stripping away the layers

I’ve spent the past several days and nights stripping the wallpaper in one room of my house.  It’s a chore I’ve done in many other rooms of my home and each time I’m confronted with a different set of challenges to meet and overcome, because once the first layer’s removed, you never know what (if anything) lurks beneath… 

 If that sounds somewhat sinister, then believe me, it  can be.

Scoring, spraying and scraping is a fairly mindless task – one that frees the mind to think about a myriad of things.  I mentally worked through the end days of my last marriage while stripping the painted wallpaper in the upstairs hallway 12 years ago, and pondered what was left of my womanhood while removing 75 years of bad choices in my son’s room after cancer surgery in 1994.  I’ve discovered ancient, crumbling plaster and poorly done patch jobs.   I’ve caulked and patched and primed and rewallpapered and painted my way through every room in my house and thought, thought, thought about life and love and everything in between.  Last night, while fighting my way through one small area of industrial strength glue in the study, I came to this conclusion:  Stripping wallpaper is like deconstructing and examining the inside of a relationship.

The outside layer of wallpaper is intact, waterproof.  Like the facade of a relationship – the face  a couple presents to the world – it can mask a whole lotta nastiness lurking beneath.   Peel it off and you never know what you’ll find.  It could be the clean, smooth wall of serenity or it could reveal what I found this week:  Layers of muck and ugliness (and nearly impossible-to-remove adhesive) stuck to yet more layers of muck and ugliness.  Last week an acquaintance declared me incapable of understanding the deconstruction of her long-term marriage because I, myself, have failed at several of my own.  Yet I beg to disagree.  It takes little insight to understand that a three-decade marriage is not so different from a one-decade marriage – there are  just more layers built up behind the facade. 

Peeling away the layers is hard and people often don’t want to revisit what’s been covered up.  Maybe you quickly slapped some paint over the existing wallpaper just to get the job done with as little effort as possible.   Or maybe you decided to just glue another strata of wallpaper on top of the three previous ones – like adhereing a new set of problems on top of the old, unresolved issues.   Hiding the work you should have done in the first place doesn’t make it disappear, and covering up a problem with a layer of denial only serves to preserve it for later.   Eventually you’ll have to scrape the paint, peel away the layers, dissolve the old glue and expose the foundation if you want to start over.   

Rebuilding is a long, slow process that takes an arsenal of tools, elbow grease and a drive to succeed.  It doesn’t matter if you’re repairing a slightly broken marriage or starting over after an irreparable relationship. 

Deconstruction is laborious.

So everyday I scrape my way through decades of old decisions and ponder this metaphor of layers.  I think about the conversation I had last week and wonder if that person will have the strength to reveal her foundation so she can rebuild her life, or if she’ll settle for sealing over her own layers with more of the same. 

I’ve got a good scraper to loan her if she needs it.

acquiescence

The older I get the more I realize that the end of my time as a person on this planet is creeping up on me.   The phrase “life’s too short” isn’t  just a cliche anymore and it’s clear that happiness isn’t something I can just continue to hope for. 

People get stuck.  They get stuck in relationships that are unfulfilling.  Stuck in situations they know are destructive.  Stuck in lives that don’t serve them well.     When you’re being dishonored or treated poorly, you’ve already given the other person permission to do so.  You’ve acquiesced, given up some of your boundaries, decided to be lazy about defending your most prized possession – your own self worth.  You’ve let someone else chip away at it and steal the pieces  it until there’s little, or even nothing left.   

I’ve been stuck over and over and over.  When a less than optimal life is all you think you deserve, you’re destined to stay there because nobody is going to ride in, swoop you up and carry you off into the sunset.    Nobody can give you your own unique recipe for rebuilding belief in yourself.   And nobody can force you to realize this: it’s not selfish to be happy.

Being stuck means you’ve caved into fear – fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar.  Fear of failing.  Fear of seeking happiness.  Fear of reaching out and grabbing great, giant handfuls of life and stuffing yourself full with them. 

Getting unstuck forces you to answer this question:   Are you brave enough to save yourself?  Or have you given in to silent acquiescence?

Hmmmm?

Single on Valentine’s Day

Single on Valentine’s Day.  A position I literally have never been in before.  “So” I wondered to myself, “what DOES one do on this, the day that’s not only specifically for those who have mates, but practically screams in laughter and points its finger at those of us who don’t?”   After carefully weighing my options (go to the movies alone/ Stay in bed with the covers pulled over my head/ Stick my head in the oven – oh shit, it’s electric, never mind) I hit upon the ideal solution:  Road trip! 

In my opinion, a solitary road trip with the tunes cranked up, Pepsi Max in hand and full pack of cigarettes at the ready not only kills a lot of time, it restores a girl’s confidence in herself.  My destination:  Paxico, Kansas, population 208.  There are almost as many antique shops there as are there are residents in Paxico and rumor has it that there’ll be a Meatloak cook-off in June!  Whoo hoo!!  So at 11:00am on Saturday I gassed up the Focusmobile and pointed her west for a day of driving, smoking and shopping. 

I hit the turnpike, set the cruise at 75, and headed smack into Kansas, a state that’s never failed to depress the hell out of me.  Maybe it was the fact that previous visits to Kansas were obligatory, thus my tendency to sense only despair and desolation when faced with miles and miles of prairie, but this time I felt optimistic, my earlier depression fading away with each passing mile.  Maybe it was my favorite driving CD (Dada’s Puzzle), cranked up to maximum volume that lifted my spirits (because the very first song, Dorina, kicks ass every time and then it just gets better from there) or maybe it was the healthful, healing powers of the ginseng in my Pepsi Max.   Whatever the reason, I began to feel empowered and excited and tingly all over. 

Just outside of Topeka, the Flint Hills appear.  Because of the chert, the land sucks for growing crops but cattle ranching is all the rage.  In the spring, if you drive happen to be driving through on a relatively windless day or night; you might drive smack into a controlled range burn.  I got to see a major range burn at night several years ago and it was a spectacular sight.   

After stopping for a quick bite to eat on the interstate, I reached Paxico at 12:30.  The town is so small, it’s impossible NOT to drive right to the main district section.   I parked the Focusmobile and proceeded to hit practically every antique store and junk shop that was open.  I’ll spare you the details of my purchases, only to say that I found a Catholic school version of a Dick & Jane reader for four bucks and a kick-ass Lawrence Welk ashtray.  Score!   Many Observant-friendly finds made their way into my possession that day.  I stopped in at the local cafe for an iced tea, mentioned to the female cashier that I was sans Valentine, (so was she!  I am not alone in the world!) and we had a nice girl-to-girl talk about the advantages that having one’s options open afforded us. 

The afternoon was waning, so I fired up my fuel-efficient vehicle and headed west, back to my sublimely empty house.  Once home, I unpacked my belongings, placing the LW ashtray with my increasing collection of vintage smoking accessories, and noted that it was almost dusk. 

I had just one more important task to complete today.

I set about collecting fire-making supplies and the stash of cards and love letters from my ex-lover.  Everything he’d written to me during our ten-year run had been kept lovingly in a carved box and stored with my most special possessions.  And now it was time for their ceremonial burning – the last vestige of our relationship together was due to go up in smoke on this, the Day of Lovers, in just a matter of minutes. 

The sky was deep purple as I fed the tinder into the fire pit.  The fire burned slowly at first until I touched the first card to the flame.  Damn, paper makes a dandy starter!  The flames jumped higher as I fed more of the missives and declarations of love into the pit.  Words that once held meaning were reduced to ashes, and the flames licked at them greedily, as eager as I was to cremate it all. 

I watched the fire consume this mound of paper, then found myself whistling a little tune that’d been dancing around my head all day: 

“Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame. 
You give love a bad name.”

Ah, Bon Jovi.  You’re a genius. 

It was full dark when I finished.  I put out my fire, walked into my house and closed the door – Valentine’s Day was officially over.

hill jumping

An up day begins.  I call these days the good ones; the other days are called the bad ones.  There’s seldom a day I can simply call an average one. 

Up and down, I ride a rollercoaster every single day.

A good day begins with laughter.  Always laughter.  The optimism I feel is rooted in small things – a lover’s message, restful sleep, kind words, warm smiles – which lift me up and carry me through my day as if I am gliding far above the world, smiling down upon it.    Far above it all I can’t make out the dirt in the cracks of my life; I only see the top of the rollercoaster, the pinnacle of exhilaration and the promise of good things to come.   Laughter is easy, my thoughts sublime.

A bad day always begins with remorse.   My thoughts spin in a labyrinth of regret and moroseness for many things – lost tempers, missed opportunities, failed loves.  Down days take place in the world of the subatomic, a place where I can examine my individual faults in minute detail, tease open their black shells and expose the rotton nuclei at the center.  The bottom of this rollercoaster goes far beneath the crust of the earth.   It free falls down to absolute darkness and crashes onto bare rock and this is where I lie – surrounded by detritus of disappointment, sadness and self-loathing.

I see the people who can jump over the chasms of darkness and hill jump from one  good day to the next.  I wonder how they avoid the skeletal arms of sadness that seem to be able to snatch me down into their dark portal at will.   My good days are cherished because of the dark ones.  During those good days, I gather pennies of strength and laughter and store them up in my heart and my psyche and use them as currency to buy my way out of the madness. 

 I sometimes ask myself if I’d be satisfied living on top of the hills all the time, jumping from one to the other, and honestly the answer would be no.  For as much as I ache when I’m drowning in the chasm,  it makes the good days that much more valuable.  I live in a world of polar opposites, rarely in the middle – up, then down, then up again. 

I ride the rollercoaster.  I am alive.

Six word memior

Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak has just been published in paperback and has inspired me to write my own succinct love & heartbreak memior:

Unlucky in love.  I still believe…

What does your six-word memior say?  It’s easier than you think.

52 YO SWF ISO SM for LTR – Must love music

I’ve spent a lifetime marrying, divorcing, dating, fucking and just plain horsing around, Along the way there have been compromises, accommodations, deals with the Devil, trade-offs, give-ins, cop-outs and arbitration.

In other words:  Concessions have been made

And so now, after much consideration, pondering and contemplation, and with hope still coursing through my swiftly sclerosing arteries, I’ve decided to compromise no more.   Look, I’m a reasonable person who plays well with others; I can put up with a lot of shit and still retain my world-famous biting wit.  But experience has taught me one thing:   You must meet certain requirements if you want to be my guy. 

Got that?  Good.  Let’s review:

#6:  Must provide copies of financial statements for review.   I’m not a spendthrift and I don’t want to waste a good portion of my time worrying about your spending habits.  If you’re bad with money, find someone else. 

#5 Must be masculine (but also have big enough balls to romance me every, single day).  I plan on taking good care of my man and I expect reciprocation!  Frequently! I want you to be a man and do manly things.  But fellas, it’s not gay to be romantic.  Really.   Remember, foreplay starts before bedtime and 90% of a woman’s orgasm is cerebral.  90%!!

#4:   Must not be a hoarder.  Look, I expect you to have your own shit, but seriously, if you have a proclivity to collect things-  like scrap lumber or empty tubes of toothpaste, or if you haven’t thrown a newspaper or magazine away in the past 25 years, or if you keep every single empty box belonging to every single item you’ve ever purchased (just in case you might possible NEED IT SOMEDAY),  or if you don’t currently have room in your house to walk because the shit’s piled up EVERYWHERE – then we have no future.    I will not abide clutter.  Enough said.

#3:  Must be able to spell and have a working knowledge of proper grammar.  If you can’t write a coherent sentence, move on.  My perfect mate will be able to spot the misspellings on public signs and laugh with me about them, write a love letter that will knock my socks off and be able to compose effective business correspondence.   Mmmm, business correspondence. 

#2:  Must have a sense of humor.  OK, this is a big one.  Let’s say we’re having a disagreement and things get a little heated.  You need to know right now that I’ll probably burst out laughing at some point during the argument.   I expect you to do the same.   If you can’t, then hook yourself up with a grim-faced bitch who loves to fight and I predict you’ll be very happy together.

#1:  Must love music.  This is essential.  My perfect mate must be able relate music to every aspect of his life, have an extensive listening background and be able to converse with me at length on nuance and form.   I expect you to have a comprehensive music collection that you’ve been working on for several years (preferably since high school).     One of the very first things I’ll notice about you is the music you listen to and I expect you to do the same.   It should be incredibly easy for the right man to make a mix tape for me that will knock my socks off. 

OK.  There you have it – Six simple rules if you want to be my man.  My needs are few and I know you’re out there baby.  Come to me.

crane

Observant has writer’s block, so her best friend/twin from another mother, Tracy (aka Miss Texas), has graciously offered her talents as guest blogger with this short, but beautifully parsed essay:

She glides in silently on broad wings and lands in the shallow surf.  Perching on one preposterously long leg, she turns her head this way and that, staring imperiously down her beak at the lesser avian life around her.

  She ignores all other life forms on the beach, but a two-legged mammal recognizes her for what she is–the supermodel of birds.

the yes girl

No, it’s not what you’re thinking (and I know what  everyone’s thinking, didn’t you know that?).   As of 3 weeks ago, saying YES is my new response to every social invitation that comes my way these days (OK, I haven’t said yes to doing THAT yet, because I haven’t even been asked. Besides, I’m much pickier than all that…).  I know there’s a new Jim Carrey movie coming out called The Yes Man, but really, that has nothing (nothing!) to do with my new policy, which by the way, I instituted after my last major breakup a decade ago.

So I’ve been spending a lot of times in alcohol-enhanced situations lately and let me tell you, there’s a big difference between being 41 and single and being 51 and single.  Back in 1999, I joined Parents without Partners, a good organization that screens its members before it lets them join.  And while there’s a screening process to weed out the obvious abusers and otherwise dangerous people, you can’t screen for what I like to refer to as Just Plain Loser Status.  And let’s face it, we’re divorced folks.  This means we didn’t screen our own partners very well, or we got blindsided by jackassedness later after the I Dos were said, or we knew they were jackasses but thought we could just ignore that little fact.     After a few organization-sponsored dances down at the VFW (OMG, the fucking VFW, people), I started calling PWP The Loser’s Club.  “No, I won’t be able to do that.  I’m going out with the Losers tonight!”   I never dated anyone from PWP, not that I didn’t have plenty of opportunity.  I just wasn’t interested in dating at that time, only in socializing and meeting people. I’d like to say I made at least one lasting friendship from that experience, but it never happened. 

And now, fast-forwarded one decade, I’ve come to one conclusion:  You generally don’t meet interesting people in bars.  Especially when the median age is about 10 years younger than your own.   And the most scintillating conversation to be had revolves around who fucked who and who’s pissed off about it.   I think I’m more like a beatnik.   Sitting around, drinking wine, wearing turtleneck sweaters and making intelligent conversation while some dude plays the bongos sounds more like my speed.    Groovy.

One upside of hanging at the bar here in our little slice of Heaven is the fact that you can still smoke in bars here.   Having a decent gin & tonic (heavy on the decent dose of gin) while sucking down a cigarette in a public place is a priceless experience these days.  Even when surrounded by throngs of mindless youth.    Had I not said yes to these nights out, I would never have met some of my own neighbors. 

And I’m really looking forward to actually talking to them someday when we’re not drunk and every other word out of our mouth is Fuck. 

Along with my current Yes! experience, I am throwing an actual New Year’s Eve party at Casa Observant.  And being the insecure nutjob that I am, I have frequent visions of me, sitting alone in my house waiting for guests that never show up.   Then one by one, I blow out the candles at midnight, crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep. 

Don’t feel too sorry for me.  I have this anxiety-ridden vision before each and every party I’ve ever thrown in my entire life.    I actually went to a baby shower once where I was the only guest who showed up.       The expectant mother was in the hospital with premature labor.  The hostess was pissed!  I, myself, chose to see it as an opportunity to drink all the wine myself, which I did – secretly grateful it was her party that nobody showed up to, and not mine. 

So, in the spirit of The Yes Girl, I’m really putting myself out there with this party.  And if nobody shows up, I’m drinking all the wine myself. 

You hear that, people?

Ray LaMontagne: Empty

I’ve held this video of Ray LaMontagne as a draft post for a year. These lyrics have always spoken to me personally and convey the simplicity of the primary emotion I’ve felt for 12 months. Empty, estranged. I’ve been lost for awhile, but I feel the hopefulness of the future returning.
The new year is coming, new beginnings, new challenges. It will be time to step out of my sadness soon. Happy holidays, everyone. I will surround myself with family and friends and revel in their love for me.

She lifts her skirt up to her knees
Walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing
I never learned to count my blessings
I choose instead to dwell in my disasters
Walk on down the hill
Through the grass grown tall and brown
And still it’s hard somehow to let go of my pain
On past the busted back
Of that old and rusted Cadillac
That sinks into this field collecting rain

Will I always feel this way
So empty, so estranged

Of these cutthroat busted sunsets
These cold and damp white mornings I have grown weary
If through my cracked and dusty dimestore lips
I spoke these words out loud would no one hear me

Lay your blouse across the chair
Let fall the flowers from your hair
And kiss me with that country mouth so plain
Outside the rain is tapping on the leaves
To me it sounds like they’re applauding us
The quiet love we make

Will I always feel this way
So empty, so estranged

Well I looked my demons in the eye
Laid bare my chest said do your best destroy me
See I’ve been to hell and back so many times
I must admit you kinda bore me

There’s a lot of things that can kill a man
There’s a lot of ways to die
Yes and some already dead who walk beside you
There’s a lot of things I don’t understand
Why so many people lie
Well it’s the hurt you hide that fuels the fires inside you

 

starting over

 

Just when I believe I can keep all the emotional balls in the air (and I believe it with all my heart) confidence falls, rapidly followed by pluck and grit and mettle. 

There are days when you feel like you’re on top of the world, and if you’re like me, those days are usually followed by an abrupt change in the opposite direction.  Out of nowhere, the enormity of decisions  I’ve had to make hit me like a sucker punch and I go down for the count.  Sometimes I stay there until the fight is called and everyone goes home.  Then, and only then, can I pull myself to my feet, dress my wounds, and consciously decide to live to fight the fight again.  

Can I do this by myself again?   Can I live this life without a helper, a partner, a mate to help pick up the slack?  At times I feel my life moving too fast, slipping by at 600 miles an hour at a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet.  Descent is imminent and pre-ordained.   How do I begin to start over again?  How do I begin?

I begin at the beginning and hope not to slide backwards too often.