Oh, but I love ”third wave feminism.” Unlike the first wave (concerned with things like the right to vote) and the second (Roe v. Wade, Title IX), third-wavers argue for equality in appropriate places, like the workplace, but are not willing to subscribe to a particular view of femininity. What this means for me, and you, really, is that we can stay home to raise our children, work full time, not have children, work part time, not marry… I especially love these sorts of postmodern definitions of things when they create a specific little niche that I can slide right into. To catch you up, our sewer saga continues. The indicted doll, it turns out, was only the catalyst; the real problem is a huge tree root shredding the mainline. It began with a gurgle Thursday afternoon, by Friday night Mimi’s bathwater took two hours to drain, and on Sunday Jon and I had to take turns going to the gym to shower. Oh, hell, in for a penny, in for a pound: I’ve had me period, too. Just thought I’d make extra sure you got a really good sense of my desperation.Filed under: daybreaker, Life on Life's Terms, NaBloPoMo, Recovery is hard
…but not quite yet. We don’t know each other well enough and, frankly, I’m afraid of what you will think of me. Put another way: I think I know what you will think of me, and I am afraid I could not handle that.
Yesterday, I found a note in my toiletries bag. I “heart” you, B-Day Girl! was scribbled on a piece of hotel notepaper, the kind they stick under the phone. My heart recognized the note first, and my stomach took a flip. Then my head caught up and I broke out in a cold sweat.
Last year on my birthday, I was with someone I loved and who loved me. Perhaps this last wasn’t quite true, but I fully believed it — so it was my reality. And I was happy. Content with my vision for the future, with Mimi, love, my career, a lovely home, and liberal doses of family and friends.
At the time, I didn’t have a single one of those things, not really. I was clinging to each by a gossamer thread, begging the wind to not blow too hard and pull it all apart.
Of course, it did. Three months later, my marriage was in shambles; my career destroyed; my home — well, I was living in the hospital by then; my daughter was with my sister, separated from both me and her father; my only contact with family was on one of the two phones made available during three tightly controlled periods a week; friends — none; and my love?
Let’s just say, for the moment: things had changed greatly from when he’d written my birthday note.
I’m not sure why I found the note yesterday, the day before the last day of the last year of the decade. This is the decade for which I can probably count the number of nights I went to sleep without a sedative on two hands. The days, in the last few years, don’t number many more than that. So it is safe to say that it was much easier to feel happy and content… or “happy” and “content” — before this past May.
For right now, it’s enough to know I handled finding that note without drugs or alcohol. And even more: I know there won’t be anymore notes like that, notes with sweet words tethered to nothing.
Today’s Firstwords: “I’ll take the purple one.”
I’m beginning to see a trend here … why the fixation on purple?
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