I need to say a few things about waking up alone on a Sunday morning. 1) this hasn't happened nearly as much as it should have in the past 5 years. 2) it's a very special kind of quiet that lets me feel my body aches and hunger and clarity and especially comfort. 3) why was I afraid of this? I haven't even gotten around to having a warm drink to complement my warm blanket. This can only get better. I have my cats, who are bopping around like they're happy to see me, tossing toys back and forth, murmuring little grunts as they play, stopping to check out the view.
I changed my furniture layout yesterday. I was attempting to consolidate the clutter, make better use of the windows, open up the main room. Can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. I was so focused on filling up my free time with social activities that I didn't allow myself time to get into my own magical head space. Here I am, in that space, feeling like I went far away on a soul searching journey. And I'm at home! I missed the feeling of home. Once my brother visited me at my studio apartment in Ravenswood, the last really cool vintage place I lived. He said something about how I can always make a place feel homey (implying that it wouldn't be his choice to live in an old building with antique lighting and whatnot, but this was not so bad). It was one of the best complements I ever got.
Today I'm in my perch, 4 floors above the corner that is the historic center of my historic home town, in a fairly new and perfectly functional attached home. No complaints. I just watched a Canada Goose approach from a quarter mile away, and fly off to the North. It's been a mild winter to say the least, and the goose confirms all of our confusion.
On another house-cleaning note, I broke up with Michael. It was a no-brainer. Or an all-brainer. Yeah, all-brain decision. I woke up at his house for the last time a couple weeks ago on a Sunday. Woke up feeling stressed about brushing my teeth before offending him with my morning breath. Feeling obligated to relieve his sexual urges. Knowing his kids were texting with demands for rides and visits. My own daily needs were so far down the list I couldn't see them. And this had been going on for a year. 5 years, really, if you count all the false starts. But it had really come to a point where I didn't see a way to fix it. I simply didn't want to wake up with anyone else anymore. I wanted this very thing, to wake up and be concerned only with my self and my daughter. And my pets. Mine, not his poor ailing sleeps-all-day dog.
I met Michael within a month of my separation. It was an awful, anxiety-ridden, rainy April night when I desperately sent out my plea to the readers of the match service to come and save me. He was the only one who answered. He was recently separated too, and sort of homeless, since half the time his wife was home with the kids and he was squatting at a friend's condo. Talk about two drifting souls looking for something to hold on to. We had fun, forgetting our money troubles and broken hearts together. It was actually one of the most fun times of my life, in between the terrifying moments of realizing I was going to be on my own. We traveled, we danced, we laughed, we slept and ate and drank and talked and reminisced about our former married selves, we grieved together. That was such a gift. And the gifts kept coming. And then he had the chance to try falling in love with someone else. My heart broke again, not a total shatter but a big tear. But I realized it was for the best. I found someone else too, someone else who needed to grieve. It wasn't as fun. But it taught me some new things. And it had to end.
I hadn't had much time to embrace my new world of being officially divorced, and off the dating circuit, when Michael started coming around again. This time he was open about sharing his kids, and wanted more to do with Zoe. It was the same man but a totally different attitude. I tried to play it casual. But how could I ignore his attention? He knew how to get me to open up. And then I'd retreat. And that made him sad. So we got into a pattern of him seducing me and me falling all in, and then me taking my life back. And over and over as time permitted, on a bimonthly basis since that's when Zoe would be visiting her dad. They started to feel like conjugal visits. It hasn't felt right since we returned from Italy. I came home to the prospect of a dead end job. Our best friends had moved away. I had my family. But they deflected any mention of my companion. They met him once, at Brian's crawfish boil. He came in his own car, obviously tight on time, focused on having to go back home for his son's baseball game or wrestling match or something. They didn't seem to dislike him. But they definitely didn't try to pull him in to our family tradition. It wasn't until December of this year that my mom and I had a conversation about what it would be like to pack up and follow our friends to Colorado. She asked if Michael would move with us. In that way that mothers ask. It wasn't so much the actual words that carried meaning, as the disdain in the wrinkles that formed in her nose and eyebrows as she asked the question. I told her I felt like he was purely my companion, not my partner. It seemed to appease her. And weirdly, as I said it, it appeased me too. He wanted to be a partner, and he showed great potential. But partnership to me felt like a punishment. Like being grounded. I'd be relegated to a tiny house in Skokie, not just me but also my daughter who has had the privilege of growing up with her grandparents a few steps away. She'd have a smaller room, she'd have to share everything for the first time in her life, or confine herself to avoid conflict. And so would I. In this tiny house I couldn't imagine being confined to a corner of a bedroom, with barely enough room to tiptoe past the dog bed and zero room for clothes and personal tokens and space to do all the weird crafty things I like to do. No. This was not a once in a lifetime proposition. I was not coming into this relationship with a deficit. I was already set up in a spacious, clean, bright and cozy spot that was perfectly affordable. Could I finally just admit that to myself and go on with my life as I pleased?
I made a clean getaway.
Here I sit, on my comfy couch, under my comfy blanket. Free to be all the things that I am. Going all sorts of places. Revisiting all my favorite memories. Ready to soar like that goose. I'm already 4 stories high, I wonder how much higher I can go?
