The road diverged...

Easter 2016 meant going home.

I sat in my pew today at Rix Mills Presbyterian Church. I sat by my mother and father and sister, just as I did as a child. My girls took part in the Sunrise Service. I said "debtors" instead of "trespasses" and didn't have to think hard about the next line.

It's home. It really is. Walking into church, I see my grandmother at every turn. I see faces of family-and neighbors so close that we all feel like family.

But I also see my wedding. And I see memories that I can't erase-that I don't want to erase. But I don't want to be awash in them either.

It's hard.

Finding my seat at the Methodist church has not been easy either. Finding our place to sit, figuring out how to sing (use the words on the screen, not the hymn books), even figuring out which service suits us best-it's the earlier one-all of that has been a bit uncomfortable, like trying on clothes that are pretty but don't exactly fit like yoga pants.

I know in my heart that God doesn't care which church I attend.

This Lenten season I have focused myself on Jesus' words. "Oh God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I know, I have been taught the lesson many times that Jesus was quoting the psalm, that the psalm ends in victory for Jesus, and that ultimately he was proclaiming victory on the cross.

But for me, this year, it was just about the first part. About feeling abandoned. For me this year, that was how I approached Jesus. Alone and abandoned. I don't pretend to know how human Jesus was. The Gospels each paint a different picture for a reason. But for me this year, I needed a human Jesus. Hanging from a cross, in such pain because of nothing that he did, but in pain nonetheless.

Easter, of course, is about life. Is about new beginnings. I have had a weekend full of pivots, full of seeing my life as it's moving forward and away from such overwhelming grief. I have seen the cusp of new chapters to be written. I am grateful. I am scared. I am completely and totally unsure of everything, and yet somehow sure that that is as it should be.

Out of the ashes...

Many people have been asking me lately about my new job. Allow me to say I love it. Love it. I kind of pinch myself everyday that I get to go to work in the town that I love, near to my girls, with such genuinely funny and warm people. I am so amazed that this is my life.

It is a life that I could not have had if Nick had left me sooner. I also realize it is a life I would not have had he not left at all. Ultimately I truly am grateful that something so wretched led me to something that I am enjoying so much.

Not everyday of course. Some days I miss my old life. It's hard to explain and put into words. Because looking back on the past two years of my life, I see so many things that should have been a wake up call, that should have made me realize that the distance that had crept into Nick's heart could not be breached by my just wishing and hoping it so. I believed for such a long time that even though Nick could not remember so many important, life changing events in our life, it was okay, because I would remember them for him. I have a memory rather like an elephant. Which can be useful but hurtful. I have learned throughout my life to pretend sometimes to forget things, trivial things that don't matter, because people look at you weird when you talk about a commercial for Snickers that was on 12 years ago.

Remembering now hurts, of course. And I can't quite figure out how to forget. But I am working on remembering the good and smiling, and remembering the bad and facing that it was bad. And that doesn't mean it was all bad. Somehow that has been such a roadblock for me. Saying that I'm glad to not be living with tension does not mean that there was tension all the time. Saying that I'm able to imagine being happier with someone else does not mean that I wasn't happy in my marriage.

In nine months time I have gotten two jobs, met many amazing new friends, reconnected with some old friends, managed to find at least a small voice to speak to my truth. It feels hard, standing here with empty hands, and yet feeling completely changed.

I have always believed that things happen for a reason. I know that everything that has happened will led me to something better. I know that walking through fire leads to an emergence of something beautiful, something changed, something more than what it began as. I know that in my head. It's, of course, much harder in my heart.

I told Nick several months ago that I feel like someone who lost their legs and everyone just keeps saying, forget you had legs. Just move on. It's hard to just let go of the life that you had, of the faith and trust that you had, and accept that it was misplaced. I still feel a lot like a fool, like everyone looks at me like I was that girl that thought that she had it all and it was all just a great big lie.

Learning to live with the disappointment in myself is the hardest part of all of this. I don't trust my own judgment anymore.

But...tomorrow I go to work. To a job that I never dreamed I would have. I work on these abs and these arms and believe that I am making progress. I drown in my girls, in their never ending love for their messy, sad mother. I pray and I hope and I try to have faith. And maybe, just maybe, one day that faith will be rewarded. I will hope, Joy Elizabeth. I will hope.

Ode to a butterfly...

So...good things have happened.

I have a new job that I love. I'm feeling genuinely happy for the first time in nine months. I'm ridiculously proud of myself for doing things I didn't think I could do.

I'm scared too. I'm scared that this is all a mirage and that I will slip back down into that black hole again. I'm scared that the smallest misstep will cause me to lose my grip on all that I've managed to create.

I really do feel like that donkey. You know, the one in the parable that goes that this donkey fell into a hole and the townspeople couldn't get him out. And he was old and injured anyway. So they start throwing dirt in the hole, thinking that they will bury him and he will lay down and die. But instead he starts climbing on the dirt that they are throwing in the hole, until he is able to climb out.

That's me. I so wanted to just lay down and die. I wanted to wrap grief around me like a blanket. And I did, in the beginning. For nearly a month I was just immobile, unable to function, unable to eat, unable to believe that I was expected to just go on living even as my insides had surely shriveled up and died.

But somehow-and I don't really know how, except that the girls just had to have a functioning mother-I managed to emerge enough that I could get up. That I could eat, even if everything did taste like sandpaper. That I somehow was not going to die of a broken heart.

Grief has become a friend. I welcome him every morning, wondering what we will be feeling today. Lately though-lately I've been feeling happy. Contented. Proud.

I have done so many things in the past nine months that I just did not think that I could do. I have learned so much about myself, which sounds so clichéd that it pains me to write it. But the thing is, the person that I was, she was a good wife. Truly. And her husband was going through something that was painful and her every thought, her every action, it was in a hope that she was doing the thing that would fix it, that would make it better.

Letting go of that-letting go of the idea that Nick is no longer my husband but just my friend-it has been sad, and hard, and freeing. I will always care about Nick, of course. But I have taken that weight off my shoulders. And in its place I have started to learn things that I always wanted to learn but didn't think myself capable.

I learned how to fix my hair the way I always wanted it to look. This seems stupid, I'm sure. But I was always just a girl who threw her hair in a ponytail. My hair finally looks the way it's always looked in my mind's eye.

I exercise a lot. I push myself. I have dreams about what my arms and abs will look like-and for the first time in my whole life, I honestly think that maybe they might look that way eventually.

And I reached out and got a job that I wanted with all of my heart. I say this a lot, but I am blessed.

This past weekend has been another huge step in this grief process for me. Because I spent a lot of time with Nick and Jenifer and I did not feel sad. I felt light. I felt content. I felt like I am in the place that I need to be. And luckily, that place seems to be a place where we are all friends. Which has been my goal since forever. I know that many people wouldn't feel that way, and I don't judge any one else's path. Divorce looks different for everyone who has lived it. Grief takes a different shape for everyone who feels it.

Grief is not linear, no matter what we might imagine. Grief skips around, makes you feel sad and haunted and unable to breathe. Sometimes. Grief is still with me. Tucked away like a childhood blanket, ready for me to remember some silly thing that happened eleven years ago. Or six years ago. Or yesterday.

But I also feel healing. Like the sinew is restructured, like the scar is slowly disappearing. In the end, I feel whole. I feel changed. I feel like the person that I always wanted to be.

If I fall apart, it's okay. Because I know that I have lived through what I was sure would kill me. I will make mistakes. I'm not fully healed yet. Maybe I never will be. I don't know, I've never done this before. The days are long and there are surely shadows still to absorb. Memories still to surface. But there is joy. There is joy.

In the end, the beginning...

So. I'm divorced.

As I sat in the courtroom today, listening as Maggie asked Nick if he agreed that we were no longer compatible as marriage partners, I looked at the judge, who was this kindly, grandfatherly gentleman, who has the privilege of watching as people disintegrate their marriage in front of him, and wondered what he thought of us.

Of two people who were married 13 years ago, who had 2 children, and who were now sitting in his courtroom attesting that they wish to undo it.

Of course, he doesn't know the rest. He doesn't know that Nick served a year in Iraq. He doesn't know that they had 3 dogs, one of whom died as Joy watched, waiting in the vet's office because their computer system wasn't working (yes, Zoe would have died anyway, she was sick-it was still hard). He doesn't know that these 2 people in front of him met in November of 2000, while Joy was still in college, while Nick had a full time job but lived at home. He doesn't know that they fell in love, besotted, fireworks and passion and the whole bit. He doesn't know that they worked together, raising these children, struggling to get by on one paycheck. He doesn't know that they had so many trials during this 15 years that they have been together, that they fought so hard through so many valleys to reach the peaks. And there were peaks. Lots of them. There were dark valleys too. But he doesn't know that. He knows that they are here today, asking for their marriage to be dissolved. Like acid.

At church on Sunday, Pastor Karen read from II Corinthians 13, the love passage. Which of course was central to the message in our wedding, as it is nearly all weddings. I wrote our ceremony out, top to bottom, and put many verses into it that mattered, that meant something to us. But smack in the middle was, of course, "Love is patient, love is kind..." And I ended it with "Love never ends." Because that was why I wanted to include it. Because I knew that love is not always patient, or kind, or just, but I did know that love never ends.

I feel like today that love was supposed to end.

It didn't. I sat in that courtroom today, and said yes, I want to end this marriage, because I love Nicholas Ryan Johnson. And I want him to be happy. And even though it hurts, I can accept that his path with me beside him as his wife has ended.

I know that Nick will always be a part of my life. We have children. We will have grandchildren. Not too terribly long ago, Nick considered me to be his best friend. I don't doubt that he no longer considers me that, but I do hope that he considers me a friend, and a close one at that. We may no longer be those young kids, so excited by the life that stretched out in front of us, but we can be old friends whose paths sometimes cross.

So today I know for certain that love never ends. Flowers and romance and all of that, yes, they end. But love, at its core, is rooted within us. Or at least, it is for me. I hope and pray that eventually I will meet someone who would like to walk beside me, who would reignite that consuming, mind altering experience that is falling in love. Oh, I pray so hard for that. But love, genuine, grounded, to the marrow of my bones love-that is still there and always will be.

When you grow up...your heart dies...

John Hughes is one of my heroes. His prose lives inside my head to such a degree that a lot of the time I don't even realize that it's him that I'm quoting. As a director, I find that he excelled at minutiae, not so much at endings. But that is surely because they weren't really ending. They were trailing off, short stories really, with characters who would drift away from each other in the reality of life.

The Breakfast Club is my favorite of all the John Hughes movies. Allowing the girls to watch it this young was something I really mulled over. It is so important to me, carrying so much of what I consider my truth, and they are young for the content. Not just the swearing, which they seem immune to (according to them, they know all of the curse words from the school bus), but the pot, the references to sex and virginity, all of that.

But the point-the theme of the movie is vital. They understand bullying. And cliques. And stereotyping, even if they don't exactly know that word.

It is within the stereotypes that John Hughes excels as a director. Take, for example, the lunch scene. He does not go out of his way to make a big deal of it, but within their lunches lie their homes. Claire, of course and most obviously, has sushi. Brian has the well-balanced lunch. Allison makes a sandwich of Capt'n Crunch and pixie stix. And then there is Andrew's never ending bag-three sandwiches, chips, a banana, an apple, and on and on. He never points out that John does not have a lunch. Nowadays, that would be a huge plot point.

I'm not sure that they could make The Breakfast Club today. The crying. I don't think that they could just let them open up and cry. Certainly the gun. Brian would have gotten much more that Saturday detention. And the adults. They would have made a bigger deal of them, of the fact that they are sad and pathetic. One disillusioned with his job, the other the former big man on campus now reduced to cleaning up after the kids that would have worshiped him eight years ago.

But Judd Nelson is amazing in this performance. I always feel sorry for Judd, when they trot him out for whatever, and he ends up having to talk about The Breakfast Club, like he never did anything else except possibly Suddenly Susan. Judd is a great actor who gave many great performances but, such is life, this is what he is remembered for. His performance, though, is profound. Yes, he has to keep going off the wall, screaming and carrying so much of the heft of the movie. But his character is the heart, the soul, and the connection point of the audience. This is surely one of the bravest decisions that John Hughes made as a director. Bender is not the character most people would select as the most accessible. But watch his face in the scene where Vernon is begging him to hit him. Watch what he is able to convey with very few words-how scared this kid is as this adult informs him that his greatest wish is to beat him up.

I realize that I am now an unequivocal grownup. I am the parent pushing my kids to succeed, hoping that they chose friends that help them to grow and not that pull them down a rabbit hole. I am raising children who have to split time between their parents, surely the worst punishment of all in the Brat Pack world. I am sorry for that. But I'm also kind of still watching the world around me in wide eyed wonder, hoping to run into John Bender and help him to find some solace. My heart isn't completely dead yet.

Slight musings on starting a new year...

My New Year's Eve was not really very exciting this year. I actually just talked to the girls and then basically fell asleep. It is probably the first time in 30 years that I didn't at least make it to the ball dropping.

I did, however, watch When Harry Met Sally... yesterday. Which is how I always ring in the New Year. Harry is one of my all time favorite movies, and Meg Ryan's character of Sally Albright is one of my idols. In my life I have basically tried to emulate 4 fictional characters: Anne Shirley, Charlene Fraiser Stillfield, Corky Sherwood, and Sally Albright.

And here's the exciting part: I am so much like Sally! I have never watched When Harry Met Sally having gone through a break up. Basically because I have never been through one before. But this year, with all my wounds still fresh and stinging, watching this movie was like a balm to my soul. The character of Sally is trying so hard to move on, to accept that life is moving forward, and she refuses to feel anger over her life changing in such a huge way-it was me to a tee. Many, many people have told me that it would be best for me to just get really angry, to scream and fight and let that emotion overtake me, even if just for a little while. I don't doubt that they are right-it probably would feel good-but I have yet to really feel it, and at this moment I can't imagine that I will go there. I feel many things-most profoundly, overwhelming sadness-but I don't really feel anger.

I also feel panic. There is a line that Carrie Fisher's character utters that so describes me right this minute. She is telling Sally that she should get out there and date, and Sally's response is that she is in a mourning period. Carrie says, "All I'm saying is that somewhere out there is the man you are supposed to marry. And if you don't get him first, somebody else will, and you'll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that somebody else is married to your husband." Now, just setting aside the irony of me suggesting this applies to my life, this is how I am feeling at the moment. Like if I am not getting out and seeing people, the person that I am supposed to end up with might end up with someone else. But I also feel like I don't have all that much inside of me to give.

Which is all neither here nor there. What happens will happen when it happens. In the meantime, my plan is just to keep trying to heal and grow and become a better person. Let's hope.

My week has been fairly good, even if I did miss the girls like crazy. I spent an evening with my sister, which was so fun. I went out to eat with my friend Niki, which was good conversation combined with a delicious chili at Tumbleweed. I got my hair done. I went to yoga. My radio did this weird cutting in and out on my way home from April's, which made a mash up of Little Drummer Boy and Turning Japanese, which was wicked cool.

And tonight I get my girls back. We will make our resolutions. Mine is basically to keep healing. Here's to 2016-let's hope it's the best year yet.

My grown-up movie weekend...

Okay, so finally, something different is willing to come pouring from my fingertips and into cyberspace. Movies.

I see a lot of movies, if that isn't obvious from my Facebook and Twitter feed. I see pretty much every kid movie that comes to the theater, and I've now entered into a tween genre as well, which mostly seems to include lots of apocalyptic stuff. But I go to the movies nearly every weekend, and so on the weekends that I am kidless, that means I get to see anything that the girls might not be interested in seeing.

This weekend that included two movies, one which I got to see with my sister, and the other which I saw alone. I am getting much more at ease about seeing a movie by myself-I'm pretty sure that the people that work at the movie theater know me, so I'm likely that sad lady who sometimes has kids with her and sometimes is all alone, dateless on a Saturday night. My, that is a depressing thought. But I do believe that everything that I'm doing at the moment is leading me to wherever the heck it is that I'm supposed to end up, and so learning to entertain myself seems a big part of that.

Anyway, I digress. The movie that I saw with my sister was, naturally, Sisters. It's funny and raunchy and the kind of movie that a few years ago we would have all been like, oh my goodness, women can be vulgar just like guys. But in the years since Bridesmaids, Melissa McCarthy has made a career of those movies. So it's not shocking. But it is gross and hilarious and just enough of a literal mess to make my OCD sister squirm in her seat for the majority of the movie. Tina Fey is the oversexed, messed up sister, Amy Poehler is the uptight, do good, divorced sister in need of both a man and a drink. One of the biggest differences between raunchy girl comedy and raunchy boy is the heart, and this one delivers on that front-it's point is that who you are at 13 is not who you have to be a 40. Which is true, to a degree. I'm still so much like my nerdy 13 year old self, it's hard to completely buy that.

The second movie that I watched was Joy. Of course. It's a movie about a woman who pulls herself from the depths of despair to be a millionaire. A woman who gets divorced but ultimately is such good friends with her ex that he helps her on her journey. A woman who is at a loss for exactly how to take care of everyone in her life, but who is ultimately the savior of her family. And her name is Joy, for goodness sake. So yes, I had to see it. Jennifer Lawrence does an excellent job, as she seemingly does in every role she has ever had. The movie is a bit all over the place, but it means well.

I did not walk away from the movie with a magical map to the answer to how exactly to fix my life. But that is likely the point. This Joy could not have imagined that one day a mop would be the answer to all of her prayers. Heaven knows what my answer is. Surely not a cleaning product. But this rabbit hole is leading to somewhere.