But Facebook, Do I Have to Remember?

If you're on Facebook, which even Mama H is these days (can you believe it?!), then you probably get reminded all the time of pictures you posted on this date in years past. I think someone in California was like, how can we force people to look at other people's weddings and babies over and over and over again without the original poster being even more obnoxious than they already might be.

So, issue #1 - if I already liked the picture in the past I don't know if it makes me a bad person not to like it again however many years later. I mean, some posts are hilarious or over the top precious, and it is interesting to see time flying for things like first days of school and such. But honestly, that's not always the case.

Issue #2 though is that Facebook has decided to remind me, at least once a week, that I used to be in this giddy, adorable relationship. The kind that makes you post cute photos of you and your boyfriend/fiance/spouse doing cutesy date activities because you're so darn happy and it will never end.

Now I don't negate the happiness. Read the blog. I was head over heels enamored for a very long time. I just sometimes wake up and remember the state JG and I have now found ourselves in and the last thing I want to do is see how awesome we were. I'm glad we were. I truly am. I love our history and our beginning and more than anything I love these crazy, awesome. adorable. ridiculous boys we created together. They're the absolute best ever. I will always be thankful I fell in love in New York and took a risk on the man I married because all the heartache is still worth it. And, as evidenced in the flashbacks, most of it for a very long time was not heartache. It was bliss and comfort and companionship.

So maybe there's a button that a younger millennial can show me to avoid the barrage of happy memories? Or maybe part of moving on and adapting to change is learning how to accept the past being launched at your face when you'd really rather be mindlessly scrolling and liking happy babies and weddings and vacation getaways.

I don't know.

Either way, it's not like it would help me forget the dates that matter over the summer and fall months. I mean, I still remember birthdays of kids I went to elementary school with. I'm not going to forget August 15th. November 12th. September 6th. Or September 4th or 5th or the other September 6th that eventually led to February 6th. Maybe this whole elephant brain is gonna get me year after year even if I do take a Facebook hiatus.

But when I invent my time machine - along with unsending quite a few emails, being way more thoughtful with certain college decisions, finding the cross streets of the bar from spectacle night, and spending more time with Mom-Mom that final year - I'm going to insert a bunch of ridiculous posts on Facebook to be seen only by me, so that when I return to the present 2017 I can be reminded of cute things like rabbits and pigs napping together, clouds that look like unicorns, me sleeping eight hours uninterrupted and so on. Facebook can remind me of that as much as it wants. I'll smile as I start my daily scroll. I won't repost unless it's over the top adorable. And when I'm ready for all the emotions, then I'll click on old albums or return to old blog posts here to relive the magical and heart-wrenching story of my first great love.

Art and Life

These days people ask me a lot how I'm doing. Not everyone knows, and most who do know only the tiny bit I've shared with the public. It's just a simple greeting that's often followed immediately by "How was your summer?"

Typically I answer with "fine," or "too short" or "hanging in there, getting used to the new place." But sometimes I'm tempted to be super honest and return with "devastating and refreshing and confusing and the hardest right choice I've ever had to make." Or maybe I can get straight to the point by returning with a question of my own: "Have you ever seen The Last Five Years?" I mean, it's not a perfect analogy, but it might get the point across.

And while I'm on the topic of divorce-related entertainment, I've been watching Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce on Netflix lately. If you're concerned, I promise I'm not actually using it as a guide or reference source or anything more than post kid-bedtime amusement. I mean, it takes place in Hollywood and is nothing like my current situation. At least, I'm pretty sure I didn't turn into a best-selling author overnight and JG hasn't gone from lamenting my choice in television programming to hooking up with a CW actress half his age.

There are some points they do get right in the show. The question mark of writing truthfully about something as raw as losing a love you once relied upon for stability and certainty in the world. The first nights without the kids. The way that committing to change can still feel wrong even when it feels right. That dream of a "good divorce." And also how there's something that happens when you go through relationship trouble that allows people around you that you assume are happy in their own relationships to share the crap going on behind the scenes past or present.

And that element reminds me of when I decided to start talking about wanting a baby and I realized how many women struggled for the same thing. I felt so alone until I encountered all the other voices saying "me too." And now I'm a voice that says, to a certain degree, I've been there, at least enough to understand the emotion, even if not the full complexity of your individual situation. Because the most painful experiences of our lives shouldn't be the topics most closed off in the world. Shouldn't the hardest trials we deal with be the ones for which we get the most support? Not shameful secrets that we pretend aren't happening as we go about our daily tasks of just making it through?

Now that school is back up and running a coworker (and also an Ivy grad woman of color) was discussing a babysitting issue with me. She asked if I was married - probably because in our discussion of who would watch the boys for back to school night I didn't mention their dad as someone I'd asked - I decided to just let her know I was separated. Her first reaction was "I'm sorry," and then quickly she said, "Well, maybe I shouldn't be? If it's right. When I was separated I wanted people to be happy for me for getting out of a terrible marriage." We didn't dwell on it, but I thanked her. Not just for sharing about herself, but for so openly accepting how complicated it is when a marriage is ending. I mean, no one goes into marriage thinking it will end. But no one gets out of it if they were truly altogether happy in it either. I don't know that I want people to be happy or sad or any emotion on my behalf. This is just where I am now.

Something broke, so we're apart. Quite possibly forever. And coming to terms with that truth is a journey I've not yet completed. But in this stage here, I'm ok. And wherever I end up I'll be ok too. Even if it isn't my current best case scenario dream. I don't need movies or TV shows to tell me that.

And until I know where my journey is going to end, relationship wise, I'll keep working hard and playing hard and figuring out how to take a decent selfie.

After the Move

After rereading my last three posts I'm thinking I made the right choice by deciding to write tonight. The summer hasn't been the positive slope graph I was hoping when I turned the maybe-divorce-won't-be-awful corner around my birthday. But not everything has been terrible. In fact, a lot of things have been quite wonderful.

For instance, the new house is great. It's about twice the size as my old place for substantially less rent and includes a basement, a bathroom on all three floors, and a guest bedroom for whenever you decide to visit. Yep, you. There's a pantry where I can store your favorite snacks and enough cabinets for me to finally put to use all the fancy wedding gifts that have been stored away. (Oh irony, such a tricky little friend)

The neighborhood is off to a solid start. There's a pool if you get here by Labor Day and it's never busy. Ever. Sometimes we're the only family there. Plus there are a billion kids ages 2-12 that rule this townhome cul de sac like a kid gang from the late 80s. PDG and MDG have joined right in with their training wheels and nerf guns. So many boys! When that's not enough exercise and excitement, we make our way to Fantasy Playground and make believe in the wooden castles, or check out what the library is offering that day. Reptile night has been the biggest hit so far. Camp Nicole isn't quite what it was the year of exploring A-town parks, but it's still suburban busy and scheduled around much needed midday naps.

Still, it's all hard. The uncertainties. The wondering if the kids are going to come through this all ok. The wondering if I'm going to come through ok. The quiet every other Saturday morning when I wish for tiny footsteps to come in the room and tell me the sun's awake and request cereal or frozen waffles. There were the accidents and bedwetting that first week after moving when their little brains and hearts and bodies were adjusting to a new home. My brain and heart and body had to adjust too.

It's all so new, and yet, so much is the same. MDG will be at the same daycare. PDG will be there in the mornings for a while too. I'll be at my same job with my coworkers who have welcomed me to the community with dinners and girls nights and play dates. The boys still have the toys and games and shows they love. We go to a church that teaches the same lessons from the same books and sing the same songs. At bedtime we pray and we tell the same stories. Even the princess story about me and J-Man. We see the people we love and they (you) find time to keep our friendships going.

There's a hole, of course, and there are plenty of people with opinions about how I should fill it and when. There are times when I push too hard and times when I still don't say what I want or need or think I deserve.

There's hurt. Specific hurt that warrants apologies and the broad hurt that no one gets to own more than another.

But at the core, there's so much love. I love my boys. I love my family. I love my friends. That other love I used to write about - I miss it. I'm sure I will for a while. Maybe one day I'll even feel it again. For now though, I'm going to keep counting blessings, finding silver linings, letting myself have a biweekly cry when the house is too quiet, and finding more ways to embrace the positive in the otherwise awful limbo of separation.

May and Me

I've been trying to practice intentional self care these past few weeks. (Don't I sound so in touch with my 2017 self in that sentence?) For real though, I know there are plenty of self-help books to tell me how to navigate the incredibly emotionally exhausting roller coaster of likely divorce, but none of them are actually written just for me and my marriage so it's still a lot of trial and error.

You know, like how I spent the first full weekend J-Man got with the kids alternating between watching Thirteen Reasons Why and packing all his things - therefore obsessing over memories in certain clothes and sobbing over tucked away love notes. That was a rough forty-eight hours...

Instead, I've been using the month of May to avoid sliding into depression or terrible binge teen tv-watching by keeping busy. First there was  SA's wedding (I guess I should call her Dr. S, or really double Dr. S with the whole MD/PhD amazingness she has going on). Then a friend invited me to a hot yoga class. I should clarify it wasn't technically bikram because the thermostat only read 99 degrees but that's hot to me. And despite having to occasionally take breathing breaks in child's pose, I was pretty impressed with how well I rocked those 75 minutes. Also all the cheesy yoga talk about feeling open and refreshed and centered really applied. So the next week I bought a yoga mat and my first official pair of yoga pants and have been trying out videos in my living room since. Even the boys have gotten in on the action.

A different weekend I went to visit FR in New York. Sadly EK wasn't there since she is a a professional wedding attendee (or so it seems) but FR and I had plenty to keep us chatting. Our lives may not be mirror images, but I know I found it therapeutic and comforting to talk and talk and walk and eat and talk the whole time. She shared a favorite breakfast spot with me and I shared a favorite with her from my and DrDrSA's time in NYC - only 2.5 blocks from FR! - and we mutually indulged in our love of Central Park and Broadway. The musical we saw was War Paint, and those impressive voices almost made us dip into Sephora to buy some face cream. Then we decided that until we're real make-up wearers, we'll save our cash and pray the wrinkles appear slowly and gracefully.

This weekend, while I didn't expressly celebrate fallen soldiers, I did hang out with veteran Big O and KB's family for a fantastic cookout. I also did a 24 hour trip to Winchester where the boys got their rural activity fill by burning trash, riding the Gator, walking to the mailbox with Granddad, and checking on the garden.

Today we hit up a favorite A-town spot and watched the planes take off above our heads. They love the loud noise and the feeling like you can reach up and touch the giant jet-liners.

That and tossing rocks in the river, quacking at ducks, waving at turtles, and making new friends. For me it was a nice break from their recent need to be Captain Underpants. All. Day. Long.

All this to say that I didn't magically flip a switch on my birthday and stop feeling sad or crying, but May's been good. I'm being good to myself. So here's hoping June's more of the same, if not better.

Good Riddance, 32

Guess who just finished celebrating her first solo birthday with her first solo wedding! That's right, this woman right here.

 (I was gonna write "this girl" but at 33, it's time I call myself a woman, I think.)

Now, I can't say that I survived the birthday weekend unscathed. I mean, I did sob while driving through the pouring rain at 8am after dropping off the boys, but a phone call to Big Sis and reassuring texts from KB and other friends helped keep it the only real cry of the day.

With that behind me I ventured out to get my hair relaxed at a new salon. And no, I haven't dyed the gray yet. Despite lots of people asking me. Just so you know, I don't plan on changing my mind any time soon, but feel free to keep asking. Seriously. The endless inquiries make me feel amazing. So young. So beautiful. So treasured for my intellect and personality. Can you tell how much I love being judged for something my body is doing naturally? I'm looking at you, random man at Target who felt the need to know if all that gray was real. Awesome.

Less sarcastically, I ate at the bar in Olive Garden while reading another Liane Moriarty novel and it was pretty fantastically self-indulgent.

So with my hair done and lasagna enjoyed I joined KB and O and hit the road to wild and wonderful WV for SA's wedding. There was a moment during the rehearsal when I realized I'd be walking down the aisle to the same song I walked down my own wedding aisle to and my eyes welled on instinct, but remembering it was SA's day and she is an incredible and wonderful friend, I told my emotions to save the pity party for another weekend and pushed through.

After that moment I honestly forgot it was my birthday for hours. We ate and laughed and crossed our fingers the weather would stay warm and sunny for Saturday (spoiler: it didn't). At the end of the night, back in the amazing cabin that we hope to revisit in September - according to Big O we will definitely be back, and fishing, with the little ones - we ate birthday cookies and it sunk in that I was 33.

The next day there were only tiny moments of heartbreak that sneaked in. I knew they would. I breathed them in and exhaled them back out. I accepted hugs from kind friends old and new, and I danced. A lot. With a confidence I owe to J-Man and eleven years of him insisting we always be on the dance floor within minutes of it being opened to the crowd. I wished I had someone to dance with. Then a new song would come on and I'd shoo that thought away and keep dancing.

I kept dancing.

And dancing.

And dancing.

Until the band packed up and we were the final twelve or so folks on the floor.

It kept my body warm in the crazy-cold, see-your-breath, wear-a-coat-through-dinner, night.

It kept my heart warm to be in motion. To cling to the songs about love and happiness and celebration, even if they all didn't feel 100% like current anthems.

SA's wedding was beautiful, and deserves more of a post than this, but what I realized about myself through the weekend is that for my 33rd year, I'm ready to be a doer. I'm ready to say yes. I'm ready to take the confidence I learned in the early years with J-Man, braving the chaos of Harlem and NYCTF, two cross-country moves, the madness of questionable fertility, the juggling act of two under two, and keep pushing forward.

I'm going to say yes more this year.

Yes, I'm going to NYC in two weeks.

Yes, I plan to have applied to grad school by my next birthday.

Yes, I will be on that committee or go to this yoga class or help out with those activities.

Even, yes I will recognize that I need a good cry, YA book and early bedtime to recharge before continuing to say yes to something else.

Yes, I will be happy this year.

Good riddance, 32. You brought too much heartache. You left too many scars. You demanded too many tears and compromises and surrenders.

Hello, 33. Bring on your adventures. Show me your hidden surprises. Tempt me with your possibilities. Teach me what to do with this bowl of lemons because I'm ready for the pitchers and pitchers of lemonade now.

Bring. It. On.

My Heart: Act II

Friends,

It's been a long time since I've written because I haven't had the words to say. You see, last September my heart broke. In all honesty it was breaking beforehand, but as I understood it the whole fracture took place in a day. A hammer on stained glass. Scissors to a quilt. 

I thought afterwards that my heart must have stopped beating, and reflecting in the passing days I wondered how it could not have. It was a miracle. 

Lest you worry, physically I was fine. The boys were fine. Even J-Man was fine. I guess.

I don't really know how to discuss heartbreak here because there are always two sides, and if you're reading this I can only guarantee you mine. And I don't guarantee much of that because it's still my story, to be shared if and when I'm ready. It's my truth. It's a day that, however, did not manage to stop my heart.

In the months since then, my heart has proven time and again that it beats on. It races when I consider where to move or if that's right for me. Or for the kids. It races more when I think of starting at a new school and what changes that could bring. Or resentment. But then I hold my two sweet boys and wrap myself in the world of loving them. Cleaning nosebleeds and blowing bubbles and dancing to the music we choose. 

Of course, it speeds up again when I have to answer their tough questions about our family being forever. I tell them that their dad and I will love them more than anyone else, like we always have, and that our love is forever. In that way we will always be a family. 

It physically aches when they request the story of the prince and the princess. The one where the main characters both have castles in Harlem and meet at teaching school and get engaged in Central Park and give each other rings in front of friends and family to say they'll live happily ever after with their two little princes. PDG's timing on requesting that story is impeccably ironic. And also gut-wrenching.

The thing is, we changed part of the story. And then I changed how I tell the story. It used to be that was the end of it all. Now the two promise to love the princes forever, but one day decide to live in separate houses. I didn't think I could change it, and yet I did. 

I realized during one telling that just because the ending changed, it didn't actually alter anything else. The story is still full of happiness. The story is an outgoing, smart, and goofy guy falling for a polar opposite girl, and the two making a life together.

Of course I know that years from now I'll reread this entry and think of all I don't know yet. By then I'll know if I moved and where. If I got a different job in this school district. I'll know if someone else found me lovable, and if I learned to trust again enough to accept it. If I figured out how not to judge myself based on someone else's adoration. I'll know the myriad things I cannot even fathom that I don't know now.

I do know this, as I will in the future, my heart will keep beating. In eight months it has beat through a separation, a reconciliation, a #divorcemoon and yet another separation. It keeps going. And if I doubt that, I will channel the characters of my book, turn up some Ingrid Michaelson, and sing along with both MDG and PDG that "all the broken hearts in the world still beat." 

I'll keep doing the things I love. I'll write about the topics that hurt and scare me - both here and in my stories. I'll cry at times, but I'll smile more. I'll make new memories, adding more chapters to the story of my life. My heart will step into act II. 

So, here goes. Welcome to the journey.