When you get to the point where you feel you
were meant to be with someone, particularly after the devastation of divorce
and they feel that way too, and then that doesn’t work out either, you find yourself
fluctuating between despondency and being really angry. Anger is safer than hurt. It’s easier to feel. The energy wants to get up and out of
you. It helps if you are a kick boxer. Sadness is harder to feel. It threatens to drown you and make you want
to leave the earth. It has been
difficult for me on the planet. I have
had so many challenges and I hate
that freaking word. The only way to use anger wisely is to kick something, otherwise you get mad at things like words.
The person I fell
for died. First, you cry for six months. Your life is suspended in the air while you have to grapple with an event so heavy such as death. The other thing that happens when the person you love dies, is you have the luxury of pining over what could have been. That will haunt you for a couple of
years. It’s also that splendid place in
your mind where you can idealize how it would be for the two of you, now. You will never know. You also never got to see the person at 2AM sick
with the flu or completely lose their temper.
You never see them grow listless from too much or too little
responsibility, or say, forget the gym altogether or give up on their dreams. As a result, you can immortalize their persona
of how perfect they were as if frozen in time.
But of course, no one is perfect.
Perhaps this is why trying to get with someone post-divorce in your 40’s
is difficult. You have an unrealistic
idea of what the perfect man is, to begin with.
It’s warped by time, by how it was when you were young. Also the gene pool narrows and the only men
that age well are gay and there is a statute of limitations for them too.
Maybe you have a type. Tall and stalky or tough or athletic. The kind of guy who has a lot of knowledge
about obscure shit with a motorcycle or a Republican who likes to scuba dive or
the guy who has a trike who’s into art. <--- actually I don’t think those last two go
together. You come up with a lot of
qualifications that if the person lacks become deal breakers. “Well, he asks weird questions like how was your weekend? and I won’t live
like that,” you think to yourself. The
staggering disappointment of losing something that seemed completely impossible
to get in the first place sets you back.
I’ve developed permanent armor as a result.
Friends are not helpful. They say “well you just really need to get
laid.”
So then you take personal inventory. I
don’t want to be toiling away at my career any more is part of my latest
thinking. I should be in the Hamptons
yelling at the help. “Everyone knows living
room curtains go to the floor.” (idiot). I want an oblivious workaholic husband who’s
never home but has five cars. I want the
house to be so big that I busy myself decorating and preparing for
house guests. I’ll design menus in my
fabulous Cole Haan bathing suit, poolside sipping bubbly rose out of crystal
flutes with the most gorgeous gay men in New York. This kind of fantasizing is exquisite if you
don’t want to feel.
I was so burned by the real one in the past
and not just my marriage. I mean when
your heart is sensitive and shit just goes wrong, you’re left to deal with
the fallout. Growing up there was a
suicide attempt, a divorce, a remarriage,
moving to an awful suburb with an alcoholic step monster. But the now is re-traumatizing me. My parents have passed and I’m divorced. I’m
left on my own with a 49-year-old sibling who is developmentally disabled. I’m talking death, disease, divorce and
disability. This is going to be the name
of my one man show. Or should I call it
the one man show with tits. Naw, that's too crude. I'll think a somethin'.
