Howdy! Hooray!
I’m a good sport!
My day began at
Family Court!
IT’S ALL COOL! LOOK AT ME BEING ALL COOL ABOUT THIS SHIT! I AM SO FRICKING COOL.
Seriously. You know it, but you don’t know it.
Jesus Christ, is she not done with all that sad divorce crap yet? you’re muttering at the screen.
Whatever. Like you’ve never had a DIY project that took forever.
Don’t ask me why Massachusetts is the way it is. It’s a solid, fairly literate, Kennedy-stuffed state that provides nice health insurance to its low-income citizens and doesn’t wallop them too hard with the taxes, like neighbor Vermont.
There are plenty of other shitty places I could call home. I’m not going to name them, because you probably live there, and blog readership is already in the toilet since I started writing “poetry.”
No, I’m not going to complain too much about Massachusetts, about its mandatory divorce hearing, or the 120-day waiting period to finalize my eternal damnation, or the state’s dubious approach to equitable distribution of property, or even the “101 Ways You’ve Already Scarred Your Kids With Your Divorce” seminar.
No sir. I know how we got to this point. I take my Massachusetts divorce like a man.
Which is to say that I sat in the fucking mall parking lot and bawled like a crack baby with fresh cigarette burns after my mandatory 15 minutes at court with the person with whom I combined genetic material to create two hungry creatures that now require feeding, bathing, educational materials, and bedazzled skinny jeans.
Whatever. No skin off my back. Off my nose. Sweat off my—? Whatever.
You’ve said it. You’ve thought it. You’ve heard it. Everybody gets divorced. One out of two marriages end. It’s trendy. Starter marriages. Real life. So go to your happy place. Go to your trust fund. Go to your naughty step. Take your lumps. Take your meds. Don’t take those meds. Remember the good times. Remember the bad times. Forget the good times. Forget the bad times. Get over it. Get used to it. Get past it. Expect less. Care less. Love sux. He sux. You sux. You sux if you think I sux. Suxorz. Josh. Go back to work. Oh yeah? What’s that, Josh? Yeah, I had a job. It was called PIMPING OUT YER MOM. Blow me. Rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay.
No, I am not fucking manic, and, why, yes, my ex-in-laws LOVE my blog, thank you. So do all of my ex-friends and ex-lovers. So does all of western Canada. And part of Newfoundland, the drinking part. I am a fucking national heroine in Canada. I’m so special in Canada, they issued me something called the Black Card. I haven’t asked what it’s for yet, but I’m sure it’s something really really awesome, like free helicopter rides over downtown Regina at night for life.
This is not mania. This is just how my brain works when most of it has leaked out of my eyeballs during a crying jag before noon in a mall parking lot, and I need to recharge and regrow brain cells and amuse myself.
Consider it a privilege to get a glimpse of this organic, solar-powered writerly shit. Take a handful. Fertilize your life.
In case you were wondering, the Family Court judge was very nice. He understood the concept of humanity. The Family Court judge, I like. His name was Edward.
That name, I like. And I hated Twilight.
They say everybody gets their 15 minutes of fame. I somehow wound up with 15 minutes of divorce court instead. I want to know whom I can sue on that count. Because I really would have preferred the fame.
It was real close in 2005. In the form of David Sedaris’s editor, phoning my agent from a plane, saying my book was going to happen. A scene from a MOVIE, I tell you! Complete with my Hattie smearing chocolate pudding adorably all over her hair and face and highchair while I took the call. I was the cute funny writer-mom-wife-blogger with ASPIRATIONS and POSSIBILITIES and BABIES WHO DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO SASS THEIR MOTHER YET.
Yeah, yeah, you know all that. I’ve told you before. It’s called vomiting on my laurels. I can’t help myself.
And you know how that turned out, too. On all counts.
Now, at 40, I’m in overtime.
I try to console myself with the fact that I don’t need to change my name back to Mattern. And if I have any single friends left who like me enough to ask me to be their Maid of Honor someday soon, I can be a Maid of Honor again, instead of a Matron of Honor.
But I will still want to cover my upper arms with an unfortunate wrap. That’s just 40 for you.
Yup, I am in extra innings. I need more fame, fast. Less divorce, fast. Like, NEVER AGAIN ON THE DIVORCE PART. Or the Virginia Woolf/Ophelia near-demise will become a serious reality. My heart has died a thousand waterboarding deaths in the past five years. I don’t care if I marry Jeffrey Dahmer next. DUDE AND I ARE GONNA WORK THAT SHIT OUT AND BECOME MARRIAGE SWAMIS AND YOU ARE FINALLY GOING TO PUT SOME SERIOUS PAY IN MY PAL.
I will accept cash instead of fame. If you care.
Anyhoo:
Today, because I couldn’t stop sobbing like the Pitiful Regretful Irritatingly Oversensitive Reclusive Freak-vorcee that you have come to know and love
(or don’t know, don’t want to know, and love to despise and make mean comments about from your anonymous wank-off quarters),
and the mall police had already done two laps around my car,
I finally admitted defeat and turned off the ignition.
And, thus, the Coldplay.
Yup. Time for a chick-flick. Heavy on the chick.
No, I don’t want to talk about the $3 Daytime Drunkard Margarita Special at Bennigan’s beforehand, or the fact that I was walking around with salt on my upper lip and a spinach leaf wedged over my upper right incisor when I purchased my ticket to “Eat Pray Love.”
If you’ve read “Eat Pray Love,” like three-quarters of the Earth’s population (the Gideons are replacing the Bibles with it soon, FYI), you won’t be surprised by anything that happens in the movie. It’s pretty much like someone took a pink highlighter to all the best passages of Liz Gilbert’s book and handed that copy to Julia Roberts, who subsequently donned some cute Indian-inspired cotton PJs, learned twelve new ways to style her ponytail, and said, “Where’s the pasta? Do I get to eat in India, too? And what do I eat in Bali? Javier Bardem? Yeah, I’m in.”
If you haven’t read “Eat Pray Love,” I have no idea if you’ll be surprised by anything that happens in the movie, and I don’t really care. Because you’re obviously a dude named, oh, say, Josh, who maybe works for Nintendo, gripes about crazy gold-digging East Coast women, talks all kinds of mean shit about nice folks he’s never met, and really really really needs to get laid. Like, yesterday.
Do I digress? Very well, I digress. I contain multitudes. I mean attitudes. I have a mean attitude today. Stay out of my way. I’ve got Dog Poo-Scent and Piss-Odor Removing Enzyme Spray and I’m not afraid to use it on your corneas. Josh. Or Asswipity Anonymous.
I liked the movie.
As in, I LIKED IT BECAUSE IT WASN’T DIVORCE COURT.
As in, IT WAS BETTER THAN TODAY’S CURRENT REALITY, WHICH INVOLVES LINGERING AND UNFATHOMABLE GRIEF ABOUT THINGS OVER WHICH I HAVE NO CONTROL,
as in, ANNOYING LIFE-SUCKING HEARTACHE THAT REALLY IRRITATES THE SHIT OUT OF ANYONE WHO HAS NEVER EXPERIENCED LINGERING AND UNFUCKINGFATHOMABLE GRIEF ABOUT ANYTHING, AND FEELS SECRETLY KINDA SORTA SMUG ABOUT THAT, BECAUSE THAT MUST MEAN THEY ARE DOING THINGS RIGHT.
My monthly BlogHer ad revenue doesn’t support my Dunkin’ Donuts coffee habit. My demographic is pretty small these days. Whatevs. I’m thinking that’s because MOST PEOPLE—like you and you and you-with-your-smiley-emoticons there—MOST PEOPLE TEND TO GET THE FUCK OVER BAD THINGS.
I don’t.
I Just Don’t.
I’m 40 now, so clearly it’s time to accept that this is just the way it’s gonna be. It’s part of my charm. I am all process, no progress.
If there were no cute spindly baby gazelles to get eaten by fat ferocious bloodthirsty lions, over and over again, National Geographic would not have a cool cable channel. And, apparently, a magazine or something.
My highly scientific explanation for this phenomenon of MY NEVER REALLY GETTING OVER ANYTHING HEARTBREAKING THAT HAS OCCURRED IN MY ALREADY SQUANDERED, SOMEWHAT ASININE, ILL-SPENT LIFE is that I was born to MOURN SEMI-PUBLICLY ON MY BLOG, because:
1) there is a God
2) It likes to make fun of amateur poetry
3) It digs schadenfreude, hard
You know, it was God, not the Deutsch, who created schadenfreude. And God has really been jonesin’ for some ranting, misery-sodden blog posts.
Maybe you didn’t know this, but God prefers blogs to Twitter. In fact, four out of five deities prefer blogs to Twitter—especially that Christian God, who grooves so hard on blowhard ranting, He/She/It created right-wing militant extremist TV preachers, to entertain Him/Her/Itself during downtime. He/She/It has really been bummed out since the advent of all those unsatisfying “tweets.”
I may not be a right-wing extremist militant Christian preacher, but let me tell you, I crack up God’s SHIZ with this blog. Even if you hate it, FAKE-NAME/FAKE-EMAIL-TROLL-WITH-A-CANADIAN-IP-ADDRESS.
The funny thing is? I’ve actually been pretty darn happy lately. I’ve been downright resilient, I tell you. I didn’t expect the volcano of ugly scrunchy-face tears to erupt in the mall parking lot. Maybe a tear or two, but nothing more. After all, this divorce is all old news, to you, to me, to him, to the kids.
And here you go: the one deadly serious line in all this lava, the line that would have turned into a crap poem, so in a way, you should really thank me, because at least the ranting breaks up the relentless parade of sonnets and villanelles that drive readers from my blog in tweeting droves:
This divorce is old news to everyone and everything except my stupid heart.
Apparently, the heart never gets that memo. That it’s all just dunzo.
As my dear Karmenina wrote, “That’s because love is NOW. It ALWAYS is.”
Gritty. Slick. Gritty-slick. She also said that. I’m just quoting her here because it will make her smile when she reads it. She reads the blog. So I have one reader. Thank you for the coffee, Karmenina.
Yeah. I’ve been happy lately. You either know about it, or you don’t yet. It’s okay. I’m not going to be all crazy K-Stew and R-Patz about it, but, yeah, it’s cool. It’s quiet, it’s happy, it’s the thing with feathers that does something, with -ful on the end. I forget the quote. Writers are always forgetting quotes and making shit up. Can’t trust a damn writer to remember anything or forget anything.
Hey, not that I really have a point, but if I did have a point today?
I am amazed by the force of the heart’s truth. Inconvenient truth. Karmenina is right: the heart is love, and love is always NOW. Love is. Always.
I am saying I finally surrender to that. To that being who I am, and who I always have been. It doesn’t mean I know what to do about the love, or how to make it work. It doesn’t mean I still talk to all the people I used to love. Or interact with them in an active, hands-on kinda way. Or want to. But I reserve the right to still love them.
Because I can’t figure out any other way. I’m tired of trying. I give up.
If I ever said I loved you? Guess what? I still fucking love you. Yeah. That’s right. Even if you don’t love me. So there.
Book of Revelations, over.
I was happy-ish again, watching “Eat Pray Love.” Not because it was a great movie (which it wasn’t), but because it was based on a real person who got her shit together and despite wanting to blow her brains more than a few times, found some peace.
An attempt to quote a line from the movie: “So love him. So miss him. When you miss him, send him some light and some love. Then drop it.”
Working on the “drop it,” like a hyperactive retriever. I reserve the right for the “drop it” part to always be a work-in-progress.
I will also say:
The character and the person she’s based on?
She’s a writer. Liz. One not-particularly-pretty syllable. Serviceable, though. As a nickname.
In one scene, Liz watches a shitty play of hers, done shittily by shitty actors. Audience members walk out, and she lives.
Liz had a box full of travel articles and clippings about places she knew she needed to visit someday, but couldn’t explain why. She was especially obsessed with countries beginning with the letter “I”.
At Liz’s wedding, the wrong music was played for her first dance with her new hubby. It wasn’t their song. They made the best of it.
Until they didn’t.
Immediately after the demise of her marriage, she attempted a relationship with a dark, handsome, brooding guy who spoke frequently of his favorite deity, Ganesh, and who wanted to go to an ashram in India to find himself.
They did laundry together. He folded her delicates.
That whole thing didn’t work out so hot. Not just the laundry-highlighted thematic differences.
They parted ways.
After four bites of heartache spaghetti, Liz’s jeans didn’t fit.
Liz spent a lot of time taking baths and learning odd languages whilst doing so.
A lot of people thought she’d gone pretty cuckoo. No. Really. Like, a LOT.
She spent even more time trying to find “her word” — one word to sum up everything in her life, everything she was and wanted to be.
It started with an ‘”A”, and hailed from a language that began with the letter “I.”
The word means “to cross over.” Or something like that.
She didn’t mean it in the John Edwards way. I don’t either.
But I can’t spell it because I only tattoo Icelandic words that start with “A” and mean “forward” on my body.
Liz also enjoyed spending time with a wise old soul named Sophie.
Sophie didn’t want to eat her pizza.
Sophie helped Liz zip up her new big jeans in a dressing room.
Liz reconnected with old friends who almost didn’t remember her, and she made lots of new ones.
Only two actual mutual friends were sighted in the whole darn movie. Food for thought.
She wrote down the hard stuff in emails.
She used a telephone exactly ONCE in the span of the film.
She chowed like a fiend, even in India.
She figured out how to forgive herself, whilst at the same time, being brought down by clouds of killer mosquitos.
When she did forgive herself, she was immediately knocked off her bicycle (and a bridge) by a dark stranger driving like a maniac, drumming the steering wheel with crazy kinetic fingers.
The stranger came from a faraway land where Spanish is spoken. It’s hot there.
The stranger, too, was divorced.
He liked making 80s-style mix tapes.
The stranger offered to be her tour guide. They ate a lot of fish. He cooked it over an open fire.
She found this stranger and his advances absurd. At first.
She found him much less absurd when she saw how much he loved his son.
He cried easily. The stranger, not the son. (Although the son probably cried a lot too, as the “101 Ways You’ve Already Scarred Your Kids With Your Divorce” seminar social workers in Massachusetts would be happy to explain to you.)
The stranger-who-was-no-longer-a-stranger said to Liz: “You don’t need a man. You need a champion.”
No one’s ever said that to me, not exactly like that, but I thought it was kind of romantic and pretty super and sweetly old-fashioned, so sue me.
He also said, “Darling, it’s time.” I liked that part too.
The movie ends with her and the quirky, divorced, fire-making, sensitive, romantic stranger crashing through Pacific Ocean waves in a motorboat, shooting off into the horizon—presumably to contemplate ways to work out their long-distance relationship. Six months in Bali, six months in New York? Can their love survive?
I read the sequel. I already know what happens.
To her.
[insert emoticon of your choice or guess]
Comments on this entry are closed.