Chapter 46: Exile

I walk boldly out the front door of the hotel into the bright sun, shoulders squared, head high.

Icy wind whips the tails of my long black coat, and it floats on the wind, my Superhero cape. I am freezing, but don’t care.

I am alone, and it feels delicious. Alone Woman, out to seize the day.

I am Monica, the free. I am Monica, the self-sufficient.

I am Monica, and I need to get breakfast for the girls. I hunt and gather, haul my kill back to the room, and lavish them with doughnuts, breakfast sandwiches, flavored coffees and other high carb delights reserved for stays in hotels that inevitably excuse high calorie behavior. Bring it, Dunkin’.

As I consider the evening, I know this will not happen again. It was a breaking free, a snap of Pangea to create my own continent, dammit. And I feel the freedom. Let it ring, baby! DING DING DING, I won, letssee my prize.

Changing my surroundings always seems to help me think things through. Out of town, on vacation, in a completely different setting, feels like removing the roof from a house, tipping it over, and looking at it sideways. The perspective is so different, rendering problems easier to solve.

As tempting as it is to connect with someone, and as exciting as Wonder Woman’s evening with Funnydude was, I am only at the very beginning of this game. I’m on the Price is Right and they haven’t even yanked the jumping, screaming, crazy-ass contestants out of the audience yet. There’s a long ways to go before the Final Showcase, one being a spectacular two weeks in Puerto Vallarta and the other lame patio furniture. And what was the deal with that silver Dum-Dums microphone anyway? It’s the only place that bizarre mic exists, as if they shamelessly hijacked it from the set of Plan Nine from Outer Space, a silver spray-painted Styrofoam ball impaled on a dowel.

Although I took a massive leap forward leaving other’s expectations behind, and forging ahead in my self-determination, I have a lot to reconstruct. Changing direction in life is less like a hairpin turn on a jet-ski, and more like making a 180 degree turn in a cruise ship. This mess ain’t gonna be fixed overnight. But the key is the shift in direction, and as any pilot can tell you, a teeeeensy shift of half a degree in your direction now will make a massive difference in your eventual destination. Problem: I’m not quite sure where I want to go, kinda necessary to know before I take off. I have to figure out who I am first, something people usually do in early adulthood, but in my case has been delayed till my mid forties.

I am yoyoing up and down each day. Excited at the possibilities, freaking out over how I’m going to pay for everything. Alternately excited and miserable at being alone. Happy about what I won, depressed about all I lost. Enjoying the cool place I live, yet knowing it’s a temporary rental and I still have to find a permanent dwelling, as well as the furniture, silverware, and every other single solitary bowl, cup and fork necessary to a household by the time this temporary rental expires in May. I don’t have a bed. Or a chair. Shit.

I had my breakaway evening, and it was amazing and empowering, yet it is time to work on reconstructing Monica, and that is a solitary work. I exile myself, so I am not tempted to break this commitment of figuring out who I am. It’s time to repair the years of being under the thumb of the church and living in the perpetual fishbowl. At the moment I am mostly a product of what I have been told I should be, a walking, talking Do’s And Don’ts list who just crushed a major Don’t. I’m Breaking Church, ha.

Phoenix Monica perches alone, and considers…

Days, weeks, months pass, and I continue rebuilding, tiny two-stud Lego bricks being used to build the Taj Mahal. I work, raise teens, stay home… as you may recall, I’m still the town pariah, and avoid going out in Tiny Town. I read a small library of books about how to find myself, my own live action version of Where’s Waldo. It’s Missing Monica, and I can’t find shit in this massive crowd of confusion. I just keep finding that same guy with the striped pants and melting ice cream cone. My life feels like a crater left where there was once a city, and asteroid having hit, I am now at ground zero building sandcastles.

I don’t need sand, dammit, I need concrete and rebar. Where’s the store?

This is going to take a while.

Enter my friend Sarah.

Sarah is from a larger city and has a cottage in Tiny Town, and is insisting I come to her holiday gathering. She knows I have been exiling myself, and I am reluctant, being protective of my self-development project, but it’s just a handful of her relatives, and a nice family cocktail party seems like the right thing to allow myself to enjoy. Safe. I decide to take the rare outing, and dress up, and climb in my car, excited about actually doing something for once.

I ring the bell and wait in the falling crystals. Diamond snow, it looks like I’m surrounded with sparkle, as much as I hate winter, tonight is beautiful. I try to soak in the moment, that’s really all we have is this moment right here and POOF it’s gone, if you don’t enjoy it right then, you never get it back…

The door opens, and I enter her cottage. Christmas music is playing, and twinkle lights wink at me from everywhere. Lovely. She takes my coat and hangs it up, and we are off, talking about everything and nothing, her friendship has been priceless to me throughout the divorce, and I have nothing but kind feelings, a bottle of Chardonnay, and an appetizer for her. She introduces me to her husband, a delight of a gentleman I instantly like, a spark in his eye telling he may be a bit up to no good. I feel welcomed. Her cottage is full of memories, she has traveled the world and is showing me… this sculpture is from Japan, these wall hangings are from Ireland, those figurines are from Germany…

Sarah continues the tour, and I ascend a handful of stairs to another room, a living area with a massive sectional and a wall of windows with what I know has to be a stunning view, though it is night and it is a wall of black with only Christmas lights from nearby cottages glowing in the darkness. This is absurdly quaint. Comfy, cozy. It feels like a resort. I could spend a week here. I could spend a month here. As we chat, I hear activity down on the lower landing.

She wants to introduce me to the rest of the relatives, and we descend the stairs.

A man approaches me.

Tall. Slender. Slightly greying sandy hair, every one perfectly in place. Pressed crisp dress shirt. Dress pants. Alligator shoes. Tan. Looks like he just walked in from the Hamptons.

Teal blue eyes like the Carribean sea.

Sarah’s cousin.

Ahhh, shit.