organized chaos.

:: my closet::

i heard a psychologist once say that the interior of a person's home, specifically the inner places like cabinets and closets and attics - often a reflection of the interior of the person.

if that is true, i am [as steffi would say] totally "ska-rood".

i am the messiest person i know. which is odd, considering that my closet - when clean - looks like this. and i mean has to look like this. wooden hangers. facing left. organized by article or sleeve length, then by color. denim folded and stacked. like a store. albeit, a very tiny store, but still. i stop short of using a folding board on tee shirts, but only because i did a brief stint at the gap in my late teens and consequently, have mad folding skills.

housekeeping would be a lot easier for me and probably occur much more frequently if i didn't have such ridiculous standards that were impossible to maintain. my closet looks like this about once every month or so... and the rest of the time, you can't see the floor...

and so i often wonder what the psychologist would have to say about me... perhaps she would diagnose the obvious, which is that i have a little problem with a thing called moderation. [or she might throw out the broad generalization - as steffi also does - that i'm as "crazy as a sprayed roach"]. the truth is that the thought of doing anything in small increments is excruciating to me. i'm an 'all or nothing' kind of girl. and frankly, that hasn't worked out so well for me - which could segue into a multitude of facets... too many from which i am just too tired from all my obsessive cleaning and organize to even choose.

speaking of moderation, i never thought i'd enjoy running the way i do these days. i have no marathon aspirations or desires, but i really enjoy running the 5k and 8k runs. i never planned to start running, it just sort of happened. i'd run a little here and there when walking on the treadmill or track. i'd walk a lap, run a lap... walk a lap, run two laps... and literally, before i knew it, i was running. solid. and even more unexpectedly, i was enjoying it (granted, initially, i was probably thrilled that i no longer felt like i was going to drop dead).

running - in and of itself - has taught me some serious life lessons on moderation (obviously still a work in progress), but running literally transformed my thinking, forcing me to set small goals, pace myself and ultimately, endure. it is astonishing at how fast the human body and the human heart can build endurance. you find yourself anxious to see if you can push yourself a quarter mile farther next run or a fraction of a minute faster in pace.

running is - simply put - the best thing that could have happened to me at the very season it occurred in my life. i had tried running in the past and deplored it. it was hard. it was boring. it was really hard. and utterly un-enjoyable. it is so fitting that i became this recreational runner without even a sliver of intent... and endured through the most difficult season of my life because of it.

i am a work in progress. which reminds me of this excerpt from a previous blog:

------------------

"There’s a process of preparation God takes us through in order to make us what we need to be. But preparation takes time. God must deal with our inconsistencies, personality defects, areas of distrust, unresolved childhood issues, scars, flaws, etc. We should all wear a sign that says: “Work in progress."

-------------------

here's to enduring through the process... and having funny friends that make you laugh through it, too. :)

post-divorce dating: postcards from insecurity.

i'm digging this title. its as if i know what i'm talking about. [not that anyone who knows me believes that to be true.]

it is inevitable that i am eventually going to have to blog about various aspects of life from a post-divorce perspective. i typically like to avoid thinking of my life in those terms... you know, because its reality and i very much prefer my own delusions over reality any day.

i often make fun of my dad because he's "one of those people" who talk about life with such absolute subjectivity that it is nauseating. its as if he has absolutely no inclination to believe that others might disagree with his perspective, much less that his perspective might be the farthest thing from reality. as hilarious as that all is to me, i find myself doing the same thing. often. and i've started to wonder, "is reality really objective... or not?"...

i was so determined that my life wouldn't be defined by divorce, but rather that God would refine it through that process. and while that has happened on so many levels, the reality is unchanged. life post-divorce is drastically different than anyone and everyone who hasn't walked through it. there is so much stereotypical stigma that surrounds it, but i'm learning, albeit slowly, that it doesn't make me different in a way that is entirely jaded or cynical any more than the person who has never been married; or the one who has been married for decades. we're all different. (okay, i'm beginning to sound like a middle school speech on embracing diversity)... i digress.

and speaking of middle school... i've been doing some keen observation here in adulthood of some of my close friends who have been through divorce and are now in the throes of post-divorce dating, which seems to be some mystical portal of regression to junior high. and quite frankly, junior high wasn't so great of an experience for me in terms of relationships with boys. . . not that there ever was such a period of time, but whatever. another blog.

i have blogged a little about how the landscape of life post-divorce is so drastically different. even though i was born and raised here and have tons of great friends and family here, in the beginning i felt like i had relocated to some strange new town. i had lost common ground with my married friends... and my single friends... and feared that i had lost acceptance from anyone and everyone in between. as for family, if i had to hear my mother utter the phrase, "marriage just doesn't mean what it used to anymore..." [while simultaneously sighing] one more time, i was going to voluntarily excommunicate myself from my family. the rest of the world was in black and white, and i was residing in this undefinable shade of gray. i had always envisioned a life that was neatly and beautifully packaged. one that fit neatly in among the others without any conspicous defects or abnormalities. any form that i had to fill out post-divorce made me want to scratch through all of the check boxes and scribble "social reject" across them all.

so i observe, in horror, these throes of post-divorce dating - of which i know nothing about. perhaps one of the draws of dating is this pseudo excitement that comes from the unknown - evidently, there is this whole [prolonged] period of not knowing if or how much someone is interested; followed immediately by another [prolonged] period of not knowing if your level of interest is increasing while the other's decreasing ... or vice versa. quite frankly, this part of dating makes me want to vomit, even vicariously.

and quite frankly, i envisioned dating in adulthood to be different. not sure why. i was, after all, a big Sex & the City fan. but still. that was all ficticious and glamorous. no one i knew lived like that... certainly, no one i knew could afford shoes like that... and in the days of SATC the possibility of my having to one day reenter the dating scene was never a thought i entertained. but here, in reality - i assumed (erroneously) there would be a more pragmatic approach. i have enough trouble sleeping at night living alone, the last thing i need is to be lying awake at 3 a.m. wondering if a boy is going to call me... or email me... or text me... or whatever.

and so i wondered, why these thirtysomethings (both men and women) were suddenly reduced to levels of insecurity i haven't experienced or witnessed since junior high. welcome to post-divorce dating. PDD. there should be some sort of online support group for this.

several of my PDD friends shared with me that - early on in their PDD days -they had all arrived at the same [inevitable] conclusion, which was they could and would only date other PDs. it seems divorce changes you in a way that only another divorcee/divorcee' can relate to; and single parenthood is much the same. unattainable common ground for someone who hasn't experienced it firsthand. and then i realized....

these people have no idea what they are doing.

no. as my friend amy would say, "these people have no idea what [in the crap] they are doing".

and the insurmountable truth: neither would i.

these people (like me), having been married during the first solid decade of adulthood and thwarted into singledom somewhere in the midst of the second, have absolutely no [dating] experience from which to derive wisdom... and so they [um, we] revert. and regress. and suddenly, we're no longer thirtysomething women, but thirteen year old girls - only better - [and by better, i mean we have cell phones and text and email on our cell phones] and we can stay up till all hours of the night giggling and chatting and agonizing, not having to worry about waking our parents (only sometimes having to worry about waking our children). and then i think, "maybe this isn't going to be so bad...".

it isn't at all what i expected. but it is reality. objective or subjective... whichever.

they say (and by they, i mean all the self-help books and such) that for every four years you were married, you need at least at least one solid year of singledom. let me do that math:

tick. . . tock.

he's just not that into you...

where was this book [and movie, for that matter] when i really needed it? two decades ago when i was in my preteen beginnings of what would become a lovesick decade of pining over boys who were ... just not that into me. oh, in hindsight, it's all so clear now.

i love greg behrendt's blatant honesty. i love the fact that he treads fearlessly where girls and women often refuse to go.

i didn't have a whole lot of dating experience pre-marriage, however, i feel certain i would've had a whole lot more experience [and a whole lot less heart-wrenching poetry] had i accepted the simple truth that rejection was going to be an inevitable part of the whole boy-girl thing.

is this some sort of innate self-defense mechanism? our innability to accept the possibility that our affections may not be returned for no particular reason? granted, in adolescence, we are already ahead of the game emotionally - and intellectually - and so it begins, the ceaseless theorizing and hypothesizing. we dish out rejection frequently, but it seems we are completely inept at accepting it ourselves. [and i'm speaking solely for myself here].

i wasted precious years of my life post-high school pining for a man who only half-heartedly returned my affections, at best. time that could've perhaps been some of the best times of my life away at college, i spent on the phone with my [older and wiser] best friend, pouring over every detail of a recent conversation. delving into all of the [obvious] issues that must've been holding him back. i opted against going off to college because i knew, i just knew, that once he overcame whatever it was that was holding him back from a full-on commitment, he would totally marry me. excuse after excuse, year after year... for nearly four of them. he was into me. just enough to hold onto me. but to marry me? well, turns out, he just wasn't that into me.

if only i had known it was as simple as that.

in the aftermath of that romantic fiasco, i found myself entering adulthood, utterly bewildered. damaged goods, already, at the ripe old age of twenty. i had moved on from trying to figure out what was wrong with him to trying to figure out what was wrong with me. and here's where we go all wrong... when we begin picking ourselves apart to find evidentiary support for rejection, as if justification will in and of itself give way to vindication. i had already concluded that perhaps, i wasn't mature enough or smart enough or funny enough or thin enough, [God knows, i would never be thin enough]. i was probably still compiling my list of personal faults as he was planning his wedding to some girl that he was that into.

my mother had "the talk" with me when i was thirteen. you know the one. i can still feel the heat rising up into my face as she intertwined words like "virtue" and "honesty" in with others like "protection" and "birth control". my mom has always been a straight shooter, blatant facts and honesty, and "the talk" was no different. i was horrified. i had absolutely no inclination of doing whatever it was she was talking about, primarily because i had not even kissed a boy yet. and it wasn't for lack of them trying... i already had a "list" of two or three boys i would allow to be my first kiss and i wasn't compromising with any boy who didn't make the cut.

thinking back to that afternoon, sitting in the passenger seat of my mom's car - i'm thinking it was her sky blue topaz that she absolutely detested or maybe the cream colored buick century with seats that looked like red velvet cake - anyway, sitting that car... before my first kiss... before my first heartbreak, i realize, i'd have been much better prepared for what was to come if she had simply said:

"look, sometimes you're going to like a boy, really like a boy [the way you like the ones on your mental list of 'acceptable first kiss' list (only i hadn't told her about that)], and he might not like you back. sometimes, he might like you back, but not enough to treat you right. if a boy wants to be with you, he's going to make it happen. just know, if he doesn't - it has nothing to do with who he is and more importantly, it has nothing to do with who you are. if and when this happens, accept the simple truth: he's just not that into you. and you know what? that's okay."

i had too much to think last night...

03.01.09 Snow

(completely unrelated to the blog below...)

ebb and flow. the blog so often follows the ebb and flow of my life. ebbing when my life is flowing and vice versa. february was, obviously, a month of blog ebbing and life flowing. at warp speed. if i could send a literal postcard from adulthood today it would be black and white. no color. no picturesque landscape. just three little words in typewriter font: this place sucks. [okay, maybe there would be an asterisks next to the word sucks or a parenthetical disclaimer somewhere in tiny print, alluding to the truth that it only sucks sometimes.]

i'm just sayin'. sometimes it really does. you know it. i know it. and if you're on this side of adulthood post-divorce, you more than know it. i think this is especially true for those who, like me, married before actually becoming an adult. there was very little, if any, transition period from the security of my parents to the security of marriage. beginning adult life - even married - is still stumbling through a mix of idiocy and ignorance, but at least you're walking through it with someone, either having someone to brace the fall or falling down together. divorce thwarts you into the wilderness. without a compass. without a flashlight. and certainly, without a map.

marriage, parenthood, divorce - all life experiences from which i would say i have gleaned all sorts of valuable lessons, maturity, wisdom and insight and yet, at the very same time, i find myself utterly inept at the practical wisdom and life skills that necessitates living life on my own. wisdom beyond my years in some aspects and far (hear me: faaar) below in others. instead of a scarlet D, sometimes it's like i need a little sign or maybe a t-shirt that simply says, "i have no idea what i'm doing...".

and so this is a blog about everything. and nothing. one single blog in the month of february is pressuring me into the month of march. it isn't that i've nothing to blog, it is that there is too much and not enough time to sort through what is sharable and what isn't and then compartmentalize the shareable nifty little, profound titles... i need less flow and more ebb - as evidenced by this blog, which has been sitting in my 'drafts' folder for days. i had assumed it would work itself out, as my blogs often do.. my own words - as if working entirely on their own - beginning with randomness and eventually winding into specific direction, towards some specific purpose and perhaps this one would have evolved, if there were more time.... and less pressure [to click the 'publish post' button].

so here's hoping for more ebb and less overcommitted insanity and with the click of publish, getting this randomness out of the way will pave the way for blogs that are more... blogworthy.