Divorced Life

Unfortunately there’s been a tragedy in my family. I had a tough time sleeping last night and all my thoughts are unfocused today. I decided to share something I wrote last year when I was going through a brief moment of panic and frustration:

The past couple of days have been really stressful in my household. Last night had to take my five year old to the emergency room for breathing treatments. I hate hospitals. No I detest hospitals. A veil of dread falls over me when I step through the door. Emergency rooms are the worse. A crowd of sick people sitting around miserable for what seems like ages and the whole time I’m terrified one of them has a contagious disease that my children or I will get. Paranoia kicks into high gear.

Finally I’ve been slipping into a depression of my own making and I can’t exactly explain why. My ups and downs the past few years have me feeling a bit scattered and unable to focus on anything of substance. I’m probably making no sense (right now).
Maybe later today I can make (a little) sense of things. I have a question. What do you do to overcome depression, when you don’t know exactly why you are depressed?

I’ve had many conversations with my ex- husband that ended contentiously. I’d always tell myself before I picked up the phone, that I would try and be civil. I really wanted to end the conversation on a good note. Somehow it always ended the same. In harsh words and someone slamming the phone down leaving the other to stew in their anger against the sound of a dial tone.

After one of these not-so-pleasant conversations I thought about the idea of karma.

Does it really exist or was it wishful thinking? Is a cosmic force pulling us along through life and dealing our rewards (and downfalls) based on the energy we put out? I put pen to paper and decided to write my thoughts down. Hoping that maybe I’d draw my own conclusions about it. I thought maybe if there is a such thing, I could save myself a lot of anguish. Maybe I could talk with my ex nowing that know matter what he said to me (or did), karma would handle it all in the end.

Before I married Thursday was my favorite day of the week. I had a sort of ritual where most of my friends, at the time, would meet up and go to this lil’ artsy bar in Chicago. I remember many Thursdays standing in that smoke filled place with the mix matched sofas and various lava lamps, feeling a sense of belonging, excitement and suprisingly…contentment.

It became an unbreakable staple as my days moved along and weeks passed by. Something to look forward to even if the days before and after seemed to stretch me or gather clouds of discontentment. I cherish these times although in the moment I took them for granted. I assumed they’d be there forever. At least I have them locked away in memories of laughter, silliness and retrospection. I have an official seal that says, “hey I am legitimitely one of the cool kids”, I’m just on hiatus now.

Ironically at that same bar on the same day, which (if omens are to be believed) happend to have also been my birthday (that year), I met my ex-husband. The events before our conversation (that day) and after I remember, but by some unusual and slightly morbid twist of fate, to this day I cannot recall what was said. In the years since I’ve needed others who were present at the time to fill in the blanks for me. It seems that I immediately forgot meeting him after the brief conversation at the bar. A week later he was there again. He approached me and started a discussion and I literally had no idea who he was.

Was some spiritual entity attempting to protect me from the future consequences that were sure to come? Was I given a stopwatch to correct a mistake before it happened? I’ve pondered this idea the past year. Something stepped in and gave me a lifevest seeing I was one minute from falling over the edge of a very rocky boat. Too bad I didn’t take it.

My Thursdays have never been the same since (but I still love lava lamps).

Dissect an affair into equal parts then look closely at the unequal emotional results. The consequences of actions that start with a tiny tear in the fabric of an marriage then becomes a gaping rip and the steady hands of the best surgeon with the finiest thread and needle cannot mend it.

When it’s said and done, examine the fatality of marriage with the precision and careful eye of a Forensic Pathologist. This post mortem autopsy is something I did, because I can’t help but to know any and every moment or tidbit that eventually led the relationship to its demise. Is it healthy and does it emanate a foul smell in my otherwise struggling-torecover bereaved mind? No, not on a ongoing basis. However maybe once is not so bad. I think it’s helpful to look at not only our own roles in the end but those of the other party. It’s helpful when the dust settles and you eventually move on, why repeat the same mistakes a second time around?

My conclusion, it’s not such a bad idea to practice preventive relationship therapy. If you can understand the negatives you bring to the table and resolve them before entering another marriage, recognize what you do not want in a mate (and the limitations of what you will accept in mate) then you can save yourself, your heart and a story of new love instead of grieving yet another relationship demise.

My experiences have shown me that sometimes even the best of us need vices to get over the humps and hurdles life throws at us. After my initial separation from my ex-husband I was of course shocked but moreso there lingered a tiny feeling of hope that the situation was temporary and all would settle down and be worked out. In retrospect I wonder why I even considered this. Then after mulling over the thought for a bit I realized the answer is simple. It was for the children. That may seem cliche or blaise but it’s true. When kids are involved it’s not so easy to walk away, despite what the issues are.

I was mistaken, of course. The marriage was over and there was no going back just moving forward. How did I cope with the intense pain and stinging betrayal and viperous exchanges between he and I? Well, for one, I went back to writing. I got all my thoughts down on paper and computer. I stored them in files, notebooks and loose sheets of paper. I wrote paragraph upon paragraph in blogs and spent hours chatting about it with anonymous people online, whom were trying to recover from their own blows life had pummelled them with.

Still, that was not enough. In the moments when I wasn’t writing or couldn’t write, I felt like an empty cup whose contents had be drank and all that remained were moist remnants of what was there before.

The days passed as most other did for me and I felt myself slipping into someone I didn’t recognize at all. Looking in the mirror each day at my unkempt being wondering if this was the real me all along and I was just “playing” sane before. This went on for a bit until I took to the computer and created an alter ego. One that could express the darker aspects and thoughts of my personality and allow the other me to make it each day.

Sometimes vices can consume a individual and take over their entire life in unhealthy ways but in moderation and with realistic expectations it may also be a great outlet to flush out the burdensome garbage that builds up within all of us. In my experiences it kept me sane and in these past couple of years I take that any way I can get it.

I thought I’d share this short article I wrote last year about a controversial website that puts philanderers on blast:

(from 2006)

“I found this gem of a website that was brought to my attention from a segment on CNN. The web address for the site is

It may seem, on one hand, immature (as one poster boy for infidelity put it). However isn’t repeatedly lying to various women, whom you are in a relationship with, making promises you have no intention keeping and putting women’s lives at risk, equally immature? Hell it’s really dangerous! (duh Lorena Bobbit, anyone?).”

Stepping toward the light illuminating the archway of those double doors to freedom, you take a deep breath before crossing the threshold into a new life. It’s only the beginning they say (boy, truer words have never been spoken). Is there a parallel between the great emancipation into adulthood and the somber cross into singlehood?

When we leave the nest are we marching to the beat of freedom or captivity? Are we predestined lambs to the slaughter? I know…I know, that’s a kind of bleak outlook on the future. I’m of course taking liberties with this idea, but could there be even a slither of truth to it?

The world is an endless road with many exciting adventures along the way…at least when your 18 but when your thirty it looks a lot different and if you’ve managed to dodge certain catastrophic disasters on the love front, hold on you may be steadily approaching a fateful collision.

The slow procession of smiles, goodbye waves and tears in it’s naivety may truly be in essence fitting, for the same can be seen at funerals.

At 18 were we marching happily to freedom only to face the harsh realities that comes with it a few miles down the road?

Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund

April 16, 2007, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of the Virginia Tech community and the world beyond.

To remember and honor the victims of those tragic events, the university has established the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund to aid in the healing process and generate financial support.

The fund will be used to cover expenses including but not limited to:

• Grief counseling
• Memorials
• Communication expenses
• Comfort expenses
• Incidental needs

If you plan to give, please click the link below:

What are the mysteries that lay below the surface flesh of who we are, when part of us leaves?

Do I encompass the astrological being analyzed through self proclaimed clairvoyants, numerologists and mystic guru’s? The beautiful tragedy of the Piscean woman, almost reminds me of “The Passion of The Christ.�? Poetry emanates from one word making the others seem void and meaningless without it. Am I the tragic tale of two fish? One gilled beauty struggling upstream the other riding the tide to calmer, sounder and more hopeful waters.

Am I crimson with anger, the red slash of open flesh stained a shade of brownish grey from the endless evenings of fins whipping ferociously through hostile waters of hate, revenge and rage? Am I blue fish whose delicate graces fall into the endless depths of waters unknown while I struggle against the tide, fighting the sorrow within and lamenting on minutes lost and promises unfulfilled?

Am I two fish inside this one shell of a human being swimming along the chaos of time and fighting the tide raging within myself?

The simplicity of child-like curiosity leads me to ask what is beneath the thin and thick layers of this worn suit I wear. What’s underneath may be the key to moving forward and in the end the answer to my salvation.

I awoke in the middle of the night hair glued to the nape of my neck in small kinky curls, my t-shirt was damp and for a second I wasn’t sure if I was in bed or in the middle of some primordial jungle being chased by some scientific aberration of inhanced arachnid. One of my biggest fears and a childhood nightmare that has never been shaken, a phobia to add to the numerous adult induced paranoias I”ve come to cling to like deflated life vests in the middle of icy ocean waters.

As my vision comes into focus I realize that I’m safe (for the time being). I’m simply having a bad dream. All little girls have bad dreams from time to time, but women…women have nightmares that even the firmest of pillows can’t shield you from. I feared falling asleep again. I feared taking that step into the unknown. Like a waitress in the midst of a crowded restuarant during the lunch rush, sometimes you can’t anticipate when it will strike, just know that any moment it’ll come and you’ll find yourself wading through the murky brush of Floridian everglades waist deep in the swampy weeds of lifes most unpredictable moments.

Fall asleep just for tonight (I tell myself) for if you don’t, tomorrow will be unpleasant and your temper quick to light the fuse of discontentment at the predicament to which you find yourself. I gave myself the pep talk, the one all single mothers do when they know that their up to bat and the team needs to score to push the game into overtime. I can’t let my team down although I’m in the thick of it. In the thickest of overgrowths, the eccentric neighbors unkempt backyard and the weeds have embedded themselves for the long haul. I need to clear a path then remove them one by one to reveal the beautiful landscape that has rested there all along.

I’m in the thick of it but can I find a way out?