She Ain't Heavy, She's My Brother

Photo attribution here. 

Two weeks ago I was sitting in sacrament meeting, sketching, minding my own business when God asked a favor of me. In a very polite, yet insistent way He said, "Will you please go out yourself as a divorcee by bearing your testimony in front of your entire ward?"

I have made a lot of progress in being open about my relationship history. All my close friends know and I discuss relevant details when they come up, but any time I'd considered sharing the facts in one of my Sunday School lessons, I had always gotten the feeling that I would be doing myself more harm than good. Then, pretty unexpectedly, there I was--sitting in the congregation of my BYU--Hawaii ward with my hands shaking so harshly that I had to stop sketching. That's how I know, by the way. That's how I know He wants me to get up and say something--jitters in my belly and my limbs. Makes for kind of a funny moment for me, but who am I to complain about the way God chooses to speak to me. I asked probably three times, "God, are you sure?" And He was.

So, I did it. I wasn't very happy about it, but I did do it. At the time I thought it must be for the sake of someone in the congregation. I thought it must be pretty important if God was going to go to all the trouble of outing me for it. Maybe there was someone out there who it helped, but now I am not sure.

I have one real guy friend here. He's a musician, a thinker, a talker and a tender lad of twenty-two. We are perfectly content to plant ourselves somewhere on campus and talk each other's ears off until security finds us and reminds us that it's well after midnight curfew and we need to be on our way. A couple nights ago we were engrossed in just such a conversation. I was explaining to him about my guts and how deep down inside them I feel like being transparent about the things I deal with (my divorce is just a drop in the bucket of a dysfunctional family) would be an unbearable burden and nuisance to anyone I opened my mouth to. "So you feel like you're inflicting yourself on the people around you?" he asked. And I had to admit--yeah, I really do. And it occurred to me in that moment that that mentality is at the heart of my deep seeded loneliness. I feel so alone often in my life. I feel misunderstood and undervalued and mostly I feel like all that I have gone through and am going through is just too much for any acquaintance to take in, so I don't show it. And this is what my friend, we'll call him Brown Pants, has to say about that.

"Well, that's a load of shit." Which was followed by, "Sharing experiences from your life with your friends makes the relationship better, not worse. I can't fix it and I can't completely understand the experience, but I can empathize with you. It's good to know--the things you go through. It helps me understand you."

I went on to tell him about how I had already burdened him enough with stories about my life (my divorce, depression, family problems etc.) and how everything I disclose is so heavy and I don't want people to think I am just drama, but also how it's not fair because this is just the hand I was dealt and I can't do anything about that and I try so hard to be healthy and happy, functional and progressing but no matter what I do I will always be divorced and that separates me from the rest of the crowd and makes me a heavy load to bear as a friend so I need to compensate for all the issues I have by being an especially excellent friend and... (Yeah, it all came out as a rapid fire run on sentence, just like that, but it ended with...) Don't you feel burdened by all that I tell you about my life? It's just so heavy.

To which he responded with a very simple but sincere, "Not really, no."

If the atrocity that was my marriage had continued the other night would have been my four year wedding anniversary. My aunt just got diagnosed with an especially aggressive form of cancer and my mom was recently served divorce papers, so I was a little emotional. I called Sassy McLadyBoots, and like the rockstar best friend she is, she snatched me up and fed me gelato 'till I felt better, but there was something in that exchange that was, like the Brown Pants moment, surprising to me. I've always considered myself a particularly socially savvy person. Not that I am super popular or do any kind of networking, but that I understand people. I am absurdly empathetic and have always been able to pick up on the moods of others. So the other night at Sassy McLadyBoots' I was perceiving that it was getting later and she wanted me to go home. I'd been venting at her, so I was sure that she had had enough of my emotionally heavy banter and said told her I would start heading home. She looked at me, totally confused and said, "Why? I thought we were having fun."

When you have been hurt by someone, I mean really, intentionally hurt by another human being, especially if it goes on for long, it alters the way you perceive yourself. I consider myself very healed at this point in my recovery. I have done the work, seen and paid my shrink, written my blog, talked it out, and moved on in my life. But here we see it clearly--my misinterpretations, the way my views of life have been skewed by destructive influences remain.

I think God wanted me to let other people see this horrifying thing that's been lurking in the depths of my belly, riding my shoulder, whispering in my ear, "Fake. Liar. Burden. Worthless. You have no right to ask for help." He wanted them to see it so that when I watched their faces for the shock, disgust, repulsion and pity I would see, it's not an ugly thing at all. It just is, like a red sweater or a tuna sandwich. It's one of the many building blocks that make up me. To most it's largely insignificant to their daily lives. To those who care it's a way to understand me, relate to me and hold a space of love and acceptance.

Realizing these things is a strange mixture of painful and alleviating. I am more broken than I thought, but I am also a lot more whole. I'm a lot more lovable, more acceptable and valuable than I had apparently thought. So goes the journey of divorce recovery. Two steps forward, one step back--but we keep walking.

Sneaker Waves

One time, I got hit by a car.

It was over a decade ago now, so it's nothing for you to worry about. It was really pretty minor actually, albeit somewhat traumatic for me. I had just stepped off the bus and was on my cell phone with a friend, walking home after class. It was evening and chilly and wet in the early Northwest springtime. I came to a four way stop and, since I had the right of way, proceeded to cross at the crosswalk. A Bronco came directly across from me and maybe tapped his breaks, but rolled right through. I put my hands out in front of me, instinctively. The phone flew out of my hand and a slid back on the pavement on my stomach. The grand total of my physical injuries amounted to a sprained ankle, but then there's the part you can't see.

I didn't have (or really need) a car at that time. I walked everywhere I went. I didn't mind the adventure of public transportation, but after that accident I had a problem. Every time I heard an engine rev the way that Bronco's engine revved just before he drove into me I panicked. I'd be walking roadside to get to work and big trucks would roar past and I would feel my hands shake for a minute or two. An SUV across the parking lot would be accelerating to the ridiculous pace of 2 miles per hour and I would run for my life to the nearest curb. The response was not a logical one and the humor in it was too much for my friends and family. They couldn't understand it. I couldn't really be mad, because I couldn't understand it either. All I knew is that's how I felt.

That last post I wrote was a total downer. If you're here, you are familiar with the days that make you feel that way. I've been meaning to write a follow up post to it for some time now so you know that I don't feel that way indefinitely every day. It's a combination of school, a school newspaper I started and the fact that I am really in a new phase of my life at this point that has made this post so slow in coming, but I just wanted to take a moment today to talk about the moments like the one that caused me to write that last post.

It's probably only about every three months now, but there will sometimes be a night where I somehow work myself into a spin about my marriage. Instead of the sleep I so desperately need I find self remembering, reinterpreting, reliving the moments that once made up my life. I told Sassy McLadyBoots about this one morning when she picked me up and I was in a total grief hangover. She didn't understand. That time seemed so long ago to her that the idea that I could still be reeling in it from time to time just could not compute. I called my sister in law who has been in these shoes and she explained. When we've been through trauma our brain has to sort out the things that don't make sense. It takes time. It will get better. In the mean time, don't let the sneaker waves get you down.

That last post found its genesis in a link on Facebook. A good friend of mine had posted an adorable link of Dorris Day singing it and that was it. I was instantly lying on that sterile hospital bed, paralyzed with fear while simultaneously overwhelmingly aware that I had to get out of there. That memory is a strong one and it took me a little by surprise. I spent that night writing a post about it to process how I felt, and then I let it go.

In our recovery process we will all have moments like that one. They are usually unexpected and can be triggered by the things that seem the most insignificant to those around us. Others may not understand. They may think we are being too self pitying or living in the past, but after I was hit by that car, when I heard an engine rev I jumped before I thought about jumping. We have emotional responses to the trauma we've lived through. We don't have to be victimized by them. We don't have to dwell in them longer than the time it takes to fully process them, but we will experience them from time to time, and that's ok.

Life on the island is so beautifully balanced. It's incredible to me the difference in my soul from almost exactly two years ago. I still feel sorrow, yes, but today I know what to do with it. I know that it's not a permanent part of my identity, and I know that it will pass. I know that feeling it is normal and that I am entitled to choose my own way through. I know that I am strong, that I will make it, and that with God I can do hard things. When the pain comes, just remember--even if no one else seems to understand the why, even if you feel like it will never stop being there, even if, in that moment, you feel like it can't possibly get better--it does get better. You've just got to keep your face turned to God and your feet on the path of faith.

Losing What We Call Lovely

Photo attribution here.

The day before I started packing up to leave my Long Beach home I went for a walk on the beach. The Mr. had already taken a job in the next city over and was staying there, so I was alone. Of all the things I loved about that city, the lifeguard towers were one. There's something so iconic about them. They symbolize the best things in life--summer, sunshine, ocean, bare feet, vacation, spontaneity, freedom. But the summer was ending, and so was my marriage. I was a year in, but there was a part of me, just below consciousness, that feared it even then. It was a long and slow beach walk, and towards the end I climbed up on a tower and sat and stared.

Rusty metal. Chipped paint. The smell of salt. Cityscape to the right. Slow, lapping ocean. Gritty sand. Sunset. Losing light. 

I took a picture of myself in the lowlight, trying desperately to hold on to what was already, in a way, gone. I remember sitting there, trying very hard to be brave and positive, to have faith in God, in my husband, in my ability to pull it together, but in a place so deep I couldn't let even myself be aware of it I was terrified. Terrified of loss and terrified of the future. Terrified that I would never have anything so lovely as the early days of my married life in Long Beach, ever again. 

Last night I went to Waikiki with some friends for--are you ready for this?-- Spam Jam. Apparently Hawaiian residents consume some ridiculous number like 3 million cans of Spam a year, and just to prove we're proud, we have a whole food festival to honor this strange canned "meat". It was a group of girlfriends and I driving down together, busily chattering on about internships, secret crushes, embarrassing moments and frustrating school policies. When we got to "town", as we countryfolk refer to Honolulu, we disembarked and weaved our way through drum circles, fire dancers, a mime, a Michael Jackson impersonator and every Spamtastic abomination you can fathom. Spam tacos, Spam ramen, Spam burgers, Spam T-shirts, sports bras, hats, an entire wave constructed in cans of Spam, a Spam impersonator and the world's most unlucky puppy sitting with a can of Spam strapped to its head, victim to endless photos and an adoring public. 

It was fantastic. 

When we'd had enough of that we headed over to a frozen yogurt place. Here I purchased my first treat in one full month. On my list of thirty was the task of giving up sugar for one month's time, and it just so happened that the four weeks came to a close last night. Coconut and caramel flavored frozen goodness with fresh strawberries, toasted coconut flakes and a slice of waffle cone on top--heaven. 

I took my treasure across the street and the five of us lady friends climbed up the steps of a lifeguard tower to bask in echoes of Waikiki nightlife, the smell of salt and the familiar feel of grits of sand beneath our feet. A quick glance at the cityscape to my right and I was instantaneously transported to my Long Beach lifeguard tower. I was nose to nose with my old self. She was hesitating on the precipice of her headlong dive into the brutal years ahead. I looked back into the eyes of my pre-divorce self for that brief moment, and saw how desperately she was trying to peer into her fate. I saw so much fear in her eyes--fear that all the beautiful parts of our life had already come and gone. I realized that the Waikiki me was an absolutely unimaginable figment of a possibility to that scared little Imogen in Long Beach. That Frowfrow wanted her Long Beach life. She wanted her cranky, ill suited husband, half working cars, dead end jobs and a lifetime of bending herself in half to force a square peg into a star shaped hole. She clung to the life she was losing so desperately that she could see nothing else. She couldn't believe in anything better than the dismal path that lay before her, so she lied to herself and told herself it was all ok. It was what she'd always dreamed of. 

I've been addicted to sugar pretty much my entire life. (Stay with me, this is all coming together, promise.) I know it's not healthy. Sugar causes cancer, diabetes, heart disease, jacks up my blood sugar, is clinically proven to be addictive, messes with my depression, and is in no way an adequate substitute for human affection, no matter how much I lie to my subconscious. Did any of this matter? Not at all. Why? Because throughout my life I was scared. I didn't want to let it go. I needed it to numb and distract myself from all the turmoil incessantly churning in my stomach. If I have a stomach ache over Swedish Fish or Ben and Jerry's then I don't have a pit in my stomach about my parent's divorce, the homework there is no one to help me with, my relationship with my mama, my unanswered questions for God, the way I can't seem to choose a life path, a major or a career, my failing marriage or the lurking possibility that now that I am single again I will die a lonely cat lady weaving dream catchers out of my own hair to take to market. (That one was for you, Sassy McLadyBoots.) If I abuse sugar I can blame it and my addiction for my problems. I needed that distraction, at some points of my life more than others--the years before and after my divorce most especially. I didn't want to let it go, just like I didn't want to let go of the fantasy that my Long Beach life was all I could ever dream of. But then... I did. 

The one month of living sugar free came as easy as a wave crashing on the sand. It just was. I didn't even really have to try. I just let myself acknowledge, I don't even like this stuff. It makes me feel like crap. I let myself eat an occasional PB&J, some yogurt or a granola bar, but the cookies, cakes, chocolate, ice cream and late night trips to the vending machines disappeared all on their own, and so did my obsessive desire to eat at every convenience. I just let it go, and when I did, everything was fine. 

I want to pull all this together now to say this: beautiful things will come. Sticking with something because we think we need it to survive, unhealthy as it may be; keeping a death grip on something out of fear that it's the best we will ever get; believing nothing else will come along for us and we will be left miserable; all of that is a lie. All that grasping, in the end, doesn't help. It doesn't make the good things stay, it just invites fear, and fear taints the lovely we do have in our lives. It paints it, so we don't recognize it for the glorious little moment of kite flying, balloon holding, baby smiling, first kissing, new learning, big laughing that it is. We miss it. So when we find ourselves panicked, desperately grasping, strong faced, but terrified in the soul, let's just remember this my brave friends: nothing we need ever dies.

Nothing.

And there is lovely in store beyond what you now see as possible. There will be more lifeguard towers. There will be new friends laughing, fresh flowers waiting, brand new favorite foods, hands to hold, freckles to kiss and lessons to learn, but we've got to learn to look for and see the good, not hunker down and brace ourselves for the next tragedy. 

"You're divorced? What happened?"

Photo attribution here. 

On the issue of telling people I am divorced, I have two opinions:

1. The incredible shame of going through a divorce in the church causes many to clam up about it. I believe it's because we're not talking about it that those not touched by divorce are not thinking about it, therefore they stand in judgement by default of our culture, and the shame remains. Opening up about what life is like in the post marital world is the only way to open people's eyes and hearts to empathizing with us. It's hard, but we can do it.

2. It's none of your damn business. Leave me the hell alone.

I often feel these both, simultaneously.

When you tell someone you're divorced they always want to know one thing--what happened? The reason I don't like this question isn't what you think. I have no problem talking about my experience. I find it pretty cathartic--as is evidenced by this blog, it's just that I have no good answer for the question that can be conveyed in a 20 second window. This is because when you are a Latter Day Saint, there is an unwritten rule that there is a short list of reasons that make it "okay" to get a divorce.

1. Your partner is beating you black and blue.
2. Your partner was unfaithful.
3. Your partner has an addiction - usually drug or pornography - that is negatively affecting your family.

And really, with the exception of number one, these issues are not a hall pass to the courthouse to file. As a people we favor reconciliation in pretty much every case, and while no decision regarding a marriage and family should ever be taken lightly, I think this, "There are three people in my marriage and as long as God and I are two of them we can get by," mentality is doing long lasting damage.

I need to reiterate to you here that I deeply respect the marriage covenant. My relationship with The Mr. would have passed its expiration date six months into the marriage if we had not been sealed in the temple. Three quarters of our time together was spent turning myself inside out to avoid the inevitable. In the end there was no other way to retain even a shred of my self worth or identity than to let it go, and still somehow I feel guilty for finally releasing the long dead weight of the relationship.

When people ask me, "What happened?" I have no concise answer. I have spent days and weeks of concerted effort trying to encapsulate into a simple phrase the kind of life it was being married to The Mr. "We got married too fast." "He wasn't kind." "He changed when we got married." "We were just too different." But none of it covers it, and I know--because before I crossed over into this no man's land I would have done the same thing-- that while people have sympathetic feelings and faces, many of them are ultimately trying to discern what I would be like to be married to and if the break up was my fault or his. Ultimately they want to know if I "tried hard enough" and if the break was justified. It's not really the individual's fault. It's a product of a religious culture that honors lists of dos and don'ts. Divorce is a don't. I know that, but to convey the nuance of all the different layers of hell that I lived for those two years is impossible in a 20 second window, or even 20 minutes. Knowing that someone could think I would tap out because I was too tired, that I would walk away when the going got tough, that I don't have it in me to be in a healthy relationship, that I made this choice out of selfishness, or that there is any part of my soul that feels okay about breaking a covenant with God is extremely painful and insulting to me. It leaves me feeling unknown and completely misunderstood.

One of the hardest and most heartbreaking aspects of the end of my marriage was when I would show up at The Padre's house, completely distraught, bawling my eyes out, trying so hard to convey what was going on. The Padre and Lady Pants are sympathetic people, but they are (fortunately for me or I would be the last one standing in the family) very active in the church. While they have both gone through divorce, the counsel they gave me was essentially--So sorry this is happening to you. He's just a young guy. He shouldn't treat you like that, but he is your eternal companion. I hope you two can work it out. And off I would go, back to the vortex of my marriage to see again if I could make sense of it. I can't really blame them for not being able to give me what I needed in those moments. They were doing their best, I'm sure, and couldn't know the full extent of what was going on behind our closed doors, but what I needed was for someone to tell me it's okay for me to think of what's best for me. It's okay to own up to how horrible things had gotten. It's okay to put myself first this time. It's okay to say enough is enough.

Because my relationship didn't fit into scenarios one through three, there is a small part of me that refuses to die off that still says, "It could have worked out. I should have tried harder," and I don't think that's fair. I don't want anyone else to have to live with that feeling. My life with The Mr. was full of half working cars dangerously jerry rigged, camo shorts and black socks, beard hair trimmings left in the sink, a tragic lack of social skills or understanding, his inability to settle on a career path, a constant fear that he was going to get fired, pressure to have a baby when I wasn't ready, discontent at my desire to complete my education, lack of spiritual connection or involvement, and a complete dismissal of any element of me that slightly resembled an artist. In the last couple months I've seen three plays, started a student activism blog, joined the music club with a trip planned to the symphony, hand crafted a pitcher that looks like a whale, made the perfect salad bowl in ceramics, started juicing, planted an herb garden with fresh mint, made plans to launch a vintage inspired clothing line, and learned to properly capture a human likeness in charcoal.

The Mr. and I do not belong together.

He didn't hit me, cheat on me, turn to porn or pot or suddenly develop an affection for Neil Patrick Harris, but when I was with him, all that I loved about me hid itself away in a deep, dark corner of my soul for fear that it would continue to go unnoticed, unappreciated, dismissed and rejected. He was not good to me and I was not right for him. We are better off apart. As clear as God speaking to Moses, night following day or the human body needing oxygen, that is the truth. Can't that be enough?

As a culture we are endlessly looping through this idea that a list of dos and don'ts will be what saves us-- that it's somehow an all inclusive package to salvation. This mentality is how we end up criticizing those who drink coke but have no qualms serving brownies with every meal. It's why we can feel justified telling ourselves that home and visiting teaching members of our faith alleviates us of the opportunity to better the world at large or to reach out to our non-LDS community. This mentality disconnects us from the Sprit and our core knowledge of what is right and wrong. It creates a blinding hyper focus on a fear that we are somehow deviating from the list.

When we do what we do out of fear--fear of losing, fear of disappointing, fear of punishment or falling short-- it is not the same thing as when we do it out of love. The point of this existence is to become changed beings. Fear does not transform us for the better. The right thing for my parents to do in that time was to reiterate to me that the destructive elements of his behavior were absolutely unacceptable and help me remember to value myself while I was married to a man who couldn't find anything about me to love. The right thing for me while I was in that relationship was to say, "I will not allow you to treat me or anyone this way. You are not being a good husband and will not make a good father to my children. If this is the life you choose, you choose a life without me." The right thing for any of us to do in the myriad of situations life throws at us is to look inside, connect with that voice that never lies and is never wrong, and follow it--end of story. The dos and don'ts are guidelines. The voice is a lifeline. Pushing it aside for the sake of the list doesn't bring us closer to salvation, it alienates us from direct revelation. It separates us from God.

I want to go home.

Photo attribution here. 

My parents divorced when I was eight. My mom took my siblings and I out of school early one day after they separated and we left on a "vacation" never to return. We stayed in California for a bit with family, then moved to Utah for a year or two. After that, the siblings that hadn't chosen to move back to my dad's house, my mom, my step dad and new little brother along with two of my five step sisters moved back to California into a place where there are three types of people. 1. The law. (Cops who don't want to raise their kids in LA so they make the 2 hours commute daily) 2. Those hiding from their past or the law. (Can't tell you how many kids from my high school there have died of an overdose. So sad.) and 3. Members of the witness protection program. I wish that was a joke, but it's not. Rural and isolated don't even begin to describe the bizarre universe that was my home for seven years.

By the time I hit my late teens I decided I would be better off living with my dad again. On my 17th birthday I packed up and transferred schools in the middle of my junior year of high school. It was not a smooth transition. I kept telling myself that I was just going to leave for college soon anyway, so I didn't want or need to make any connections there. After that phase there has been ten years of bouncing from one idea, one place, one school, one beach to another. 

Being quite unlike most Mormons I know, but loving the gospel with gusto, I have always felt an intense longing for my people. This coupled with my transient past made for an intense desire to find my place in the world. The long story short of that saga culminated (or so I thought) in my marriage to The Mr. and moving into our apartment in Long Beach, CA. I had finally, finally, finally found my place in the world. For a short time I lived this moment where I was satisfied with the life I'd created. I had found my home. 

Part of grieving my divorce is reconciling the loss of that brief moment of my place in the universe being found. I spent last summer in California with Sassy McLadyBoots and, after my first day of work as a nanny for the summer, felt this intense urge to drive "home" as I had hundreds of times after my nanny job in the neighboring city during my married life. I braved the traffic and spent the 45 minutes in the commute I made daily as a wife. I pulled up and parked next to the apartment complex I left my heart in and sat for a time. I then spent an afternoon walking the streets of the abandoned foundation of my marriage. After that, I wrote this:

July First, Twenty Thirteen

I am in love with the city of Long Beach

This one time I was married to a man who couldn’t see me. I’m tall and bright and was standing right there, so by all accounts it doesn’t add up. When we married we settled in Long Beach, California. To him it was rough enough around the edges and equidistant from our places of employment. To me it was everything that’s right with the world. The third day of house hunting he told me to make up my mind already. God picked me up that day after work and set me down on the corner of 3^rd and Junipero and in that moment, I knew.

Constructed in the 1920s, Spanish tile roof with hardwood floors, crystal doorknobs and quirky neighbors. When I brought him to it that night in spastic adoration the courtyard was lit with twinkle lights and inhabited by lovely lesbians sipping a red wine over cigarettes.

After moving in I at first mistook my enthusiasm for the city as just another element of the blissful sneaker wave of matrimony crashing down around me and turning everything upside down. This satiated longing in my gypsy soul explains at least partially why it took me so long to notice and accept that in the beginning he was just “tired”, then distant, then angry, then mean. He moved back to his neck of the woods, and in an ultimately self-sacrificial demonstration I pulled myself, kicking and screaming from the only place I could ever, in truth, call home.

Today I walk the streets heartsick and sobered, but inescapably on the verge of an orgasm of the soul at the sheer perfection that is my city. Ocean waves, calm and gentle lapping at the shore; kiss after kiss after caress the sea makes endless love to my city. Latin lovers have salsaed themselves into tree nymphs. Her leafy hair still holds the blossom. His skin on the branches that suspend her in perpetual elegance is smooth like glass. Stained glass in the windows of the churches of every denomination.  Tibetan Christians, Lutherans, Muslims. Thick air settles in your car, your hair, your skin – sticky, like a memory you just can’t shake.

The buildings are corporate and creaking, stable and filthy, artful and average, because here in my kingdom by the sea, you can be anything you want to be. Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles and yoga in the park, open to the public and interrupted by a pickup game of soccer. A sexy, sweaty, stinky group of dark eyed Latinos at home scoring goals in my city.

The birds of paradise and palm trees are jazzercising in fluorescent purple, green and orange; sweating it out with the rest of us. The air is dirty and the cars are clean and glistening in the sun – or they’re not. The food is unapologetic in its -love me or leave me- essence and the freeways mock your impatience and lazily roar curses in stereotypically colorful language. Even the garbage cans lining streets are purple.

And everywhere I go in this town, so starkly juxtaposed, I see him and me. That endlessly awkward night at dinner. The time he slept in the car. The long walk I took down the pier when he started to change, desperate to clear my head of early signs of warning. The alley where we both giggled and kissed for the engagement shoot, and loaded up the moving van. The place I stared while we sat in our car and he told me he couldn’t love me if I couldn’t start being happy.

These memories, these blackened, charcoal, cancer coated moments growing stale in a dying corner of my mind—these are the only things I do not love about my city. These are the only things I would change.

I was married only a moment compared to the average divorcee, but I understand at least a taste of the sense of loss of place. I went to a support group once where a woman talked about the hours she'd spent driving around in her car, not wanting to return to her disrupted home and life. That's an element of this road we walk. Will I ever return to Long Beach to build my life again? 

Maybe. 

Or maybe not.

So much there I love and so much there I can't recover. I'll tell you what though, wherever I end up, however it goes, I'll make a life worth loving. I'll find my hardwood floors and crystal doorknobs in a brand new city full of streets I haven't walked, food I've never tasted, challenges yet to be discovered, miracles I have not yet fathomed, dust that's never settled over my not-yet-discovered vintage treasures, and people I have not yet had a chance to love, but I will love them. I'm going to keep loving, looking for and building the good and the best. Because despite the way I've been hurt, that's still who I am. That's who I choose to be.  

30 Things to do Before I Turn 30

The first 28 years of my life have been eventful. I've lived in 30 houses in 7 different states, attended 4 universities and a trade school, seen Paris, Mexico, Canada, visited 20 states in the US and served a mission. I've fallen madly in love a few times and had my heart brutally broken once. I've met and made better friends than any person has a right to. I've given up and tried again, discovered talents I didn't know I had, and weaknesses I didn't want to know I had.  I've worked as a teacher, pizza maker, shelf stocker, deli slave, personal assistant to a boutique owner, campus bouncer, a special needs nanny, an RA, a waitress in a tapas bar, and now a cotton candy spinner extraordinaire. I've skinny dipped, road tripped, yelled at the ocean, stared at the moon, laughed so hard I've cried and cried so hard I've had nothing left to do but laugh. I've seen vibrant rainbows, more beaches than I can count, new babies and old ladies, big cities, small towns, gorgeous countryside and trees that tower so tall and majestic that I would dare anyone to not be overcome with a sense of awe at the sight of them.

And now, I'm almost 30. I'm 29 in fact--today.

To give you just a small glimpse of what it's like to be "almost 30" and a student at an LDS university that only offers undergraduate programs I will relate the following: A couple days ago I was sitting, sketching and a guy I'd talked to a few times around campus came and sat to make chit chat. We exchanged stories  and laughs for about half an hour. By that point I'd calculated that he was probably 21 years old and I could see he was getting curious. I always ask people to guess my age when they ask and he came up with the usual guess of 23. When I, half grinning, knowingly revealed that I was just about 29 the guy hilariously half choked, then caught himself and tried to recover with, "Oh, congratulations" and a handshake. 

When a woman gets this far past the ominous, "menace to society" label she has two options. She can either bury her head in shame and spend her days pining for a man to make her an acceptable member of Mormon culture-- a wife, a mother, an adult--or-- she can fully embrace the exceptional thing it is to be so free, to know herself so well and to have so many doors open to her and enough sense to go explore them. When put that way it's hard to understand why so many of us settle for option A. 

I've decided the best way to celebrate the year twenty-nine is to cram thirty more "to do"s into my eventful twenties. They've been good to me, and when they haven't been good to me, they've taught me oceans of lessons I benefit from daily. I want to give them the fine farewell they deserve.

I have one friend I reach out to in my blackest of the black moments. She is infinitely patient, kind, positive, and gently nudges me in the best direction-- even when I don't want to hear it. She intuitively contacted me moments after The Mr. walked out of my life for good and never seems to tire of my sometimes spastic pleas for help in moments of desperation. In recent conversation about the demise of my marriage she said, "I don't feel like it was the end of something. I don't even feel like it's now a new beginning. I feel like it's the beginning. The start of your beautiful life." I feel like I am in a place in my healing where I am ready to more fully look forward. I can feel a shift in me where the healthiest thing to do for me now is to look ahead and build, and the best way I can see to do that this year is to work my way through the list I've compiled of thirty things to do before I turn thirty.

I still get sad sometimes, and that's okay.

Photo attribution here.

I spent a lot of my childhood riding in the back seat of a car, watching the road--quietly contemplative. Speeding along the freeway I would watch as the pavement holding us would silently split into two lanes--one with a brand new destination. We'd cruise along, parallel with the new road. Two that had been made from one. I'd watch as the new road rose or sank, then took its own turn and silently peeled away from us and disappeared from my view. I'd wonder then for a moment where that road went and how it could disappear, so smooth and silent. When I think about The Mr. now, I think about the roads. One road split into two, silently going their own ways.

When I first got back into classes here in Hawaii I was completely immersed in the healing that comes with creativity. Particularly there was a drawing class that took all the time, attention and focus I could afford it. I loved it. My professor was excellent in pointing out where I was going wrong and teaching me how to fix it. I marveled at the return I got on my artistic investment over those few short months.

In this class an interesting thing would sometimes happen. I'd be so lost in trying to capture the core shadow on the sphere I was drawing that I probably morphed into a full on mouth breather and didn't even know it. The kind of concentration it takes when you are first learning this stuff is nigh unto Jedi Master in training concentration. I'd be full on in the throws of mastering the force of my charcoal pencil when all of a sudden, a still frame from my former life would flash through the feature film of Frowfrow Goes Back to College and Loves It. It was such an unexpected juxtaposition that the first time it happened it almost knocked me over--it was so dizzyingly disorienting.

When I take stock of my life, the things I want to be and the things I've accomplished, the phrase, "divorced" inevitably filters through. Every time it does my brain does a double take. No, I'm not divorced. I'm not the type. I wouldn't let that happen to me. I'm not stupid enough to marry someone I would have to divorce. I wouldn't break that promise to God.

And yet, I did.

I am.

I can't take it back or unmake the decisions that brought me to and through that. I can't know better in time to not make those mistakes. I know God doesn't hold it against me, but I still can't help feeling like I can't ever get my slate completely clean.

I'm divorced.

In my memory bank there's ring, a proposal, a wedding day and a wedding night. There's a family ward I attended and an apartment I decorated. There are plans I tried to make and promises broken. There's the first times and the last times, the endless efforts of making it work, the cruel things that can never be undone and the way it unrelentingly would not renege until my soul was lying motionless on the floor, bereft of any ideas for what I could try next. There's a foundation--laid and abandoned.

I'm divorced.

And now I'm in my second chance at life, and it's a nearly surreal life at that. I put an ocean between myself and anything I'd ever known. I indulge every creative impulse that flits through my mind. I spent an hour today lying on a private, aqua beach reading for pleasure. I sleep in on Sunday, go out on weekends, skinny dip in January and have nothing I can logically complain about in this freshly constructed world I've built for myself. But there is always this part of me that is somberly saying, No, you don't understand. You don't know what it was like. 

I'm divorced.

I was married. I took a full on face dive leap of faith into the tea cup of a quick marriage. I make my conscious efforts to move ahead, to live in the present, to embrace the now, to learn from my mistakes and to cultivate gratitude, forgiveness and love--but I will never not be divorced.

That makes me sad.

So please, when you meet someone who has been through it, withhold judgement for a moment or two. Give the person space to be who they are--now. Let the divorced people you meet know that it's okay to be okay, that they are not categorically dismissed because of life experiences, and that life is full of tough choices. None of us get out unscathed. There's a unity to be had in sharing our stories, regardless of the source of the scar.

The voice inside that never lies, and is never wrong.

Photo attribution here. 

Do you remember a few entries back where I illuminated the benefits of breaking all contact with ones ex if at all possible? And then a couple entries later The Mr. called me just to see how I was doing? It was almost like God was testing my ability to walk the walk of all the talk I do. Well, my time with Captain Amazing has reached its end. We are broken up once and for all, and in grand summation of the whole situation, I would say that I'm pretty sure this, like the phone call, was one big test/chance to grow from God to me--like a Christmas present. A painful, excruciating, disorienting, soul stretching Christmas present from God to me. Refresher:

On August 16, 2013 I wrote the following:

There's a voice inside me that never lies and is never wrong. When I met The Mr. that voice said, "No thank you." But I kissed him anyway--a lot. When he proposed that voice said, "You do not know this man. How can you marry someone you don't know if you can trust?" But I told the voice to be quiet or we'd never find love. When The Mr. and I would sit in a room together, 15 months into our mistake that voice would say, "He's not here in the room with you. He's already gone." I would tell the voice, "No. He's the one who loves me."

I met Captain Amazing the day before classes began, the beginning of September. The voice kicked in about a week into our time together. I was waiting for him to stop by to pick me up for what I knew would be a very romantic evening on a Hawaiian moonlit beach. I was sitting in the courtyard of my dorm, chatting with him on the phone, arranging the final details of where to meet and when. The voice said, "Don't you go with him. Stay home. I mean it," but having been completely alone for the last 10 months and desperate (key word there) for some kind of something to take my mind off my past, infatuated with the exoticness of the potential of dating a tall, handsome African man, and with a soul so parched for affection the substance with which it would be quenched made little difference to me, I went anyway. I did not listen to the voice.

The next morning I awoke with memories of what I can only, in all honesty, confess to be among the most romantic nights of my life, I went outside to the Hawaiian sun and started reading my scriptures in preparation for church. I picked up my patriarchal blessing with a secret hope that maybe this gentleman could put an end to the eternally daunting task that is once more before me of dating and being single. Again, the voice was clear--this time almost fierce. "Let me be perfectly clear. Captain Amazing is not the one for you." But desperation dies hard.

I spent the next three months trying every angle I could think of to convince myself that this upset stomach was a result of my scrambled egg divorce brain. I was being overly cautious, defensive, unwilling to relax and neurotic. I told myself these things again and again and again. Why? Because I hate being alone. I hate being alone, and Captain Amazing was cute, romantic, funny, scholarly, devoted, a convert, a psychology major, an AP in his mission, a temple worker, a Sunday School President, was the CEO of a nonprofit for crying out loud, and a damn good kisser. But the voice was right all along. He is not the one for me. The voice inside me never lies and is never wrong.

After at least four attempts at breaking up the voice adopted subversive tactics, embedding herself into a muscle on the left side of my neck 'till it began to spasm. I'd gotten to a place where my brain was 68% devoted to anticipating and meeting his needs, which were often cryptic and unmeetable. I was eating too much, sleeping too little, not making time for myself and, by the end, incapable of holding a fully upright posture. Every day I wondered what I could do to make it better. I was apologetic, open, eternally available and losing myself bit by bit by bit...again, till the moment came where I'd had enough.

Breaking it off for good was hard because I, like my father, am intensely uncomfortable inconveniencing anyone. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but once things got bad enough that I no longer could see the situation for anything other than what it was, I couldn't go back anymore. He was determined not to end it, and I had to become even more firm. It wasn't pretty, but it was the right thing to do, and there is a peace in that.

Lessons to extract from this experience? Red flags:

1. If the person you are with makes you feel less like yourself they don't love you for who you are.
2. If you feel like your partner can't live without your help. Walk away from projects, no excuses, no exceptions.
3. If you cannot tell what you want, how you feel or what you think in the presence of another, you are having enmeshment issues and the relationship is not a healthy one.
4. If the person you are dating makes you feel bad on a regular basis -- bad about yourself, bad about your values, bad about your body, your taste in movies, your job, your major, you passions, your friends, anything really-- no good.
5. If your relationship with God suffers because of your devotion to your partner, run.
6. If you find yourself saying, "Things will get better when..." They won't. People have patterns. They can be broken, but usually are not.
7. If fighting with the person is overly dramatic, childish, or immature leave them in the past. You both have some growing up to do.
8. If the relationship feels unbalanced--like one of you is investing significantly more time, attention, effort and love into the relationship, it will not get better. It will get worse.
9. If you find yourself continually lowering your expectations, week after week after week. Some compromise is necessary, but we've all got to draw the line somewhere before we become shadows of ourselves and what we once were and wanted.
10. Just because a person looks amazing on paper, it doesn't mean you have the right to stifle the voice inside. I'm telling you, guys. She never lies and is never wrong.

Part Three

I know I've written before about the importance of breaking all contact with an ex if at all possible, but I have an update for you on this topic. About a month ago things with The Mr. were in a place where we weren't talking, really just because there wasn't anything left to say. All the finances are sorted, possessions divided, words spoken, papers signed. But when you have been in such an intimate place with someone closing the door completely somehow seems caustic-- even while rationally acknowledging the trauma leaving the door even slightly ajar brings.

I was driving--windows down, sun shining, so I didn't hear the phone ring the first or second time. When I checked the message it was something I would have swallowed as sweet in days gone by. The Mr. wanted to know how I was doing. He wanted to know if I was happy.

There's a voice inside me that never lies and is never wrong. When I met The Mr. that voice said, "No thank you." But I kissed him anyway--a lot. When he proposed that voice said, "You do not know this man. How can you marry someone you don't know if you can trust?" But I told the voice to be quiet or we'd never find love. When The Mr. and I would sit in a room together, 15 months into our mistake that voice would say, "He's not here in the room with you. He's already gone." I would tell the voice, "No. He's the one who loves me."

So when I heard The Mr.'s voicemail I stopped for a moment and asked the voice what she thought. Two days later she replied in the form of a text message I sent The Mr.

I got your message. Thank you for your concern. How I'm doing is information I no longer feel comfortable sharing with you. I know you feel guilty for things from our past, but that's between you and God now. I wish you the best of luck in sorting it out and sincerely hope you find peace. Please do not contact me again. 

It wasn't easy to send, but it was easier than all that work it took to smother out the voice for those two years. My mama says that you don't have room for good things in your life when you won't let go of the bad ones. Mental energy is finite, after all. Since I calmly but firmly closed the door to all that pain, beautiful things have started happening. Or perhaps the more likely truth is that beautiful things were happening all along, but in closing the door I finally was able to look up.

My life is in the process of changing in big ways this week, not the least of which is where I reside. I am moving... again. But this isn't one of those little hopping around moves I've done every six months up until now. This is a mega leap of faith move from my seemingly eternally cyclical existence betwixt a few west coast states-- to a distant tropical island. 

I've never been to Hawaii. I've never rented a car or bought a one way ticket without any idea when I'll be coming back or really any desire to find out. In nine days I start part three of my Three Part Plan to Get on With Life, and I just want to say, it's coming together shockingly well. 

I bring this up, not to rub it in your face that I'm finally getting healthy when you likely have come to this blog in a state of profound grief or concern. I bring this up because I remember vividly the days that I was incapable of believing that things could ever, ever, ever get better, and I remember the day I started listening to that voice in me that never lies and is never wrong.