Alcohol Plus Time

[From December 2020. Current notes in these here brackets!!]

A very few of you are aware that yermom had shifted focus to relationship recovery. I still don’t know how it is supposed to work, even after many months, but at least I am further along.

Ask any scientist, they will tell you T + C2H5OH = D

Yes, time + alcohol = divorce. It’s not complicated and the only unpredictable part is the timing. A divorce can sneak up on you and pounce when you are just trying to change a flat tire. Then, seemingly without warning, you are haunted by one question: what was wrong with the people who invented all this paperwork?

Some of you may want to argue with me that you know one old couple that is companionably tippling together after forty years. You are mistaken. They are divorced, at least spiritually. They just haven’t done the paperwork because they are too tired or too drunk.

[Deleted some tedious details about divorce that’s not divorce. Nobody cares.]

When I try to explain this to people, they assume I am bitter, but frankly, I am only curious. How did I grow up to be equally skilled at alienating people as parenting them? Am I some sort of cat?

It’s new and different to think more about what I want and need rather than considering anyone else. At times a pall of shame washes over until I remember I’m not responsible for anyone else any longer. The kids are great and they are all adults. My parents are great and they are all sane enough to decide things. For now.

Still, some days we cry while we are donning our socks. That’s not the royal we: everyone has those mornings if they own socks. People who are exiting a relationship cry a little bit more. The only thing I have learned so far is that it’s fine to let those emotions have their turn. [It’s more than fine; it’s essential to feel your way along.]

These days, I imagine my emotions are a horde of mice who are dressed up like cheerleaders. Different ones get their turn with the bullhorn (mouse horn?) Sometimes the mice arrange themselves up to build complicated pyramids, and other times they collapse into a pile, but whatever they do, they are rooting for me.

Squeaky Cheers!!

[Fast forward]

Wow. I find it extremely weird that I pulled up this draft exactly two years later when it was simply titled “Friday” and could have been a grocery list or worse. What I didn’t record was how I worried, marching into the unknown of whatever.

Now that I’m finally getting unpickled, I am very grateful for my 2020 self who had the bananas audacity to try a free life. I used to say I couldn’t understand ancient people who paddled off in a boat to see what they could find. Now I do. A little bit.

Love,
yermom

p.s. Wanna buy a book?