If you’ve been around here for awhile, you know that my family has been going through something since June. I’ve been posting sporadically since then and only occasionally referencing the total suckage that has become my life, without getting into detail.

I thought that maybe I had it in me to continue posting innocuous, funny stories and use my blog as an escape from the bitter, harsh reality that I am living.

I admit defeat. The funny continues to elude me. I hope that won’t always be the case. But for the moment, it is.

My blog has always been based on my life. My stories are grounded in truth albeit garnished with a bit of exaggeration. I drew my inspiration from my husband and my kids. And my dog’s poop.

I loved my life. Even the poop behind the couch was expected, a familiar constant, a sign that yes, my life was average and normal and predictable but in a good, comforting way.

There is nothing predictable about my life now. I am struggling to find any source of comfort. I have been thrown into a new normal and I am floundering.

The man I have deeply loved for fourteen years, my husband for the last twelve, with whom I raised a family I adore, the subject of so many stories on this blog, is no longer the man I know. He hasn’t been for some time but I kept fighting to bring him back because denial is a wonderful thing. It shields you from pain so horrendous, you cannot even imagine.

But reality is brutal and merciless and it comes at you at warp speed when you least expect it, cloaked in a frigid coat of betrayal so staggering and cruel, it knocks you breathless and senseless, leaving you doubled-over with gut-wrenching sorrow.

For the preservation of myself and that of our kids, I have made an agonizing decision to separate our lives.

I am inconsolable. I am numb. I feel so empty.

I think I am still in shock.

And I am so profoundly sad that it is hard to simply breathe.

The rational, logical part of me knows that I am a strong woman and that I will be OK. That these were his choices and not a reflection on me. That I’ve already proven I can single parent, having done it for the last two years in one sense or another. That there are still blessings in my life and that I am so incredibly fortunate to have two wonderful daughters who really, if truth be told, are the only reasons I have continued to wake up every morning and get out of bed.

But I cannot reconcile that part of me with the emotional part of me which still cannot grasp the enormity of what has happened to us. The part that is wondering what is wrong with me, why wasn’t I good enough, pretty enough, whatever enough. The part that is heartbroken and feels like a colossal failure. The part that is desperately trying to make sense of this, the part that refuses to believe that the man I so deeply love could have done the things he did, the part that cannot come to grips with the overwhelming loss, the part that can’t look at anything without being blindsided by a memory of our life together.

Memories hurt.

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Both kids were sleeping elsewhere last night so Nate and I had a date night.

And by “date night” I don’t mean we took in a movie or went to an expensive restaurant or listened to a band or went dancing, horizontal or otherwise.

No, I mean we hit Lowes in search of mirrors of the upstairs bathroom and Nate actually waited for me to get out of the Durango so that we could walk into the store together and I didn’t have to pull a groin muscle by chasing after him.

And then after we walked in the store together, we actually walked around the store together and I didn’t have to send any texts saying I’m in the tile section. Did you see this mosaic? Nate? Are you there? Did you forget and leave without me again?

And then we agreed not to buy something because we both didn’t like it instead of one person buying something and the other silently telling herself she’ll learn to love it, all while mentally re-calculating the color-coded, alphabetized, spread-sheet of grievances she keeps in her head and pulls out of her ass whenever the situation warrants.

And then we drove to a small diner and he held the door open for me.

And then while we were waiting too long for our meals, he didn’t ask me accusingly What did you order?

And then we actually talked during dinner and, if I’m not mistaken, we had an actual, bonafide conversation. With complete sentences and everything.

And I didn’t even burp.

We may have even held hands. On purpose.

It was nice.

And I’m still a bit giddy.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I leave you with the very first post I ever wrote on this blog, about how Nate and I met almost fourteen years ago, long before the phrase “chia pet” would make me drop into a fetal position and cry for my mama.

Happy Sunday, everyone!

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I married my tall, dark, handsome rebound guy

(originally published May 2008)

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It was May, 1997. I was about six months into a separation from my husband of six years, the man who had promised to love and cherish me until death do us part or, apparently as he understood it, until he got a better offer. I must have missed that in our vows.

So I had spent the last six months gathering my wits about me, trying to scratch my way to a surface where I could breathe normally again. My co-worker MaryAnn decided that what I really needed was an adventure and what better way to get the blood pumping again than to go white water rafting down the Black River Gorge? I couldn’t think of anything better to do that Saturday so I said yes.

I met Nate (a/k/a MaryAnn’s nephew a/k/a tall, dark, handsome, soon-to-be rebound guy a/k/a my destiny) in the parking lot of the mall where we all gathered to figure out car pooling. Well, actually “met” is a bit of an overstatement. So is “said HI to.” I wasn’t paying attention to anything other than my own thoughts running amuck. How did I get myself into this situation? White water rafting was as ludicrous as climbing Mount Everest. The only sport I had ever played was golf and there was nothing extreme about it. It was no big secret that I was athletically challenged so what the hell was I doing with these people?

After arriving at the gorge, all of us ran in different directions … some to pay, some to change outfits, some to just hang out until the rest of us were ready. When we finally all came together it became immediately apparent that one of us thought pretty highly of himself. Specifically, my destiny was wearing his very own three quarter length wet suit. He looked ridiculous amongst the rest of us normal people who didn’t own our own wet suits and were therefore outfitted in the glamorous, fluorescent orange, musty smelling, one-size-fits-all full body wet suits supplied by the rafting company.

Did you know that it’s possible for a wet suit to fit so snug across your chest that it sucks the soul right out of your body while at the same time leaving enough wiggle room in your nether regions to hide a bowling ball?

I paid no attention to my destiny all decked out in shiny black and blue down to his knees. I hitched up my sagging wet suit, trying in vain to get the crotch somewhere in the vicinity above my knees and waddled my blazing neon orange droopy ass over to my co-workers who were waiting by the rafts and proceeded to listen to our guide’s survival instructions. And really, the only instruction that seemed to resonate with me was DO NOT FALL OUT OF THE RAFT. That one seemed pretty important.

We hopped into our rafts and as it turned out I wound up in a different raft than my destiny. I was in the raft with my boss and my boss’s husband, a very athletic, strapping specimen of a man who gave me his solemn vow that he would personally ensure my safety at all times. I expressed my concern to him that I NOT FALL OUT OF THE RAFT BECAUSE I COULD DIE AND I DID NOT WANT TO DIE IN THIS SUIT. He patted me on the shoulder, told me to not worry and to stick by him.

About 1/2 hour into the trip down the gorge, things were going pretty well and I started to relax a little, thinking that I might actually live to see what we were having for dinner afterward when we hit a strong set of rapids. Our guide hollered instructions at us left and right and we feverishly tried to keep our raft afloat. I turned to my boss’s husband for assurance only to catch sight of his ass AS HE WENT FLYING OVER BACKWARDS OUT OF THE RAFT. Hello? Are you kidding me? You can just go find yourself someone else to protect, Mr. Manly Man.

So, what does all of this have to do with a tall, dark, handsome guy in a ridiculous wet suit? Not much, but we had met. At a pivotal time in both of our lives. We knew the other existed. And that was all MaryAnn needed as she became the social director of my pathetic excuse of a life. She organized activities for her family and friends and one volleyball night later, my destiny emailed me at work. A very short email in which he briefly commented on the volleyball, asked about an upcoming soccer game and wished me a nice day. Having been out of the dating game for awhile, MaryAnn and my boss sought to ease my way back in by helping me draft an appropriate response – polite but not too forward, leaving the door open but not yanking him inside: yes, volleyball was fun; yes, we would all be at the soccer game and hey, you have a nice day too.

Eventually, we got better at composing interesting emails.

And then at a soccer game, I committed a major faux pas by making the first move and asking him out on an actual date – drinks after the game. From the expressions on MaryAnn’s and my boss’s faces, you would have thought that I propositioned the pope. WHAT IN GOD’S NAME WAS I THINKING? DID I NOT REALIZE HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED?

We dated.

Everyone was happy that I had a transitional man.

But then we fell in love.

I was breaking rules all over the place and MaryAnn was just beside herself. Just what in the hell did I think I was doing? Did I not know anything? YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR TRANSITIONAL MAN. THEY ARE CALLED TRANSITIONAL FOR A REASON. GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF.

We married almost 2 years later.

We’ve been married just about 9 years now.

The tall, dark, handsome, soon-to-be rebound guy wearing the shiny blue and black three quarter length wet suit was my soul mate in disguise.

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When I sat down at my computer today, I had every intention of writing a really fascinating post, a fable of sorts. I was going to set the scene at a bustling Target one Saturday morning and follow it up with multiple paragraphs of character development and an exciting plot filled with one man’s version of Internet porn, some lingerie and a touch of negligent homicide. It was going to be a story wrought with moral turpitude, conflict, mental cruelty and angst, culminating in an emotionally gut wrenching climax of lessons learned.

The story was going to be centered around a man hopping online without supervision *again* and buying a $140.00 juicer for his family which, admittedly, doesn’t sound like a very compelling tale but HOLD ON TO YOUR KNICKERS, PEOPLE because I was going to add in little interesting details like … oh, I don’t know … maybe the man inadvertently revealing this purchase to his wife whilst she was perusing the women’s underwear department of Target?

And then maybe the wife had flashbacks to $80 Chia Pets and gasped so hard that she nearly swallowed her adenoids while screaming BUT NO ONE IN OUR FAMILY EVEN DRINKS JUICE.

And then maybe the man slowly backed away from his wife because her left eye was starting to twitch and her head was starting to spin counter clockwise and she was starting to speak in tongues.

And then maybe the man narrowly escaped a 100% cotton 8-pair jumbo pack enema by grabbing his daughter’s hand and dragging her away to the pet department under the guise of getting their puppy some new chew toys because it turns out their puppy is really a seven pound furry piranha in disguise.

And then maybe the daughter returned to the wife at a full speed run twenty minutes later, waving what appeared to be an outfit for her American Girl doll which would have been really weird because it had been forever since the daughter had played tattoo parlor with a permanent marker on that particular $100 Christmas gift but whatever, there were more pressing issues at hand, such as determining the difference between hipsters and bikinis, and theorizing why people choose to wear thongs because don’t we as a people spend enough time trying to yank our undies out of our fanny cleavage as it is? And by the way, HOLY SHIT, IS THAT A CHRISTMAS TREE IN ELECRONICS?

And then maybe it turned out that what the daughter was hysterically waving in the air was not, in fact, an outfit for a grossly overpriced doll but rather a miniature Buffalo Bills t-shirt, sized extra-small and made specifically for seven pound incognito shih-poo piranha puppies and then the wife who, having previously made it crystal clear to her family that dressing up any animals in clothing is seventy-two different kinds of WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, decided that it was high time to sit the man down for a long overdue Come To Jesus talk even if it had to take place in the midst of granny panties but before she could tackle him to the floor and hogtie him with his colon, she heard her daughter excitedly exclaim IT WAS ONLY TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS, MOM! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

And then maybe the wife couldn’t see straight anymore for all the blood gushing around her brain which caused her head to spin right off her body and ricochet around the racks of bras and thongs, getting snagged on a 44DDD which acted like a slingshot, launching her bloody head right back at her headless body like some heat seeking missile, causing it to slam into her legs, shattering her shins and dropping her to the ground where she lay unconscious and left to wonder which of these egregious offenses would ultimately do her in: the shock of seeing the $140 juicer appear on their bank statement and doorstep, the two inches of dust that will have inevitably collected on the unopened box three months after delivery, the disembodied, bloody head that took out her kneecaps, her puppy prancing around as a mascot for a football team who loses season after season out of sheer habit, the obscenely premature appearance of the elves staring down at her from the shelf above, or the fact that despite her own preaching, she would finally be caught dead while wearing torn and stained period panties, they being the only underwear she owned to date, thus her browsing of the Fruit of the Looms in a bustling Target on a Saturday morning in the first place.

I was even going to post a picture and everything.

But after several minutes of staring at a blank screen, I ultimately wound up chucking the whole story idea.

I just couldn’t find the right words.

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