It does get easier.

After two years I'm starting to feel unmarried. It's not something I think about all the time, I'm not angry as often, I actually can see the rest of my life without ex.

I just have to take a little moment to mention that it sort of helps that 1 out of 3 people, after I tell them I have separated, ask me if ex came out of the closet yet. Back when I was engaged and working at Gap headquarters where every man was gay, ex came to pick me up one day and my fellow gay writer pulled me aside the next day to tell me he that he hated to break the news to me, but my fiance was gay.

What does it say about me that so many people thought I'd married a gay man? I love gay men, but I didn't want to marry one. I feel sorry for his girlfriend who, now that I think about it, is slim-hipped like a boy.

I don't want to think about this anymore. I'm going to go eat a drumstick. Alert! The industrial-sized boxes are back in stock at Costco. $12.99.


 

Gems from boredom

As a writer, I often multitask. I put the part of my brain that is writing headlines on a burner to simmer and go surfing the web. (I can't even remember what I did before the Internet? Talk to people?) I found this young whipper snapper's site. He was born in 1985, the year I graduated college. And he taught me a few things.

I've always felt a bit conflicted about email and Facebook and the constant barrage of online crap that keeps me from doing. (There was a time in my life when I wouldn't even go to movies because I felt I should be out experiencing life, not watching it happen.) Now I waste hours online, some of it helpful, lots of it not. I've reconnected with people who drifted away and always wondered about (hello old boyfriend, former fiance, past co-worker) but I also fall into a comparison trap (she looks better, his house is bigger, she's more successful.)

Ev experiments and one of his experiments was to untether from Facebook. Here's how he put it:

Overview: I began to notice in late 2010 that my interactions on Facebook were keeping me from being present in my own life. I knew what everyone else was doing, except the person across the table from me. I had 1,000+ friends, and couldn’t figure out where they’d all come from. Dunbar’s law states that a human mind can only have 150 connections, so I knew something was wrong. Facebook’s “Like” function kept drawing me back into the application, distracting me from my own life. So, I decided to quit.
Intention: Quit Facebook in order to be more present in my own life.
Length: Initiated in Dec 2010 –> Indefinitely.
Results: Many extra hours in my life to be present with the people who are actually in my life.

I don't think I could disconnect, but it's interesting to think about.

Back in the snake pit.

This time around I'm sitting next to very, very nice people. It's just amazing how the wrong personalities can mess with my fragile inner peace. Although she is young enough to be my daughter, my new desk mate talks quietly on her cell phone (although my hearing is failing), says hello and goodbye, and sometimes asks my opinion about design. This shit makes a difference, especially when you are fighting the feeling of being the biggest loser in the world since you're older than dirt, a fucking dinosaur in advertising agency years (where do the nearing 50s go in this biz? Rehab? Hollywood? Suicide?), and you spent your ladder-climbing years carpooling and picking Cheerios out of your carpet. Alas. I get up, get dressed, and start every day thinking I'm going to write the best monitor topper Intel has ever seen and all those tattooed hipsters can kiss my saggy, spreading bottom.

Literary rejection: the other white meat.

Got a decently long email rejection that went on for pages outlining my small, embarrassing mistakes and the larger problems with my story—no style, nothing that says this is Eileen. (And I had worried my story was all style, no plot.) I had misspelled freshman and made other "miscalibrations" (This isn't a word, but poets like to make words up and they can when they have degrees from Harvard.) I was aghast and awed.

At first I felt this editor was an overeducated prig who recommended I read people I’d never heard of—Cyril Connolly's book is in my bag right now--but then I came to admire him for his attentions to lil ol’ me. I must have something to elicit this reponse. So I googled him.

He is a renaissance man, not just a poet, but a designer of posters and books who edits several literary journals, writes esoteric blogs and quotes more writers I’ve never heard of. He translates books from German and Spanish. (He's probably a musician, too.)

There was something about his formerly skinny child-self and now schlubby academic that made me feel depressed. Possibly I felt deflated for lacking the training and intellect he worked so hard at inflating, but it was that black hole feeling I get when I'm around an active addict and our divorce attorney. He uses so many words, quotes so many people, puts up so many ideas, and says so little--a man hiding behind his intellect.  He is also a committed atheist and organizes meetings for atheists (a form of church?). If he didn’t believe in words, I would have cried for the emptiness of him. And then--boom!-- I get it; he is ex.

How a short dinner with ex can make things okay.

Dylan likes a sun-warmed walkway.

Kitten likes a warm bed.

Mario had a learner expo yesterday evening, which is hippie speak for a school open house. I roasted a chicken, mashed potatoes and invited ex to join us for dinner and asked if he'd make gravy. I arrived home to him in my kitchen, pulling a bowl from a shelf for beans. The gravy boat was filled and the sink too with the dirty roasting pan. Just like old times. We were like old times. He was quiet and seemed depressed and I, flaming co that I am, thought it was my fault and tried to lighten the mood by talking. (My emotional tourettes kicked in.) Ugh. I know he has so much to offer his kids and so many interesting thoughts swimming around his big brain, but they get stuck on their way to his mouth. It breaks my heart. But I am grateful I don't have to fix that problem anymore.


P.S. On a happier note, I included gratuitous cute cat photos.