The Woman Behind the Blog

I have a little scoop to share with you all.  I have had a couple of dates with one of my blog readers, a man going through a divorce (big surprise).  He and I exchanged some emails about my blog and his divorce, and well, one thing led to another, and we decided to meet.  He asked me if I was violating any blogger code of ethics.  I certainly confess ignorance on that issue, but I did consult my Facebook friends and they seemed okay with it.

He is a regular reader of my blog (Hey babe!) so I am certainly not going to reveal many details.  However, our interactions together have brought up an interesting question for me.  It is clear that he likes me largely due what he has learned of me through my writing, and that has led me to wonder if I am really the woman he thinks I am.  In other words, is my writing a true reflection of me or just an idealized version of me?

I have a doctorate in literature so this issue really isn’t a new one for me.  In graduate school, we often spoke about the dangers of assuming that an author speaks through his or her texts, even when he or she writes an autobiography.  Every writer dons a sort of mask when she writes, as her texts are only a representation of her thoughts on a given subject at a given moment.  They are a kind of performance, aimed at a certain audience.  I myself know that when I write about a conflict that I have with my ex and how I have handled it, I choose my words carefully.  I am conscious that friends, colleagues and exes are reading my words.  I also want to represent my divorce in a way that can help others achieve some harmony or cooperation with their exes as well.  While I think I am being honest and at times self-deprecating, I know that I also want to represent myself in a particular way.  I want to show my readers that I am peaceful and capable of resolving conflict.  Sometimes I just want to be funny.  I don’t share with you all my every thought and word (Thank God).  This is not some reality show where you get to see my every flaw, although even those shows are edited for an objective (to entertain?).

As I was musing on this topic, I decided to talk to my ex husband about it to see what he had to say.  Now that was an amusing conversation.  I ask him, Am I really who I say I am in my blog?  He says, I don’t know.  What do you mean you don’t know?  You read me and you know me very well.  Who would know better than you?  He hems and haws and says that he really doesn’t want to analyze that (he’s getting smarter about how to handle me).  I goad him into it, and he says, well, that I’m not always as serene as I portray myself.  We have a good laugh about that.  Of course, I’m not.  I don’t tend to write when I’m angry.  I write with the calmness of hindsight.

Upon reading one of my posts, my blog reader date gave me a really sweet compliment.  While his words were touching, I did let him know that I am not always the way I represent myself.  If I were to get involved with him, there would be times that I would lose my temper or say something stupid or sharp or react to something that my higher self, my peaceful divorcee blogger self, knows is petty.  However, I do know the ideal that I want to be and I strive to reach that goal each day.  So I guess my answer is that the women in my blog is one face of me, and that face is real.  It just changes expressions depending on the circumstances.

Enough Time

The lazy days of summer are a thing of the past.

I just finished my first week back at school, and everyone keeps asking me how it is going.  The biggest change is that I just don’t have as much time as I did during the summer.  It is stressful for me to think about all that I have to do, but I remind myself that this is the price that I pay to have the summers off, right?  Today, while I was catching up on my backlog of blog subscriptions, I came across the perfect article for me called My “Enough List” on Alli’n Son’s Thursday Thank You Journal (I love any blog that makes me focus on gratitude).  The author was pointing out that humans have a tendency to focus on the things we want MORE of or on how things could be BETTER, yet if we really think about it, we have ENOUGH of a lot of things.  That’s when it hit me.  I could have more time, but the good news is that I have enough time to do most of the things that I love.

So the following is my Enough List, it is a list of the things that I have enough time to do during the next semester.

1) Friday night family dinners. Read the rest of this entry »

The World’s a Roller Coaster

As my blog has developed more readers, it has brought me into contact with so many interesting people for whom I have developed an affection and with whom I feel a connection.  My readers’ comments have not only given me new ideas for my blog, but they have also expanded my perspective of life.  Just yesterday I wrote about a reader going through a breakup who had told me of her experience riding a roller coaster this weekend, and how fun it had been.  Well today, synchronicity struck again, and my sister, brother-in-law and I brought our kids to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

Read the rest of this entry »

My First Foray into Dating

Several of my friends have encouraged me to blog about my post-divorce dating life.  Well, as luck would have it, last night I ran into the first guy that I dated after my ex and I split up.  So I thought what  better place to start than at the beginning.

Two and a half months after my ex moved out of the house, as part of my process of making lemonade out of lemons, I asked myself “What are the benefits of your new single life?”  Dating was right there at the top of that list.  So…as many people do, I signed up for Match.com, not really sure what I was getting myself into.  The very first date I had was with D (I can’t bring myself to mention his name in case he feels compromised and somehow making up a fake name sounds weird). He and I hit it off right away.  At the end of the date we had a make-out session in the parking lot of Thornes.  I felt like a teenager again.  It turns out that dating as a single parent (with kids at the house) can return you to a certain adolescence in which you have to be creative and do some sneaking around.

I like to give my ex credit where credit is due, so I have to say that he always made me feel like a desirable woman.  He noticed my outfits, my makeup and jewelry and to this day he still compliments me on a regular basis on how good I look.  Of the big three topics that couples fight about (sex, kids, and money), we just had the latter two. Nevertheless, after being with the same man for thirteen years, this passionate and somewhat illicit connection with D was very exciting for me.

Even more important than that (can you believe there’s something more important than that?) was that D had this amazing capacity to help me understand and process my relationship with my ex.  Whereas my ex was sensitive, emotional and emotionally open, yet tended toward maelstroms, D was logical, compassionate, objective, and extremely level headed.  At the end of my relationship with my ex, I felt like I was inadvertently stepping into landmines every time I spoke.  It seemed that everything I said rubbed him the wrong way or set him off.  With D I could talk about anything under the sun and admit to him all my feelings, and he would listen, never react personally and respond with a well thought-out observation.

Now I don’t really recommend that a recent divorcee spend a lot of time talking about her ex with a new lover.  In fact, many of my first dates from Match have bombed because the guy spent so much time badmouthing his ex-wife (such an unattractive quality).  However, D had this preternatural ability to calm me down no matter what my ex did, and I loved it.  I would call him up all riled up about something Hugo had done and he would listen and sympathize, and then when I was calm again, he would gently point out to me my part in the conflict, where I could have done things better.  He was way more helpful than a therapist, and, frankly, better than my sister or mother, who already had preconceived notions about Hugo and his behavior.

D looked at me with new eyes, and he made me see myself (and my ex) with new eyes.  After so many years of cohabitation, it is easy to forget how much of your identity is formed through your spouse’s perception of you.  D teased that out of me and made me realize that I was different than how my ex viewed me.  Not only did he help me understand my ex better, he helped me understand myself.

After the turbulence of my breakup, D was a breath of fresh air, but of course in the end it turned out that such even temperedness had its price.  He was also at times aloof, ambivalent, and never really let me into his heart, but I suppose you can’t have it all.  Nonetheless we saw each other on and off for over a year, and it was exactly what I needed.  We are still friends, and, in fact, he does computer work, so when I started this blog I called him up for help.  He’s not an expert on blogging or WordPress, but he did do what he has done so many times before.  He sat on the phone with me, answered my questions, and nonchalantly guided me to take action.

It seems fitting, after playing such a big role in my transition into divorced living, that D would also play a part in starting this blog.  Plus, he made me laugh at the end of the conversation when he said, “So I take it from the name of your blog that things are going better?”  I told him he can write the “I knew her when” comments.

That’s What She Said

For some reason, many of my friends love the quote “That’s what she said” and tend to use it on various occasions.  I’ve never quite understood its charm, but it does occur to me now that it aptly sums up what many might imagine would be my ex’s response to my blog.  “That’s what she said.”

When I wrote Our Anniversary Gingko, I actually mailed it to him right away before even posting it.  It’s a touching post that expresses some lovely sentiments towards him so I knew he’d like it.  But when he asked to read Trouble in Paradise, I was a little nervous.  It’s an edgier piece that celebrates the fact that he is no longer my husband.  I also wondered if he would take umbrage with my representation of his relationship with his girlfriend (a topic that clearly I’m no expert on) or if he would find my description of him somehow denigrating.  So I held my breath a little while he was reading it.

Now you may wonder why he even asked to read it.  I mean he could find it online and read it on his own without my permission.  However, in our typical peaceful way, he was at the house (our former family home) doing something, laundry I think (that’s a topic for another post!) and I asked him for his feedback on the blog’s appearance because he has such a keen aesthetic eye.

So…this was his response:

“I didn’t say turbid.”  You’ve got to be kidding me.  Of all the things he could pick on, that was it?  The word that I had to look up in the dictionary to understand?  If there was something that I knew was undeniable, it was that word.  I’m just not clever enough to have made that part up.

“It’s very honest.”  But I thought he just said that I made up the word turbid.  He clarified that he liked how open I was about my feelings.

“You’re right.  I’m a drama queen.”  Wow…no fight about that? I thought that was rather self-aware of him.  And because he likes drama, he was of course happy to hear that he could still cause me to experience angst.

Then I asked him for some kudos by saying “Did you see how I called you tremendously generous?” which, I realize, wasn’t so generous of me to ask about.  Interestingly enough, that led to a calm, but more serious, discussion about how this summer’s five-week trip to California was just a bit too long and that he would appreciate it if I would only take them for a maximum of a month in the future.  Fair enough.  Done.

Later that night, after he had dinner with us and cleaned up the kitchen and I was taking the kids up to bed, he hugged me and thanked me for sharing the blog with him, with a sincere look of appreciation and love in his eyes.

Then we laughed about how I would blog about that, which, of course, I just did.