Mar
7
A couple updates on my last post: first of all, I did end up receiving a very kind rejection message from the hiring person regarding the job I applied for. So perhaps I should be a tiny bit more patient about the application process, although I went back and looked and it had been 3 weeks, which seems like a long enough time to figure I had been round-filed without notice. Anyway, some mildly deflating closure on that little mystery.
Also, I need to stop saying things like “I think I’m through the big ups and downs of this whole giant life upheaval business!” Like, who is the jackass who keeps writing shit like this in her crumbling fossil of a WEBLOG, it is simply begging the universe to deliver a full-bodied crying jag and reconsideration of every decision I have ever made. The fact of the matter is that it’s both untrue and unreasonable to be all done with feeling big feelings lol!! I might wish otherwise, but I am very much still in the murky midst of things, as opposed to being high and dry on some emotionally-neutral other side.
Some aspects of being divorced have become easier, though. Referring to the ex as the ex, for instance. At first that felt like such a foreign, inappropriate word. Now it comes out of my mouth without a flinch. He feels like an ex, the person I was once married to. He has, in fact, excommunicated me. Maybe someday we’ll be on better terms and the ex part will carry less weight, it will simply be an objective fact. For now though, ex seems just right, stated as third person. The ex, not my ex. A giant X over me, his family, the house I used to live in, my beloved pets. I didn’t think it would be like this, but it is. And so: ex. My ex-life.
It’s easier to tell people, on the occasion that I meet someone new and have to explain my existence. At first it felt too intimate somehow, like I was letting someone have a real good look at a fresh wound and having to be like, Oh no it’s fine! Sure the bone is sticking out and blood is gushing everywhere in scary arterial spurts but that’s okay!! Now it just feels like a fact of me, like having brown eyes and three tattoos and preferring whole milk to skim. Also I am divorced, and I live alone.
Well not all by myself, of course. There is Billy! I love him dearly and also he has reached some terrible teenage phase of kittendom where everything in the house is up for grabs in his weirdly dexterous poop-rake paws. I thought he had outgrown the most destructive stage but what he was actually doing was waiting until my guard was down before deploying a new, more athletic approach to destroying everything I own. Things that were previously ignored that have now succumbed to Billy’s curiosity: the towels in the hall bathroom, my framed Lisa Hanawalt print, three different lamps, my vintage butter dish that I loved SO MUCH. (I found a replacement on Etsy and paid 55!! US dollars for it, jesus H.)
You cannot really scold him, either. He’s just a baby!!, for one, and also he has this hilarious and utterly unrepentant reaction when he’s caught, he pretty much turns his head upside down like an owl and waggles around like what? what? He’s just such a goddamned clown.
He is about 13 lb now, smaller than his same-age litter mates. He snuggles with me in bed every night until he wakes up and starts biting my toes, at which point he gets ejected. He howls pathetically outside the door every morning, a gargling sort of caterwaul: glglglglglMEOWWWWW. Then when I get frustrated and yell BILLY! STOP! There’s this pause and then a small high-pitched very cute sound…. Prrrrt? Then back to the gargle-yell.
He is my constant companion at home, a loving presence and also a maniacal agent of chaos. It’s hard to imagine wanting to live with anyone else! It’s hard to imagine sharing a home again, at this point. I suppose that may very well change. But let me tell you, there is so much to delight in. I haven’t lived on my own since 1999 and it is such a luxury. I don’t wish divorce on anyone but I do wish every woman who has done her time with raising a family and being in a long marriage could somehow experience this. A life free of compromise and other people’s feelings. Sure, you may have to replace a towel or two, but oh my god the peace. The rediscovery. The ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want.
Except if what you want is to have a single lighting source that goes unmolested, then maybe don’t get a kitten.
The defendant pleads innocent, your honor.
Mar
2
Lifewise I feel like I was barreling along at breakneck speed during the last part of 2025 and now I have come to a slowdown. Settling into this new chapter. It’s been long enough that nothing feels as surreal as it initially did, and I think I am hopefully through the most dizzying rollercoaster loops of Yay!/Oh Noooooo.
And, like, I know it’s not all about ME, but I must say that this whole life under fascism thing has really been at odds with my post-divorce glowup. I mean, won’t this morally bankrupt administration festooned with pedophiles and grifters think of my personal growth while they’re busy dismantling democracy and explaining away state-sanctioned murder?
It’s pretty dang hard to tell the difference between situational and regular depression these days, you know? Do I feel this way because everything is a race-for-the-bottom shitshow, or do I need to touch grass and have a snack? Am I feeling wobbly because I’ve just been through a total life overhaul and my once-tight family unit has been scattered to the winds, or is it because I looked too long into the disturbing amount of white eyeball flesh surrounding Kash Patel’s corneas? Does the idea of getting through the next three years feel overwhelming because I find myself at a sort of middle-age crossroads and I’m just not sure of my next steps, or is it because our nightmare of a president who should by any measure of justice be clutching his McDonald’s-stuffed arteries in the throes of eleventy billion heart attacks has the seeming resiliency of a gas station hot dog just basking away under the hot burning lights of MAGA disinformation? Am I tired because *flaps hands in all directions* or is it because I’m 52?
Also, dude, I’m FIFTY-TWO now. That happened last month and I guess I am mildly pleased to be a round number of years old but aside from that I’m not sure I have a lot to say about being not just 50 but into my fifties. It beats the alternative? I do believe I am fully into the menopause stage of things so there’s that. (Speaking of, I will keep this short but if your once-lush lady garden business is feeling a bit … wilted, and on its way to transforming into a hostile desert environment, topical estrogen cream is the way to go. Easily available now from the telehealth options.)
Let’s see, what else to report on. Well, my friend Marty died, goddamn it. I called him Mark in that post but what the hell: his name was Marty. I was able to see him the day before, and say goodbye in my own way. Like Isabelle, he declined rapidly and the end was peaceful, so that was good. That is two people I really, really cared about in two months, and I will for sure take a bit of a break before getting my next hospice assignment. There is one volunteer lady I’ve met at meetings who has like 10-15 patients at a time! I truly do not know how she manages that emotionally. There are opportunities to help with other things, like office work, so I believe I will do that for a little while instead. I’m also looking to help on Fridays with another organization that works with kids.
I applied for a job that I was pretty excited about. I got far enough along in the process that the friendly, seemingly-interested hiring manager asked me for a complex writing sample, a whole bunch of varied copy for one of their services, which I dutifully worked on and sent off and then I never heard from her again. Totally ghosted, even after I checked back in. That is some real bullshit and something I perhaps very unfairly attribute to a new generation of people in charge of hiring who prefer the Irish goodbye to “thanks but no thanks.” Here at 52 (!!!) I am, like Pepperidge Farm, old enough to remember the lost art of the rejection email. Being ghosted just sucks — no closure, with all sorts of lingering questions. Did my sample blow ass? Did she just take it and use it for free? Did she get fired/die? WHAT THE HELL.
I have been on a few dates! That feels absolutely crazy to say, but it is true, I have. There is a very nice man who lives a couple hours away and we have shared some good meals and hikes and conversation. I am not looking for anything more than that, and it’s been very chill and pleasant and interesting and fun.
January truly felt like it went on forever, then February seemed to just fly by. We had no winter to speak of and spring feels like it’s bulging at the seams nearby, ready to explode into bloom. I have no idea what this year will bring, but I am ready for more change, and curious about it all.
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