Pancakes Taste Like Poverty: And Other Post-Divorce Revelations (23 page)

Just "not nekkid."

So I got a few cute dresses that looked like
"me." And I wear them with some cute bracelets and cute
shoes. And then sometimes, because I have a cute outfit on, I have to
put some face on. And then, without red lipstick, I became the kind
of person who will not leave the house in yoga pants.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. If "I
just want to be comfortable" is your goal, then by all means.
But that,
for me
, was an excuse. I now refer to them as "gave
up pants" because that's what they were when I was wearing them.

I know some of you "just got done working
out" so you walk around in your workout clothes
,
but this is something that is very American. In many countries,
workout
clothes are for
working out and they are left at that. They don't double as
clothes
.
They're like pajamas or lingerie. Just a little fun fact.

But it is shocking to me how, when you really
start to care about yourself and make yourself a priority, it does
not feel like extra work to put on a cute dress. It feels as natural
as waking up and brushing your teeth. And it's born from self-love!

It's crazy!

I'm not dressing cute so guys will think I'm hot
or so I'm the foxiest mom at the playground. I don't care about the
guys or the other moms! I actually,
finally
, and really for
real truly look cute for
me!
Like, for real.

Self-love is REAL.

And all because of my sorry, saggy boobs!
And
check this out. You can want to improve yourself while
simultaneously
loving yourself.

Could you imagine such a thing?

You don't have to
hate
your boobs or
your thighs or your self to want to change them. It's just bananas.

I got a little ways to go, still.

I'm still much chubbier than I'd like to get
comfortable with, but holy shit I
never
thought I'd be the
kind of person who actually got dressed. I thought my schlumpy
perma-pajama thing was part of my charm. It was part of my quirk. But
I know now that the schlumpy clothes and schlumpy boobs were really
just a symptom of low self-worth.

BOOM!

Educated by my tits, y'all.

I decided to take my new revelations to my
friends and slowly they started to join “the movement.”
Some called it the “Get Dressed Challenge.” For so many
stay at home moms and home school moms it's easier not to. But then
it becomes cyclical and going and doing things feels difficult
because
,
sigh
,
you'd have to put on
pants
. But there is something
really busy-making and feel-goodish about waking up and hoisting your
boobs up and putting on “hard pants” at the top of your
day. You just feel capable.
So my lady friends started posting
pics of themselves dressed every day, in hard pants and with makeup
on their faces. We cheered each other on. It was pretty groovy. And
all this goodness coming from a bra dilemma!
Old.
Alone. Done For
.

I've been thinking about my eventual death a lot
lately.
It's not my mortality, necessarily, that scares me.

Aside from zombies, the only thing I am really
afraid of is dying unloved.

Before you start crying rivers, please know I do
not want pity or sad face emoticons. But if you feel sad for me, then
by all means. Death is not something that makes
me
feel sad
or scared. Typically, when I lose someone close to me, or someone
young I am more humbly shocked than anything. I have a robotic
"healthy" relationship with death as a reality, I think. I
know I will lose everyone one day and they will lose me. I know I
could run out to the store for milk and not come back. It is "morbid"
to many but I'm a Pisces and my parents let me watch Beetlejuice when
I was five so morbid is familiar and comfortable territory for me.

Even though I am only thirty-one, I am touched by
only one degree by shortened lives or at least potentially shortened
ones. Friends my age are being diagnosed with or dying from cancer. I
never had that infinite feeling that goes along with being young and
daffy. My mortality is what prompted me to file for divorce and leave
my ex-husband. The day with the garbage can was the changing day. I
realized then that if I died that day in the driveway covered in
maggots I'd done absolutely nothing to feel proud of. My legacy and
the last memories my loved ones would have would be of me fat,
depressed, angry and unaccomplished. I am only a few short years
beyond that day and
so
much has changed.

I am thirsty to finish my education with a
ferocious clarity I have never before experienced. I am homeschooling
my kids and they are
thriving
- academically and socially. I
am molding them to become
exactly
who I'd hoped they'd be:
questioning, challenging, open-minded, worldly,
and
courteous.

Through the common journey of single-parenthood I
have made so many close friends from around the country - other lady
warriors not content to just keep their own raft afloat but to share
a bail bucket with their sisters in need.

I've taken the last few years to so some
seeeeeerious emotional work. I've cleansed myself of the demons that
haunted the first twenty-five years of my life, determined not to
take them into my future - or worse - allow them to taint future
generations. I am, however, still pretty fat.

Shrug

But all in all, if I go out for milk and get
struck by a car, or mugged and shot, or a triceratops stampede comes
and runs me over, my little soul will float away feeling 80% okay
about my life. I think that, for being thirty-one, that ain't bad. I
try really hard to feel grateful for at least that.

However, the nagging itchy 20% is dissatisfaction
belonging to
one
truth. I've never been in love with anyone
and no one's ever been in love with me.

Oh, but you still have time...

Well, it's time that is not exactly guaranteed or
owed to me.

You know your twenties, when you're dating and
falling in love and focusing on yourself and all that? I didn't do
that. My ex and I moved in together when I was 19, after knowing each
other for 6 months and after finding out I was pregnant. I was not in
love with him. He was not in love with me. But by some bizarre "code
of hono
r," that in the end he
did not actually believe in, h
e insisted we stay together for
the sake of the baby. And I, embarrassed and determined not to go
home to my family a knocked-up failure, agreed.

I always knew he was not a good partner but my
fear of being alone, and my fear of being "a single black
welfare mom," was bigger than my desire to self-preserve.

We, eventually, loved each other in some sort of
way, I guess. But we loved each other the way two castaways on a
deserted island grow to eventually love each other. You just try to
not die
together and there's no one else to talk to - so you
eventually sort of love each other. It's more like Stockholm
syndrome, really. I was isolated and have no perspective.

So now I'm single and I have three kids and I
worry that I will never find love.

It's not because I don't think I'm worthy. I know
I am.

I'm whip-smart. I'm hilarious. I'm empathetic.
I'm a good-listener. I'm open-minded. Very little is taboo to me. I
got it going on.

I'm too busy making myself exceptionally awesome
to have time to date.

I am focused on getting myself so "on top of
it" that I will never, ever, ever, ever find myself in a two
bedroom apartment with three kids and one mattress eating rice and
beans every night because we're poor ever again.

EVER.

But, no, my fear of dying unloved really comes
from time.

I'm going to be in school for the next 3 years
minimum
. Then I'll be out in the world working and will maybe
be in a place, emotionally, to begin dating. Anything can happen and
I don't know if I'll be able to squeeze it in before I take the long
dirt nap. But, as a person who thrives in a chaotic environment, the
fact that I'm actually planning and taking steps really fills me with
a mild sort of dread.

Right now I'm "doing it right."

I'm not dating before I'm ready. I'm going back
to school. I'm focused on the mental health of myself and my kids.
I'm not allowing myself to be led by my vagina or my loneliness or
insecurity.

I see my fellow single mom sistahs get pulled in,
left and right, into these short-lived flings and I feel for them but
I am so glad I am not in their place.

One single lady in particular is so blinded by
her fear of being alone that I am puh-retty sure her boyfriend is a
predator. He grooms and gives me the mad creeps. But no amount of
warning can sway her. She is positive he's a gentleman despite there
being no consistent evidence for that to be true.

I'm not in that place, emotionally. I've got a
rational, logical, data-backed plan.

But what if I don't get the cheese at the end?

And in five or ten years, with my degree and my
healthy kids I shout "ok world, I'm ready for love" and
then BAM! Zombie apocalypse and I'm dead. No love for Jess.

I exaggerate of course, but really, planning is
scary because you are taking yourself out of the present,
on
purpose
, to create a reality that will hopefully come
sometime
down-the-line with no guarantee that it
will
.

That kind of love is not
owed
to me. I do
not
deserve
it. None of us do. It's just a gift if we can get
it. It's like a good parking space or a crab leg that cracks
perfectly and you can get that big, whole piece of crab, y'know what
I'm talking about? It's amazing when it happens but it's not, like, a
guarantee or even a right. It's a sweet, precious, surprise, luxury,
happy event.

Millions of people die every day without having
ever been in love. People die without ever seeing their children grow
up. I noticed that when someone young passes away, it is often
customary for people to say "they were taken before their time."
But who ever said we were owed all this time in the first place? What
do we know about how much time people are supposed to have? Humans
are fragile and can die at any time.

That seems to be a conflict of perspective.

I am gravely aware that neither time nor romantic
love is owed to me.

And that realization kinda bums me out.

So even though I hope to maybe one day meet the
man I'm supposed to be with I still have to sit in, and accept, the
possibility
that it won't happen.

And the love of my kids and the platonic love of
my friends might be the only love I get this time around. And that is
a little scary and also a little sad.

And every "it'll happen" just boils my
blood.

I was telling Jenn on the phone, “
I
never had time to be in love. I was nineteen when I got pregnant and
twenty-nine when I left him. My entire adulthood up until now has
been orbiting around him. I know I'm worthy of love, yes. But I do
not believe there are many men out there willing to sign on to a
woman with three kids who can't have any more. I mean I could be one
of those women who gets pregnant despite having her tubes tied, but
still. Even if he did exist, I do not want to blend families. I think
it significantly increases the risk of divorce and I'm still tied to
my ex's family. I don't want any more in-laws if I can help it as
that would give my kids something like five or six sets of
grandparents. The pool of available men gets smaller and smaller and
smaller, and I know
so clearly
what I want and need and that makes the pool even
smaller
and
if
he
is out there, will I even meet him and. even worse, what if he
doesn't even exist?”

And after interrogating and pushing and
questioning and offering advice and insight when she finally
got
it
all she could say was "damn, that sucks."

And yeah, that's all there is to say.

I'm kind of a robot. I'm really rational. It's
possibly my best quality since, according to her, even though I
cannot join people in grieving and crying and I have no real
emotional highs and lows of my own, it is for that reason that I am a
good go-to woman for making people feel stable, for offering facts
and data. I'm a true ENTP.

But, because of my brain-first approach to
everything I worry I won't "turn on" my feelings in time.
It's crazy.

It's a shit realization that totally sucks and
there's nothing more to it.

It's a fleeting feeling, like all my feelings,
that sneaks in late at night and gnaws at my earlobes until I give it
a little attention. Usually, it's gone by morning.

I'm not walking around paranoid or worried about
some Final Destination-esque freak accident. But I'm also not
presumptuous enough to think I've got all the time in the world to
develop myself as a person
and
find Prince Charming.

It's one of those times I wish I was the kind of
person who thought little beyond what pants to wear and feeding the
dog and football season.

Love is the only box left to check and I don't
wanna go with it empty.

Everything He Needs

Earlier this year I was beside myself trying to
figure out how to find positive male role models for my son. He'd
grown prone to apologizing before or after speaking. He was passive.
This worried me.
We went to counseling for a while but, with our
poor-people insurance, ended up with an apathetic counselor. He
really just reinforced Jack's middle-child-syndrome by barely
listening and zoning out while he was talking.
A male friend of
mine came over a few times to watch movies and play but eventually
got back into his single-person life and hasn't been over in months.
I was so worried Jack would feel re-abandoned.
We were sitting
outside one day and Jack was playing with some sticks in the front
yard, trying to fashion himself a bow and arrow. The girls were
making bows and arrows, too. I called out to him, “Maybe your
Uncle Terry can come over and hang out with you, Jack, and you guys
can make arrows together.”
He nodded apathetically and then
I was stricken with some wisdom.
It's my fault.
It's
all
my fault.
He wasn't meek and passive because he didn't have a
male role model. He's meek and passive because I didn't even give him
a chance to feel okay. I
told
him his life was lacking without
a man in it.
I
put that hole there.
This is hard to
explain but bear with me.
The story is that little boys need
a male role model so they know how to be a man. So single-moms need
to busy themselves with finding a man for their sons to look up
to.
But do people say this to widows?
I've never heard it in
reference to women whose husbands have died.
If this is true for
men then it should be true for women, also. Do people say this in
reference to single-fathers? Do people warn single fathers that their
sons or daughters need a female role model to look up to? I've never
heard it this way either.
I have several lesbian friends raising
boys with their partners. Do I ever feel like their sons need a male
role model? Nope. They all seem pretty happy.
I tried to think of
exactly which personality traits came along with a Y-chromosome. Does
one need a penis to be honorable? Trustworthy? Brave? Tender?
Assertive?