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.

the stuff of nightmares

in another lifetime, i had met a handsome ne'er-do-well in college ... i moved in with him too quickly, and thought everything he did was golden. turns out he was a compulsive liar and an alcoholic, but i only realized that after the fact. after being together four years he proposed, but luckily i had the good sense to say no. but during that four years i was blindly in love with the handsome ne'er-do-well. and due to my daddy issues, which i will not go into here, my biggest fear was that the handsome ne'er-do-well wouldn't love me back.

throughout the four years i had one recurring nightmare. the nightmare took many strange forms and transpired in various vivid scenarios, but each time it was the same ... one day the handsome ne'er-do-well would stop loving me for no reason at all, and i'd be left in the hellish aftermath of never understanding what happened, and not knowing how to "get him back."

and when i met the bolshevik it was the same thing. same nightmare, but recurring a bit less often.  maybe it was because i was older and stronger and more confident in myself. and of course i was so confident in this one golden thread that linked the bolshevik and i together.  because i knew one thing and one thing only: that the bolshevik adored me and would never hurt me. and this thread would just go one forever, leading us through our lives together.

sometimes the nightmare would be that the bolshevik met someone else and had instantly decided to be with that woman instead of me. this of course would be explained to me very matter-of-factly ... "oh hey ms. dewey decimal, meet so-and-so.  she's really awesome so i'm just going to be with her now ... why are you so upset? what's your problem?" so that was one scenario in my nightmares.

the other scenario was much more cruel ... the dream would begin and i was in this reality where the bolshevik had already explained to me that he didn't want to be with me anymore. but he wouldn't have a reason. he would just be done. and i'd be left roaming this dream world broken apart, not understanding how he could just turn on a dime and stop loving me.

of course then i would wake up and realize that it was all a nightmare and that it's impossible for people to just instantly stop loving you.

except this time.

because this time the nightmare that has haunted me my entire adult life has quite literally come true. i throw the bolsheviks lifelines so that at any time he could grab onto one and be led back to me. even the morning in family court when he flew to hong kong to dissolve our marriage, i gave him one last chance to tell me he loves me and that this is all some awful mistake.  but he never wants the lifeline.

and now i am left roaming this surreal dreamscape, completely broken and empty inside, not understanding how the bolshevik could just turn on a dime and stop loving me.  but this time it's actually real.

say my name bitch

Dear Facebook,
when i got married and changed my Facebook status to "married," Facebook automatically added the last name "bolshevik" to my profile URL without my permission.  I have never been Ms. Dewey Decimal Bolshevik.  i am Ms. Dewey fucking Decimal.  and i do not appreciate having another person's name attached to my name.  crazy as it might sound, i consider myself to be my own full individual person. and this was NOT done to the bolshevik's profile, only to mine.  god forbid a man gets bogged down with being attached to a woman!

now i am getting divorced and I have changed my Facebook status to "divorced" and yet "bolshevik," the name of the man who is so heartlessly leaving me, is still in the URL of my profile page.

i want this removed immediately.  it never should have been added in the first place, and it absolutely should not be there now.  Facebook should not be making decisions about which last names women should be using.

Sincerely,
Ms. Dewey Decimal.

i'm just waiting ... an-ti-ci-pating

a brief history of waiting for the bolshevik

6 hours - i was looking for a scissors so i could trim our passport photos to the right size when i found the condoms in his drawer.  the same drawer he had stashed his wedding ring in.  he was at work, so i texted him and asked him for an explanation even though i knew there was nothing he could say to explain this.  he wrote back, "let's talk tonight."  and then i drank half a bottle of whisky. and i waited.

54 hours - we had said we were going to work it out, try harder, see each other more, go to couples counseling.  "you're worth fighting for," he had said.  back in hong kong for a week before school started, no one else was back yet so i was getting sad and lonely thinking about the state of things.  i texted him on a Friday morning that i was feeling really blue and needed some TLC.  i asked him to call me after work. he said he would. friday passes.  i wonder if he's on a bender.  saturday morning comes and goes and i wonder if he's at the apartment of another woman.   saturday afternoon passes and any bender should be over but he still isn't answering my calls or responding to my texts.  by saturday evening i'm convinced something has actually happened to him.  sunday morning i send someone over to his apartment to confirm the bolshevik is alive, and it turns out he is choosing not to talk to me.  i text and call and try to find out what the hell is happening but nothing.  then around 5pm i receive an email from Apple telling me i am no longer a part of the bolshevik's Apple Family Sharing Plan.  so to be fair, the bolshevik first broached the "divorce talk" through Apple.  fucking Apple.  then five minutes later the bolshevik emails me himself and says he doesn't want to be married to me anymore.  doesn't want to be a team.  it's too hard.  he can't do it anymore.  doesn't want to.

during this 54 hour period i drink half a bottle of champagne, six whiskeys on the rocks, and four glasses of malbec.

then i send an expletive filled text telling the bolshevik to be a man and tell me this to my face, because he still won't answer my calls.

25 hours is how long i have to wait to talk to the bolshevik about his batshit crazy email because talking to me that evening was too much for him.  i drink several more glasses of wine. and i wait. the following day is my first day back at work after the holidays and i have to answer questions like "how was your xmas break?  you and the bolshevik go somewhere special?"  i try to make it through the day but i am empty inside.  and i wait.

4.5 days - i convince the bolshevik to see me the next weekend to talk things out.  we can work this out, i say.  he is just really stressed and confused and couldn't possibly mean what he is saying.  we're so great together.  he can't possibly let that go.  i wait 4 days to fly to shanghai to see him.  i stay at a friend's place.  i want to come over straight away in the morning but he's hungover and asks me if i can wait until 2pm.  i tell him i will wait no longer than noon.

26 hours is how long i have to stay in shanghai after finding out that my marriage is over.  he doesn't want to try.  and i cry and i wait to go home, hoping never to return to the mainland again because it's all tainted with memories of him.

5 days - is how long i have to wait for the results of my extensive STD screening.

8 hours after i text him i am graced with a phone call ... actions have consequences but not any consequences that the bolshevik is willing to own up to.

11 days ... so he truly doesn't love me anymore?  well if that's the case then put me out of my misery. 11 days ago the bolshevik agreed to meet me in a hong kong court house so we can amicably dissolve our marriage.  11 days later he confirms that he really is going through with this.

4 days until "D-Day" ... it's weird to be waiting around for someone to divorce you.  especially when you're still deeply in love with that person and desperately wish you could stay married to him. but he's shown so little compassion for me.  such little concern for my feelings or my well-being. then he says he cares so deeply about me, but none of his actions through this process have been caring at all.  is he purposefully trying to torture me?  is it his plan to be as horrible to me as possible so i won't want him back?  or is he just so oblivious to the emotions of others that he doesn't see the purgatory he continually puts me in?

maybe i'll never know.  all i can do it wait.