10 weather. Not bad for a girl that doesn’t come from a camping people. I may not be able to make fire by rubbing two sticks together but I have learned that I have a knack for finding even the most camouflaged portages and I can haul a food heavy Duluth Pack with the best of them.

But now I find myself in a quandary. There was one dream we had together that we didn’t pursue, we were going to go kayaking with killer whales. We’re working through dividing assets, building a parenting plan that works best for our 11-year-old son, and figuring out who gets the ashes of the two dogs we’ve lost in the last year, but who gets custody of the unrealized dreams? Is this an adventure I can strike out on, on my own? I’m really not sure. Part of the dream was to have a once-in-a-lifetime adventure together. I guess what I’m realizing as I think about making plans for this adventure solo is that it’s not the same dream if he’s not along for the ride. That’s not bad, but it is a little sad to me. I will always be grateful to him for giving me back my ability to dream by simply having dreams himself that he pulled me into. Maybe we can split custody of the dreams…

Acceptance

“…and acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation-some fact of my life-unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.” The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
So after another sleepless night, I find myself battling with acceptance. There are many things I need to accept about myself. For instance, I’m smart but I have a knack, dare I say a gift, for making poor decisions almost every time; I quit taking mathematics classes as soon as I could in high school but I’m obsessed with numbers…what does the scale say, what does the tag on my jeans say, how many calories is that, how many calories did I burn, how many miles can I run…you get the picture; I fall in love too quickly and get bored too easily; I’ve constructed an elaborate fortress around my heart to protect myself, but since I’m little more than a Tool Time girl, nothing is level or square or to code so the structural integrity of this fortress is compromised constantly; I’m a neat freak and life, well, life is just plain messy. So today I’m working on acceptance: I’ll probably continue to make bad choices, but I’ll try to learn from those choices; I’ll start weaning myself off numbers by putting the scale on a high shelf (of course I’ve got a harness, rope and some kick ass climbing shoes so I may never be able to move it out of reach); I won’t fall in love…today; I’ll either apply for a building permit and bring in some expert contractors to reconstruct this fortress right, or I’ll tear it down and work without a net (mixed metaphor, I know…go back to the first sentence and reread the part about the sleepless night); and I’ll focus on keeping clean what I have the power to keep clean in my life…and maybe pick up a new vacuum.

Girl on a Mission

Please indulge me for a minute while I back my story up a bit. I am many things, I’m a mother, I’m a daughter, I’m a sister, I’m a friend, I’m a long lost friend, I’m an ex-friend, I’m an ex-wife, I’m a soon-to-be ex-wife. I’m a student, I’m an entrepreneur, I’m an activist, I’m a pacifist, I’m anorexic, I’m a clean freak. I’m a runner, when I’m on the treadmill, sometimes I wish I could stay there forever, kinda like Forrest Gump (although, I’m probably more like Tom Hanks’ character in Castaway...and yes, I’m pretty sure that will be fodder for therapy soon). I’m a rock climber, an aspiring stand up paddle surfer, and a future snowboarding goddess. I’m a recovering alcoholic that has more 30 day medallions than should be allowed, but they told me to keep coming back, and I did. And I’m also apparently, “a girl on a mission.” This last one is in quotes because I was told that last night by a long lost friend and can now add it to my many other “I am’s”. I can be labeled in many ways, but today I think I’ll stick with “girl on a mission.”

FSG...Future Snowboard Godess

Late in the evening on February 19th of this year, or maybe it was early in the morning of February 20th, it was a rockstar kind of night that way, I stood at the bottom of a hill in Wisconsin, looked up at the black night sky and thought “so this is what it’s like to breathe again.” What had begun as an off handed request to a friend made in a spontaneous moment spurred on by the kind of existential dread that seems to come along with separation and divorce, landed me at Trollhaugen with a group of people I did not know, except for the aforementioned friend, in the middle of the night, having just made it down the hill on a snowboard for the first time in my life. Now, granted, there was no style involved, unless you count laughing and falling simultaneously as a style, but I did make it down in one piece and made some great new friends that night. The next Sunday, I took my first real lesson at Hyland and was hooked from the word go. I’m not sure why, other than that for too long, I’ve been listening to people tell me what I can’t, shouldn’t or couldn’t do and snowboarding was right up there on the top of that list. So I’ve decided this is the year to test my metal. Next up, paddle surfing at Lake Calhoun, who’s with me?