If life was a soap opera, and let’s be honest, it is, we might call it One Life to Live, unless you are dealing with divorce in which case it’s “One Life to Life While a Thousand Arrows of Pain come Hurling your Direction.”
or “All My Children Make Me Have to see my Ex Again which Makes Me Feel like that Cat Walking Across Hot Coals.”
I prefer to not see him ever so I can pretend he doesn’t exist. But alas, while I keep building a beautiful pink bubble around myself, pesky reality keeps puncturing holes in it, forcing me to deal with pain I’d rather wish away.
But let me tell it to you from the beginning (of the latest drama);
I was heading to NYC to see my daughter perform and as I made my plans, I learned that my ex husband had booked the same hotel as I had with his latest 20-years-younger bartender girlfriend.
Sigh.
Tailspin.
Yes I’d like to say “Who Cares? He means nothing.”
Yes I’d love to say, “Oh fabulous! How wonderful!”
But I’d be lying. Or would I? Do I care? And if I do care, why? Tailspin.
I ran to my kitchen to de-stress by baking my favorite pumpkin muffins and as the air filled with cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, my mind went in circles faster than the spin cycle on my washing machine:
I need to lose 10 pounds! I need my 20-year-old body back! I need fluffy lashes, long lustrous hair extensions, toned abs and sculpted thighs! I needed a new me and I needed it in less than a week.
I immediately dropped to the kitchen floor to do 10 pushups, (I know it’s shocking that I can do 10 pushups, but I can!) Then I kicked into a handstand against the kitchen wall as a framed photo crashed to the floor after being hit by my foot. My pets scattered, staring at me, bewildered.
I pointed my toes and my arms started to shake. Danger was afoot–would I or wouldn’t I fall on my head?
That’s all I’d need is to show up to the hotel with a bandage on my head. But ‘Danger is my middle name,’ or so I like to think, and yoga teachers always say aging is reversed when you are upside down, so I stayed in my handstand and imagined my wrinkles being erased by the blood flow. (And I know I know, aging is beautiful, and I embrace it, but let’s talk about this more when your ex is dating someone who is 20 years younger.)
Once I came back down, I put on my large pink oven mitts and pretended they were boxing gloves, imagining my ex’s face while I punched the air, upper right hook, left upper cut, and a roundhouse kick done Rocky-slash-Rockette style, or in my case, 55-year-old woman style meaning about 6 inches off the floor. “How dare you stay at my hotel!” I shouted to my ex in my head. “After all the pain you caused! How dare you date someone twenty years younger! So gross!”
But there were other voices in my head yelling back, “Girl! Chill out! You don’t even want him! You know he’s still lying, cheating, and doing his black-slime-on-your-aura thing. Be happy you are free!”
And I am, so why does the idea of seeing him still feel like chewing broken glass?
I pulled the muffins out of the oven and started my emergency texting to my girlfriends, telling them the situation.
“What? No way! Kick him in the nards! That’s awful! Tell him to change hotels!”
But then one friend, I’ll call her L, texted something like, “You should f— with them. Look them in the eyes and act so happy for them.”
My stomach churned. There is no way I could look them in their evil eyes and act happy after all the pain they both have caused. I mean this is not the same girl he ran off with years ago, there tends to be a revolving door of 25-year-old blondes in and out of his house, but still, she’s now part of the House of Pain.
But L. continued to cheer me on. “It’s an acting role. I’m casting you in the role of ‘empowered happy ex-wife whose life is so fantastic they don’t mean anything to you.”
Oooh, interesting concept.. Could I?
I imagined myself in the elevator with the vermin, looking them in the eye and pretending to be happy for them.
Ugh.
I don’t think I could do it, but it sounded better than my own fantasy of going full Bruce Lee and karate-chopping them both, leaving them both in a gasping heap while I put on my Prada sunglasses and power-walked out of the elevator with my long lustrous extensions flying behind me to the tune of “I Will Survive.” (I don’t have extensions anyway, and I’d rather no visions of my ex in any form ever enter my head.)
I took a deep breath and imagined L.’s scene in the elevator, “Darling! So lovely to see you! How wonderful that you came to support my child… our child… ugh!”
It makes me feel a bit like vomiting, so I turn on Billie Holiday and take a bite of a hot muffin and let the warm chocolate chips I added melt in my mouth, and wish for the millionth time that hot pumpkin muffins boosted one’s metabolism instead of destroying it. If I ever create my own world, I’m going to create a reveres- metabolism situation where the more warm pumpkin chocolate chip muffins one eats, the more toned one becomes.
As Billie’s voice washes over me, I feel the edges of my pain soften. I don’t know if it’s her “I-know-your-pain” voice, or the effect of warm melted chocolate in my mouth, but I no longer feel like vomiting.
The scene actually sounds good. I could speak in an English accent, pretend to be royalty and they are peasants I stumbled upon while feeling generous and kind.
Generous and kind.
Two words that always act as a balm on my prickly soul. They have the same impact as melted chocolate in my mouth, just saying the words, thinking the words, immediately reminds me who I am.
I don’t have to be a drama queen, Bruce Lee, or anyone.
I can just be me.
And I am generous and kind on my better days.
Interesting idea.
Can I do this? What do I want the next chapter of the soap opera that is my life to be called? “The Lady Who Ended Up in Jail for Kicking Her Ex in the Shin?” or “The Empowered Woman Who Remembered That Though her Marriage Imploded in a Fiery Ball of Pain, The Children Are What Matters Now and They are Miraculous and Amazing and Deserve to Have a Mother that Stays out of Jail.”
Oh Life, why must you always create such drama? Is it Life, or is it me? I don’t know. I have no answers or wisdom for myself, so I will do my best and let you know what happens.
Epilogue:
It’s been 3 weeks since this entire kerfuffle and due to a gas leak in the theater building, the show dates got moved, so my ex is no longer in my hotel. All that drama for nothing, but I must indulge my inner theater diva on occasion. She likes a wild ride of emotions. The funny part of all of this is that the more I envisioned the elevator scene and me playing the role of empowered ex-wife who is kind and generous, the more I felt like the empowered ex-wife who is kind and generous. Isn’t that strange, the power of the mind? I can just think it, get used to the idea, and the more it played in my head, the more I became it.
So note to self: Always call L. in a crisis, and don’t make any plans until I have melted chocolate in my mouth.
Double Epilogue:
While no longer in my hotel, I will still see both their stinko faces at my girl’s opening night tomorrow. I will do my best to play my role, but it depends on what my heart can handle. I might go for “pretend they aren’t there and I don’t know them” which seems the least painful. My arms and legs are going numb just thinking about it. Or I might step into my power and follow L.’s advice.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s episode of “As the World Turns…Marci’s Life Continues to Implode…”
