And so it goes... (an homage to JT)

It is with some remorse that I'm writing this blog.

The circumstances are happy. I just had $5 mussels at my favorite place to write and Paula Abdul's "Cold-Hearted Snake" is playing in the air. There is a $4 glass of Sauvignon Blanc by my side and a kindly Somali math teacher who keeps trying to talk to me at the next table over. Not a bad evening as far as evenings go.

However, what was supposed to happen this evening was a date with the construction worker I wrote about two blogs ago. The one who was adorable and sweet and the opposite of a slimy banker I met through e-harmony.

Unfortunately, he is dropping the ball.

Despite the fact that he planned the movie night, and that he has been texting and calling me reliably and calling me baby and honey, I have a very ominous feeling that since nearly two weeks have passed since we hooked up, this movie night might not happen after all.

The problem isn't that I think he's rejecting me. The problem is, I'm feeling disappointed.

There may be any number of reasons he's dropping the ball, including the fact that he's been doing manual labor for 12 hours at a time in July heat and humidity, but at the end of the day, I'm not making excuses for him. Time will tell, I suppose, but at this particular time, I'm feeling disappointed.

What is just a little bit silly is that while I am certainly disappointed because of the plain and simple fact that I'm attracted to this man and would like to see what would happen on a second and third date, the main reason I'm disappointed is that it's just so anti-climatic. It doesn't make for a good blog. I was all set to thrill my audience (of four) with the wonderful details of a wonderful night with a wonderful guy, sort of the end-cap to a journey.

I was ready for my Eat-Pray-Love moment.

The beauty of the narrative arc. Coming full circle. Leaving one relationship, surviving the trauma, pulling myself out of the wreckage, and then-- poof! Adorable blue-eyed boyfriend at the end of the rainbow.

Damn.

Maybe only Elizabeth Gilbert is entitled to those endings.

But now Will Smith is singing Summertime, and there's a drop of wine left in my glass, so I guess I cannot complain too much. I can only keep going.

Maybe the truth is that whether there's a relationship or not, there are still questions, there is still uncertainty. Whether this man and I slid into a relationship or apart from each other and back into dating outer-space, we would both still have questions and issues and worries and needs and we would have to negotiate all those road bumps if we were together, just as we still have to negotiate them on our own. Life doesn't have happy endings. Life keeps going. And thank God that it does, if we're lucky.

A friend of mine posted on facebook that while he was going camping in the Boundary Waters but could not help thinking of a friend, a high school alum of mine whose 10-month daughter is battling for her life against a blood infection. He asked that we all "appreciate every breath we take and pray for her." Who am I to deny that request?

The truth is life is complicated. Life is beautiful. The truth is two servers are dancing to "Dance, Baby, Dance" David Bowie's song from the Labyrinth. The truth is I'm lucky to be here. Each breath is a gift.

There will be more dating adventures. There will be more stories. There might be some resolution, but there won't be happy endings. If I'm lucky, there are just more and more happy beginnings, happy moments, and happy dancing to silly songs playing on the radio in my favorite place to write.

Painting Lemons Gold

A list of dreams:

1. To high-five someone driving a car while driving my own car (slowly) in the opposite direction.

2. To own a convertible.

3. To teach part time, write part time, and host fabulous dinner parties in the evenings.

4. To one day be able to pay someone else to do my laundry.

5. To drive across the country on my own.

It is a great honor for me to share with you that I have recently made one of those dreams come true and am working on my second.

This weekend, I went back to my hometown, Fridley, Minnesota, a town that made into the top three in Minnesota for underage illegal alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use when I graduated back in 1996. I never loved my hometown in high school. There was a nasty vein of redneck racism that ran through the school for a year. Clothing, status, and popularity were as important there as they were at any school, and while I was voted Most Friendly my senior year (that's right, the Friendliest Fridlian), I still felt isolated and excluded most of the time. On the fringe of belonging to many groups, but still feeling lonely a good deal of the time. I had to work through my own teen angst and disliking my hometown fit in nicely with this mode of existence.

Now, however, I feel a certain sense of pride for my hometown. It's so much easier in hindsight to love and understand the complicating factors causing me to feel isolated but act outgoing, Kris G to walk around like a bad-ass with a chip on his shoulder, Erik W to be on a compendium of chemicals during art class, the "rat-pack" putting on a hyper-masculine appearance at all sporting events, sitting in the front row, and mocking poor little color guard performers who drop their rifles during the half-time show of the basketball game (me). All of these things make sense in hind sight.

In a way, I feel a certain amount of love for even the businesses in the area: Dave's Sport Shop, Miller Funeral Home (with its fluorescent pink neon cross hailing as a beacon from Hwy. 65, the highway that splits a shallow man-made lake into two boggy, weedy ponds), Biff's bar, and Friendly Chevrolet.

Ironically, I went to Friendly Chevrolet this weekend to scope out a convertible. I test drove a '95 Chrysler Sebring with a missing bumper. It was not my dream car. My dream car was written on a piece of paper in my purse: 4 door, V6, under $16,000, relatively new, front wheel drive. Turns out there was a two-door on the lot.

I tried to play it cool with the salesman, but he had my number. I saw the car and immediately thought of the Renee Zellwegger line from Jerry McGuire: You had me at Hello. You had me at hello.

I did manage to hold off on buying the car immediately however, and came back a whole two days later, met with their trade-in guy, who was surprisingly a Fridley alum, one who had graduated a couple years before me, a wrestler, I think, and had married his high school sweetheart.

"Yeah, we just bought a house out in Ramsey," he said, a suburb 20 minutes north of Fridley. "It's not Fridley, but we were able to get a pretty nice house for the money. Now's the time to buy."

Turns out it was the time for me to buy, too, though a much more impractical purchase.

The last thing I pulled out of my '01 Nissan Sentra was a sticker from one of my favorite white rappers, part of a group called Atmosphere. One of his albums came out in 'o8 and I still had the sticker from the packaging. It was a lemon and his album title scrolled across the back: "When life gives you lemons, you paint that shit gold."

I took the sticker with me. In '08 I was a wounded recent divorcee. I couldn't imagine making the best of the lemonade served to me. But I liked the saying--you were not simply "making lemonade", you were Painting that Shit GOLD. Emphasis on the verb. Emphasis on the noun. Capitalize the adjective. It seemed like such an active reaction to a difficult situation. It wasn't someone making do or trying to get by, it was someone asserting themselves, claiming a new version of the original. A saying to keep for the next car. My brand-new (one-year used) convertible.

In Minnesota, there are a million reasons not to own a convertible, especially if you are a teacher. I pulled up that day to my brother's house and he immediately teased me by saying, "Wow! They must pay teachers a lot more in the Robbinsdale district."

My mom began questioning me on where I'd park this car (since I didn't have a covered garage) and I could see her mentally observing the two doors and thinking that there was no room for babies in that car.

For me, though, driving the car was like being let in on secret. And the secret is this: one life--do it up.

It occurs to me that it's not so hard to have the life of my dreams. What is hard is deciding to make it the life of my dreams.

I have made a lot of decisions that the pragmatic folk in my life cannot comprehend. I took a year off of work to go back to school. I travelled to Europe on a credit card. I bought a convertible. I'm driving across the country alone and renting a cottage for myself for a week. A lot of people, people with IRA certificates, mortgages, and savings accounts, think that I'm being frivolous. They think I'm wasting my money or recklessly throwing it away.

I think I'm doing what I need to do to make this life work.

It's a different type of risk-management, one no banker would invest in, but here's the thing: I lived my life by the rules for 30 years. I got married, bought a home, sold it, bought a bigger home, saved money to buy furniture, gave up little indulgences to finance my husband's car, worked as a coach even though the hours pulled me away from my dream of being a writer. And what happened? It all disappeared. Any equity evaporated. The furniture sold on Craig's list for a fraction of the cost. I took on debt from a house sold in a floundering market. I keep putting money towards a retirement plan, but would I want to stop working? Not if working means teaching part time, writing part time, and hosting fabulous dinner parties in the evening. I think I can make my life what I want it to be. And so, with just a trace of guilt, I bought a new car, the one of my dreams.

"Fuck that," said my friend D when I told him people were questioning my judgement on buying a convertible, "if it's not their money they can't say shit."

We were drinking Jeremiah Weed and lemonade on his roof on Sunday afternoon, surveying the skyline of Minneapolis from atop his 7 floor building of sleek and trendy condos, discussing vocabulary lessons we would use next year, the men we had been trying to date all summer, softball, my car, among other topics, and swearing in a way that is delicious for teachers on summer break.

I couldn't put it better myself. Fuck that. One life.

Harmonizing...

This weekend turned out to be pretty interesting in terms of dates.

Eharmony-2 was nice but not dazzling. I met the crawfish-farmer downtown where he worked. I call him the crawfish-farmer because he attended a crawfish boil over the 4th of July and was raised on a dairy farm.

"He's a boob man," said my friend Jay while I was at a happy hour on Thursday with him, my friend Amber, and his partner Brian.

"What?" I asked. "Because of the udders?"

"Yep," he said. "It's just programmed. He can't help it."

"Well," I replied, laughing. "He's probably going to be disappointed then."

Disregarding the ominous premonition, I spent an hour or so getting ready for the date. I showered and primped, straightened my hair, and put on a cute orange v-neck dress (over my A-cup boobs), the turquoise-stone-and silver necklace my mother had bought me while on a cruise, and some cute peep-toe snakeskin heels I bought for ten bucks at Marshalls. I arrived 15 minutes early. Parked in a ramp. Bought my first beer. And after he arrived chatted for a couple hours while he drank three black-and-tans and bought me a Finnegans. I graciously thanked him for the beer and he said sure, it was fair. I had driven to meet him and parked, and so it made sense.

As it turned out, the crawfish-farmer was interesting and in fact, the nephew of one of my mother's best friends.

"Did she go to the wedding in San Antonio?" he asked about my mom, referring to his aunt's son's wedding.

"Yes," I said. "In fact, she did."

"Oh yeah," he said. "I heard the whole story, how [my aunt] moved back and was reacquainted with her high school friends. I saw some old ladies dancing at the reception and everyone was wondering who they were."

It was not a good sign that he called my mother an old lady, especially when I love the fact that she, at 60, still loves to dance, but the fact that he actually said the word boobs twice in our two hours and looked at mine about four or five times, made me think he might not be the man I next want to marry.

Oh well. It wasn't too bad. He was interesting and fun to talk to other than that.

The next date seemed more promising. Eharmony 3 was a man who loved traveling and working out and spending time with friends. He suggested we meet for brunch on Saturday, and I was optimistic that perhaps it was because he realized from my profile that brunch was one of my favorite hobbies.

I spent an hour or so getting ready. Showered and primped, straightened my hair, and put on a short denim sun dress and a pair of silver, low-wedge sandals. I walked three blocks to the restaurant where we were meeting and grabbed a spot on the roof.

"Running late," he said in a text. "Traffic on 94 sucks."

I didn't worry. I looked at menu and asked for a water.

A group of people arrived and sat at the table near me. An adorable blond man with thick muscles, short blond hair, and pointy teeth turned to me, "You look lonely," he said. "Why don't you come join us?"

"Oh, I'm meeting someone," I smiled.

"Well, we have two chairs," said his friend, fair-skinned and cute, with a mop of tousled brown hair and just a few freckles on his nose.

"Are you meeting a guy or a girl?" asked the first guy. And he scoffed when I admitted I was meeting a guy.

I laughed and we chatted. They were from Oklahoma. I asked how they were enjoying the city of Minneapolis and they told me they were scared of the sushi and going to a concert.

"At a church!" said Oklahoma #1.

"The Basilica Block Party?" I asked. "Fun! I wish I was going."

"Look," said OK#1 a few minutes later, "I think you should just come join us. Obviously, this guy isn't any sort of a gentleman if he's late."

"Oh," I excused my date, "he's coming. He's been texting me the whole time."

And eharmony-3 did show up. He was 20 minutes late. He was also hungover. He joined me in ordering a $8-bloody mary, but he said he wasn't going to eat. He had already eaten at the hotel this morning.

I nibbled my chilaquiles, feeling silly eating in front of him alone, and we talked. He told me, from behind his Ray Ban sunglasses, about his job, how enjoyed banking and "working with the scum of the earth" by arranging the loans used by car dealerships. Then he talked about how he'd love to have a house on Lake of the Isles or Lake Harriet, adding that he had always thought about getting a cabin but figured the upkeep made it a poor investment.

The check came and after a few minutes I pulled out my wallet. "Well, here," he said. "Let me put this towards it." And he pulled a ten-spot out of his Coach wallet.

"Put the ten towards the bill and the rest on the card," he said, handing the waitress the check.

"Did she just take the bill?" asked a woman at the table near us when the waitress returned and put the check on the table.

The whole table was silent as I picked up the tab and signed my name. OK #2 turned to me and looked me straight in the eye from under his messy brown hair. I blushed and looked down as I signed my name.

I knew what he meant.

I walked away from the date feeling irritated. I had put my best foot forward and he had bombed. I decided in that moment I could never marry a man who didn't buy the first drink. Really how much does a man have to give if he can't make a bit more effort, show up on time, and buy a lady one drink. Eharmony 3 had said in his profile that he didn't want a woman who wanted to be taken care of, but to me this didn't exclude common courtesy. Especially if he picked the place and the time and talked status and pulled bills out of a designer label wallet. At least toss in a $20, even if you don't want to buy the meal. I started to think chivalry was dead. Men didn't care. But the good news was neither did I. Sure that man doesn't want to take care of a woman, but the truth is I don't need him to do so. I'm not looking for a man to pay my way; I'm looking for a partner who is considerate and kind, like I would be to him. What did I need with this guy? Why should I bother to impress him or hope he would call again?

He did call, or at least text, telling me it was nice to meet me and to let him know if I was "out and about" next week. I said that sounded good, but secretly realized I would not be letting him know if I "was out and about."

I wore the date dress out later that Saturday night. I decided I needed to erase the stench of the bad date from its fabric. I added silver heels, my silver bracelet, and new flower ring to my outfit and took it out to my favorite local spot to celebrate my favorite local bartender's two-year anniversary.

One drink turned into several more and before I knew it I was sitting with three other regulars, my friend Amber, and three cooks from the restaurant in an apartment nearby, waiting for our favorite bartender to show up and playing dominoes. I was sitting next to a man I have been thinking was cute for the last two years, and he had just admitted he had always had a little bit of a crush on me.

I tried to play dominoes and he tried to play footsie. I ended up being much better at footsie than dominoes and he ended up coming home with me.

The next day this blue-eyed construction worker surprised me by making the bed and cuddling and holding my hand and telling me he liked the pictures in my apartment and smiling a lot and texting me later in the day to wish me luck in my soccer game, after I drove him home around 2 p.m.

Earlier, I lay curled up in arms that morning and the what-ifs and oh-dears started running through my head. I was surprised by the events, not unpleasantly, but worried. What would happen next? What was I supposed to do? Was this a hook-up or the start of something more? And would I even want something more? And on and on and on until a little voice in my head said Stop. Just stop. Enjoy this moment. Enjoy being an adult being affectionate with another adult who is happy to be spending time with you. Stop worrying. You were safe and smart about your actions. Enjoy the moment. Who cares what chapter comes next. You are strong and you know what you want and you will be ok. And even if he doesn't ever want to hang out again, you know he respects you.

Chivalry isn't about making financial gestures. It's courtesy. It's making beds and invitations. It's being interested in her life. It's giving him a ride. Offering food and shampoo, if that's what's needed. My ex-husband was great at courtesy. It was just that his addiction prevented him from intimacy. I was good at courtesy, too, but I don't think I knew intimacy, yet. My next husband will be good both at courtesy and intimacy, and so will I.

Life is interesting. I don't feel bad about my choices Saturday. I would much rather be with the considerate construction worker than the slimy banker, even if it was just for a night.

But my hunch is it wasn't. He already asked if I was up for a movie night later in the week. :)

Book Title

Bird in Flight

Totems

I'm feeling a little self-conscious about my writing, so indulge me while I ramble for a few paragraphs trying to find my string. Not that anyone is really reading this blog, but it helps me to think so. To think of an audience.

I am a woman who likes totems. Security items that reassure me throughout the day. My perfume is one. Sometimes I even carry it with me in my purse. Not a day goes by when I don't wear it, even if I'm just doing laundry and staying home.

A silver bracelet I bought for myself during my 5th anniversary to a husband I no longer lived with is another. It reads "What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us." I wear this bracelet like Wonder Woman's golden cuffs, a visible reminder throughout the day that I am ok. That everything will someday be better. I bought this bracelet without imagining how healing could happen, and now, two-and-a-half years later, I'm startled to see how far I've come.

As proof of the healing, I had a surprise encounter with ex. It was Saturday at 4 p.m. and it was steamy and muggy. Who goes running at the hottest part of the day? Me, for one. My ex, for another. I saw him first and was surprised, but at the same time felt it was sort of expected. He's bound to turn up and I've stopped having the anxiety I felt at these surprise encounters. My bowels no longer feel like they are going to drop out of my body, my hands have stopped shaking, I neither want to strike up a conversation nor feel the need to avoid him. I raised my hand in a casual wave. He shook his head in double-take recognition and said, "Oh, Hey Kate."

The whole thing was so casual I could hardly believe it happened. Even more surprising, I felt no anger. No anger for the broken trust, the loss of house and family and identity, the financial strain, the emotional trauma. In fact, I felt like the lucky one. Good luck, I thought, a little sadly, my book will be on the shelves in two years.

Writing about my ex is a tricky subject. I am not trying to maliciously hurt him or ruin his good name, but at the same time, I have a right to explain my experiences. I have a right to be honest about the truth. And I have no obligation to keep shameful secrets to enable an addiction.

Shawn isn't a bad guy. In fact, I was telling a friend over sushi after my second e-harmony date, just how great he was as a partner and husband. He was the good boyfriend, the one who called even more than expected, who treated me at least on our first few dates, who was kind and in a way dazzled by my capability. He kept the house clean, he did laundry, we had fun together, he made me pizza when I had to work late for conferences. He told me to sleep in during the summer, recognizing I had earned it during the school year.

It really wasn't a bad relationship, except for the lying, lack of intimacy, financial secrets, and, of course, all that porn.

But my point, is that I feel like I need to share both stories. I'm not out to get this man. I recognize all his beautiful flaws and hopeless perfections.

Passing him running around the lake was like noticing a wound was suddenly no longer stinging and tender, like a solid scab had closed the painful opening, and it was almost an interesting observation, like running my finger over the brown bumps on my knee when I was seven that covered the scrape I had gotten a week before from falling off my bike.

Another totem I wear today is a ring a friend gave me for my birthday. I journeyed out of my city to the suburb of Maple Grove where we drank mojitos on her deck and she and her husband made me dinner and sang Happy Birthday over a candlelit chocolate cake (complete with jazz hand motions). The ring is a large silver flower with 16 little sparkling jewels in the center. I love it because it reminds me I am loved.

I love it because I feel myself blossoming.

Down My Street

Tonight I returned home from a sushi dinner with a friend on an outdoor patio near the lake by our apartments. She had graciously agreed to join me despite having already eaten in order to keep me company while I satiated my hunger that had been growing all afternoon. I had been on an eharmony happy hour with Jason, the crawfish-boil attendee who also runs marathons and was raised on a dairy farm. The date had been fun, but I was starving, and so little mattered until half a spicy tuna girl roll and half of a Temptation roll were lined up in my belly.

After the hunger waned and the sunlight fell, I dropped my friend back home at her apartment, and I picked up my dog from my own for a quick 9:30 stroll around the neighborhood, I began to think of things other than food and my recent date. I began to notice the world around me, the perfect July nighttime air, minus the humidity of the earlier part of the week. Nearly everyone else in my neighborhood, or at least everyone under age 40, had noticed the same gorgeous nighttime quality and were taking advantage of the weather in groups or pairs, or even alone on a bike.

My apartment sits across a busy street from a coffee shop. The streets behind this coffee shop wander towards a lake, and along the road are 80 year-old homes with yards, some lacking grass in lieu of sustainable indigenous plants and flowers. One home I pass daily has a delicate little arrangement of toy cars, plastic dinosaurs, and today I noticed a plastic hedgehog head placed strategically among the flowers. There are no children at this home, but I have often seen one of the two women who live there working diligently on her yard. My section of this part of the city is four blocks away from the action, the Urban Outfitters and Victoria Secret, the Famous Dave's that hosts live blues and swing dancing, L.A. Fitness, the Aveda Salon, the restaurants il gatto and Chino Latino. I often walk the four blocks towards the fun with my dog and then back, taking in the urban art on the way that's filled with irony and wit. Some graffiti bandits have sprayed tarantulas randomly over the sidewalks. Clever artists have added the words "Drop & Roll" to a stop sign. It is my belief that these same artists also added the words "Don't" and "Believing" to the stop sign down the block in the same thick black marker that looks like wet paint. This stop sign is the whole four blocks away from the giant sea mammal spray painted on a utility box above the smeary words "Oh! The manatee!"

So, it did not surprise me that in this neighborhood, I passed a group of urban hipsters standing on the sidewalk outside a rented home waiting for a cab. It also didn't surprise me that they began singing "Livin' on a Prayer" by Jon BonJovi at the top of their lungs. My dog did not approve and began huffing and snorting like an old man, which is what he does when he knows he will be scolded for barking but he wants to show his disapproval anyway. I, on the other hand, chuckled. In fact, I was tempted to hum a few bars myself, this being one of my absolute favorite karaoke songs.

I restrained myself and walked away from the karaoke group, and I began to think about karaoke. The most recent of my karaoke escapades involved a denim dress (the one I am planning to wear tomorrow for eharmony date #3), an old bus filled with vinyl seating and fluorescent lights, and a tribute to lovers of blue-eyeshadow everywhere: "Hit Me with Your Best Shot," by Pat Benatar.

I was attending a birthday party for a woman I adore who was turning 30, but she was really the only person I knew. While I love karaoke, I was not sure that I'd be able to sing on a bus full of strangers at 11:00 in the morning.

We actually did not board the bus until 11:30, though, in part because the birthday girl's sister, let's call her Kristi, was outside the apartment talking on her cell phone in her car.

"So, I think Kristi's going to ask you some questions later," said my friend after I hugged her a Happy Birthday.

"Of course," I said, knowing that Kristi, the mother of a three year-old and a on year-old, had found out a few weeks ago that her husband had been having an affair with one of their friends. Her life was upended, he wouldn't stop seeing the other woman, and now she was facing a divorce.

"Right now she doesn't want anything," my friend said. "She wants him to keep it all because she doesn't want anything to remind her of their lives together." I knew what she meant, and I knew how I felt when I left my ex, and how Kristi was probably feeling the same way.

I knew I'd be happy to talk to Kristi, to sympathize, to share my story, and when she got on the bus, this strawberry-blond 35 year-old mother of two. A woman wearing a denim dress with a heart-shaped neckline and an A-line skirt, and that matched her round-wide blue eyes. I liked her immediately. "I'm Katie," I said, looking at her to see if the name clicked, "I work with your sister." Recognition showed in her eyes, and I knew we'd probably chat later, after a couple drinks.

After an hour on the bus (plus a mimosa and a bloody mary), I did get up the courage to sing in front of a bus full of strangers. Part of me was doing it because I love karaoke, and another part was just sheer stubbornness not to let my anxiety stop me from doing something fun, but as I started to sing Pat Benatar's song, the one I had chosen on a whim because "Livin' on a Prayer" wasn't on the bus's playlist, I started to feel something more.

Suddenly I was really believing the words.

"You come on with your c'mon's; you don't fight fair. That's ok, see if I care. Knock me down, it's all in vain, I get right back on my feet again. C'mon- hit me with your best shot!"

I started shaking my hips a little, making a pouty face, shimmying my shoulders, and I gave those lyrics my best-throaty-blue impersonation (the one that got me a slightly-better-than-chorus role in my middle-school's production of "Annie" back in 6th grade). Suddenly I just wanted so badly for Kristi to know that you do recover. That at some point you smile and it doesn't feel forced. That you do get back on your feet again, and you sometimes even sing loudly for a bus full of people you don't even know.

Later Kristi and I would talk and I would feel my eyes welling up with tears for this beautiful woman and wanting somehow to make it so she wouldn't have to go through the experience.

But even more badly, I wanted her to understand that my divorce was the worst, but also the best thing to ever happen to me.

****


This is what I was thinking about while walking my dog through my neighborhood, watching a black bat move like a cursor across the story of the sky.

Sorting through the Muck

As I was talking with a friend in the writing program, I was telling her all about how there are so many things I DON'T want to write about anymore. The list goes like this:

1) My divorce

2) Being married to a sex addict

3) Being sad about my divorce

4) Being confused about being married to a sex addict

5) Shawn

6) Sex

7) My sexual experiences

8) My anger, my sadness, my grief

9) My experiences with harassment

10)Loneliness

11) My divorce

12) Being married to a sex addict

I think this is fair. I've been pretty wounded for a couple years, and I think my body is ready to heal. Ready to forget. Ready to bury the past.

For some reason I feel like I should be over this loss. I should move on from this awful topic of divorce. I sense my family, my friends, the men I've been on dates with, and even my own pragmatic self urging me on to the future, leaving my experiences in the past, in the silence.

But, the true version of myself, the writer, the thinker, the optimist within, knows I must worry this subject into extinction. I feel like part of what pulled me into a relationship with a nice man who had an addiction, were some of my own blind spots. We matched like puzzle pieces fitting together. He wanted a woman who wasn't aggressive, wouldn't push for intimacy or even sex. I wanted a man who felt safe, who wouldn't pressure me to have sex, who would treat me politely and not get into fights. Ultimately, though, maybe he sensed I'd eventually hold the line, force him to confront his addiction, at least for the first time. Maybe I sensed he'd force me to assert myself, to set boundaries, to put my own needs first for once.

Personality traits are a two-headed coin. I love that I am compassionate, but the flip side of that is that if I'm not careful, I put others' needs ahead of my own, that I rely on others to take care of me.

Here is a silly example of what I mean:

When I was turned 16 my family let me choose where we were going for dinner to celebrate. My youngest brother who was 7 at the time desperately wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese. So, for my sweet 16, we went to Chuck E. Cheese.

I don't really remember the experience, but I wouldn't be surprised if I felt sorry for myself after the meal. I was relying on someone else, my mom or dad, to step in and say that Chuck E. Cheese was a ridiculous choice for a 16th birthday.

Compassion. Duty. Fear. Shame. These are the buttons that have pushed me to be fake-nice at times.

Now I love that I can be genuinely compassionate, and I'm aware of whether I'm acting in a genuine manner or because I'm trying to do the right thing, be the good daughter, the good big sister, the good wife, the good teacher. I'm aware when I'm being kind because I'm afraid I won't be accepted.

Truly, I am a genuinely kind person. I don't think I'm fake very often. I think I used to be scared into trying to woo people to accept me, into being a pleaser, but I think I'm pretty good at curtailing that behavior now.

Here is an example:

I set a goal to greet all of my students when they walked in the door this school year. Not because I wanted them to like me, or because I thought it would make me a good teacher, but because I wanted to respect the light within each one of them, whether that light was shaded by the pain of adolescence or not. It sounds corny, but in yoga, the saying "Namaste" means the light within me recognizes and honors the light within you. I love this saying. I try to bring that attitude to my meetings with people, and especially my students. This doesn't mean I don't discipline students or set boundaries, but I try to see them as whole people, flawed and perfect, as I do so. As Plato said, "Be kind to everyone, for we are all fighting a great battle."

This afternoon I took a nap and I dreamed of my ex-husband. I was trying to pick out an outfit and we were both staying at my parents' house at 6275 Kerry Lane. He kept following me around, trying to see me naked, asking me to pick out his outfit. It was very strange. And disturbing. I remember feeling like I just wanted to be away from him.

Then he asked me if I had ever even loved him.

My heart broke again. I tried to explain, yet again. I tried to tell him how much I had loved him, how much I had put into our relationship, how I wanted more than anything for it all to work.

But he started to get "slippery" and I knew I had to leave again. Slippery is a term often used in recovery programs for codependents of addicts. It's recognizing this sort of manipulative and deceptive line of reasoning that turns black and white concepts gray. It's Shawn using guilt, logic, sympathy, and cruelty to coerce me into staying with him in our sad marriage. It's a baffling place to be as the partner to an addict, I would get so confused in our arguments. I would forget things and get lost in his reasoning.

In any case, even in my dream, I left again.

I think I dreamt about him because I've been bracing myself for the fact that he is going to get married again to a woman that is not me. In my dark moments I wonder if maybe I was the problem in the relationship. If he could truly be happy with the girlfriend he's been living with for over a year (as I've heard from others). I wonder if I dreamed the whole thing, the porn addiction, the sadness, the loneliness. Maybe I was the problem after all.

But I have the credit card statements. I have all of my journal entries. In my heart I know he is not in recovery. I remind myself I was with him for 5 and a half years before I really started to question the slight pulling away I had sort of been feeling for a year.

Sometimes I feel like I look like the wreck. Like I am the one dwelling in tragedy. Reliving a past that doesn't matter to anyone else. But in my heart I know the work will pay off. Trudging through the darkness, making it through the woods, and sorting through the muck, painful as it is, will make my future so much clearer.

I will die happy and uplifted, knowing I did the best I could with the time I had.

Happy Moments

Recently I asked one of my match mates on eharmony.com to name one of his happiest memories. We had made it to "step three" and I wanted to ask a question that hadn't been made up by a god-like computer database. It was a question I asked off the top of my head.

"What is your happiest memory?" asked Lana, my dating coach, when I told her the question I had posed.

"Well, obviously that would be wearing matching overalls to a house party with you when we were freshmen in college," I responded, referring one of our most amusing recollections of freshmen year at the prairie-town school, the University of Minnesota, Morris.

Picture this, two girls in beige Union Bay corduroy overalls over baby blue polo shirts knocking cheerfully on the door of an upper class men house party. The going cover charge for a house party in Morris at the time was between $3-5 a cup, depending on who was throwing the party. Sometimes girls got in for free. The owner of this particular house and coordinator of this particular house party opened the door, looked us over, and after consulting with other people in the house finally decided we could come in if we paid a $10 cover charge. Bewildered, we returned to our car in the frigid early December weather of Minnesota to put our coats back on, the ones we had left in the vehicle so that we wouldn't have to worry about them while at the party, and drove on to the next location, self-esteem shaken, but not crushed.

We both laughed at the memory, and while this is a great one in the collection of fond moments in my mind, I don't know that I could quite call it my happiest memory.

Yesterday was the 4th of July. I met up with "the poker group", the families of the dads (including mine) who have played poker together since college, since they all went to the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. I went on a pontoon ride on McCarron Lake, (while visiting the Bob McCarron family), played with my adorable nephews, ate a lot of chips and salsa, drank a frozen, sugar-free margarita, played a round of bocce ball, stayed for the annual cutting of my mother's special "flag-fruit-pizza", and then politely excused myself from the group my family has spent the last 28 years with on July 4th. I told everyone I was going to watch the fireworks with friends.

I lied.

I went home and I worked on various little odd projects around my house. I walked my dog out into the balmy weather, admired the sun setting, the air so warm and thick it felt like a shawl on my shoulders, and returned to my apartment to the sound of rockets exploding the air. I didn't watch a single one.

For years, my happiest holiday after Christmas was spending the 4th of July with the poker families and playing with my "poker cousins." Jessica and Melanie were the oldest girls, almost too old for me to even fathom. Sometimes they just liked to sit with the adults, hang out and eat. Marjie was a year older than I was and sooooo cool. She read Stephen King books, and was gregarious, and magnetic, and joked with all the dads and watched sports. I was next after her, a quieter, creative girl who loved to make up the stories of what we were "playing" while we hung from our knees on the top rungs of the octagonal playground set the Voelkers had in their back yard on E. 6th St. in St. Paul, MN. Mary came after me, two years younger, a curly-brown-haired girl that would join in on any game laughing, and Sarah, who loved Buddy Holly was after her, and then Annie, who was dramatic and sweet and flirted with Nate, my brother, the sports fanatic who was next in line. After him came Tom who broke his leg one summer and survived a sailboat overturning when he was four, and then Kathy, Mary's sister, the one with golden curls who loved everything girly, and then Jim, and then my youngest brother Mark, both of whom competed in the "who's louder" competition and tormented the poker dads with water balloons and jests. I think all of us kids teased Ray about being bald mercilessly. We held mock-Olympics, water-balloon fights, piano recitals. We played seven-steps, freeze tag, water-wars, and told ghost stories. We ate cheeseballs and sat in the Voelker's basement watching Sixteen Candles and not understanding any of it. Then we'd change into jeans, put on the bug spray, pile into cars and drive to the Capitol of Minnesota, in downtown St. Paul. We'd pick out spots on the lawn of the giant domed building to watch the fireworks, back when they were free, and spread our our fuzzy plaid blankets before reapplying bug spray to our ankles and necks. When we got older, Marjie and her cousin Molly would point out the couples "having sex" on the lawn. We'd play frisbee, play more tag, and wear ourselves out until the moment a voice came over the loudspeaker singing "I'm Proud to Be an American." The show would leave little squiggly lines on my eyelids when I closed my eyes and my ears would be ringing. The littlest kids would cry and cover their ears. But I loved it. I loved the vibration in my heart, the exhalation of twilight into darkness, the white chandelier hovering closer and closer above my eyes as I lay on my back and watched black puffs of smoke float on a navy blue sky.

When we left we'd trot with our moms behind the dads who carried the youngest kids on their shoulders, above the crowd, down the streets, over the bridge, to the parking lot, where we all said our good-byes. I would lean back in the car and pretend to fall asleep on the drive back to our suburb, Fridley. When I was young my dad would carry me up the stairs.

This might be one of my happier memories.
Almost as happy, or maybe happier, were my July 4ths in my 20's.

For six years, my fiancee and then husband and I went with our college friends up to Bayfield, Wisconsin, where we took camping to a new level. The first year we grilled steaks in the Indian campground just outside of Bayfield, carried toilet paper into the woods to go to the bathroom, and took a little 14-foot sailboat out onto the water of Lake Superior. The first year it was just us and one other couple, then gradually we invited more people, and instead of taking one vehicle and a sailboat to Bayfield, we took three or four vehicles, two kayaks, a sailboat, and about four cases of Corona to Bayfield, and then to the ferry that took us to Madeline Island where we camped at a state park. The four or five couples on the ferry would toast each other with an open bottle and a lime wedge and we'd lean out onto the water and fantasize moving to this area, this little island, this escape from the world.

The weather was almost always hot, 85 or 90 degrees, and the water in the great lake was probably 50 degrees, so we would play frisbee up to our knees in the frigid water, beer in one hand, frisbee in the other. We'd set up a tent on the beach, haul down our three water vehicles, bring two or three coolers, and sometimes people would even buy drinks from us. I would bring a book I'd never read, preferring to chat, or play frisbee, or kayak around the hook of the island out to the giant rocks of the shore down the way. You could see the bottom of the lake to 20 feet and the rocks looked like giants had arranged a sort of underwater landscaping scene. Too cold for weeds, the lake was a turquoise in the shallow lip that extended about a hundred yards from the southern shore of the little island, and dark blue once you moved beyond that shelf. Again we'd go out in the little sailboat, and I thrilled to dodging the mast swinging when we would "come about." The friend that owned the sailboat taught me, almost, to sail by myself, challenging me to take the tiller and the strings the moved the sail sooner than I felt ready. We'd bring a Nalgene bottle of some horrible drink or another, usually gin and tonic, and the trip would turn into this heady adventure of water and wind and leaning this way or that, and trimming the sail to stop the luffing, and catching a breeze and flying out on the lake, water splashing up on my stomach and toes while we leaned backwards towards the blue to stop the boat from capsizing. We'd return to shore, my legs wobbling, and I'd jump out into the knee-high cold water, before walking up to the scalding hot sand, collapsing and asking for the chips.

Breakfasts were my number one sport on vacation. I would usually be the first one awake at the camp and would attempt to quietly work on the necessities, coffee being the main priority. Later, Dave would start cooking. Eggs, pancakes with peanut butter and syrup, bacon, and Paul would make bloody marys. I think I ate more at these breakfasts than I usually did in a week. Then Shannon and I might go for a run through the woods, before returning back to our group. Even with the added run, I'd still be the first one in my suit, practically dragging the rest of the team with me to the beach for our day of frisbee and relaxation. If it rained we played drinking games under the screen tent.

On the fourth, we made our way to the ferry landing, near The Burnt Down Bar and set up our folding chairs in the sand while the sun set. I took pictures of boats intersecting with a giant orange orb lowering into purple water, of pink-reflection water lapping the shore. Andy, the geology major, would describe the geological principles of each of the stones lining the shore. We filmed silly videos and said stupid things and wandered to the ice-cream shop for giant cones. I'd wear a hoody sweatshirt and lean up against my husband, or sit next to him and touch his foot with mine. Sometimes there were tense moments with him on these trips, moments where I saw a crabbier side of my husband, probably the side of an addict in withdrawal, but not during the fireworks.

The fireworks were nothing compared to the Taste of Minnesota, but the drama was greater. A crackly voice would come over the loud speaker and start reading the preamble to the Bill of Rights, then one firework would go off. Then the speaker would give us a little history about our forefathers. And another firework would go off. Music would begin and one by one fireworks were set to certain chords and crescendos. It was a very deliberate show, but the finale made up for the theatrics. It was as if the show's pyrotechnic could no longer contain himself during the charade of the Great American Firework Script and suddenly took matters into his own hands, sending up all the rest of the rockets in a streak of glory before the Madeleine Island police could haul him away riding buck on a bicycle. I'd hold Shawn's hand after the show, his long fingers, his smooth fingernails. We'd sit in the back of someone's SUV and he'd make a stupid comment, I'd roll my eyes, but be very, very happy anyway. Maybe sometimes, during the sad years, I wished one of these other men had been my husband, one less complicated, one that understood me better, but at the end of the day, Shawn and I were a team that knew each other and saw the world around us in the same way. Eventually his shoulders would be against mine, his arms around my body, hugging me at the waist.

I loved these July fourths on our little island in the middle of Lake Superior.

So last night, as the sun started to drop, and without warning it was already 8:00 at night, I suddenly couldn't be there for the fireworks. I couldn't be with my nephews when I used to watch fireworks with my husband. I couldn't be with the family of my youth when the family of my early adult years has somehow vanished like sands under a north shore wave.

There are no more trips to Madeleine Island and there will never be trips anymore like that.
There are no more fireworks at the state capitol. I am no longer watching for my brother atop my father's shoulders.

I am without tradition this Independence Day, waiting for the next phase to begin. Waiting for my next happiest moments.

Dating like it's 1999...

When I first started dating again after my divorce, there were all sorts of new technological advances that had developed since the last time I was dating... 12 years ago (!), back when I was 20.

Dating in my late teens and early twenties went something like this...

When I was in college, a boy might become interested in me by reviewing the pages of the "freshman shopper", the freshmen edition of the school paper at the small, prairie school called The University of Minnesota, Morris. It was part of the "main U" (University of Minnesota located in Minneapolis), but had not nearly the numbers. While the main U had nearly 50,000 students, including graduate programs and the St. Paul campus, Morris had less than 2,000 and the town had less than 5,000 people in it, many of whom were Mennonites and resented the rowdy, liberal students the college brought into town. I remembered feeling apprehensive about the number of sheep I saw on campus property as my parents turned our mini-van off of Hwy. 28 when I was arriving for my freshman orientation. Later, I would discover that the stabled horses on campus went out to graze the apple trees in the pasture located right next to the soccer field where I practiced. One day five horses got loose on the field during practice. I had a sprained ankle and could only stand and watch while my teammates chased them down to bring them in.

In the freshman shopper at this school was a compilation of all the photographs of freshmen who were tricked into sending their senior picture to the school and writing three of their hobbies on the back. I was one such freshman, who dutifully sent her picture in, believing it might be sent to my roommate or my orientation group leader for some sort of get-to-know-you activity, and thus choosing my "ugly" picture to send in because it was the one I least wanted to give to my real friends, the high schoolers who attended Fridley High (and some of them certainly were high, believe me). I wrote on the back "Soccer, Swimming, Dancing." I had censored my original third selection "Reading" because I felt it was too nerdy. I was determined not to be nerdy in college (even if I was in real life).

Little did I know that my "ugly" picture would be put smack in the middle of the school newspaper to be perused by older students before the first few house parties of the year. "Oh yeah," I heard on more than one occasion after telling an older boy my name, "I saw you in the shopper." Mortifying.

So while a boy might initially become interested through perusing the shopper, it did not guarantee any sort of communication. In order to actually talk to a boy, I could strike up a conversation with him at a house party and either tell him my full name so that he could look me up in the campus phone book, give him my brand-new email address (something I had never had before), or tell him my phone number, since for the last two years now every dorm room had its own phone instead of one for each floor at the end of the hallway. "It's 6518," I would say, listing off the four digit campus extension and adding, "65, like the age you retire, and 18, like the age you're an adult," a clever mnemonic device I had conceived in order to help the drunk boys remember after the house party was over.

Of course, there was one other option, which was to get sloppy drunk, make out with a boy at a house party, and then invite him over to my dorm room if my roommate happened to be out of town, (which was often, since her boyfriend still lived back in Watertown, South Dakota). We would make out on my roommate's bed (she had the bottom bunk and it was just too awkward to climb up a ladder) and I would always say, "but I'm not sleeping with you."

"That's fine. I wasn't expecting it," they'd almost always say. (Really, I've made out with some extraordinarily respectful individuals, not at all like what we learned about during the "safe sex" and "no means no" talk we all got during freshman orientation.) Then in the morning, the situation would become awkward. Either I liked him but he wanted to avoid me, or vice versa.

Make-out sessions very rarely led to relationships for me, though for many people at Morris a good make-out session was a sign of instant couplehood.

Provided I was actually going out on a date with a guy, the course followed a very different route. He'd eventually call me or email me and ask me out on a date. I wouldn't be able to think of anything to say other than "Sure." And then he'd cook me dinner in his dorm kitchen, having banished his floormates from the room for the evening, or he'd pick me up and take me to Alexandria, a town 45 minutes away that boasted a Chinese restaurant and current movies. On the worst of these occasions, the drive was painful, me attempting to make small talk with a very shy and sweet individual, but one who took me to BURGER KING for dinner and then made me pay for my own meal. I felt no chemistry for this individual and the Burger King expedition was a nail in the coffin.

Very few, if any, of these "real date" situations led to a relationship for me at Morris, either, though again, it was like insta-relationship for other couples.

If I were home for the summer, the dating scene took on a new form. Dance clubs were a part of the way to meet boys. I would go to teen night with my friends and we would pay our $3 cover charge and buy $1 waters all night. We'd check out the boys and smile at the ones we'd like. We'd speak in girl-talk to each other with eye-brow raises and head nods, letting each other know if the guy dancing behind us was cute or not.

If I wasn't into a guy, I'd perform the "t" move, meaning I'd position my body to be perpendicular to his whatever way he moved and thus, the only part of me he could rub up against would be my hip bone. This deterred most boys after attempting to get closer once or twice and they'd look for friendlier territory. If I liked the guy, I'd either face him while we were dancing, or allow him to grind on me from behind. (As I just chaperoned a high school prom three months ago, this methodology still seems to hold true.)

Then, after maybe a half an hour of sweaty dancing, we'd try to go get some water and scream a brief conversation at each other over the bass. I might even give him my phone number. If I did this, it was a week of anticipation, wondering if he'd call, and when he did, of course, he'd have to get through my mom, or dad, or brothers if they answered the phone first. Many a time I'd try to sprint down the hallway in my basement where my room was to be the first one to answer our phone, the one in the basement laundry room that was a beauty out of the early 1970's complete with rotary dialing. I'd have to really think about if I wanted to call someone while sticking my finger in each little number hole and pulling it up to the top of the circle. It was very exhilarating.

When I did actually talk to a boy, after first screaming up the stairs to my family, "I got it!" I would be almost as physically involved in the conversation as I was mentally. I would sit on the dryer, I'd kick my mom's sewing chair, I'd walk down the hall as far as the curly receiver cord would let me. I'd lay on the hallway floor and run my fingers through the tough bristles of the cheap downstairs carpet. I'd kick my legs up on the white walls of the hallway scuffed with black marks of my brothers' hockey equipment that they brought into the "sports room" after practice, an unfinished sauna room lined with cedar started by the people who owned the house before my parents and I moved in when I was 2 and-a-half.

All of this was very exciting and once in a while, after a hour long discussion about nothing in particular, a date would be planned.

But, again, very few of these dates or phone calls led to a real relationship, though I'm told they did for other people.

In my awkward early dating career, I really only had one big relationship (with the man I would go on to marry) and a couple of brief practice relationships. I think part of this was my own fear of relationships, and part of it was the lore I had built up around the legend of parents' relationship. They had met at a party during which my dad said to himself "she's the one," and my mom said to herself, "he seems like a nice guy." Four months later, they were engaged. Eight months after that, they were married. Thirty-four years later, they still are.

In my mind then, there was ONE relationship in everyone's life, and I believed my marriage was it, the relationship that would last until I was in my 90's.

But that was not to be, and sadly, or at least two years ago I thought it was sadly, I'm back in the world of awkward dating. And there are all sorts of technological advances that have made it more and more complicated, like facebook, and texting, and things I never even had to worry about back when I was 18 and the most anyone really might have was a pager. One of my friends had a cell phone to be used "only in emergencies!" because each minute was "really, really expensive!"

Through the last two years I've been awkwardly navigating the whole technological dating world, asking myself questions like "to text, or not to text?" But it's time, I've decided, to enter the final frontier: online dating.

I have decided to experiment with eharmony this summer, for one, because I actually have time to pursue this kind of adventure right now (there's a lot of homework involved), and two, because I suddenly realized I might not always be single, and how silly not to take advantage of this while I can.

It has been quite an interesting experience. I log on each day to review my "matches", profiles of men sent to me by a database playing God. Then I decide to either archive, contact, or simply leave the men in my homepage. "What happens to the archived men?" my dad asked when I explained the system to my family.

"They just hover in bubbles, like on SuperMario [for Wii-the new one], crying 'Help me!' until Katie lets them out." We all laughed, and I have to say, there is a certain power that comes with deciding to archive someone.

"It's not mean, is it?" I asked when I archived someone because I just wasn't that attracted to his pictures.

"No!" said my friend Lana, "It's normal! It's just like at a bar, the process of elimination."

And plus, there is just no way to contact everyone. I can only imagine how things could pile up if I wasn't checking my matches each day!

After the initial stage, there is a four-step process. First you send each other multiple choice questions, then you send your list of "Must-Haves and Can't Stands." If both of you are still on board after that, you send each other three short answer questions, and finally, you are allowed to email each other.

"Chompers," as Lana and I have fondly dubbed my first e-harmony date, (because he wrote in his profile that he had braces, 'the metal kind that most people have when they are 10' but that he was hoping for 'a nice set of chompers by the latter part of the year,') I have discovered was sort of an anomaly. He jumped right to step four and proposed we meet for a drink. We had a good time and swapped amusing stories about our families, and then, three days later he sent me a very polite email explaining that while he had had a great time, he had also been on a couple dates with another woman and he wanted to be exclusive with her. "I joined eharmony because I wanted a serious relationship," he wrote, "and for me, that couldn't happen if I was dating more than one woman at a time." It was so nice, and so filled with integrity, that I became even fonder of Chompers and decided we had been on the best first eharmony date ever. I wished him well and returned to my six matches a day.

The first time I got to step three with a man, I have to admit, I almost broke out into hives. The questions were serious! "Besides love, what one trait do you believe successful couples have?" and "If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?" and finally, "tell me five random things about yourself." The first question was the one that really caused me to sweat. How serious was this? What kind of commitment were we making? This was with Brian, or "Cheese-lover." I contacted him because he included cheese in his list of five things he couldn't live without. But, after making it all the way to step four, I suddenly stopped hearing from him.

No matter. What I like about eharmony is that I feel like I'm getting over the concept of rejection. I contacted another one of my matches, named Joey, who I was just swooning over. He was so cute, looked kind of manly, was in triathlons, said his daughter was something he couldn't live without, and here's the kicker, said he was looking for "someone who wants something serious." I contacted him and showed his picture to Lana, my dear friend and dating coach.

"He looks like Wes," she said.

Perhaps you have heard the new song by John Mayer, the one called "Friends, Lovers, or Nothing?" I would say this aptly describes my relationship with Wes. And we are firmly in the "Nothing" category as he no longer returns my calls.

I would like to say I simply ignored the comment, but with all the maturity of a seventh-grader I instead said, "Yeah, except taller and smarter."

Not that height is a "big" factor me (ha ha), but I imagined the 5' 8" Wesley would be chagrined to know I was dating a 6'1" version of himself, and so mentally I felt I had scored a point. And the smarter comment refers to the adage I coined this year in my 9th grade classroom when I would turn to the girls I was teaching after we watched the 9th grade boys hump each other and try to hit each other in the balls during the first couple minutes before the bell rang, "Boys are dumb." They would nod, and I felt like real learning was happening.

Here's the thing, it's not about me if a guy rejects me, it's about him or us or timing, but really, I am still quite a fine person. It helps me to remember that "boys are dumb," a comment I don't believe literally, but one that reminds me not to take dating so seriously or so personally. When it finally works out, it will be great. Until then, no fretting, just more surfing.

This is why when adorable Joey never responded and eventually "closed" me as a match, (sort of like death to an eharmony match, because you are never allowed to communicate again--Ever), I was not upset.

"But why would he close you?!" asked my dating coach, just the sort of unconditional supporter you need in the dating world. A woman who can't imagine any man not falling madly in love with me while I too quickly see all of my flaws.

"Oh, well, I just think it's probably because he met the woman of his dreams a month ago and now he's being respectful and closing all of his matches," I said, having no clue if this was the case, but choosing to believe that it was.

"Oh," she replied, "that's nice of him. I guess that's ok."

Whether Joey closed me because he met the woman of his dreams, or he didn't like the Kentucky Derby hat I was wearing in my first profile picture, or he thought I was too tall, or he didn't like that I did yoga, or perhaps he was against the dog I mentioned in my list of hobbies (as in I like to walk my dog around the lakes), it doesn't really matter. It doesn't change who I am as a person, which is the woman who "loves spicy food and dive bars, going out for breakfast with friends, curling up on the couch in front of candles, and singing Bon Jovi on karaoke night." I think that woman sounds great, and like a lot of fun, and if Joey doesn't that's fine.

Especially because Jason, who likes to go running and is going to a crawfish broil for the 4th of July, wants to go out for drinks next week! :)

Watching Porn

On New Year's Eve, a bunch of my college friends got together to wave goodbye to 2006 with skewers, hunks of bread and veggies, and vats of bubbling cheese. After spending an outrageous amount at an actual fondue restaurant the year before, we were determined to do it better and cheaper on our own.

It was a night of hilarity and laughs. Very few, if any, of the women there were pregnant (we were all married couples ranging from 4-8 years in wedded bliss) and at least one bottle of Hendrick's gin was consumed with small amounts of tonic water and thin slices of cucumber resting on the surface. This in addition to the champagne. And the beer. And the wine. Our host, a who liked to keep parties rolling along, made a play list of classics from our "back in the day" years. "Bust a Move" was one of the songs playing, along with Keith Sweat's "Twisted", and of course, a variety of Michael Jackson's hits. When "P.Y.T." came on, there was a lull in the ferocity of the party and in general people were simply sipping and chatting, but when that song came on, I started dancing in place, glanced across the room and saw my lanky husband bobbing his head in his chair and singing along as well. "See!" I exclaimed, moving across the room to perch on his knee while he rested his hand on the small of my back, "this is why I know we are perfect for each other."

It felt true. It felt like we were two people who danced when no one else was. Because we were so in sync when out on the town, I felt reassured, like the problems I felt drifting into our lives when we were home alone didn't exist, that they must be imagined, something only I felt because I must have a contentment disorder. I must be the type of woman who looks for problems where there are none.

Now, I realize I was looking for reassurance that our lives were fine because they weren't. I wasn't imagining problems. But I just didn't know the truth. I thought it was bad that Shawn looked at porn, but then I could argue against myself. I thought he had an addiction, and even he thought he had one, but he told me he was done, that he had quit. What choice did I have? He looked me in the eye and said it was done. I could choose to believe my husband wouldn't lie to me and ignore the nagging feeling in my gut, or I could choose not to believe him and instead feel crazy worrying about what was true.

All this and we were only three weeks in our new home. I was working full time and going to grad school. I just wanted to have fun at New Year's; I wanted to stop thinking about the problem.

But I couldn't. I would encounter sexual innuendos at every turn. My coworkers who teased me when Shawn and I moved in with my parents, joking that we'd have to put a sock on the door when we wanted to have sex. I blushed fiercely, not because it was true or I was embarrassed my parents might think we were having sex, but because we weren't having much sex. I was pretty sure my husband wasn't attracted to me.

Even this got confusing, though, because he reinforced my self-esteem, told me I was attractive, and clearly enjoyed when his friends flirted with me or told him he was lucky.

At New Year's I was sitting cozy wedged between two of my girlfriends on a couch and we were talking in low tones about sex with the men (our husbands) drinking tonic and gin at the basement bar. Emily was giggling about watching porn with her husband, a woman who was always open about her sexuality and who seemed to me to be the definition of Healthy when it came to sex.

The porn question came seeping back into my mind. If porn was healthy, was Shawn healthy? And if Shawn was healthy, what was I? I thought about the times I had suggested we watch CineMax together as an experiment, one of my many attempts to persuade my husband to want to have sex with me. Could it be he was the normal one? Was I just uptight about his habits?

"Well, what about if one person is watching porn in secret?" I asked, wearing a short-sleeved, body-hugging black sweater lined with silver threads. I felt Emily's arm against mine as we leaned back on the couch.

"Oh, no," she said, without a hint of hesitation. "If it's secret, it's dirty."

I nodded. Relieved. But I didn't explain why I asked. I kept my secret.

What troubles me now, three years past separation and into recovery, is that Emily, wise and healthy as she is, doesn't get to be the judge on what is acceptable and what is not. Emily can decide for herself what is acceptable. I can decide for myself what feels right. There isn't really a quota for what it takes to be a sex addict, there's no rule about how much porn you have to look at before it "counts" as addiction.

"It's like this, I think," said a friend of mine recently at the bar I visit for happy hour about once a week. "Addiction is when something takes away from your life. So, the guy that shows up smashed to work and loses his job is an alcoholic. The guy that drinks every night, gets up in the morning and adds whiskey to his coffee, but shows up every day on time and does his job, has a drinking problem and might not be living his life to the fullest, but he is not an alcoholic."

I don't know that I agree with this definition exactly, but I see his point to a certain extent. Addiction is a slippery topic.

I'm not sure how to handle the subject of pornography. "It's such an interesting topic," said one of my peers from class. "I mean, it is the internet." [Add research later]

The feeling I fought against when waking to the realization that Shawn had a problem with pornography was the feeling that everyone looks at porn. I'd broach the subject tentatively and my girlfriends would dismiss it as something every guy does once in a while. My sister-in-law said she knew there was porn on my brother's computer (ew!), and even my mom told me that my dad used to get Playboy magazines (double ew!). "Of course, I made him get rid of them when I moved in," she added. Both women told me this after finding out about Shawn's addiction. They didn't understand. I had never told them. It was the secret I'd been keeping to myself for three or four years.

Every man I knew in college had at least some porn on his computer, and they would amuse themselves by showing each other images. I still don't understand why guys look at porn together. It is completely beyond me, but I realize there's some sort of amusement factor there, especially, it seems, at the college level.

[Add research about the highly addictive nature of internet porn]

And it is addicting. When I was starting to realize Shawn's compulsion to look at porn happened more frequently than I imagined, I would trace the history files on our computer. When I confronted him, he started erasing the history, and I found the temporary files in our computer still held the downloads and links he'd visited. I would trace his steps through the internet, and I hate to admit it, but I would start to become fascinated myself. And sickened. And not totally unaroused. It is erotic and arousing to look at naked people having sex. It is fascinating to absorb the different links and channels porn took. It is sickening to see how porn reduces people: sex with Asian women, sex with teens, sex with grandmothers, with blonds, with brunettes, with redheads, gang-bangs, big dicks, tight pussies, black women, rape scenes, blow-jobs, cum-on-her face, look-up-her-skirt, watch-her-change, watch-her-beg, give-it-to-her-hard.

One site was just a spreadsheet of choices, and because my husband never told me what he watched, I assumed he watched the worst. I saw the rape scenes and thought about how one time he put his hands on my neck, though not hard. I saw the scenes where she begged and thought about how I would talk dirty to him to try to turn him on. I saw the scenes where men fucked teens and I thought about the girls I taught in high school.

I lost myself in that internet porn for hours, just trying to figure out my husband. Feeling pretty horrified.

I still don't know what he looked at on the internet. I probably never will. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Maybe it was worse. I know he went to one site everyday, Carrie Sweets, teen tease. She would change outfits and dance for her "fans" and tantalize them with her journal of daily events, like sucking on lolli-pops, trying on swim-suits, getting sweaty out in the sun. There was even a birthday club where she would send a birthday wish to her most loyal "fans" (the ones that paid a subscription) on their special day.

I know he purchased porn through cable television and that often the bill would be about $300 a month. I know he also bought dvd's from some company called Adult DVD empire. I know unlisted numbers showed up frequently on our phone. I know one of the other sites he visited frequently was a peep show site where you could chat with the strippers. I only know all of this in hindsight, through my sleuthing. By looking, finally, at the credit card statements he would never show me, the cable bills he hid from me when he got the mail.

I wish I hadn't had to be so sneaky. I wish I wouldn't have had to spy. At the time, I was a good-girl who got married when she was 24 and assumed it would be for life. When things started to feel distant and he wouldn't tell me what was going on, when he would say he wasn't interested in having sex because he was full, or tired, or busy, or whatever, I started to wonder what was going on that would drive so much distance between us. When url addresses popped up unbidden when I searched for grad schools, I began to get concerned.

First, it was the secrecy. "Just put a post-it on the computer when you look at porn," I said. "I hate the secrecy. It makes me feel gross."

But I would still find porn.

"Did you look at porn today?"

He'd confess and look remorseful.

"How come you didn't just put a post-it on the computer?" I would ask.

"It's embarrassing," he'd say, or maybe he'd just shrug.

I'd let him off the hook. We were too happy otherwise. He cooked, he cleaned, he was affectionate in public, he took care of me. He was attractive, he dressed well, he listened to great music, had great taste in books, loved eating at great restaurants, and was a receptacle of interesting though somewhat trivial information. He was generous and bought drinks for other people. He could break dance. People were forever telling me how lucky I was.

Porn shut me out of his life. His compulsion to watch porn caused us financial debt. His absorption in this "hobby" caused him to lie to me daily.

I'd call that an addiction.

In the end it was the lying that drove me away. In a way I thank God that he lied to me. Had he been honest, I would have stayed. I would have "helped" him through his "sickness." (For better or for worse, in sickness and in health...). I would have been the good wife.

But when I found out there was yet another $1400 cable bill in August of 2007, after he had told me weekly that he had quit looking at porn, I knew there was nothing I could do. I knew we were not in it together. I knew it was beyond anything I could control. So I quit. I left. I walked out the door.

A week later we were separated.

A year after that happy New Year's to welcome in 2007, I celebrated the birth of 2008 by myself at my aunt and uncle's condo in Florida, 10 miles from the beach. I cooked lobster. I cried. I drank wine. I ate chocolate. I bought myself a cute nightgown and a beautiful bracelet. I went to the beach. I wrote prayers on shells. I drove my rented convertible up and down the coast. I felt the sun on my skin and the wind through my hair.

I did not think about porn.

I don't know what will happen with me and pornography. "Look at you," said my wonderful red-haired motherly therapist. "You're so much stronger now, you know you wouldn't let a guy into your life who looked at that stuff."

But I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's a deal-breaker for me, or simply something I would want to be completely honest and open about with my partner. Internet porn is out. Done deal. Something I can't stand because it can so easily go from silly to disturbing. But some porn, the silly kind that I feel quite certain was filmed in a studio and not someone's bedroom, the kind that is played on CineMax, can be sort of stimulating and might be fun to watch with someone else. But I'm not sure. I'm still not sure how I feel about porn.

What I do know is that I won't ask Emily, wise as she is, about what is right for me when it comes to porn. That is a decision I will make for myself.

A tribute to my cousin Andrea, with thanks to the poet Mary Oliver

Hospital tape leaves a gray sticky residue that seems impossible to get off the skin.

I know this because there is a line of it across my arm right at the elbow joint, where it was used to hold a cotton ball to the spot where a kind nurse stuck a needle into a vein while I was in the ER on Sunday. I warned her my veins were tricky before turning away to avoid the sight of a needle going into my skin and sucking out my blood.

"They just like to wander," she said.
"Well, that's ok, I guess," I said. "So do I."

She laughed. And I am realizing I am letting my thoughts wander right now. I thought I had this essay mapped out. I thought I knew where it would take me, but now I'm not so sure.

I'm feeling overwhelmed. And awestruck. I have just returned from the ER for the second time in a week, but this time it was for my dog, a 17 pound yorkie-poo named Friday who had tiny lacerations in his eye from visiting the groomer and getting soap in it. It's funny. I debated less about bringing him to the ER than I did myself, having been told by a woman at the nurse's hotline that I called that I should see a provider within four hours because of the injury, the bruise, on my head that I don't recall ever getting.

I have had concussions several times in the past, and migraines that have left me speechless, nauseous, and sightless, so I have visited the ER a couple of different occasions for brain trauma. This didn't feel like trauma, but the nurse sounded concerned. I thought of my cousin who died nearly two years ago. A freak blood clot working its way through her veins. She was 33. I would turn 32 in two days. I weighed the cost of an ER trip on my left hand, and my cousin, her beautiful life ending in a moment, on my right.

I went to the ER reasoning that I would have even less money if I were dead.

With my hound, I listened as the vet tech told me the cost of a visit and simply said, "Ok." There was no hesitation when he said it was better to take care of eye injuries right away. I just wanted my dog to be better.

Sometimes I think it's easier to love others, even if they are small, furry, and weigh only 17 pounds, than it is to love ourselves.

"Why didn't you call?" asked one of my friends on Tuesday night as we were celebrating my birthday with a few other friends. I had driven myself to the ER, a fact that caused my doctor to roll his eyes and smile, especially after hearing I only called the nurse hotline because I wanted the ok to play soccer that night, that the only dizziness I had felt was when I put the ball on the tee at my 8:30 a.m. golf game, and that the only possible moment I thought I could have bruised myself on my head was perhaps while swing-dancing the night before at the local VFW after riding a karaoke bus to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday.


Why didn't I call a friend to give me a ride? "Because she's stubborn," said another friend, a man with a white eyebrow, "and too proud to ask for help."

I nodded to this comment. It's true. I have such a hard time asking for help. I feel this is especially the case as a single woman. At least for me. When I was married, of course I had no problem asking my husband to help me. To do the things I couldn't do, like drive me to urgent care when a post-soccer game migraine had me lying on the bathroom floor with a towel over the crack under the door to keep the light out of the completely darkened room. But as a single girl, it's harder.

I did call my parents, though. And a dear friend. "Lan," I said while waiting in the lobby and trying to calm down so that my blood pressure would drop from the shockingly high number of 202 over 127 that it had just read a minute ago. "The only thing I could think when the nurse told me to go to the ER was 'I can't die. I have a book to write!'"

"Yes," she replied. "I am so glad you went. I know you are ok, but you are just too precious. The world and I need you!"

Her comments made me smile and made me feel loved, but strangely did nothing to lower my blood pressure.

"Someone just got moved to the top of the list," said a nurse in the other room when the woman who had taken my blood pressure reported I was still off the charts. The ER was busy and there was a shortage of beds, but apparently when you have crazy bp scores, you become a priority customer.

After a barrage of tests done by extraordinarily kind people, complete with witty senses of humor and everything, I was pronounced O.K. but told by half a dozen people that I had high blood pressure.

"Yes, I keep hearing that," I said and smiled at a red-faced middle aged nurse named Jim. He went over my post-ER directions of health care and smiled at me from his round face. After I changed out of my hospital gown and back into my normal clothes and emerged from my curtained bed, he pointed me in the direction of the lobby, sensing my disorientation and smiling when I left.

It was a relief to be ok.

I drove myself home on a gorgeous June evening, up France avenue and past Lake Calhoun. When I got home I greeted my yorkie-poo and we went for a walk to the lake, he stopping to make friends with every group of people and furry creature that was joining us for the beautiful Minnesota sunset that evening. Sailboats dotted the water, weeds broke the surface into the air, and an orange sun painted the sky pinks and yellows and blues and purples with large water-color strokes.

Friday went up to a group of three Somali women and pulled me along behind him. "What a cute dog!" they exclaimed as he snuggled into their laps and gazed up into their eyes. He is such a flirt.

We left and rested under the shade of the tree, Friday panting, I thinking. My cousin rarely leaves my thoughts this week. She had a dog, a pitbull who she loved. She was 33, blond, and had been through a lot of interesting life chapters: from high school valedictorian, to fashionista, to grunge music-maven, to girlfriend-of-a-druggie-who-had-a-son, to debt-stricken ex-girlfriend living in Vegas after the boyfriend took advantage of her, to woman pulling the strings back together only to hear her mother was dying of terminal cancer. And then she got a blood clot. And she took a nap. And she called her mom. And her mom told her to go to a neighbor's and call for help because of the mysterious leg pain she felt. And she walked out the door, pitbull on leash, and collapsed on the steps. A neighbor saw her and called 9-1-1 immediately. Her phone was still on. Her mother was still listening. The dog ran away. There was commotion. The ambulance arrived.

They couldn't save her.

"It was probably a blood clot that traveled to her lungs," said the doctor taking care of me, the one who had grabbed my toe when he told me everything would be ok, "and then it stopped her breathing." He was quiet for a moment and I appreciated his bedside manner, which only furthered the crush I had developed when he grabbed my toe.

But I couldn't stop thinking about my cousin. And I can't stop.

I remember telling a friend over buffalo wings on my 30th birthday how angry I was. We were sitting on the outdoor patio watching traffic pass on Hennepin avenue. I wanted to blame someone. I wanted to blame her dad. I knew her mother was terminally ill and I knew her father had always been too hard to live with, too hard on his only daughter. To me, it was as if when her mother died she would be an orphan. It almost felt like she chose to die, rather than be without her only ally.

This was grief talking, of course. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. I just wanted my cousin not to be dead. I wanted her to be alive.

I remember her burial, though I've blocked the funeral out of my memory. I remember the soggy ground, the smell of fertilizer and grass and prairie flowers in northern Illinois. I remember the smell of earth and the sound of birds flying overhead. The early July heat. The air pressing down on us and the heels of my shoes sinking into the earth. I remember the sky was bright blue and the grass was impossibly green. And I was still angry.

Life is so short. And life is so beautiful. Even the burials are beautiful. And the trips to the ER are filled with startling beauty in the jokes of the technicians and smiles of the middle-aged male nurses. And I am glad I took care of myself. And I am glad I took care of my dog. Because when all is said and done, we only get one chance to do what we want with our one wild and precious life.