Sucker-Punched

I hate that feeling you get in your stomach when you’re about to be emotionally sucker punched. There’s no dodging it. You can’t bob and weave like you could if a tangible attacker were headed for you. There’s no talking it out. You just have to stand there, with your feet straddling the railroad tracks and wait for that locomotive to come plaster your guts over the rails.

I can remember two occasions, vividly, where I stood there with my back straight and my face stoic and took my punches.

The first time, I was 22 years old. A new mom with a baby so young that my house was still obsessively decorated with childproof bumper rails and baby gates. Barely an adult and shoved, face-first into parenthood with my then-husband, on the surface a family man, working hard to change his circumstances. Within two years time, he went from a green jumpsuit behind double-plated glass to a manager in a white-collar career. The poster child for first-offender-felons, he really had turned his life around.

Saturday morning, it was Valentine’s Day. He promised a romantic dinner at home that evening. Our son was not yet a year old, so there would be no going out this Valentine’s Day. Not like we had gone out for other V-Days, mind you. The first Valentine’s Day that we celebrated together, we were newly engaged (the first time). He bought me one lonely red carnation and Dumb & Dumber on DVD. To be fair, it was (and still is) my favorite movie, so the gesture was sweet. It wasn’t sweet, however, to come home from an 8-hour shift slinging lattes to find him and our two best friends hot-boxed in my bedroom, watching the movie. My carnation was on the kitchen counter next to the cellophane packaging. What a bummer.

I didn’t have my hopes high for our first married Valentine’s Day together. Even with lowered expectations, I was still disappointed when he didn’t come home. He went in for over-time on a Saturday. I thought that was pretty strange, but didn’t question his dedication to his job. He didn’t answer my calls, all afternoon and into the night. My frantic phone calls to his dad and his brother left me more worried and puzzled. Nobody knew where he was. I started to worry that he was hurt, injured, in a ditch somewhere. Then a phone call the next day, after no sleep.

And it happened. I imagined a giant, animated fist appearing stage right and walloping me from the side, my limp body curling over the oversized knuckles and then, rag-doll-style flopping to the ground. He wasn’t coming home right now. He needed some space. He was not happy.

I was at home with no car. No car seat. No money. In serious need of a trip to the grocery store (and the liquor store).

That following Tuesday was our son’s first birthday. He didn’t come back to visit with his son for nearly six weeks. I remember bundling up my baby and rolling my umbrella stroller down the street, in the gutter because there was no sidewalk, because we needed food from the grocery store.

What a mess. Such an empty, hollow feeling inside my gut. It took me months to recover from that. I look back at how fragile and weak and spiritless I was in that time and I’m damn near disgusted with myself.

Then again, the other memory that resonates in my head for that sucker-punched feeling was a similar betrayal. I had been dating the filmmaker for about a year. We ended up being together for over three years and I have never felt such a psychic presence in myself in any other period of my life. My intuition was hyper-sensitive and I never listened to it… Even when unflappable evidence existed, I held fast to my romantic notions of love and happiness with a chronically unhappy man.

I woke up in the middle of the night, gasping for air, a panicked dream ripping me from my slumber. My heart was racing and something, somewhere, deep inside my gut told me to go and get on the computer. I don’t really recollect how I broke into his email that first time (my intuition would lead me to this one more time, more than a year later), but I somehow skated my way into his inbox and right there, in plain sight, an email to the other woman. My chest felt tight.

“I can’t wait to get my arms back around you,” he lovingly wrote. “I miss your scent.” Romantic words for such an unromantic man, I thought. And, as if I needed evidence, I printed out this email and went hunting for more. I found, in total, about twelve emails between these two lovers. My printer ink was struggling to make the letters as I struggled through salty eyes to read, and more so, believe these emails.

I took them to bed, feeling floaty and out-of-body like a ghost. I sat up in the bed a long time that night, in the dark, only my bedside lamp illuminating the room. The emails were in a messy, strewn pile in the floor next to my bed and I recall laying there, on my side, staring at the pile and wishing I could just roll off the bed and into the abyss, like Alice… Wake up somewhere else, where all the rules were different.

I was pretty frustrated with myself in these recent weeks recollecting all of these horrible memories, plowing through my head and my heart like war-era flashbacks. I’m engaged! I’m happy! Why is my subconscious dragging me into my dark and unhappy past? And I realized that my body, my heart, in an attempt to make room for all of the good that is in store for me, was making space… Pushing old, dark memories out of my head to clear an area big enough for all the good that is supposed to be… Exercising the demons.

I guess this is part of the reason why writing this stuff down is good for you too… Even though I don’t want these memories taking up space in my head or my  heart, I never want to forget the feelings. I never want to lose touch with where I’ve been and the men I’ve loved and the lessons they all taught me. It just makes me exponentially more and more grateful for Colin every day.

Things I Can’t Possibly Understand

Calculus.

Physics.

Mandarin Chinese.

What my exhusband calls “research”.

Oh wait, I actually can understand that… I just know it by a different term: stalking.

He did this once before and was basically pummeled by a judge in court over it. His lawyer lauded his “research” and praised her client for “such dedication” as she ran her thick fingers over the front covers of his THREE 4″ 3-ring binders loaded with every thing I have ever done or said or considered saying on the internet. Yep. He stalked my MySpace blog (back when I had one) and he infiltrated my mom’s message board and created a fake user name specifically to track how much time I spent online (based on an algorithmic formula of words typed divided by the square root of projected time online) and exactly WHAT I was up to online… Because what else is a working single mother going to be doing online?

She’s probably a terrorist, he thought (allegedly). (I’m sure). (Probably).

And he found poetry. And reports on life and how hard it was having to trek in and out of court with an exhusband so full hate-rage. How frustrating it was to get shoved into mediation and then, after hours and hours of discussions and trying to meet in the middle, only to be booted right out of mediation because the exhusband had “changed his mind.”

The judge asked him, “Do you collect stamps?”

He made the classic “him” quizzical look at her. The one that says, “What the fuck are you some kind of ruh-tard?” The one that, when you aren’t expecting it, has the power to make you feel tiny and insignificant and stupid… And he replied, “I beg your pardon?”

The judge continued, “Do you like baseball cards?”

He continued to look at her like she was sitting up behind her tall desk with a trio of chickens balancing on her head, all juggling.

She went on to admonish him for being so caught up in his exwife’s life and completely ignoring his fiance over there, on the front row, supporting him. What an embarrassment.

He actually confessed in an email to me recently — a heated one (like so many of our emails) — that he does this “research” so that he can keep up with our son’s day to day life.

Well, firstaball, I don’t blog daily.

Second…aball… I don’t blog about my son’s day to day life.

And finally, if he was REALLY so interested in his son’s life, do you think he would have given up 50% of his visitation last year when I moved 11 miles closer to him because (and I’m paraphrasing the entire whiny email here) traffic was too hard in the mornings?

I just wish I could have a popup service him when he visits (which is often, y’all.. I’ve got statcounter and it’s pretty clear when there are DOZENS of page loads from his city all from the same ISP, like… DUR) that would say, “Hey, dude… What color shirt did your wife put on today? Do you recall what you ate for lunch today? Do you realize how pathetic it is to stalk your exwife’s personal blog on the internet?” And then, when he tries to click away, it pops up another message, “Are you sure you want to continue living this shell of a life where you aren’t really living at all?”

It would be awesome if it could be a persistent pop-up, like one of those that keeps popping up more popups until your blessed computer wheezes under the pressure and then finally freezes.

That would be awesome.

OR… Another solution: he could just take a look at his life and realize that there is magic in every moment that he is missing while he quietly obsesses over my life…

While I am dancing — spinning circles — in the magic that IS my life.

Life is good. Love is grand. Work is awesome.

Exhusbands can be really lame. Here’s hoping he’ll turn his life around and start living.

CREEEEEEEEEP

I have been getting lots of new friend requests on facebook lately. I’m never sure if one of these requests is coming from a potential new client, so instead of steady ignoring them as I have done in the past, I have been trying to make a little bit of effort to find out who the heezy these people are, especially if they’re local.

But I got a request from this dude today… And… No mutual friends. No mutual “likes” for business/fan pages. I’m not really sure HOW this joker found me, but I knew that I didn’t know who he was. So… I asked.

Here’s a screen shot of the conversation that transpired.

It’s times like this that I kind of hate facebook.

I feel like…

… that person that shows up unfashionably late to a dinner party. You know, the one that appears after the dessert has been served and then rudely says something about being hungry even thought SHE missed dinner because SHE was late.

I suppose I should apologize for my absence as of late… In my flurry of juggling eleven-teen thousand balls at once, I have neglected my sweet little spot in the blogosphere. You! I’ve missed you!

Come! Let’s sit unreasonably close to one another on my couch and gab like teenage girls about what has been happening in my life lately! You’ve missed so much! (more…)

Reason Number 129834932847308734 Why We’re A Good Match

All of our exchanges are not like this… I promise. But mercy, we’re great, big giant NERDS!

Hair

Not much more than fuzz on the top
He keeps it buzzed on the sides and back
Bright and almost translucent then
fading to soft brown
But it’s not the hair on his head that I love.

Around his perfect bow lips
Blonde and red and brown hairs sprout
A surprising cowlick under his chin
with hair curling toward the right
I just want to nuzzle on his beard.

When he hugs me, I get chills
Short, bent hairs grazing my neck.
My arms wrapped tightly around his neck
and his arms locked together around my waist
And in my neck, his chin… His beautiful chin.

I trace my fingers across the tips
explosions of nerve endings in my fingers.
Follow the edge, along his jawline
all the way back to his soft ear lobes.
I could spend days touching his face.

And then I feel him on the inside of my knees,
the tops of my thighs,
Up my arms, pass my elbows…
It’s an impossible feeling to recreate
in those sad spaces when we’re apart.

Ke$ha ruined the phrase, but really
I do love his beard.
It might be one of my most favorite things

In Love

You might be wondering where I’ve been for the last two weeks… Truth is, I’ve been swamped at work… There’s been free time, but I’ve spent every free moment as of late with Colin. Tonight, I’m at his house, still high on Christmas fumes and he’s cooking for me. This is the first time he’s cooked for me — what a treat.

Tonight, we’re having a pork loin with a rub that he made with thyme, garlic, brown sugar, oregano and basil. We’re also having Swiss Chard, sauteed with garlic and shallots… And some basmati rice. He rubbed the meat all down and then smooshed it into a pan and seared it and now, with all the fond (I’m guessing french for schmutz) left over in the pan, he’s going to finish the pork loin with a pan sauce of marsala, whole grain mustard, and butter. (He’s dictating this to me so I can make sure I say it right. What I want to say is, “He’s doing some such shit in the kitchen and it smells realll good.)

We’re drinking beer that I gifted to him for Christmas (though the boy child claimed it while we were wrapping gifts) and listening to his “cooking mix” on iTunes. (more…)

I won’t be that girl…

So… The Sous and I made things official this week. So… yea… I’ve got a *gulp* boyfriend. Or something. It’s all very strange to say… Like, some sort of foreign language that you knew in high school but haven’t spoken in years. You know what the word means, you can even say it… it just feels… foreign.

We had this incredibly romantic date on Wednesday night. He made reservations for dinner and when I was telling my sister about it, I joked that I haven’t been out to dinner with reservations since… prom. Seriously. Should I pick up a boutonniere for him? (more…)

Thank you, liver.

Friday night I went out for my birthday with Ms. Winston and a few of her friends in Athens. I don’t really KNOW Athens all too well, but I knew I wanted to be in Athens for my birthday. Why? God, I don’t know. A change of scenery? Originally, Cincy was supposed to come down this weekend, but she was pummeled with some financial worries and had to back out. I knew she’d like Athens and she’d never been, so it seemed fitting to make our Friday night plans there. When she had to cancel, I just stuck with the plan. And boy, am I ever glad I did. (more…)

Pardis Publications, Inc.

Thanks to my super sleuth skillzzz, I have been able to track down the address of my perpetrator… and my perpetrator, I mean that doucheface reject that came chug-a-chugging through on the hater-train yesterday.

It really wasn’t that hard. A little search through my stats on the website, a couple of clicks through google and I’ve got my finger on her!

Or him… Most likely a him posing as a her because, let’s face it… That’s when men do when they find themselves tied to target of which I am throwing knives toward. (more…)

The Wrong Way To Facebook

So the Giant and I are friends now, right. And, as is my custom, I grant myself permission to tease him relentlessly. It’s how I show my lurve, y’all. If I’m not teasing you, at some point, it means I don’t give a shit about you.

This week, the Giant has been posting a lot of… Well, not very manly statuses on facebook. In particular, something about how he almost cried watching SVU and another one about how he lit a candle in his room — but not just any candle… His Yankee Candle Company Sugar Cookie candle. Oof. So, I’m busting his balls for acting like a lady and it’s funny because there’s nothing about him that is at all feminine.

I feel like I can crack jokes with the Giant and it’s fun and playful. The Giant had been severely cock-blocked that night at a bar and this dude, (let’s call him Clue by Four) one of the Giant’s friends, was busting his balls about it, except he wasn’t really funny. Something about how the Giant should ‘take his finger out of his vagina.’ (more…)

Found

I pulled this from my Tumblr account, originally posted there back in May. This… This is the story of my life. I choose unavailable men and attract… this kind of guy.

I can’t remember the last time I actually sat at my computer and wrote something in word. There was a time when that’s the only place I would write.

I go through phases where I do a lot of handwritten, um, writing. And my most recent writing phase has been, at best, sitting at the computer and spitting something out without rereading, proofing, whatever. Just —pew— then post.

But I opened Microsoft Word today, with the intention of sitting down to write.

And I found this, in the recovered document area.

He kissed me goodbye and walked toward his house and then pivoted and cupped his hands into a heart shape on his chest, over his own heart. Then, he extended his arms outward, still in the shape of a heart, and peered at me through this heart, then pressed it back into his own heart.

I nearly vomited in my car.

And if that wasn’t enough, after he did that, he just couldn’t take it anymore and ran back over to my car – I swear to god, he ran like a half child/half super fag – this giant of a man, flitting his arms as he pranced over to my driver’s side window and he shoved his entire upper body through my open window and, with both hands on either side of my face, kissed me. It was unnecessarily romantic for a lunch date.

I realized, as I drove away, that he had just killed my boner for him.

This is the story of my life. Men who are head over heels for me and me… Like… Totally grossed out by them.

The men that I actually do find myself interested in aren’t generally interested in me romantically. Even if they “adore” me, they don’t want to date me.

What gives Cupid?