Pendulum: (n) A weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position, and beyond; the higher the pendulum is raised, the more power to swing up on the other side…
I unlock the door and step inside.
I am shivering with cold and excitement.
It’s a crisp, clear October night under a bright full moon and a gatrillion swirling stars float in the darkness. The silence is intoxicating. Bearing clothing and a makeup table (priorities, ammiright?), I enter a sympathetic friend’s furnished cottage, they will keep it open an extra month for me. It’s a wayyy oversized sprawl of rentable space on water, and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Handmade quilts are on the beds, and it’s cozy, and warm and wonderful. There’s even cable, haven’t seen THAT for years. My daughter promptly gets addicted to the cheesiest show ever called Baggage, where contestants decide what emotional garbage they are willing to deal with in a significant other. I haven’t seen a show this brain dead since Jackass.
Perfect.
I am free. Everything is a wonder to me living on the outside. Baby phoenix Monica runs amok through fields of daisies. It’s like a dream. I never thought I would escape. I feel so lucky. Ironically, being excluded from everything and all people church is doing me a world of good. No expectations, for the first time, ever.
I don’t really go anywhere except work and the grocery store, this Pariah prefers to stay at home. Guilt Monkey still savages me daily, but I’m getting used to feeling guilty all the time. I do it guilty. I do it scared. I do it anyway. I’m getting my damn life back. I may be a pariah, but I am no longer hanging my head. Therapy and the books I am reading are helping me to understand how to be strong in myself, and I am gradually caring less about what any of these church people think.
I’m still a little chickenshit, though. I haven’t even told my parents yet, or most of my family. I can’t imagine what my mom and dad would have to say to their disgraced daughter, them being lifelong devoted Catholics who were respectively considering the nunnery and priesthood, till they met each other and decided celibacy wasn’t so much fun after all, and proceeded to bear 8 children. Overachievers. They live 2000 miles away, so it’s easy for me to avoid, at least for now. I have close friends, but I mostly bear the burden myself. Which turns out eventually to be a very, very good thing. And, my kids are doing fantastic, the way we have it set up we are all together at some point every day. DX has been wonderful. The divorce, thanks to a treasured family friend who happens to be a great attorney, is all of 500$. Yes, you read that number right, I did not forget zeros, it is possible, folks. Unlikely, but possible.
Every day I sense the knots loosening, the pressure lifting. It is, of course, replaced by a how-the-hell-am-I-going-to-make-this-work panic, but it’s still better.
I soulsearch, I journal every day, I figure things out. I research like crazy.
Yeah, about research. I see many suffer and struggle for years because they don’t even try to search for answers to their situation. Hey, here’s an idea, when you’re struggling with something, research like crazy. Read like your ass is on fire. Dig through books, articles, ask people who have been there. Because you don’t know that the fifteenth book you are studying won’t have the answer on page 154, paragraph two, and suddenly the pieces fall into place, a slide of a final narrow block of Tetris, four rows magically no more.
Click.
In the middle of all of this noble soul searching, after 43 years of oppression…something rather ignoble happens…The pendulum has been pulled so hard for so many years in one direction, that the cable snaps. I’m going Wild.
I have lived someone else’s life for wayy too long. Costumes are for sale everywhere, but I am in the process of removing mine, shedding my religious mask.
I stop caring what people think. I really can’t care. If I am to drive this bus to my new destination, I absolutely can not listen to those old windbags, Far Side gramma backseat drivers insisting they know better, turn this way, no that way, stop here, NO YOU CAN’T DO THAT!
I’m simply done with the all of it. The pendulum broken, all of the rules, regulations, do-this-and-don’t-do-that in my life has been stuffed in a box and emptied in its new home, helloooo, Mr. Landfill. Enjoy my former life.
But what happens when you empty the box? You don’t automatically get a new life of some sort, a prize at the bottom of your Lucky Charms, though that would be freaking awesome. When you lose your life, you have, well, nothing. There is an empty space inside where my previous life existed, and I haven’t quite figured out yet what is going to go in there. I’ll have to find my life again, go shopping at the What Now? emporium.
I could be stuck here clutching my empty box of Unlucky Charms with no prize, and just grow resentful and complain to everyone who will still talk to me about how difficult this is…and, of course I go there sometimes, but what I really need to do is think about what I’ll put in my box (get your mind out of the gutter) to make it Lucky Charms again.
So, I exit the prison and enter the candy shop instead, wide-eyed at the extravaganza of colorful treats before me, likely going to overindulge. Uh oh.
I run right past the signs I normally obey, NO! STOP! WARNING! DON’T! (Fuck you, Willy Wonka!) and reach my greedy hand right into the bin of chocolate, grabbing fists full.
Enter my first flirty friend after my great Exodus, lets call him Hovercraft, because in retrospect, he really did kind of descend upon me at my weakest, jumping into my empty cereal box, a stealth paratrooper of racy ideas.
Having met DX at 18, I had VERY little experience with dating, or with men at all. I am an extremely compliant, very naive, affection-craving person who has just been dumped into the Planet of the Singles. What could possibly go wrong?
And, yes, I know that there are all manner of rules… don’t date after divorce, focus on you, you need to heal, bla bla bla… There’s even some sort of stupid formula some idiot came up with, stay single for every five years you were married… What Fucking Moron takes someone’s life away like that? What if you were married 40 years and you’re 60? You’r’e supposed to wait 8 years to date, even though you may have been checking out the AARP silver fox hottie next door mowing the lawn in his golf shorts? Accept that glass of lemonade and a Werther’s from him and enjoy life, it’s all too damn short! Have a Harvey Wallbanger and play strip dominos, who cares? Healing is different for everyone, some need more time, maybe I should have taken more, but I’ve already lost a couple decades and I really am not interested in putting any more time on the chopping block.
Yeah, I just exited the whole wide world of rules and have exactly zero interest in going to your Divorce Care class.
You are welcome to argue the morality of all of this with someone, but I… Well, after the Great Escape, I just don’t give a shit. You’re welcome to stop reading. I doubt you will.
Hovercraft had gone through divorce and had been helping me with the practical details of how it works. As I write this, I am laughing at my naivete, I’m positive he radared in on me like a wounded deer in November. In a good tracking snow. With an easy-to-follow blood trail. I might as well have flashing highway signs, VULNERABLE WOMAN HERE. But all I see at the time is a long distance friend, now that I’m out of the house he’s starting to get a bit flirty with me. Oh, this is fun. Wait, I can feel chemistry? I didn’t know I was capable!
He lives in another state, so I feel pretty safe, what could possibly go wrong? I’m not going to actually see him and consider anything physical. Our conversation is mostly texting with the occasional phone call. Well, flirty soon turns kinda dirty, and things pop out of my fingers I never imagined I would say. I’m enjoying it more than I probably should, but I just can’t find it within myself to care any longer. The pendulum lies on its broken cable, forgotten in the corner. I’m 43 and have to laugh to myself. I need to make a meme captioned WHEN YOU NEED YOUR READERS FOR SEXTING. Bit of a different ballgame when you’re older. And I don’t go out at all, so this becomes my new secret pleasure. I’ve never had one before.
But in the middle of this newfound little bit of illicit fun, I get a phone call.
My mom is dying.
Worship Leader Gone Wild 