For some reason, I just didn’t have that choice inside of me and I couldn’t let go of my dreams. That girl who fought so hard to live on her own terms wasn’t giving up that easily. He wasn’t going to win. After all the shitty relationships I’d been in, the friends who’d tried to bring me down, the situations I’d endured, the deaths around me, I was still standing. And the one bastard who truly cut me to the core and brought me to my knees, almost breaking me, breaking my spirit, the very essence of me as a human being, I had willingly invited into my life in every way imaginable. I spent years of my life with this person, getting to know him on what I thought were the deepest levels, sharing my hopes and dreams with him. I had worked so hard to be vulnerable with him. I had overcome everything else. And my own husband is the one who almost obliterated me. Ain’t that some shit.
If I’d had a babysitter during this initial tragedy to come wake me up every morning, who would’ve made me go to some soul-filling place like yoga or church or an ashram or friggin’ Soul Cycle, who would’ve fed me healing foods like fruits and vegetables and made me shower and rest. If this babysitter would have then forced me to meditate in a corner for 10 minutes, even though I would’ve found it grueling and a waste and awful, and then forced me to get out in the sun around positive and regular people, well, that babysitter would’ve really been the only alternative to perhaps a more positive spin on this whole healing process I’ve gone through. Instead, I pretty much had my damn self to rely on. No offense to my fabulous family, who called me and cared and hurt with me and cried with me and was there for me. I just mean that the everyday motions were up to me to figure out.
It was really up to me, to keep me out of the depths of hell, and I may have done a pretty shitty job of it, but I did do the best I could. I worked too much, slept too little (let’s be real, if I slept at all, it was a miracle—you try shutting off your mind from this wacky bullshit), drank too often, ate too little, and mostly went through the motions with more awareness than is healthy. I dated, trying to squeeze some fun out of it. I went out there without expectation and only wanted adventure and guidance, and that goddamn torturous pain inside me to stop. I did unhealthy things and spent time around some really shitty people, and I just really couldn’t see up from down. I was a broken woman. A shell of a person. A hole where a human had been. But I made it.
Dating a ton of different people had really shown me only one thing: dating is hard. Not in the sense of like “oh my gosh I feel so embarrassed what if he doesn’t like me” hard, but like hard as in most people date really with an agenda in mind. As fun as it was, it also helped me to see into parts of these people’s lives that I didn’t want to become. I didn’t want to become desperate and alone at a later age, having dated and partied myself out, when suddenly the lights of the club come on and I realize it’s 2 AM, I’m too old to be here, and my chances at many things are rapidly expiring.
I didn’t want to be the lonely workaholic who only cared about making a living and just longed to spend it with someone. I didn’t want to be the wounded person who thought they didn’t deserve a second chance. I didn’t want to become that person who thought just anyone would do because, well, it’s time to settle down. I was none of these people, and I wanted none of them in my life. I avoided the internal work I needed to do with every ounce of my being for as long I could. I dated a ton, drank too much wine, and when that didn’t work out, I got busy. This worked well to avoid the pain, so I got busier and busier and busier. I could tell that life wasn’t quite what it was supposed to be anymore, and, I hate to say it, but I couldn’t even feel my emotions enough to heal them. It was seriously too painful.
People talk about repressed memories or blocking things out, and while I didn’t necessarily experience that, I will say that I had a hard time feeling anything, in regards to that situation, for a very long time. People would bring up the subject of my divorce, and I would feel nothing. I knew I should have been extremely scared by my reaction, but there was no way to bring it up or down or around, or to access it at all. It was like grasping at dust outside on a windy day; I could sense it floating around, but I couldn’t really capture it. I knew the emotions lived in my body, and I had seen the destruction that they had caused to my life and me as a person. I was not the same. I didn’t know what to do next.
My time at home was nice but horrible at the same time. Normally, visiting home was fun because I had a life to return to ASAP. During my “sabbatical,” that wasn’t so much the case at all. I wanted to take the time so that I wasn’t making decisions about my future for the wrong reasons, but it was hard being home. Everyone had their lives going on. I had zip to do. That could be fun in a place where there were lots of activities or say, a beach to go to, but there wasn’t. Plus, it was October and that’s when the weather starts going from cold to worse. I spent my days doing some exercise and sitting in the unsettling silence that my parents’ land outside of town had to offer. It was probably needed, but it was also torture. At least I got to see my family and spend time with my parents, and both of my sisters, for the first time in a long time.
Halfway through my stay, after about two weeks, I flew back to California for a night for some meetings and to see Sir. We had so much fun together. As I sat facing the harbor with him having a cocktail, it was the first time I had relaxed in some time. He planned everything for my stay, got us a nice hotel room, took me to my favorite restaurant, and it made me wish that my time there wasn’t coming to an end.
When I got back to Wyoming, family members made comments about things I could do there for work soon, houses I could settle into, you name it. It bothered me. It was never my intention to stay permanently. I know everyone was doing their best to give me options, to be welcoming, but it was still hard. After 30 total days, and a night out to see all the people I went to high school with, I looked around a bar that used to be so much fun for me to be at when I was younger. Suddenly, I realized it hadn’t changed one bit. It would always be there. I would not be the same. I was not the same. I had more to do in the world. I needed to get out of this state of fog and grab life by the horns, to start living again, my way.
After almost a month in Wyoming, I called Sir, said I would be in California the next day, and accepted his invitation to live together. He called me often during my time home, had gotten a new place, and was awaiting my arrival. The fact that he actually seemed to want me there, instead of me just being a convenience, was nice. So, we’d split the bills and see how it went. His son also lived with him 50 percent of the time, so that was another large decision I had to make. It’s hard to break up with someone when you live together, but it’s even more unfair to drag a child through that. As a kid who grew up with divorced parents and stepparents, I was aware that this was a hefty situation to take on. I would forever have to deal with the ramifications if the relationship didn’t work out, and would be the well-meaning enemy. And if things did work, there would be times when the kid would resent me for no reason except that I was not his parent. I would have to deal with Sir’s ex for the foreseeable future, and I had no clue yet what kind of person she was or what that would look like. So, it was a lot to think about.
I left Frankie, my precious pug, in Laramie. My sister’s two kids had fallen in love with him, and I wanted to get settled back in California before I dragged him across the country again through chaos. I also didn’t know what kind of work I would be returning to, so it would be difficult. I was prepared to work five jobs at once if needed, and didn’t want to leave the poor guy alone by himself all the time. I took a bit more time off work when I first got back to really just focus on things like sleep, exercise, and having fun. In the back of my mind, I was terrified about what the hell I was going to do with myself, but I had to keep moving forward and just knew that I would find a way. I was back where I belonged and that gave me the willpower to move forward. I was also surrounded by people who cared about me, like actually cared about me and my health
and well-being, for a change.
I worked as much as I could in real estate, before life had its way of pushing me in new directions after being royally screwed over by some “friends” I worked with—and, yes, there were times they had done a lot for me, which I am still thankful for. But during my sabbatical, a house I co-listed with Paula closed. She wrote me out of the deal illegally and kept my commission money. I spoke with real estate attorneys and my family, and I had her dead to rights to press charges. Apparently, Paula claimed she did it because she thought I had stolen a lead from her for a house leasing some months earlier.
I heard all of this through a third party, and if she had brought it up to me, I would have walked away from that $600 commission check, no problem. I had already lost everything. But it was legally my deal. So, a few months later, she decided to have a client write me off a deal, because I was not in the area at the time and no one informed me it was closing. I was there the first time the buyer toured the property with an agent. I was that agent. I was also there to do the initial listing walk-through with the client. I deserved my commission, because the only other person there was Paula, who was not a licensed agent.
Because of a $600 commission, she felt slighted, so she decided later to cheat me out of thousands by leaving me out of deals that I had been involved in. She proceeded to take that money to the bank and then buy a Rolex from my jeweler I introduced her to. I decided from here that, because of all I had already been through with shitty people, I should just let it go. If they needed the money so badly that they could justify double-crossing their friend, they could keep it. I didn’t have the space to hold on to that negative energy any longer.
I also knew that if I took Paula to mediation, her partner would lose the brokerage license and Paula could never get her license, which was an important goal for her. I didn’t want to work for, with, or near this kind of thing anymore, but I couldn’t take away their ability to provide for themselves. All I had really wanted to build since I had left the hair industry was my own online business. After reading The 4 Hour Work Week, I was blown away by the possibilities of entrepreneurship. I wasn’t expecting to work an hour a week, make a million, and spend most of my time on a beach somewhere overnight. I just wanted my hard work to lead me to a life designed to fit my hopes for the future. H wouldn’t ever listen to me about where the world was going and how a virtual business that you can do from anywhere was really where it was at. He started to towards the end, by getting involved with Network Marketing opportunities, but he never really heard me or cared to listen. His loss.
I had been pestering my best girlfriend who rented my other room, Ari, about working together for a few years, and, one day (after we had both moved out obviously) she called me. She knew I was debating what to do next with my life and was really in need of some direction. I had done work for some people she had referred me to in the online space years earlier, and it had been a great experience. She knew of some online entrepreneurs that needed major help with the small tasks while launching their businesses. I also had a certain skill set and background that she thought I could leverage in this field.
I said, “Fuck, yes, I’ll do it.” I didn’t know what else to do at the time and frankly, I just saw an opportunity and dove into it head first. All the little, bitch work tasks most people who had held my many positions would have scoffed at? I did them with a smile. I didn’t care how little or how big they were, I was just happy to be back working with positive people in creative spaces, with freedom to make my own life again. I was actually in control of when I ate lunch, when I wanted to start my day, and how. It was fucking beautiful. Now, don’t get me wrong, some of the work sucked sometimes and it was hard friggin’ work at that, but I just kept doing it, kept showing up.
I started working for myself, with help and advice from Ari, I started a decent business working for other entrepreneurs online. This seemed to be my best bet after being so royally screwed over (though I no longer blame Paula, which I will explain more later on). I threw myself into my work with reckless abandon. It consumed every moment of my day and, as I got busier and busier and busier, I realized that I was still wildly unhappy. It seems work had taken the place of all the other distractions I had made for myself previously.
One day, I was finally going through bank and credit statements and all that adult bullshit that people have to do. Taking time off to go home and not work and giving myself a bit of space when I came back to Laramie, along with my bills, had left me in a pretty precarious situation. The huge charges on my credit card, along with all the bills I was forced to pay for alone, all thanks to my ex-husband, were really ruining my credit. I needed to do something. I wasn’t making the kind of money I was used to, and even though I was heading in the right direction, I just needed to figure something out financially in the meantime. I could’ve made it scraping by the next year or so with what I had going, but it was doing serious damage to my credit score with my debt-to-income ratio, and I knew I needed to make a big girl decision. I had already gotten rid of almost every fabulous thing I owned and there was really only one thing left worth anything that I had and could sell. My car.
Now, if you live in California or a city that is spread out, you know it’s pretty much impossible to survive without a car. Yet, with the invention of Uber, it was possible to do so for a while, and all I needed was a while. I looked up the value of my car to get an idea of what we were looking at. I had purchased it from a car dealer in LA who was, surprise surprise, very good friends with my ex. He had given me a decent deal on it and the car was paid for, so I was hoping to get enough money from it to pay down the credit card debt.
Turned out when the car dealer my ex had been such good friends with had provided me with a Carfax report and signed paperwork stating it had a clean record on the car, it was total bullshit. The car had been wrecked before I bought it, and, even though it ran great, everyone was offering thousands less than I was expecting. Thousands. Now, I could’ve cried or cursed the sky above or had a Steel Magnolias meltdown, but I had already been to hell and back, remember? This was a cakewalk in comparison. I wasn’t even surprised at this point. Anyone he had ever so much as bought a sandwich from on a regular basis seemed to have a special brand of fuckery up their sleeve.
I consulted my parents and Sir, and after everyone thought I was making a good decision in selling it, I still was going back and forth with what to do. It was my baby. I had worked hard for this car. It was all I had left. I got in it one day to drive to the store and my check engine light turned on. The car was a Mercedes that had just crossed 60,000 miles and was no longer under warranty, and the check engine light just decides to come on? I took it as a sign. The car had to go. The next day I drove it with Sir, and the check engine light had turned back off. I sold it that day before anything else could go wrong.
I paid down a few thousand dollars of the credit card debt, enough to make my credit score healthy again, and didn’t look back. So, what was it like not having a car in a California while also working from home and needing to be an adult and get shit done? Or, heaven forbid, you want to go somewhere and do something fun? Well, it sucked ass. You feel like a kid who has to wait for the real adults to have time to take you places. It sucks for the people around you, too, because instead of being able to help them out with menial tasks, you have to do them on a schedule. They have to take you, or have to stay home so you can borrow their car. Unless you can just Uber, and that isn’t conducive to, say, grocery shopping.
One day, I said, screw it! Car gods, you will not stop me from grocery shopping on my own damn terms! Shaking my fists at the sky, I walked to the grocery store. I bought groceries. And I walked my happy ass home with my groceries, in my grocery cart, that I had stolen from the grocery store so that I didn’t have to carry multiple bags all the way back home. Yes, I looked like a hobo. And once I had gotten home, I realized this really wasn’t convenient, probably wasn’t very smart, and definite
ly didn’t make it any easier.
So yes, not having a car sucked. You know what sucks more? Letting stupid decisions you allowed to happen-with some asshole who tried to ruin your entire life because he is a selfish douche—also ruin your financial future and any options to own a home, buy a new car, or have the financial freedom to make decisions because you want to, and not because you have to hold yourself back. Again, temporary, short-term suckiness for hopefully a long term positive outcome.
As you can tell from all of this chaos, with a life in shambles, I dusted myself off and picked myself up somehow. The truth is, the important work was really done from within. Something within me was unfulfilled and was hungry like a lion, roaring in the background. I tried to muffle it. I would look at myself in the mirror and not only did I not recognize the person looking back at me, I felt as if I wasn’t inside of my physical body at all. It was if I was standing next to myself. And, to be honest, it scared the shit out of me. But what do you do in this situation? I tried to work on myself as much as possible. I read every book I could get my hands on about how and what to do to make yourself and your life better, from laws of attraction, to success, to journaling; you name it, I read it.
I finally stumbled upon two fateful opportunities that started to nudge me in the right direction. A girlfriend of mine tagged me in a post in a Facebook group we were both in about a woman named Frances who was giving away 100 free personal coaching spots. All you had to do was put your name down. “Screw it,” I thought as I typed my name and hit enter. Whatever it is, I am game to try it. I scheduled my coaching session for later the next week and called her from the balcony of the building near my house. As I sat outside and discussed with her the situation and where I found myself now, what I was struggling with, she asked me point blank, “What is it you feel your purpose is in life?”
Divorce, Drinking and Dating Page 13
