It fascinates me that you live on, even after you've been dead to me for, like, ever

I've always had a hard time imagining people, once they've made their grand exit from my immediate sphere, actually going on about their own lives without me in them.

This makes me sound like the horrible megalomaniac villain in a kid's cartoon, doesn't it? What an egotistical wretch, you're all thinking. Assuming the world revolves around her. Ugh.

Hey, maybe I am. No, I probably, most definitely am. As my age creeps closer and closer to the 'middle of the road' mark, I am beginning to accept that the world is a vast and wonderful place that will continue to spin on its axis with little more than a wince or a resigned sigh when I make my final departure – hopefully not for a while. My role, in the big picture, is probably fairly small. Significant, I'd like to think, but small nonetheless.

Yet, it's disgusting how I imagine myself playing such a huge role in peoples' lives, I actually have allowed myself to assume that once they've moved on and are no longer players in what I imagine as The Kristin Show, they remain forever suspended as they were the last time I saw them: wearing a flannel smelling of woodsmoke, drinking a Coors Light, and never again beyond, oh, say, 22 years old.

Oh, and never being quite the same after losing me as a friend/lover/student/coworker.

Technology is fucking all that up for me though.

I don't remember what the world was like without the internet; I can't remember having pen pals or having to go to the library to research something. And now that we have the Facebook, this crazy train on which every single person I've ever known at every stage of my life is a card-carrying regular commuter, I can find out just how wrong I was in my self-centered theory whenever the heck I want.

I think I blogged about this some time ago on FERTILE. About old boyfriends who'd gotten married and gained weight but lost hair, who'd produced little humans who carry their characteristics in the most devastatingly obvious ways – my GOD, she has his EYES, just look at how he SMIRKS! – and how strange it all is, and sorta, well, unnatural.

Part of me has always believed that on this journey we encounter all kinds of people. Some stay with us a long time, some only briefly, but we are to learn important life lessons from each of them.

That's why I'm having a hard time understanding how it can be that I'm Facebook friends with the boy who put a booger in my sandwich in a junior high school cafeteria, thereby humiliating me and devouring my self esteem for my entire pubescent tenure. I log on each evening and see pictures of his little girl trick or treating or playing Wii and 'like' them. Is that masochistic? Or is it evolution? Or is it, like cloning the family dog, simply against nature's plan?

I struggle with it. I really do. And yet I will hop on the old iPhone, while stuck in traffic, and hastily type in some simply HILARIOUS thing Lily's quipped in the backseat of the car so that the kid who grew up in the house next door to me can read it while HE is stuck in traffic or on the subway or laying in bed or on the toilet or something.

WHY this need to be so tightly connected? Curious what y'all think.

Tall Talk

"Ever feel like you're life is swallowing you whole?"

I like to send texts to people sometimes, just to check in with everyone around me, see who might be going through what I'm going through, and who might suggest I seek a mental health evaluation.

Lately I feel like I'm sealed in a goddamned wooden box that's getting airmailed to a remote, desolate location. Hunched inside, legs folded up to my armpits, I punch at the walls of it, I scratch my nails bloody trying to claw my way out, and yet, I cannot escape.

I also have a flair for the dramatic, you might have noticed.

And I tend to get obnoxiously hyperbolic when I've gone too long doing the single mom thing without even the teensiest of breaks. And I don't count an 8 hour workday where I am so busy I forget to pee for three hours in a row as a break. I just don't. Woe is me! No, I'm not starving and I don't have dust in my eyes and flies all over me because I live in a place where the soil is too dry to grow food and the infant mortality rate is through the roof. I have a home. Good people in my life. A fantastic, inventive and adorable kid.

But being a single mom is hands down the hardest thing I've ever done. I remember siting in my therapist's office years ago, idly throwing around the idea of leaving my husband, while simultaneously fiddling with the tassels on this wonderful woman's beautiful moroccan pillows and honking my nose into her deliciously soft, expensive tissues. At the time it was a spark of an idea, a fleeting thing I sometimes played with to when I was feeling really out of sorts. It was certainly nothing I ever thought I'd have no choice about in a few years. 

I was struck with the severity with which she looked me dead on and said, "Being a single mother is the hardest thing in the world. No matter how bad things may seem right now, they'd be ten times harder if you didn't have someone to do it with."

She was right. As much as I love it just being us sometimes--me and Lily, just the girls, doing it our way! --sometimes it's downright terrifying. A lot of the time, actually. I worry about her all the time. And when I'm not worrying about her, I'm worrying about money. Basically when I wake up at 4 am listening to the cats chase each other around the kitchen, and I stare at the ceiling, wondering if maybe god is there or what, my brain skitters between fear of my kid not wanting to tell her secrets to me and fear that we both might end up being homeless. It's hard to fight these fears, this crushing darkness that seems always to be around the corner, beckoning me like a cartoon shadow with a finger like a curl of smoke, saying, come on, Kristin.

Fall.

Just fall.

Sometimes it seems so delightfully simple. I spend so much time trying to be awesome -- she's a super mom! She's so creative! Look at her cooking pumpkin soup and sewing a halloween costume at the same time with her 8 awesome arms after working a full day and taking care of her kid! And wow! Her house is so clean! You can't even smell all the fucking cats that live there! (oh wait. Maybe you can)--

it gets tiring. Sometimes I just want to strip off all my clothes and lay down on my back and lose myself for hours. Sometimes I want to walk and walk until my feet get blisters. Sometimes I want to drink a goddamned jug of chardonnay.

Sometimes I feel like crumpling, like one of those paper marionettes with the accordion legs. Someone let go of the strings and I need them to pick em the hell back up. Just a teeny bit of guidance. A push, a kiss on the forehead. A whisper, "Everything's going to be alright". 

Because I know that it is. It's just that sometimes I need a little reminder.

Wheels

I took my kid roller skating today. I have to bear in mind that opportunities for these kinds of just-us dates in the middle of lollygagging Saturdays are ever dwindling. Somehow I must relish in the stinky brushed-suede nastiness of rotting rented skates and too-shiny rink floors, to imprint on my mind the sweetness of red slushies and the wonder of her still wanting to hold my hand during a couples skate.

While I came of age in the garish, glinty, Jordache Jeans-Thriller-Neon and acid washed 1980s,
I'm actually really glad that my kid isn't going to have her first awkward sensations of budding pre-teen sexuality in the neighborhood roller rink. The way things are going, her first kiss will probably be via Skype.

While I'm definitely not saying that the dank, poorly-lit corner of a skate floor is the ideal place for a girl to discover the power of cotton candy lip gloss and a plastic comb in her butt pocket, a part of me mourns the experiences she will never have.

My first date, at the age of twelve, was at Laces, the roller rink down the road from our house (which was later bought by yuppies and changed to The Rolls, after which it closed almost immediately) and the experience was magical and heart-palpitatingly delicious. Of course, the date only even happened because my best friend at the time, after being instructed explicitly by me at a sleepover, called the poor bastard and told him to ask me out to go skating the following weekend.

But let's not focus on details. He did as he was told. Perhaps this was a first step in a terrible lifelong progression of me expecting men to do what I told them to. I don't know.
Regardless, I was bewitched by the poor schmuck.  He was quiet and sweet and had a giant head of dirty blonde hair and the skinniest frame I'd ever seen, even on girls my age (which earned him the affectionate nickname from the older girls at school, "The Mop").

Too cool to admit I'd orchestrated the whole damn thing, I arrived a little late, found him and instructed him right off the bat, "You'd better not try to hold my hand or anything".  I might even have added a curse word in there for effect. "You'd better not try to hold my damn hand"; "You'd better not try to hold my shitty hand". Clearly I wanted to maintain control.

My god, kids are stupid.

We skated to some fast songs and I tried out my ridiculous made-up dance to Earth, Wind and Fire's "Let's Groove Tonight" (something with fist-bumps and extended arms). We took a Snickers break and maybe had a hot dog, and before the date was over, we eventually did hold hands to a couple of slow ones. And it was heavenly.

Now, thirty years later, I still can remember exactly what those disco lights did to my already spinning head. How beautiful I felt with the breeze lifting my hair off my neck. How wonderful it felt to just glide glide glide next to a boy I liked on a roller rink floor. Nothing seemed simple back then, but wow. It really fucking does now.

True Crime

Something is very wrong with me.

(This isn't news to anyone who's been reading my blogs or who has met me, or even, really, seen me in public).

I go through these phases with regard to what I'm reading. I tend to enjoy nonfiction lately much more than fiction, as it seems lately I can't find anything to read that moves me enough to want to pick it up every night before bed. By 'moves me', I mean either makes me laugh so hard I start peeing my pants (has happened more than once), or cry like a little bitch, or get so frightened I have to throw the book across the room and later hide it where I can't find it again (also happened once. But I was smoking a lot of pot at the time). Anyway, maybe my threshold for being really affected has gone way up...maybe I'm desensitized (probably...too much porn)...but it seems like life is too short to waste time reading things that don't really do things to you.

Hence, my love affair with true crime.

It all started one winter when I was on vacation in the Adirondack mountains. I wandered into a used book store (sadly, these establishments are getting less common these days...I hate the thought that my daughter might not ever get to experience the sheer giddiness that comes from the smell of thousands of well-worn books waiting to be re-dog-eared and inhaled and savored) and picked up a few things that I thought might be fun to dive into in front of the roaring fire (note: the cabin I ended up renting had one of those gas-powered portable fireplaces, which totally ruined the effect). One was an old paperback of The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule's memoir of her friendship with a handsome, gentle young man who would later be known as one of America's most terrifying serial killers: Ted Bundy.
Oh, shit. It was SO ON.

From Bundy I moved on to Diane Downs, the narcissistic serial surrogate-mom who shot all three of her kids point blank in the back seat of her car and then blamed it on a black guy. I read about wives killing husbands, husbands killing wives and unborn children, hell, I even went through a Jonbenet phase (short-lived, thank god). I just could.not.get.enough. To this day I continue to I gulp down biographies of Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez and John Wayne Gacy without taking a breath.

Then just like that, I can't do it anymore. I'll stop. I'll get myself so freaked out laying in bed with a twisted, horrified look on my lips, only kindle light to keep me from falling into total terrifying blackness, and I'll say, OK Kristin. You're cut the hell off.

And like the junkie that I am, I'll go cold turkey. I'll jump right into Fifty Shades of Grey or the Sookie Stackhouse series, anything polar opposite, whatever it takes to clean the creepy off.

But I always, always come slinking back. Head hung in shame, I take a resigned breath and once again commence reading something that will continue to crack open the enigma of the human mind gone wrong...I'll float in the sensory deprivation tank of true crime writing until my skin is metaphorically wrinkled with it...I'll continue to drop down into the bowels of mankind in the hopes of somehow figuring out what moves me.

And the Winner is...

Nothing brings out the cranky, hyper-competitive Bitchmama in me like elementary school awards ceremonies. Really? Is a sweaty, two hour commemoration of the many, MANY milestones of the second grade class absolutely necessary? Didn't we all just do this last year? And won't we be doing it again a year from now?

 One of the reasons I get my feathers ruffled about these things is that during Lily's three year tenure at her exclusive, touchy-feely private school, I feel as though I've watched the same small group of kids collect every award from 'Math Superkid' to 'Kindest Friend on the planet' and after a while it grates on me that my kid, a good-hearted and sensitive little person, gets sorta passed over. I admit I have a total double standard here. If my daughter were one of the award-hoarders on stage, weighed down with medals and ribbons and gold fucking stars, you bet I'd be straddling two theater seats, whistling and whooping and acknowledging all the other parents with an "IN YOUR FACE!" crotch-grab. But after a while it gets hard to muster the enthusiasm to keep on clappin as little Susie collects yet another trophy and her parents just sort of shrug it off, "Well, what do you expect? We're both neurosurgeons!" and my kid stays firmly planted in her seat for the marathon celebration of her classmates' accomplishments.

 Funny thing is, this is not Lily's issue at all. It's mine only; mine mine mine. In fact, my kid routinely skips out of these end-of-the-year ceremonies with her self-esteem firmly intact while I feel like I've just had to sit through one of the Saw movies while being force-fed glass. It is my nature to overanalyze and whip myself into a frenzy of worry over things that are beyond my control. It's so fun being me!!! With each perceived oversight of my daughter's awesomeness, I feel myself slipping down a slimy drain of self-flagellation, battling thoughts like,

 "It's your fault she's going to grow up to be a stripper."

 "She didn't win the presidential physical fitness award? Better invest in those leg braces now. She'll probably need them by the end of third grade."

 "You're such a shitty mom that wild animals could have done a better job raising your kid. In fact, there they are now at the door, asking you to give her back."

 Why do I do this to myself??? Lily is FINE. She's better than fine, hell. She's got a better sense of self than I could have hoped to at twice her age. I'm the one with the damned issues. So what if she never wins any awards? She knows she's a good kid, and deep down I know it's because she is being raised well. But dang, I have got to figure out how to let myself off the hook. Any ideas?

Gone

It's so strange when people your age die. I mean, everybody dies; it's the inevitable finale to this bizarre ride each of us hops on against our will and we pretend that it's not out there, death, at the very close of the whole strange journey, administering a swift butt-kick into whatever the next phase of consciousness/existence may be. But it is. Out there, I mean. It's always there. Maybe it's written at our birth, imprinted on us. YOU WILL EXPIRE ON XX/XX/XX. SO ENJOY IT WHILE IT LASTS, SUCKER.

 I just picture my death and the death of anyone close to me as being a big, beautiful, carefully orchestrated event, happening in a big, four-poster bed; we're surrounded by loved ones and cats and aromatherapy candles and we're wearing old-fashioned nightclothes with lace collars (why?), gray hair all wiry and sticking out all over the place, oxygen tube feeding our nostrils last tastes of life-giving air until peacefully, ever so peacefully, we close down and are gone. Gone. That's quite a word. Luckily, I've never had to say a permanent goodbye to anyone who played a major role in my everyday life...I've yet to lose a partner or parent or anyone I'm so attached to I'd go batshit without them. But the other day I found out that someone I used to care very deeply for had died, at the age of freaking 38...two days before his 39th birthday, even...of a heart attack in his mother's house. If that isn't a cruel way to take someone I don't know what is. And I have just been trying to wrap my head around why the hell someone as good and kind as he was didn't get to have that beautiful, ethereal death in the soft white bed with his children's children at his feet telling him to just let go. Why his end came at the age of 38, wearing basketball sneakers and telling his mom he wasn't feeling well and maybe he should go to the hospital.

 His name was Wayne. Our moms taught nursery school together and were good friends. They would fantasize, when we were seventh graders, about us one day getting married and the two of them being able to share grandchildren, and we'd both be like, ugh, gross, because he was stick-skinny with hair like brown cotton candy, braces and huge feet, and I was sweaty, greasy-haired, pot-bellied and wore too much blue eyeliner. But we found each other nonetheless, in our own awkward way, with our mutual disdain for sporty boys who took boxes of NoDoz in math class, and cheerleaders and school dances and parties we never got invited to and somehow these things sort of just cemented us. We became best friends and confidantes and I remember hiding in my closet with the cordless phone at way past 9 pm cutoff for phone calls, whispering about some bullshit with Wayne, that at the time felt like the most important thing in the world.

We fell into an easiness that just worked because we were both such strange, overly sensitive creatures trying to map our way through the dark and deadly waters of junior high school. He had the bluest eyes I'd ever seen, like china, and just as fragile. He had almost transparent skin, he was so fair. I watched Top Gun at his house and we were both like, "This movie is LAME and Tom Cruise seems kind of gay." At one point he thought he was in love with me, as all seventh grade boys are likely to do with a girl who is a friend but isn't a hot girl but also isn't totally ugly or in a wheelchair or looking like the elephant man or is 400 lbs or anything. I remember predictable eye-rolling in science class as a note was passed to me over a bunson burner, and it quoted Run DMC and was supposed to make me laugh but instead I just crumpled it and stuck it in my notebook. I wish I'd kept it.

 Wayne got into an accident when we were in our early 20s. A car accident, I think. A bad one. I think he suffered for a long time after that and had seizures and I remember my mom telling me he'd tried lots of different medications to help him feel better but nothing was really working. I went to see him right after I'd gotten married, dragging along my husband like some sensible new extension of myself, proof that I'd escaped my supposed fate of lonely chubby girl and found someone who could define me. I'm embarrassed that I wasn't able to just be a friend and hold his hand and listen, that I had such a relentless need to prove myself. We talked sporadically over the years and I was always comforted at the way he always seemed to be the same, always waiting for something great to happen, open to whatever life would bring. He got married last year and I think about how happy he must have been, all that he must have been looking forward to. My mom said in the wedding photos hanging by his casket that he looked completely thrilled. I'm sorry his life is over, and that his wife had less than a year to build a world with him. I'm sorry that he never had babies and that his mother had to watch him being put into the ground. I'm sorry that he didn't get to die an old man in a warm bed, half-dreaming of the young man he used to be. I wish he'd met my daughter. I wish we'd gotten to talk more. But in the short time he was here he meant something to me. And I guess that will just have to do.

Losing the Battle, Winning the War

It's easy for me to get into a downward spiral of self-loathing (Why'd I cut my hair all off? How come I look pregnant when I slump over? Do other women have to deal with THIS CALIBER of moustache hair??!!), I have decided to take some advice from my sister. Or rather, her therapist. We women, especially us fucked up girls, are warriors. No, I'm not going to start touting some 1980's self-help bullshit like one of the female characters from "Friends". Rather, I think it's important for me and the legions of women like me, to try and remember our strength. We are tough cookies. We've had to be. We've weathered divorce, breakups, stupid decision-making, heartache, and lots of us are single-handedly trying to balance careers, relationships, and child-rearing in such a crazy, busy, ass-backwards world that we oft times feel like one-armed clowns on unicycles juggling chainsaws. Or maybe I shouldn't speak for everyone. All I can say is I am doing the very best that I can every single day that I'm on this crazy ass rollercoaster. Sometimes I do it well…I get into a freshly-made bed at the end of the day with a book, clean hair, and drift peacefully off to sleep feeling like everything is as it should be. Sometimes I wake up on the couch at 2 am in front of an unfinished project on my laptop, a sticky red-wine drool running off my chin, head pounding a steady reminder that I have to get up in 4 hours and haven't made lunches or set up the goddamned coffee machine. Overall, I think I do a pretty good job. I know I try really hard. It's gonna take a lifetime to get it right, but with each tiny battle I win, I feel like I'm getting a little bit closer.