Thread of Life

A little over a week ago, I found myself getting exceptionally emotional over a lighthearted text Meg had sent on our “Besties” thread that I had stupidly taken offense to. The text was benign and implicated that I am spacey at baseline and any detour from baseline will make me spacier. Not only was she not wrong, she’s spot on. For a million reasons, however, I felt insulted and all my hormones (or lack thereof) all nodded their heads in agreement. I said something back making it clear that I was not amused. Meg owned it and apologized. After dinner, I sat down to process why I had felt the way I did and immediately recognized that I was being overly sensitive. I reached out to Meg, told her as much, and then proceeded to cry because I’m unabashedly overwhelmed by everything now and again. Personally, I think it’s a miracle that we females don’t “snap” more often because it’s all just too much. You can’t expect women to handle it all, be Santa, wax their mustaches, pluck their eyebrows, smooth their wrinkles, bleed erratically, AND always be Mary fucking Poppins.

Every time I find myself writing about the joy of being a woman, I have felt the need to include some part of my writing dedicated to men readers to let them know that we are all aware that their journeys are difficult as well. I’m getting a little tired of doing that, quite frankly. Isn’t that just one more thing on my plate that I have to do so that no one thinks I’m too “bitchy”? Sure it’s hard to be male but you all don’t shed the inner lining of one of your internal organs every 28 days. You don’t have to deal with waves of hormones that rise and fall like the Bay of Fundy. You don’t have to spend part of your salary on beauty products that society tells you you need. Oh? I don’t need to buy makeup or do my hair? Or wax my mustache? Or pluck my eyebrows? Or cover the dark circles under my eyes? Ok, I won’t. BUT, I guarantee you that many will tell me I look, oh horror of horrors, tired. I’m sorry, boys. I just don’t feel that bad for you.

A few years ago, I was working on Kaua’i and spent many of my waking hours designing and writing a magazine for a small school. It was the very thing that made me realize that I have OCD. I must have reread that thing 1000 times, fixing “errors” with every read. When it came time for the board to review the final product, I was not invited to the meeting. My male boss took over from there and that was only one thing that happened in a very, very long string of misogynistic comments and actions directed against me. I sounded the alarm….to another male boss. This, I learned, was the wrong move. Work in such a small environment was practically unbearable from that point forward. “Say whatever you want about him, I’m not going to fire him.” was what I was told. I quit that job, the only time I have ever really quit anything in my life except for the time I left teaching in Weymouth to move to Hawaii. To this day, I don’t know if what I did was the right move as it set off a chain of events that led to our moving back to Massachusetts and the eventual dissolution of my marriage. I blamed myself for everything for a very long time and excused the inexcusable.

What I know now is that my experience on Kaua'i was much like the burgeoning head of a pre-pubescent weeks-old pimple that exploded when I called something for exactly what it was and it backfired spectacularly. I moved back to Massachusetts with my tail between my legs and was depleted of just about everything, including money. When our marriage came to a sudden halt, I examined the many things I had done wrong over the last ten years. As someone with OCD and the habit of revisiting things in my mind, this was akin to raking myself over coals while whipping my own back. Thankfully, therapy led me down a different path and showed me that everything wasn’t my fault and that this life I have ahead of me is full of promise despite some very dire circumstances and obstacles. “What do you want?” my therapist recently asked me. I am proud to say that I am working towards what I want every single day as my list grows shorter—bills, divorce, clogged toilets, and taxes. One by one things are being done, bit by bit I get closer to the “what” I want. Most importantly, I have learned how to completely own my shit (including the emotional shit that comes with menopause) and let the unowned shit of others go. Coincidentally, I have also learned how to snake a toilet and how to add loose curls to my hair with a straightener. If only I could learn how to get my hands on a laser for hair removal.

All of the above started with my story about how a little text from a best friend set me off. As a 45-year-old single woman with three kids to care for and two aging parents to assist, there have been a few individuals that have been like beacons to me over these years and my best friends, the ones who know just how ditzy I can be, are some of the best beacons I’ve got. My “Besties” text thread has kept me tethered to this earth from before life led us to Kaua'i all the way to the present day. If I were to print out the history of that thread and put it all here, you would be shocked, saddened, horrified, and thoroughly amused. It is the very definition of “safe space” and we allow one another to go off the rails with the knowledge that side texts will develop strategies to pull anyone back on track. I would never have gotten through these past few years as well as I have without their ever-present love and support. Although many criticize the level to which this society is glued to their phones, I for one am thankful for all the threads that exist on mine.

So, no, today’s issue will not come with it a side note for my male readers to make them feel better about the complaints I have made on behalf of my gender. Today’s issue is dedicated to the many fearless females I know and don’t who have not just made lemonade from lemons but cupcakes from shit when it hit the fan. I will keep snaking my toilet with my silver hair in loose curls and my makeup applied like the pretty war paint it is. My hands tap tap away this issue with my nail polish chipped and I make a note to self to get them done before next weekend. Will I get pink? Grey? Black? Lilac? Mauve? I don’t know. What I do know is that I am going to continue to cross things off on my list of “How to Get What I Want out of Life.” and continue to love the hell out of the amazing humans in my orbit. Now? Time to order a new toilet. #sundayfunday