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.

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.

girl you better try to have fun no matter what you do

but he's a fool.

everyone tells me how i'm doing so great. "you're doing so great!" they say. "i can't believe how composed you are!" they tell me "i can't believe how calm you seem!" or "i'm so impressed you're at work!"

and then i roll my eyes and think about how the hours would stretch out before me endlessly if i chose to stay home.  how it would be the worst form of torture to be in my apartment alone with nothing but the thoughts and questions of "how the fuck did this happen?" swirling in my head, and all the memories of 9+ years with The Bolshevik Who Shall Not Be Named haunting me.  so yeah, i'll be at work.  it's the only stable thing i have.  what else would i do?

my beloved mother once told me about a time when she hurt her knee and her doctor told her she had to walk with a cane.  not because she actually needed a cane, but to signal to everyone else that she was having a physical issue and that they needed to respond accordingly, treat her with extra special care.

i live my life without canes.

you will never see me cry.  you will never see me break down hysterically wailing with sorrow. you will never see me huddled in a corner clasping onto a bottle of booze while listening to portishead. you will never see the girl behind the curtain. i will hide this from you at all costs.

i am out in the fresh air enjoying a hike?

why? i have no fucking idea why.

the other day i went on a hike with two friends. it was beautiful and picturesque and i cried to myself when they weren't looking. and afterward we had a luxurious multi-course lunch at a seaside restaurant with wine and i even ate dessert.  and they took photos and said it was the best day ever. "BDE!" they said. and as i finished a glass of port and looked out at the rocky islands out in the ocean i thought to myself that by any normal standard this really was the best day ever. but for me it was actually just an exercise in distraction. it was just something for me to do until it was time to do the next thing and then the next thing until i finally get to take a sleeping pill and go to bed.

so outwardly i am doing great. just fucking great. i do all the "right" things, just like i'm supposed to. i am eating healthy (now that i can keep food down) and i am exercising every day and i go to work and i obsessively schedule activities for every waking moment outside of work so i never have to be alone with my own thoughts. and then eventually i tucker myself out until it's a reasonable hour and i finally get to go to bed and it can all be over for a while. rinse. repeat.

until one of these day when i can actually enjoy things again.

I've reached my "ideal weight" and so can you!

Hey ladies!  Let me tell you about an awesome new fad in weight loss!  It's called the Divorce Diet! Now, just like juicing and raw foods diets, there is some prep work that you have to do ahead of time before you can get started.  But luckily no fancy equipment or specials meals need to be purchased!

First, get yourself into a long-term loving relationship with a partner you trust who you feel has the potential to be your life-long companion.

Then be with this person for many years, maybe even a decade, living together, planning out your futures together, and enjoying all the great shared moments that your entwined lives have to offer.  Allow yourself to believe you have found "the one."

If possible, pick someone emotionally stunted.  This will come in handy later.

Then, when you least expect it (if you've made a proper emotionally stunted choice in partners) this person will out of nowhere tell you that they have cheated on you and that even though it was only once they don't feel like they are "in love with you" anymore.  And the emotional work of cleaning up the mess they made is just too hard and it's easier to just end it.  There will also be some contradictions like them telling you they love you but they don't ever want to see you again, but they deeply care about you, but could you just go cry over there because it's making them a smidge uncomfortable. The more contractions the better really, because the less it makes sense, the more you will suffer.

And that is when the weight loss magic will happen!  You will feel nauseous all the time.  Then, when thinking of these nonsensical contradictions or picturing infidelities, you will feel even extra nauseous.  You won't want to eat any food, even though you love food!  It's perfect!  And when you do eat food, you most likely will vomit soon after.  You may find that things that previously brought you joy, like a nice glass of red wine with dinner, will also leave you vomiting.  For those with gag reflexes, even mundane activities like brushing your teeth or trying to swallow the sleeping pills your psychiatrist prescribed you will also lead to vomiting.

And then you can watch the pounds just melt off!

You may be asking yourself, "Self ... what happens if I run out of food in my system and my stomach is completely empty?"  Well don't worry, there's always bile!  Bile be gone!  I'm sure you don't need it anyway!

So get going girl, and reach that ideally emaciated you!

Side effects may include but are not limited to: dizziness, fainting spells, hoarseness or sore throats, coughing, frequent heartburn, reflux, anemia, anorexia, complete shut down of your immune system, and possible death.

bye bye bolshevik

let's just pretend i've been here the entire time ...

it is with great sadness and true despair that i admit to you, dear blog readers, that my beloved bolshevik is leaving me.  says he's not "in love" with me anymore.  says if he met me now he'd only want me as a "best friend."

well what the fuck does that mean?

i have resigned myself to never contact him again so i cannot ask all these burning follow-up questions that have popped into my mind since that fateful saturday when he told me he doesn't want me anymore.

what does it mean to be "in love" with someone you've been with nearly a decade?  certainly we're not in those beginning stages of mad passionate love that feels almost like being on drugs.  no.  that only lasts a few months.  are we teammates and best friends and lovers and partners in crime?  i thought so.  isn't that what long term love is?  but i guess he wants the fireworks show.

if he met me now i'd only be a "best friend" contender?  what more could he possibly be looking for? or maybe it's that he is looking for less ... someone who expects less from him, someone who is less to live up to, someone who is less successful, someone who will settle for less emotional support.  someone who is lesser than me.  someone who will be less work.

i'm fucking work now??

how do you cope when the person you love grows into someone else?  we used to make fun of the expat guys in the foreign countries ... the ones who went out to the club and picked up an "exotic local girl" who didn't speak english and god forbid they had learned her language.  no need to impress, no need for being clever, no need to put the effort in ... no need for any work.

and in china no less, where porcelain doll types will "accidentally" drop something at his feet and then bend over to retrieve it and all he needs to do is stand there.  (actual real-life example)

pathetic.

is that who he has become?  how is that possible?  how could my beloved bolshevik have turned into that type of vapid asshole?

what happened to the freaky freezy principle?

a jew (or two) in Peru

(subject headings: jewishness)

as jews we often blow our wad too early.  and by that i mean that due to the jewish calendar an 8-day holiday (EIGHT DAYS!) often comes and goes long before christmas eve and christmas are actually celebrated, making the holiday season a bit of a let-down.  so maybe i waited to post this hanukkah story for dramatic timing ... or maybe it's late due to laziness.  you decide!

although i have often heard that there is a jewish community here in lima, i have not seen much evidence of it.  or any.  so it was with great trepidation that i began my quest for a menorah.  now, in new york you can pretty much buy a menorah anywhere: supermarket, chain-store pharmacy, judaica shop, etc.  but here i have seen no sign of them.

after a quick google search i found a very short list of synagogues in town, the first one located in my neighborhood.  i am now the proud owner of an iPhone, so i tried to find it using the maps app which they recently upgraded and turned completely useless.  after much fruitless searching and walking in circles, i realized i could use my phone to call the synagogue and just ask them where they are located.  ah, technology!

the conversation went something like this:
me: estoy buscando para una menora.  ¿vende menoras?
la señora: no, no vendemos menoras aqui.
me: ¿en serio?   donde puedo comprarla?  
(note that i am now using direct objects in spanish.  say what?!)
la señora: nadie vende menoras en lima.  necesita comprarla afueras.
me: ¿en serio?  donde compraste sus menoras?
la señora: afueras de Lima.

seriously? i could not accept that all menorahs in Lima, even those for use in a temple, were being brought in from outside of the city.  so i used my high tech phone to call the second (and penultimate) synagogue on my list.  i was then informed that they did in fact sell menorahs, and i was asked what kind of menorah i wanted!  now, at the time i didn't have much cash on me and not wanting to invest a huge amount of money, i told her i wanted a very simple, basic, cheap menorah.  (this information comes back later.  in the biz we call this foreshadowing)

this synagogue happened to be located in a different neighborhood so i had to take a cab there, dwindling my already low supply of cash.  (have i ever mentioned the ridiculousness of getting effectivo here?  next blog post!)

so i arrived in the approximate vicinity, and it really didn't look like there is a synagogue anywhere around.  however, when i looked across the street i saw not one but TWO oversized menorahs!  (did they get them here in Lima?)  proof that there were jews nearby!

i searched for the address and all i saw was the shady industrial door shown here.  next to the door was a large bullet-proof glass window with a metal security drawer and a small call-box.  i was about to skulk away in fear and then i noticed that there was a very utilitarian looking mezuzah affixed to the door.  another clue!

i push the little call button and have a lovely little awkward conversation:
me: ¿hola?
security guard:  ¿quien es?
me: soy señorita dewey decimal.  quiero comprar una menora.

they buzzed me into a second very industrial looking room with a second bullet proof glass window and a second metal security drawer.  but lo and behold inside the metal drawer is a yamulke!  then they buzzed me through a second door and i walk into a charming little courtyard.  who would've thought?

then a nice orthodox man approached me and told me that the shop woman would be here momentarily. while i was waiting he seemed very excited to ask me loads of questions: where do i work?  why am i here in peru?  what part of new york am i from?  am i married?  do i have children?  really, am i sure i don't have children?  and i'm married?  but without children?

he had that look in his eyes that told me that cute young jewish women don't stumble in here uninvited all that often.  i knew i had to be very cautious not to give up too much information.  thankfully the shop woman arrived before i became a reluctant congregation member (i am reform! i belong to no congregation!)

so i buy my menorah and luckily i remembered to also ask for candles.  she then handed me this box of velas de januca with a large Radioshack logo. strange. but whatevs. but when she rang me up i realized that i had exactly enough effectivo to pay for both candles and menorah.

but how would i get my taxi home?
as i was haggling with the tax driver i was nervous that i wouldn't have enough coins to get me home.  as i was adding up my change i thought it would only add to 1 sol ... but then, as i was adding it up, i had 8 soles!  enough for my taxi ride!  it was a hanukkah miracle!

¡feliz januca a todos!

awesome library lessons

(subject headings: books, dewey decimal system, library lessons)

oh my poor forsaken blog readers, how i have ignored you.  well, i won't apologize because i've actually been quite busy.

you see, at my lovely new school  all the teachers want to bring their students to the library.  it creates a huge amount of work for me.  when i was doing my observation hours at a school library in brooklyn, the librarian had to hound the teachers to bring their classes to the library, begging them to come in.  and in the 30 hours that i was there, i never saw one library lesson taught.  i have to say, it was rather boring.

so imagine my surprise when teachers are just knocking down my door (i don't actually have a door, but you get what i mean), knocking down my door to schedule library visits.  i actually do not have enough time in the day to schedule them all.  so needless to say, it's been chaotically busy trying to plan all these said lessons and then also do them.

you might be asking yourself, "self, i wonder what kinds of amazing clever craftiness miss dewey decimal has brought to south america?"  well, i will be happy to tell you.

so, our school has this curriculum which i need to follow and incorporate into all my lessons.  sometimes this is easy, and other times it doesn't quite fit and i find myself walking a strange sort of tight-rope between teaching the curriculum and being a librarian/teacher.   but as i go on i am realizing more and more that i must keep my identity as a librarian.  that is what i'm good at, after all.

so the first graders are doing a unit on how we express ourselves using art.  this was an easy fit, and i used it as an opportunity to talk about picture book illustrators.  first, we have been reading a different picture book each week, and talking about the illustrations.  at the end of the unit we are going to vote on which book has the best illustrations.  fun!

but then the other day i did a lesson on wordless picture books that turned out to be pretty awesome.  we looked at the book Sector 7 by David Wiesner, which tells the whimsical story of ... wait ... spoiler alert!  ok ... it tells the whimsical story of a boy who goes on a field trip to the Empire State Building and then is whisked off to a magical place where clouds are created and then wreaks havoc, blah blah blah, chaos ensues.  so we go through the story, discussing what we see on each page.  then when the story is over, i ask the students to tell me the story in order, so that we can write words for the book.  (as i said, it is a wordless picture book.  please pay attention to these sorts of details).  anyway, it turned out to be really cool.  and together we wrote an excellent version of Sector 7.

moving on ... then the second graders are doing a unit about organizational systems and processes.  mostly they are examining different processes, for example how a tree becomes paper or how milk becomes ice cream.  (i think i have mentioned my love of this video from Mr. Rogers about how crayons are made)

anyway, i took this opportunity to try to explain how we organize things in the library.  i have noticed that the children have a rough time finding things in the library.

first we learned about fiction and how we organize fiction by the authors last name.  so i put sticky notes on the children with the first three letters of their last name, and asked them to put themselves in alphabetical order. they were pretty good at that, but then i gave them a little scavenger hunt to see if they could use alphabetical order to find 3 different picture books.  we had mixed results with that one.


then the next class i explained about how we use numbers to organize non-fiction (numbers=non-fiction!)  and then after going through what the different numbers mean, i gave them a challenge.  i gave them about 40 or 50 pictures that needed to be organized and glued onto a dewey decimal chart. now, i will admit that after i had committed to doing this lesson i quickly began to doubt the ability of 2nd graders to accomplish this task.  it's pretty hard, no?  but i was amazed, AMAZED, that they were able to do it.  and within the time frame of a library lesson!  at one point we had a few pictures out of order and one child shouted out, "trains belong in 600!"

ah, it warms my heart.

and that is what has been going on here.

my degree is not useless OR suck it forbes magazine

(subject heading: higher education)


so as we were getting picked up from the airport in Lima by representatives of the school, we met one of the other teachers who was newly hired.  we got to chatting and he said that he was a school counselor.  not a guidance counselor, but a mental health type counselor.  now, the state of the US economy and educational system has been failing and it seems that anyone who is not an outright teacher is at risk for losing their job (or never ever being hired somewhere new), so i asked this counselor, "is it difficult to get jobs as a school counselor in an international school?"  because this whole international school thing is new to me.  and he sort snickered and proudly told me that school counselors are really sought after.  "school counselors, high school math teachers, and librarians," he said, "those are the positions that are most in demand."

librarians?!  say what?  (please read: "you like me, you really like me!")

which brings me to this highly offensive article from forbes about the best and worst masters degrees for getting jobs.  so it's no surprise that the "best masters degrees" to get are in computers, sciences, medical professions, etc.  pretty much, it was a long list of things that i would never be interested in.  even if i sold my soul and tried to enter one of these fields despite my complete lack of interest and passion, i still can't even fathom how i could possibly pull it off.

and what was the number one worst masters degree to get?  library science of course!  well, what's number two then?  surely every single one of my interests wouldn't be the worst possible masters degree to get, right?  drumroll please .... number two is english!  of course!  that's what my undergrad is in!  and i am a non-paid unpublished writer!  okay, i can't go 0 for 3 can i?  and number 3 is .... music!  ah yes, music, that was the degree i entered college for before i switched to english.  damned.  certainly number 4 must be something i would never be interested in, like basket weaving or criminal justice.  c'mon ... fingers crossed number 4 is basket weaving .... no, it's education!  which i recently went back to school for so i could be a certified school media specialist.  yay!  every one of my major interests that shapes who i am has been deemed useless by forbes magazine!

what is interesting is that the magazine seems to only rate the validity of a masters degree by salary and the potential for job growth in the future.  so something like being a librarian or a music teacher which will probably pay an okay salary and give you good benefits and hopefully the type of job satisfaction where you go home and feel that you've helped shape lives, has no value in their evaluating rubric.

and yet here i am, scouted out by an international school, flight paid for, apartment provided, salary very reasonable, employed in a job that i find stimulating and satisfying.

so suck it forbes ... my degree is not the worst.  not at all.

xoxo
miss dewey d.

p.s.  how's the publishing industry treating you right now?

Honeymoon adventures part 3: more than just heads

(subject headings: "honeymoon," "easter island," "excursions," "big holes")

There are three main tours you can take on the island, which leads me to wonder ... Are there three seperate tours worth of sights on the island, or have they strategically divided the three main interesting sights into three different tours that are then pumped up with filler activities so that you have to do all three tours if you want to see the three interesting things? I believe it is the latter.

the bolshevik in front of una vetana

So after having done one full-day tour, which was very good, we decided to go it alone and we rented a car for the day. Turns out those other two tours are unnecessary if you're willing to do some daring feats without supervision. First, we explored some random caves without flashlights. Tour guides have flashlights. We don't need no sticking flashlights! (this is my ego talking, we really could've used some flashlights)

The first cave was called "dos ventanas" which means two windows. We had no idea what this meant as far as caving goes, but nevertheless we entered a big whole in the ground without any equipment or knowledge about what was inside. Sometimes I'm amazed we don't get injured more. Anyway, I used the flash of my camera to guide us through the dark, which gave a sort of jolting strobe light effect. Seizure sufferers would not have been happy. And after banging around in the dark for a while, we reach a fork in the cave and randomly choose one direction. Then we see light up ahead and we realize that the cave ends in the center of a cliff with a huge drop into the rocky ocean. Cool! And totally dangerous! This must be one of the "dos ventanas.". We explore the other fork and it is a second, equally cool, drop off into the ocean. We took a gazillion pictures, but it's not easy to capture it.

The second cave we explored was quite long, maybe a 15 minute walk through the dark. It was here that my camera battery died. Apparently, using your camera as a flashlight really uses up the battery very quickly. Luckily, we we able to find our way to a hole where you could climb out. Not sure how well we would have retraced our steps. And then of course once we were back outside we had to figure out where we were and where we had left the car.

But I think one of the most impressive things we saw was the giant crater. We were going to skip the crater entirely after we had been shown a rather inferior crater on our tour that really just looked like a lake. But we saw a picture of this superior crater in the tourist office, and thought it looked worthwhile.
 

Obviously Easter Island has the head thing going for it, but they really need to start marketing this crater! It was phenomenal! I have never seen anything like it, and I have seen a fair amount of stuff. The sides of the crater were crazy steep, and there were all these cows hanging around as though grazing by an enormous crater is totally normal for them, which I guess it is. Also, the crater is right by the ocean, which is odd because the meteor or whatever that caused it was only a few feet from breaking right through to the ocean, and then there would be no crater. Actually, you could see two coasts of the island from the crater, so it really was a very precise hit on the meteor's part.

honeymoon!

After taking about a hundred pictures of the crater, we were satisfied that we had seen all the sights of the island, and did not need to employ the help of any guides.

So what do we learn from this?
1. Easter Island = more than just heads.
2. Tour guides = often unnecessary.
3. Flashlights = good to have with you.

Honeymoon adventures part 2: here a head, there a head ...

(subject headings: "honeymoon," "easter island," "excursions," "making up stuff," "big headed statues")

these heads are all located in a quarry where they believe
most of the statues were carved.  they carved the statues
laying down, and then somehow moved them to other
parts of the island.  no one is sure how they were moved.
a researched dug one these head up and found that the
entire body was still intact below,
but then they re-buried them.

This is a small island, and there are a lot of heads on it. Not just heads though, there are full statues too. In fact, there is only one area that is just heads. we found out that actually those statues do have full bodies they've just been slowly buried over the years by the mountain eroding.

I would like to say that I've learned many things about the origins of these statues ... But I haven't. 

As usual I have only half listened to our tour guide and will therefore pass on half truths and conjecture and pretend it is fact. And who are you to question it? Have you been to Easter Island? Yeah, I didn't think so.

So you'll just have to believe whatever I say. I am a librarian after all, a credible source of information. Ironic, no?

these 15 moai statues were reconstructed after a
tsunami.  large japanese cranes were brought in
to move them.  some of them had been dragged
miles away from their original site.  also, one of these
statues went "on tour" and was in times square!

honeymoon adventures part 1: business class travelers

(subject headings: "business class," "easter island," "honeymoon")

we are classy ... business classy! so for a long time the only thing I knew about our honeymoon were the following clues ...
 1. there are beaches, and people could relax near these beaches even though the weather itself would not be "beachy."
 2. the destination is remote, and while there are activities and things to see, it is not inundated with activities.
 3. the flight is long and would require business class (maybe require is a strong word, but a business class flight would be "worth it")

so I wondered ... how long can you make it at an airport without seeing evidence of where you are going? can you make it all the way to the gate? can you get to the gate and then not look at the little sign saying the time and destination of your flight? can you put your hands over your ears and go "la la la la ...i'm not listening!" while flight attendants announce that you are on the flight to ...... please listen closely as we explain the various safety features of the flight? because I threatened the bolshevik with this.

but it didn't get to that, luckily as it may have resulted in me getting kicked off the plane... the proverbial jig was up at check-in. the bolshevik, a notorious mumbler, was using hushed tones to tell the man at the counter where we were going, while I stood several feet away pretending to fuss with the luggage, but not so much so as to arouse suspicion. it's a delicate balance.

and that's when I heard it, the man behind the counter finally deciphering the bolshevik's whispers, "oh, you mean Easter Island!"

so there you have it, it's difficult to get beyond check-in without finding out where you're going.

and then I remembered that someone at the wedding had told me we were going to Easter Island, but in the wedding haze of excitement I had forgotten immediately.

moving on ... once we got past security we were able to go in a VIP lounge for business classy people. we're special! the VIP lounge was amazing! there was a buffet, and a fancy orange juice squeezer, and an OPEN BAR! all free! and there were newspapers and a TV and a nap room and fancy arm chairs ... oh it incredible. our flight was supposed to leave at 1am, and it was delayed an hour, but I didn't even mind because the business lounge was so lovely.

when we got on the plane not one but two flight attendents introduced themselves to us and explained that they were there to help us. then they brought us champagne so we could sip it while the steerage passengers walked by. you need to put those people in their place quickly.

after takeoff we reclined our seats into beds and quickly fell asleep. Then one of our flight attendents woke us up to tell us how important eating dinner is, it's a long flight after all and we'll need our strength in the morning. so we selected wine from a wine list and got warm rolls and breadsticks, and then a large adult-sized meal with dessert.

and then we were so full that we reclined our seats into beds, pulled up our cozy comforters and fell faaaaast asleep.

I'm ruined now ... I don't know how I'll ever fly with the commoners again.