Oy Vey

I picked up my friend K's sister at the airport last night and was looking forward to some much-needed help with his care. She kept insisting that I didn't need to pick her up, but I wanted some uninterrupted time to talk with her. Also, I wanted to drive my new car.

Our conversation started out pleasantly enough. I filled her in on K's most recent medical developments. He's lived with AIDS for 20 years and recently had a heart attack. I told her about yesterday's visit to the cardiologist and about his progress in the week since he left the hospital.

But before we arrived at K's house, she turned the conversation to me. She and the rest of K's family don't get why I devote so much time to his care. Frankly, they're suspicious. She kept saying she didn't understand why I would want to do this.

I tried to explain to her that aside from caring deeply about K, making sure he has what he needs is a mitzvah. (My friend J says I'm an honorary jew so I'm allowed to talk this way) I didn't tell her that since my split with Dear Husband, it's actually provided a welcome distraction at times and allowed me to get outside of myself and my problems.

But I've done lots of volunteer work over the course of my life. I often joke that I'm doing karmic mitigation to offset my evil influence, but really I think it's an important part of having a meaningful life. I've volunteered at homeless shelters and dog rescues over the years and spent many hours tutoring adults and children in the hope that they will have a brighter future.

As we pulled up to K's gate, I told his sister that I hoped she understood. She said she did.

'You have no life!' she said brightly.

I almost dropped her suitcase.

This happened to me once before, at a homeless shelter where I volunteered every Saturday, all day, for a year. The director of the shelter was suspicious of me because I was a reporter and she didn't want me to have contact with any of the residents, so she charged me with the task of sorting out several warehouses stuffed with donated items.

One day, one of the paid county employees who spent the days leaning against walls and smoking told me that they all agreed that I spent every Saturday there because I had no life.

I'm ashamed to say that I never went back there. I finished out the day, my face burning the whole time, and could never bring myself to go back.

I guess what my father always said about me is true - I'm middle-class. It's one of his most potent insults - it means I care more about what people think about me than how I feel about myself.

I hope I don't react the same way to K's family's attitude. After all, his sister is a bored rich bitter housewife in Florida, and his parents are retired farmers in the flyover zone. I really shouldn't care what they think. Besides, K needs me.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Love and hate usually flow from the same muddy emotional pool. It's hard to muster up the psychic energy for one without the other.

Tim O'Brien captured this phenomenon perfectly in his Vietnam War memoir The Things They Carried. He described a soldier who realized one day that the young woman he had been pining for didn't share his feelings.

She signed the letters Love, but it wasn't love...He hated her. Yes he did.
Love, too, but it was a hard, hating kind of love.

I sometimes struggle with this same kind of confusing emotional muddle. Hate is far too strong a word, but I'm not having very kind feelings about Bob, my adopted dog who bit me really damned hard during what turned out to be the last hour of his life. My hand is puffed up like a balloon and I have to take antibiotics for the next 10 days.

At the same time, I'm grieving his death and missing him terribly. I was really fond of the old fart even if he was a mental case. He was part of my weird little manufactured family, and the space that he occupied feels strangely empty right now.

My feelings about Dear Husband are also conflicting and jumbled, but far more complicated. I have anger, sorrow, pity, loss, loathing and longing all knotted into the same emotional clusterfuck. Could I be this pissed off if I hadn't loved DH so much? Would I feel this sorry for him if I had never glimpsed his vulnerability? It's hard to identify where one emotion ends and the next begins.

Feeling these types of feelings was a novelty to me once - I spent nearly two decades ensuring a kind of emotional flat-line existence so I wouldn't have to experience the least little bit of pain. But even though my head has been clear for nearly 12 years, I sometimes feel I'm no better at navigating this emotional minefield than I was back then.

But even though feelings can be hard and hurtful, I'm glad I have them. While trying to smother everything painful in a haze of drugs and alcohol, I stifled my capacity for joy. I also disabled my ability to grieve. Today I can experience grief and loss without trying to obliterate them, and that's a great gift, even though it sometimes confuses the hell out of me.

I miss you guys. Both of you. Adieu, Bobby. Bon chance, DH. I hope both of you are on your way to better things.

Rest in Peace, My Friend

What can I say about Bob? Above all, I loved him dearly. He was a misfit who sidled into my heart almost against my will. He was a foster dog who became permanent after he bit two prospective adoptive owners. Sure, he bit me too, and other people, and other dogs, but somehow I accepted it as a personality quirk, not a capital offense.

But today was different. He attacked the neighbor's dog, Miso, then bit my hand so bad it's not going to work right for a while. I can't run the risk of him hurting anyone else. He had to be dispatched to doggy heaven this morning.

Despite his flaws, Bobby was affectionate and even funny. He sometimes came up to me unexpectedly and nuzzled my hand or laid his head in my lap. And the little tapdance he did when he wanted to go for a walk always made me smile.

I hope he's happy wherever he is. I hope he's finally at peace. Rest well, my friend. I miss you, but I know we'll see each other again.

I Got a New Toy

My slightly wacky friend G often tells me about the pleasure he derives from filling the empty space inside him with the joy of a new car. It's a feeling he experiences over and over again - he owns more than 200 cars, all classics, and he's always on the prowl for a new one.

I haven't experienced this very often. I often say that I'm only loyal to friends and dogs and cars - jobs, apartments and men are usually short-lived experiments. In fact, I've only owned four cars in my life.

Well, five. I bought a new one today. Not a new new car, a gently used one. The car I've wanted for years. A Jetta. With a sunroof. And leather upholstery. It's a dream.

It's such a fabulous car that I'm almost afraid to drive it. Everyone who knows me knows how quickly I can turn a nice car into one that you might not want to ride in. I can even make a rental car look disgusting - usually within a day of picking it up.

But I'm starting a new chapter in my car book. I swear. No smoking in the new car. No coffee. No more giving rides to homeless people. And the dogs aren't even going to find out I bought it. They have to walk to the vet from now on.

Buying a new car felt only slightly self-indulgent. I really need something shiny and nice in my life right now. The last four months have been hell. So I got a new toy.

Thank You

Thanksgiving has always seemed like a funny holiday to me.

Don't get me wrong - it's a lovely idea to set aside a day to count our blessings, especially in a country where most of us are so very affluent but manage to suffer from a feeling of disenfranchisement. But like most holidays, the true meaning always seems to get lost amid commercialism and food.

It's always been a difficult time for me - for years because I spent the day with my family, and later because I didn't. The last time I shared Thanksgiving dinner with my family was in 1999. I ended up crying in a dark bathroom after my 35-year-old brother chased me around with a camera all night taking ambush pictures of my fat bloated body. My perverted uncle found me in the dark and told me I needed to lighten up, all the while trying to feel me up.

For a few years after that I used work as an excuse to avoid the family - I volunteered to work the holidays at every newspaper, and told my mother I had no choice. After that, I just flat-out refused to go. My mother didn't understand, even when I cited that last miserable Thanksgiving and a Christmas dinner when I had to pull a boyfriend's five-year-old son away from the perverted uncle and flee into the night with them.

Thanksgiving feels a little strange this year too - last year, Dear Husband and I hosted a big dinner for a bunch of friends. This year, I had to turn down a couple of out-of-town mercy invitations (thanks guys) because my friend K has been in the hospital for more than a week. So I'm going to eat chinese food and see a movie with a friend whose family lives on the other coast.

As usual, I have so many reasons to be thankful. K has made an improbable recovery - I really thought I was going to lose him this time - and is coming home from the hospital today. And I'm blessed in so many other ways - sobriety, friends, dogs, and all those other things that I sometimes take for granted.

Thank you, whoever is pulling the strings. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

One of the Seven Deadly Sins

Okay, everyone knows I suffer from all of them.

But one in particular has been rearing its ugly head lately.

I've never been the cleanest or the most energetic person in the world. Anyone who has had the misfortune to ride in my car can attest to that. But lately my slothfulness has become, um, more pronounced.

Lately it seems like too much of an effort to take out the trash. I've been meaning to give Cosmo a bath for about two months. I've been putting dishes in the sink to soak for about three days. And sometimes when I'm getting ready for bed I realize that I've forgotten to shower that day.

I know, ewwwww. Even I'm getting grossed out. Every couple of days I vow to change my ways - I wash the dishes, run the vacuum, scrub the coffee stains from the counters. It's not quite as bad as it sounds - I'm still obsessed with clean laundry and daily bathing - I just don't shower at a time when the people around me can enjoy it.

But I need to get my act together. It doesn't help that I have three dogs that are bigger slobs than I am, if that's even possible. But I'm the designated maid and kibble provider, so I need to get my ass in gear. Then I can focus all of my attention on the other six deadly sins.

Nocturne

I'm having a hard time sleeping again.

Well, that's not entirely true. I sleep like a baby every afternoon when I'm supposed to be working. I usually drift off about 2 pm and wake in the dark, totally disoriented. I do this because I'm exhausted.

Every night, when most people are winding down, my restless mind starts revving up. I end up awake until 3 or 4 am, reading, writing, or watching tv. Those groggy afternoon naps aren't the source of my insomnia, either - even on those miserable days when I miss my nap, I'm awake until dark-thirty.

I've always been a night owl, but my late-night hours turned into insomnia a few months before my marriage to Dear Husband. Even though our wedding was a pretty low-key affair, the planning of it started to weigh on my mind and I couldn't sleep at night. This was a problem when I was expected to show up at an office at 9 am.

It's less of an issue now that I work at home, but I'd still like to sleep at night. A few weeks ago, the problem seemed to be resolving itself - I was drifting off around midnight and waking up around 7 am, fresh as a flower.

But my insomnia has returned, and I'm padding around my apartment in the middle of the night, making the dogs anxious and, I hope, disturbing my obnoxious neighbors. In a way it's kind of nice - I can work or read without the interruptions that punctuate the days. But it's also isolating, and my life is already pretty solitary. I'm going to try to get some sleep.

Enough Already

Joan Didion is starting to get on my nerves.

I loved her book at first. "The Year of Magical Thinking" resonated with me on so many levels for the first 50 pages or so.

But by the time I slogged my way through the middle of the book, I was starting to think of Joan as a repetitive whiner who didn't know when to shut her pie hole. Alright, I wanted to scream, your husband's dead and your daughter's in a coma, I get it! Time to move on!

This just goes to show how that the process of grieving is intensely personal. I'm not really as hard-hearted as I seem - I know that losing your husband of 40 years while your only child is critically ill is the most life-shattering event that could happen to anyone. I completely understand the impulse to analyze it ad nauseum. I just don't want to read about it.

But I couldn't put this turkey down. Toward the end Didion blew up the only common bridge that joined us - she wrote that people often see similarities between divorce and the death of a spouse, but that the two are beyond compare.

She's probably right. In any case, I have to admire someone who managed to marry someone who was her partner in every sense of the word for four decades. If my lame-ass sham of a marriage had lasted more than 10 months, I might want to wax nostalgic about it as well.

But even Didion knows that grief so personal doesn't translate well. She recalled reading Dylan Thomas' widow's memoir of life after his death and being totally appalled by its whiny, self-obsessed tone. But with the passage of nearly 50 years, she finally understood.

'Time is the school in which we learn,' she wrote. Finally, something that we can share.

The Four Months of Marginal Thinking

My friend A lent me Joan Didion's 'The Year of Magical Thinking,' and although she warned me that it might bring me to my knees, it's been giving me fantastic insight on grief.

Even though Didion's husband, John Gregory Dunne, dropped dead during dinner without screwing her over, her situation is not that dissimilar to mine. Like me, she had to learn abruptly to cope with the loss of someone she loves.

I've always loved her ability to put things that leave me speechless into words. Take, for example, this passage on grief:

'Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxyms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.'

What resonated even more with me was the magical thinking referenced in the book's title. Didion confessed that although she allowed an autopsy to be performed and had Dunne's body cremated, she was unable to give away his shoes because he would need them when he returned.

Although I consider myself a mostly rational person, I'm guilty of this kind of thinking myself from time to time. Few people who know me realize that after my dog Oscar died suddenly, I believed my dog Wiley could communicate with him in the great beyond. For a while, I periodically laid my hand on Wiley's head and asked him to send messages to Oscar. After a few months, Wiley told me telepathically to cool it with the crazytalk, so I did.

I realized the other day that I've engaged in some marginal thinking about Dear Husband. I've had this thought, barely even acknowledged in my own mind, that he could fix what went wrong. It was only recently, when he asked if there was anything he could do to help me feel better, that I realized what I'd been hoping. I told him there was nothing he could do without a time machine.

(And some character. But the chances of DH developing character are about the same as his acquiring a time machine.)

I think I'm done with any magical thinking about DH. We all need some magic every once in a while, but sometimes stark reality settles in, and it allows us to see things more clearly.

Down the Rabbit Hole

After trying for months to get rid of my anger, I'm working hard to reclaim it.

I have to. Somehow Dear Husband has managed to morph from someone I'm furious with into someone I feel sorry for, and that's not good. He dropped by the other day, and unlike our previous necessary meetings, this one had no real purpose. He brought some persimmons and a lobster quesadilla, and after delivering his gifts, he plopped down on the couch to chat.

When we first separated, he said he hoped we could be friends, and I told him I don't need lying friends any more than I need a lying husband. But somehow here we were, sitting in the living room making small talk.

I felt like Alice in Wonderland without the nice high - big things had become small, small things had become big, and DH and I were having our own mad tea party, asking riddles that have no answers.

He managed to sidle back into my life simply by waiting out my anger. He knew I couldn't stay pissed off at him forever.

And I don't want to. But I need my anger back for a little while. I had to remind myself of what he had done - betrayed me before and after we were married, lied to me about it repeatedly, lied again when he was caught (I set up that dating profile before I met you! I swear!), brought a gun into my house when he had agreed never to do so, and made an empty threat to shoot himself in an attempt to gain leverage where he had none.

By the time I finished reviewing the facts, I was pissed. I told DH it's too difficult for me to see him, and asked him to give me some space.

There's no real reason for us to see each other ever again. Seeing him makes me so sad, and just delays the healing process that much longer. Once he's at a safe distance, I can begin again to lose my anger, my outrage, and I hope, someday, my grief.

Buzzkill

Yesterday should have been a great day. The Bush regime got the swift kick in the nuts it so richly deserves. Donald Rumsfeld finally did the right thing and resigned. And my friend K won an important skirmish in a long-running court battle.

But I struggled all day with mind- and body-numbing despair. My day started with an unpleasant but necessary phone conversation that left me with a sense of shame I just couldn't shake. Even an outing to the dog park and a long walk, two activities that usually cure whatever ails me, couldn't help me ditch the blues.

Later in the day I had another necessary conversation with Dear Husband and sobbed throughout the phone call, which only compounded my shame. Even though I have several kind and caring shoulders to cry on, DH is still the person I want to turn to when I'm hurting.

In a way, that makes sense - DH has been my rock for a long, long time, and it's natural to gravitate toward what you know. But it's a habit that needs to be broken. Seeking comfort from DH only makes me wistful for what might have been, and wistfulness isn't going to help me get through the hard times to come.

Voting for Change

As usual, I voted just before the polls closed tonight.

Better late than never. I had to cast a provisional ballot because I went to the wrong polling place. I went to the Gay and Lesbian Center on McCadden, where I voted in the last election, instead of the Gay and Lesbian Center on Schrader, which is apparently my new polling place. That's right, Dorothy, we're not in Kansas any more.

(The poll worker I spoke with apparently is from Kansas, or at least doesn't live in my neighborhood. He was simply amazed that all of the voters today were Democrats)

Dear Husband was on my mind tonight as I cast my ballot. The last time I was inside the Gay and Lesbian Center was when we voted there together in June.

DH was raised Republican and changed his party affiliation just a couple of years ago. I like to think that it was because he's got a brain in his head, but it may have had something to do with my ceaseless nagging over the past five years. Or maybe all that subliminal whispering I did while he was sleeping. 'Walk toward the light! Walk toward the light!'

Anyway, he was finally on the less-corrupt side, and we went to the polls together just over a month before our marriage unraveled for good. Actually we've gone together during every election for the past couple of years, even when we were on opposite sides of the political fence. It gave us a chance to catch up when our time together was scarce.

So I went alone tonight for the first time in years. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I don't think I can take much more of the status quo, both in Washington and at home. It's time for a change.

Forgiveness

My mother suggested the other day that things with Dear Husband could be hunky dory if I would just soften my hard heart a little.

'You're not very good at forgiving,' my mother chided from her perch atop her extremely dysfunctional yet intact second marriage.

But it's not forgiving that I'm not good at - it's forgetting.

I think I may have already forgiven DH for his betrayal. The tenderness I felt for him when he was crying on Sunset Boulevard the other day makes me believe I've managed to let go of most of my anger.

OK, that's not entirely true. I occasionally fantasize about beating him like a birthday pinata. But as my old therapist used to say, thoughts that remain inside your head can't result in criminal charges.

I used to be pretty good at forgiving and forgetting. Actually, what I was good at was self-medicating until I could overlook the way people treated me. I quit drowning my sorrows at 26, but my crap threshhold remained remarkably high until I was about 30.

That's when I discovered boundaries. I developed pretty reasonable standards about how I expected to be treated. When people in my life violated those boundaries more than once, I made sure they wouldn't have many opportunities to treat me that way again.

Not coincidentally, that's when my mother decided I wasn't very forgiving. But I hope she's wrong. I have a lot of compassion for human frailty, and I think anger and bitterness are loads that are too heavy to carry around in my daily life. I'm capable of forgiving. But forgetting would mean that I would subject myself to the same crap over and over again. And that I won't do.