I was really hoping to get this in before the MAGA malarkey got fully underway this year, but that’s like wishing your cat won’t lick its own butt. No offense to cats, they have to lick their own butts, just like MAGA has to bring mayhem, it’s just the natural order of the universe. No one really wants to look at either one, but we also have to accept that they are still a reality.
So, while we’re learning about their melon-hued messiah making at least $7.8 million in emoluments clause violating foreign money while sitting in the White House “donating his salary” I’m gonna share a quick piece on what 2023 was like for me personally.
Unlike MAGA, my 2023 didn’t completely suck. On the contrary, where it was hardest was where I learned the most, grew the most, and changed the most. And unlike MAGA, I have been learning to recognize and accept when change is necessary, even if, especially if actually, it can be seriously challenging and feel pretty fucking scary.
The start to my year was something I had largely forgotten to be honest. It was all a bit of a blur. But when a friend I hadn’t spoken to in years reached out because she was going through a divorce and she was scared to be alone — I was suddenly thrust back in time. Back to a time just a year ago, when I was going through that exact same thing.
I had completely forgotten how dark and scary that time was for me, and to my mind — that means that I’ve gotten through it, at least largely, and hopefully past it, at least mostly, and that now, maybe I can tell help someone else going through something similar feel less afraid and less alone.
I think I helped my old friend when she called for advice on how to be alone after decades of marriage. And maybe I can help someone else too. Who knows — so here goes.
In February 2023 it was cold in New Jersey. That’s all it was. It was cold.
There was no snow on the ground & none on the horizon. The house was stripped bare of cheery red and green holiday decorations. The khaki-painted walls and dulling wood floors of my home seemed to have merged before my very eyes into one utterly uninspiring sea of beige.
Day after day of a colorless, leaden-looking sky seemed to permeate everything — my home, my thoughts, my mood… and in that endless murkiness the melancholy began to set in.
There was a subtle, lingering sadness, and in the constant quiet, the faintest echo of emotions began to call out from somewhere deep inside of me. And then it grew louder and louder, until it was always there.
I was never so alone in all my time spent alone in all of my life as I was then. I was never truly happy when surrounded by laughter either.
My life began to feel as if I were trapped in between light and shadow.
Gray. Just gray. Always gray.
And then one day, after the kids had left to stay at their dad’s for the weekend, the heaviness of it all rolled over me like a tidal wave, and I just began to sob. I was so lonely. So acutely lonely. Those ashen, snowless skies and that tsunami of beige reflected what I was feeling right back at me. And it was too much.
There was no color. No nuance. No joy in being alone. It was just me, a cold, quiet home and my constant companion — sadness.
My ex and I had been separated since 2019, I had been alone plenty over the course of that time. I made it through a ton of gray days with no problem. I would keep busy doing this or that, messing around on social media, chatting with friends. But last winter was the first winter after my divorce had become final. And I guess for a lot of reasons that make sense and a helluva bunch that don’t, the finality of that end made the start to 2023 really Fucking hard.
I had been with him for 25 years. I was only 19 years old when we started dating. In many ways I grew up over the course of our relationship. And while I wanted it over, while I NEEDED it to be over, when it WAS over, it was like mourning someone. Only it wasn’t someone — it was something. I was mourning the dreams I had about my life when we first kissed, when we said “I do”, when we held our brand new baby boy for the first time. Mourning the visions of a “happy” family life. Mom, dad, kiddos… like I had always imagined even as a child. The death of a promise I thought the universe would deliver, but didn’t.
I had to bury those visions. They were never going to come to fruition. And it was hard as hell.
I talk pretty openly about my struggles in life. I never used to. I never could. I never wanted anyone to see that I was having a hard time. That I didn’t like myself, that I didn’t want to be here, alive on the planet, anymore. So I pushed it all down and far, far away.
Like I had done with all of the other trauma in my life. But on that day, I sat there sobbing and feeling sorry for myself while thinking; ‘what had I done? Why did I deserve a mom who beat me, and left me, why did I deserve to lose my dad, my brother, my dog and my marriage in the span a few short years? Why were my kids far away from me and not giggling over a game of war at that very table in that very moment? What had I done to the universe to deserve all that pain?’
I was feeling utterly and completely alone, feeling like a failure because I was a divorced single mom when I had always projected the “happy family” despite the actual truth of my misery, I buried my head in my hands and let the tears pour out. And then, as they passed through my fingers and splashed down onto the table, all of the sudden I stopped. Like a switch had been flipped. What was I doing? I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be in that place. I didn’t want to feel sorry for myself. I didn’t want to ask why bad things had happened to me. I knew I didn’t “deserve” any of it, but I also knew that I didn’t want to think of myself as a victim.
I wanted to understand how I had been processing what had happened to me. I wanted to take control over those feelings and over my responses. I was sobbing uncontrollably because I had been giving all the power to the dark things in my life. The dark things in my mind and my heart. All of those things I thought not dealing with would make better were instead making everything worse. And frankly, I was fucking tired of it.
It was time for me to take charge. To go back and unpack the trauma I thought I had disabled by not dealing, when really all I had ever done, was enable it to fester, to take hold and to grow.
And as I talk about often, I decided to seek help. I decided that I needed therapy. I knew what I wanted — to take control of my own pain, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t have the tools.
And a year of therapy later, I can share my truth. I don’t have to hide my trauma from myself or anyone else. I am learning everyday how I can change the way I interact with my own complicated and painful history. I don’t have to see it as something which dictates my choices today. I don’t have to LET it dictate my choices today.
I no longer see the value in hiding the hard, difficult, uncomfortable truths. I hid all of that from view for a very long time, and all it ever did was feed this unfair, inaccurate sense of shame that my fake smile was having to cover for more and more. All it did was make me feel more alone.
And as for that feeling — the fear of being alone… I’ve really come a long way there too. As I told my friend on the phone — in a very strange way, I see it as a gift. It forced me to look inward. It forced me to truly see myself for the first time in my life. To listen to myself. To trust myself, to love myself, to value myself and to give myself grace.
Hell, I loved it so much, I convinced myself that I never wanted to find love again (an over-correction for sure and not one I would recommend as it can, and did, leave me more than a little cold and distant to affection from anyone who wasn’t one of my kids, when I didn’t really want to be that way). But we all have our missteps along the way, and closing my heart off to others was confessedly one of mine.
But to anyone out there who feels acutely alone because you’ve lost someone or something, and you can’t get that person or that relationship or that promise you thought the world held for you back, I see you. And I know it’s hard. I know the gray can consume us whole. But life changes. Expectations aren’t always met or maintained. Dreams get deferred. Loved ones leave us. Loneliness and longing are can sneak up on us and they tend to try to stay a while. But we don’t have to let any of that define us or dictate where we choose to go, or how we feel forever.
My journey towards understanding that being alone didn’t have to mean being sad and afraid has been unfolding since the start of 2023. I say all the time that I’m no mental health expert, because I sure as hell am not. I’m just me. I’m still raw, I’m still learning, I’m still struggling with feeling weak when I leave myself vulnerable to caring about someone else and getting hurt. I’m still sad about a million things all the time.
But I choose what I do with that sadness. It doesn’t choose what I do. And lately, I find it incredibly cathartic to share how I’m feeling. What I’ve been through and what I am going through right now.
Maybe me owning my truths, my ups and downs, bumps and bruises, starts and stops resonates with someone who might be thinking “It must be me. There’s something wrong with me.”
I thought that. And I’m sure as shit not saying there is nothing wrong with me, as my kids and even my dog would attest, I’m really fucking weird and often SUPER annoying especially during movies (it’s true), but over the course of 2023, I learned a lot about giving myself the space and grace to be all the things. To feel all the things. There’s nothing “wrong” with you. You’re going through something hard, or painful, or scary or uncertain. It’s hard for a lot of us not to succumb to the suckiness.
I don’t know how to “help” anyone but myself. We are all so different & something that works for me could be awful for someone else. But I believe that one thing we could all use is human connection. Humanity. Honesty. There are so many threads and shared realities which connect us to one another. We just have to let each other see them. For too long I was afraid to be who I was. To share my pain. To own my fears. And it was so incredibly isolating.
2023 changed me in big ways and small. I’m not done changing by a long shot. But last year I began learning how to take ownership of the wounds I carry, and it’s made me feel much less alone and far less afraid to be alone.
So, here’s to 2024 helping all of us feel less alone, less afraid and to giving ourselves more grace.
Except for Donald Trump.
He should be living out the remainder of his days in a padded cell, alone, afraid and soiled in his own excrement.
Other than that… peace, health and love to you all this year.
I guess some things about me will never change. 😈
Here’s to 2024! 🥂
Thank you for sharing honestly. I appreciate your writing, your humanity toward yourself and all of us! ❤️
An amazing articulation of your inner feelings, so damned well written. I hope you have an agent to syndicate these articles. You are hilarious, sweet and poignant. Of course all through this I'm reflecting on my side of divorces (2!) I have endured, and admittedly, in each case not all that aware of what The Other Person is enduring. I feel pretty shitty about that now, even though there was mutual agreement that it wasn't working. There of course are a vast array of emotions involved - the one first and foremost being, how did I screw this up? It was so comfy, and hot, at one time. This thing that started with such joy, romance, promise and that vision, as you expressed it so well, of living the life we always thought was right and good. It's obviously never that simple. Any two humans gathered together are flirting with a trainwreck of splattered feelings. I really appreciate your truth and your wonderfully expressive writing. Slightly off topic, your Trump descriptions are the best, and you had a new one here: The Melon Hued Messiah. Thanks for the laughs and the tears. You're delightful and deserve everything wonderful.