They say you shouldn't go grocery shopping when you're hungry.
I know better than to take up important conversations after 3pm.
And I should DEFINITELY not undertake a web post when the Vikings have just lost. No more Vikings until September. Nothing to look forward to now until May or June sometime when we can think of camping again. And here in northern Minnesota, where the weather outside mirrors my emotional landscape much of the time (dark, cold, bleak, featureless) ... five months is a long, long time.
I don't think I've been fond of New Year's since high school. College, I remember sitting in my room with a bottle of pills, wondering if I could commit suicide with aspirin.
New Year's Eve 1985, a newlywed of just over a month, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and entered my brand-new husband's home office, dressed in bits of skimpy lace and bearing two glasses of champagne. "I'm working," he informed me, barely glancing up. "I don't have time for that now."
The evening of New Year's Day, 1999, terrified that my second marriage, which had produced a just-turned-one year old baby, wasn't Y2K compatible, only to have my worst fears confirmed three days later.
New Year's, I'm realizing, brings out the very worst of my bad habits. So much of my work with my therapist for the past two years has been about my insistence on ruminating about the past and dreading the future. So an event dedicated to looking back AND looking forward is just tailor-made to plunge me into the blackest places I can find.
F'r instance: between 1985 and 1995, I had horses again and dogs for the first time, got married, got divorced, held six different jobs in six different towns, moved nine times, got engaged, got disengaged, and got married again.
Between 1989 and 1999, even, I realized a dream and bought a farm, although I didn't have it very long. I got my dream job, met the love of my life, visited the west coast for the first time, saw the ocean and the redwoods for the first time, played Josie in "A Moon for the Misbegotten" and had a baby.
But since 2000, the happy changes have slowed down considerably. Between January of 2000 and January of 2009, I've had to learn how to be a parent and a divorced parent at the same time. Believe me, it sucks. I lost the love of my life, ended up in the hospital once and outpatient care once for "nervous breakdowns," lost 140 pounds and spent 14 of the 108 months in alleged relationships (obviously this doesn't include alleged relationships that turned into one night stands). Since I've got the calculator application open, that means I've spent just over 87% of the last nine years alone. (Let me digress to send a big Bronx cheer to the people who say I need time by myself --I've obviously had plenty.) And since this dating has occurred AFTER I lost the weight (I would have figured it out eventually, but "luckily" for me, every man I have gone out with has treated me to a lengthy riff on the "fat chicks" out there and what a turn off they are), apparently pushing 260 wasn't the problem -- my personality is.
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