6 months ahead OR to the end of the River Styx and back

the early days are all a blur now. just some dark haze where distinct memories get lost in a cloud of sadness. but there was one day i went on a hike and afterwards we ended up at a friend's apartment for dinner. there was wine and laughing and dinner and merriment. they had specially made magnets on their fridge of pictures of them, a smiling photogenic couple going on adventures, standing in front of different landscapes and backdrops. i had been looking for a way to have those made for the bolshevik and i. but that didn't matter anymore. those are all memories that haunt me and cannot be looked back upon.

and when i just couldn't take it anymore i went out into the hallway and curled myself up into a little ball and cried hysterically.

eventually my friend came out to say all the things that friends say. and i went through all the questions that still plague me: why is the bolshevik doing this? can he really not love me anymore?  how can he be over me? how could he have gone to malaysia? how is it that he is so ... okay?

round and round these same questions with no real answers.

and my dear wise friend said to me, "the bolshevik is six months ahead of you." (because the bolshevik told me in january that he'd been out of love with me since summer. did i mention that before? it's hard to keep track of all the cruel things he has said and done)

anyway, my dear wise friend continued, "he's known how he felt for six months and he's been dealing with that. but he didn't tell you, so you didn't get to deal with it until now. six months from now, you'll be where he is."

this stuck with me, my dear blog readers. and although it's been hard for me to picture a future for myself, i could at least try to picture myself six months ahead. there were times when a morning seemed to go on for weeks and a day lasted years. and i questioned if i could make it to this most basic milestone: six months ahead.

and that day is today. today is 6 months from the day that the boslehvik sent me that terrible email telling me he didn’t want to be a team anymore. today also would have been our 6 year wedding anniversary.

so now i have caught up to where the bolshevik was way back in the dark early days.  and how am i? am i okay?

eh. it's hard to tell.

i can go days without crying. but there are days when i cry and scream and punch walls and kick holes in doors.

i can go out with friends and have a good time and sometimes i can even make it home and go to bed without feeling like it would've been better if the bolshevik was there.

but then there are other times when i get to a certain point in the evening where we would have checked in with a text message, recounting some funny yet pointless detail from our evenings. and it just feels like there is a huge hole in my life, with an ever-expanding emptiness that cannot be bridged.

i meet men and allow them to worship me like a goddess, and then i extricate myself from the situation before they can notice the cracks in the facade. because i'm made of glass and any disappointment will shatter me.

i put my arms around every boy i see. they only remind me of you.

sometimes i'm high for days from the attention. sometimes it's a crippling reminder of all i have lost.

i go on trips and have adventures with friends and i try to make new memories. we share private "vacation jokes" that we will forever be able to recall with an inside catchphrase no one else will understand. we drink wine and have a good time and usually i am okay.

but he was my partner in crime and i can't help but feel a loss that he should be here. like he's just away for some reason or another and will one day reappear beside me because that's where he belongs.

i'm currently in greece with friends, and yesterday we went to the River Styx.  yes, it is actually a real river. don't worry, i didn't know that before either.

contemplating life in the River Styx

and the river was freezing and you walk against the current through turquiose waters, trying not to lose your footing on slippery rocks.  and there are times when the water gets so deep that you need to submerge yourself and swim upstream in order to get past a particularly difficult bit.  it's hard work. but it's beautiful and it's worth it.

my friends are a little less adventurous than me, and maybe don't have the same enthusiasm for scrambling over dangerously slippery rocks.  they wanted to go back after a while. and it made me sad because had the bolshevik been there we would have gone to the end. no half measures. no adventure left incomplete. no challenge not fully accepted.

maybe we made poor decisions together. but we saw them through to the end.

we went to the end of the world together. el fin del mundo. i always thought we'd go to hell and back. but i was wrong.

a karass built for two

you may notice dear blog readers that i don't outright insult the bolshevik.  i mean, i may refer to him as an autistic robot but i'm not saying really mean things or calling him mean names.  and it is debateable if he may in fact be an autistic robot.  anyhoo, i state the facts as i see them from my perspective and i try to sort though all my emotions and feelings.  but i try to be fair.  ish.

so know that i'm saying this from the role of an unbiased reporter, rather than merely trying to be insulting.

it has come to my attention that most people didn't like the bolshevik.  of course there are the "he doesn't deserve you" and the "you can do better" type comments you get after every relationship ends. but i've been getting a lot of comments of people saying they never liked him, never understood what i saw in him, always thought he was odd and standoffish, didn't like hanging out with him, never would've wanted to spend time with him if i wasn't there, never considered him a friend, thought he was an aloof asshole, etc etc.

i have always known that the bolshevik was not everyone's cup of tea. but there are people who i thought had seen in him what i see in him, and had learned to like him. or at least have a stronger feeling than merely tolerating his presence.  but it turns out even the people who i thought were the ones who had appreciated him, really never thought too highly of him. all these people who surrounded us ... i thought they were ours, but really they were only mine.

and there is a certain satisfaction in that i guess. when facing the most devastating rejection in your life, i guess it's nice to know that you're the one everyone else liked all along. but none of that matters because they're not him. and he's the one i want to like me again. because he turned that switch and now he seems to hate me. or maybe it's just complete indifference to me. i don't know which is worse.

i had always seen a version of the bolshevik that no one else saw. with me, he was funny and goofy and clever and irreverent and adventurous and caring and kind and appreciative of all that i was. and we would have the greatest conversations where we would go off on ridiculous tangents or deeply examine the most meaningless aspects of pop culture or make up silly theories about children's gloves that change color in cold temperatures. or sometimes we'd record podcasts comparing book to movie adaptations, where we would pair each movie with a signature cocktail and then end the podcast with a review done in haiku form. only to leave each episode unpublished because podcasting is way more work than you'd think it is.

we were in a secret little club for two. and i adored every minute of it.

every. fucking. second. of. it.

there is nothing i loved more than being with the bolshevik.

in Cat's Cradle, one of my favorite novels, Kurt Vonnegut makes up this religion called Bokononism.  and in these fictitious Books of Bokonon, we are told "if you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons, that person may be a member of your karass."  and your karass is the group of people you travel through life with at one time or another, and you don't necessarily know you're in this group, but you've been brought together to serve some greater purpose. you may also never know what this purpose is, but it is all planned and it all happens "as it is supposed to happen."

and sometimes there is something called a duprass, which is a karass consisting solely of two people. "'A true duprass,' Bokonon tells us, 'cant be invaded, not even by children born of such a union." so there we were, dear blog readers, me and my bolshevik in a karass built for two. unable to be invaded by anyone or anything.

but now the boshevik has torn our duprass apart. and i am on the outside just like everyone else. now i see the calousness and the inconsideration and the affectations and the indifference and the inability to communicate.  i am like one of you now.

"bokonon tells us incidentally that members of a duprass always die within a week of each other." and maybe that explains why i feel the way i feel. because surely this is not "as it is supposed to be" and i should be back in my karass built for two.  but instead i'm on the outside, where i do not belong, and it feels like death.

thank you for being a friend

i have had moments of weakness, dear blog readers, as you well know. so knowing that the bolshevik's 40th birthday was coming up, i really struggled not to contact him. don't get me wrong, had i contacted him it would have been negative. i wouldn't be sending my love and best wishes for a prosperous year.

it probably would've looked something like this:
happy birthday.  i hope that you've gotten what you wanted because i feel like you have robbed me of all my hopes and dreams and life plans. and i would hate for that to be in vain. so yeah, i hope that this is your birthday wish come true.

see?  that would've been appropriate, right?

well i did NOT write any messages to the bolshevik since our last conversation.  if you can call that a conversation.

but sometimes when you are in need a great friend will step up for you. as the fabulous ms. fifi did when she gave a voice to the feelings i myself must not allow myself express to him anymore.

do androids dream of electric sheep? do autistic robots have the ability to feel sad?

earlier this week i had a moment of weakness dear blog readers. can you blame me? after being together almost ten years i deserve so much, and yet i've gotten so little.

i just want to ask questions and try to get answers. i want the great love of my life to treat me with decency and respect, as though this ten years meant something to him. as though he is remorseful and feels sadness that this didn't work out.  as though he feels regret that he never fought for us or tried to save all that we had. as though he feels a loss too.  as though he feels some sort of responsibility for my well-being. as though he has some concern for me in any way.

but i will never get these things. and now i must really stop trying. because the pain of trying, only to get nothing back, is so overwhelming awful. to be reminded that this is the new reality of a conversation with the one i used to refer to as "my beloved bolshevik" ... well that is possibly worse than the pain of never knowing why.

 - a "conversation" in text -

Friday: 12:02 PM

me:  was it weird to be on vacation in malaysia since it's where you proposed to me and we had so many adventures there?

me:  being in thailand without you felt so wrong.  and thinking about you in malaysia was fucking killing me.

me:  i was in paradise just wishing i was dead.

Monday 5:49 AM

me:  I gave you nearly 10 years of my life and you can't even write a text message. i don't know how you can just switch off everything so instantly and have such indifference to me and my wellbeing, but it is downright cruel.

Monday 8:50 AM

the bolshevik:  i'm sorry you didn't have a good time in thailand

me:  how was it being in malaysia, the place you proposed to me, without me there?

me:  because being on vacation without you was so painful.

me:  it's not that "i didn't have a good time" ...  it's that i'm fucking devastated

me:  so i was hoping you could answer my question

me:  was it hard, difficult, sad, to be in malaysia right after signing divorce papers knowing you proposed to me there? or did that not bother you. 

me:  because every single fucking thing in thailand reminded me of you. and it hurt like hell.

- end scene - 

and that my dear blog readers is all i fucking got.  and it's probably all i'll ever get. and it is destroying me.

it's because i am

• it's because i was sad that you cheated on me and i tried to talk to you about my feelings
• it's because i rarely stay out past midnight anymore
• it's because my underwear isn't sexy enough
• it's because even though i finished my novel i never got it published
• it's because i often get frustrated by mainland china bureaucracy
• it's because i really don't like the Captain America movies
• it's because i always have at least two currencies of coins in my wallet and often try to pay with the wrong one
• it's because i asked you to talk to a therapist
• it's because my hands and feet are always cold and then i think it's cute to try to warm myself up on you but really that's annoying.  no one wants that.
• it's because i calmed down as i grew up
• it's because i asked you to call me that night and that was asking too much
• it's because after dinner and a few post-dinner drinks i'm usually ready for bed
• it's because sometimes i am rude to customer service people if they are being unreasonable
• it's because i never successfully got a band going
• it's because i cannot walk in high heels and refuse to even try
• it's because i always have to get a popcorn at the movies even if we've already eaten and then sometimes i'll get a stomach ache because i ate too much popcorn
• it's because i called you and texted you too many times that one weekend
• it's because you lost a bunch of weight and i hadn't (but look at me now!)
• it's because i feel more comfortable wearing late 50s style one-piece bathing suits
• it's because i'm more cute and zany and eccentric and artsy and when you show a male friend my picture they won't be all "wow, she's hot" and that's what you want now
• it's because sometimes i'd send you recordings of me singing songs as a way of communicating my feelings when really i should've kept it to myself
• it's because i refuse to learn the metric system and ask you to tell me the temperature in fahrenheit
• it's because i get sick more than the average person and need to see a lot of doctors
• it's because i didn't want to spend new year's eve in the square and i wanted to drink wine on the balcony instead
• it's because i tried to make us work through our emotions
• it's because i wear too many bold-print dresses and i should dress more like one of those girls in shiny tank tops and tight black skirts ready to go out to the club
• it's because i lost my mojo

• it's because i couldn't compete with the women of shanghai who throw themselves at you
• it's because i couldn't convince you not to give up on us
• it's because i wasn't lovable enough for you to want to keep me around
• it's because i can't detach my emotions from everything like you can

• it's because i am

wherever you go, there you are

i was talking with my therapist ... yes i am seeing a therapist regularly which some people will say is a positive choice in dealing with my situation in a healthy way.  while i'm sure other people will tell me is highly inappropriate to discuss in a public place, because i will be judged on my mental defeat, and how dare i admit that i actually need help.  oh i just can't win.  where was i?

oh yeah, so i was talking with my therapist and she suggested that i need to take a break from work.  "just leave," she said, "you need a break.  go and chill out for a month in Bali or something."

while this is a lovely idea in the abstract, i couldn't help but wonder what the fuck would i do in Bali for a month by myself? this would be awful. i'd be in paradise. alone. with all my thoughts. with no one to talk to. with nothing to do. with no schedule. with no structure.  with nothing to distract me from it all. just me, myself and i thinking about how absolutely terrible everything is and how devastated i am and how i feel like my life and everything i hold dear has been destroyed.

i'd still have all that ... but in Bali.

then i remembered that i actually am going to Bali for easter, but i am going with the Fabulous Fifi so that's a bit different.  "you need to go somewhere NOW," Ms. Therapist said.  not in easter.  and then i remembered that i was in fact traveling to thailand the following week.  how this slipped my mind i really don't know. but she seemed pleased with the idea of me going to thailand for Chinese New Year.

she talked about how peaceful it would be and all the opportunities for mindfulness there would be. and she suggested that maybe my days wouldn't all blur together in such a meaningless haze if i pushed myself out of my comfort zone and did something different. maybe try rock climbing.

fine. i am a risk-taker, as they say. these are all good ideas. in my typical overzealous-bordering-on-OCD fashion, i will try all these things. i'll do the yoga and the rock climbing and the stand-up paddle boarding and the thai boxing and i'll take time out each day to do short meditations in a place of natural beauty.

i'll do all the stuff. because dear blog readers despite whatever you might think, i am actually doing all the right things.

so here i am in thailand. i am here. but i'm still me. the sad reality is that wherever you go, you're still with yourself. that's the only person you can never escape.

me pretending to be okay in Krabi

so i'm here and it's the first time i'm on vacation without the Bolshevik. and i know he's on vacation too, but without me. and that's how it'll be from no on. forever. that's how he wants it. everything reminds me of him: motorbikes, crab legs, beach-front tattoo parlors, sunblock, boat rides, street food, bars that sell low-quality cocktails out of plastic buckets, foot massages ... every single thing brings up memories of him and our adventures together. and it's killing me.

and where is he?  he's in malaysia.  he decided to go to the first asian country we ever visited.  where we climbed up hundreds of stairs to see buddhist shrines and we fed monkeys and we trekked through the jungle to see the largest flower and we ate fresh strawberries from a mountainside farm.  where we went to a tropical island and ate dinner at a little seafood shack on the beach and he asked me to marry him.

he. went. on. vacation. to. the. place. where. he. proposed. to. me. let that sink in dear blog readers.  because it fucking haunts me daily.

and i'm here crying because i did one of those fish foot spas and we used to do that together. meanwhile he is traipsing around a country full of our best memories without a care in the world.  that's how few fucks he gives about me and about what we had.

i'm sorry i'm not all sunshine and rainbows

"If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels. If you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it."

-Lemony Snicket

yeah so i'm sorry i can't be all sunshine and rainbows and happy little elves in an enchanted forest for you. but was i ever?

i've always thought from the age of about 14 to 29 i was a bit out of my mind. like, not actually out of my mind, but just a bit unhinged like a crazed teenager. i could never be calm or just be satisfied or just be present. there was a neurotic anxiety burning within me that could never quite be put out.

and then i met the bolshevik. and i was able to let go of all that. i could finally calm down and "just be." it was like i finally had some peace within me.

maybe you don't really know me. maybe you think you know me, but you've only known this one side of me. like plato's allegory of the cave, you thought that was all there was, but there was more to the shadows than you thought. i'm sorry to disappoint you.

and yeah, i just alluded to plato. i'm fucking smart.

the person you knew was content. she had a sense of fulfillment. she was happy and often reflected that life was pretty good and that she really didn't want or need much more. she was living the life she wanted.  in fact, she often thought she was living a life that was way better than any life she could've imagined for herself. and she knew that was a pretty awesome situation to be in.

but that's all gone.  and i'm sorry if that's difficult for you.

so you see me at the staff meeting and i'm all bubbly telling you about some book-themed activity i'm doing, or some training i'm leading.  and i smile and can project my voice above the auditorium and i say something clever and everyone thinks i'm fine. i'm just a little ball of energy! maybe it's charming. maybe it's annoying. but no one complains. people like that girl.

but that is now a facade. it's a facade i put on every day so i can pretend to function and sometimes i get so busy and distracted that for a brief moment i can even convince myself it's real. i'm that good.

but it's not real.

and if that's the story you want to read, then read no further.  because this obviously isn't the story for you.

"And if you liked mischief, a grand old time, or trophies,  you would know which book to read, and you could throw the rest of them away. [...] You should know that the story that follows will be very different from the story of Gary or Emily or the family of cunning little chipmunks [...] the main difference being the amount of unhappiness, horror, and despair. [...] So if you wish to avoid an unpleasant story you had best put this book down." 

- Lemony Snicket, from The Miserable Mill 

standing with a stranger

this all has happened at lightning fast speed ... the condoms, the 54 hour disappearance, the break-up e-mail, the shanghai talk, and then i'm in a hong kong court house signing papers to destroy the one thing that is most precious to me.

the bolshevik and i stand side by side on lines and hand in our papers and then a person behind a window hands them back with corrections that need to be made. over and over again for three hours.

why does the bolshevik have a full middle name on his passport but only a middle initial on our marriage certificate? this is unacceptable to the bureaucracy of the court workers.

they question if he's really the same person. i question that myself.  

he fills out an affidavit explaining how middle initials work in the united states. he finds every place where his name is mentioned in the pages upon pages of documents.  then he has to write "also known as" with his super confusing alias which is just his exact same name but with a middle initial.

we wait on more lines and fill out more papers. we're sent to different windows and more lines and more papers.

the whole time he stands there like i am nothing to him. i am no one. i am not the former love of his life. i am not his former partner in crime. i am of no consequence to him anymore. i am nothing but a burden he is finally ridding himself of.  as though i had somehow attached myself to him unfairly, like a tick he's finally able to burn off.

i use the time to ask questions for any hope of closure or some sort of explanation that makes sense. i get one word answers and useless platitudes.

waiting at a window, an elderly chinese man tries to interrupt and cut ahead of us as the woman behind the counter is explaining to us that a judge will contact us in 30 days. the elderly man hovers way too close to me, shoves his arm in front of my face and waves a form at the woman to get her attention. i turn to him and tell him he needs to "back the fuck up." he pretends not to understand what i am saying, but i think my tone is quite clear regardless of linguistic differences.

when it's all over i deliver the final lines i've rehearsed in my head:

i don't understand why you're doing this

i'm the only person in this world who loves you, who you confide in, who you even talk to

and you're pushing me away

so now you'll go back to your apartment surrounded by your air jordans

and you'll hang out with work acquaintances you don't really like that much

and you'll go out to clubs you don't actually enjoy

and that'll be your life now

that's what you want

well i hope that works out for you

i ask him if he has anything to say, and he tells me he's already said it all.  but he's said nothing.

and then we walk away.