Funny Girl

Okay, okay.

I hear ya.

I’ve been a bit of a Debbie Downer lately.

I mean, I try to always offer posts with an uplifting message, even if they’re serious, but it seems you like me best when I am full-on sassy, sunny and snarky.  Which makes sense, because I’m Girl on a Wire, not Girl on Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors.  Right?

Here’s the thing: divorce fucking sucks.

It fucking sucks, and I’ve been up to my eyeballs in it for too long.  The worst part?  My soon-to-be-ex hubby isn’t an asshole.  Nope.  Sorry.  Would love to demonize him but I can’t.  I mean, damn…if he was an asshole, I could be Funny Girl - at his expense - all day long.  Give me a caricature and I’ll run with it.  But a genuine, flawed-like-all-of-us human being?  One who’s having a tough time, too?  If I pick on him, that’s just sad.  Mean.  Then I’m the asshole.

So what’s a girl to do?

Lately I’ve been trying to take a more well-rounded and positive look at my failed marriage, particularly at the moments that made me laugh.  Because, truthfully, there was no shortage of those moments.  The soon-to-be-ex and I were a case of opposites attracting, but he won me over with his sense of humor and irreverent fun.

So here are a few tidbits I hope he won’t mind me sharing (otherwise my lawyer’s about to make more money…):

Remember the scene in my novel Fifty Ways to Leave Your Husbandwhere Finn tells Eve his story of accidentally peeing on a midget?  Yup.  Inspired by true events.  Somewhere in Honduras there is a little person who was - unintentionally - urinated on by my hubby.  And yes, the man wooed me with this tale.  First or second date material.  Draw your own conclusions.

Hurricane Irene forced our wedding to be bumped up by 36 hours.  We tied the knot as the winds picked up and the storm rolled in.  (Omen, anyone?)  Unaware that the hubby had been caught in the rain coming into the church, I thought he was drenched in sweat.  I spent the ceremony fanning him and asking him if he needed to sit down.  I was convinced he might drop like a fly at any moment - and I may not have been far off.  When we danced to Adam Sandler’s “Grow Old With Me” from The Wedding Singer, I literally had to hold my groom up.  The man’s not a dancer, nor does he like being the focus of that much attention.  The smile on his face looked something like this:

When he picked me up to carry me over the threshold of our home on our wedding day, the hubby let loose an impressive fart.  And suffered a minor lower-back injury.  Clearly, in spite of having met my goal weight for the big day, I am no delicate little flower.  (And he’s no bodybuilder.)  We laughed about it briefly, until the laughter induced back spasms that sent me on a quest for Aleve and alcohol.  Why do they not show this sort of shit in the movies?

One Halloween, I donned this outfit and challenged our guests to identify me.  In hindsight, this may have been the beginning of the end.  Very bad wife:

Also on Halloween, we dressed our dogs like this:

And there were Christmas cards like this:

Hindsight being twenty/twenty, maybe we invested more in humor than we did in our marriage.  Then again, maybe we made the most of our common ground and simply ran out of steam too soon.

Maybe the moments like this:

only carry you (and the employees at Homegoods) so far.

Who knows?

The thing is, life - much like shit - just happens.  If you’re blessed enough to be around funny, vibrant people, maybe it matters less how long it lasts, and more how you enjoy the moment.  

Yeah, divorce fucking sucks.

But I can still look back and laugh.

So, I’ll leave you with this - a joke the soon-to-be-ex hubby recycled so often it elicited groans:

A pirate walks into a bar.  He’s got a steering wheel sticking out of his pants.

The bartender says, “Hey - do you know you’ve got a steering wheel sticking out of your pants?”

The pirate nods and says, “Arrrrrrgh!  It’s drivin’ me nuts!”

{Admit it, you laughed…}

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Better Than You Ever Imagined

When I first met Jude Monteserrato, I wanted to be her.

I’d come to her yoga class in her lovely home studio through her husband, Ed Cardinal, a Thai massage practitioner who’d helped me work through some lower back issues.  Jude radiated peace, calm, well-being.

In other words, all the things I lacked at that point in my life.

I became a quasi-regular at her classes, trying to temper my cardio addiction with the strength and fortitude yoga offered.

I never guessed at the painful past that led to Jude’s placid present.

On September 11, 2001, Jude and her husband John had made their way, as usual, to their jobs: his in New York City’s World Trade Center and hers nearby in the World Financial Center.  Jude fell, injuring herself slightly.  John wanted to take her to the hospital.  Jude shrugged him off.  She was fine, she told him.

So she went on to work.

Her husband continued into the World Trade Center.

The rest, as they so inadequately say, is history.

Jude’s husband was one of the 2,996 people who perished in the terrorist attacks that day.  Jude herself was a casualty as well.  She was paralyzed not only by grief, but by the “if only” game: if only she’d allowed John to take her to the hospital, if only she’d died alongside him…

She returned to work after three and a half months, but something had changed.  She wasn’t sure what the meaning of life was, but it certainly wasn’t to spend it in a cubicle.  Ultimately, she left the corporate world.  She began going to yoga classes.  She rolled out her mat in the back of the room, always dressed in black, her sweatshirt hood pulled over her head.  She wasn’t even sure at first why she was going.  Nothing mattered.  Why should yoga matter?  But she found that while she practiced yoga, she forgot her pain.  She forgot everything.

The time after class was another story altogether.  She often found herself crying, releasing the hurt she’d previously kept trapped inside.  In time, she came to view yoga as her calling.  She realized the “voice” telling her to practice yoga was her soul.  She began training, eventually earning her 2000 hour Purna Yoga instructor certification.  On a trip to Thailand, she met Ed Cardinal.  She wasn’t ready for a new relationship, but he was willing to wait.  Ultimately, she ended up in Rhode Island with Ed - whom she recently married - and her path crossed mine.

Just as my marriage imploded.

The day I left my home was one of the saddest days of my life.  Just ask the moving men, the two poor souls sent by Gentry Moving & Storage to deal with my sorry self.  I opened my mouth to utter a simple sentence about which items were going and which were staying, and my grief fell out.  Luckily, these guys were not only movers, but apparently amateur psychologists.  They offered Kleenex and water, gently placed boxes in front of me and inquired as to how they might fill them, asked the sort of yes-or-no questions that work well with toddlers. 

And then, somehow, it was done.

My meager belongings had been transported from the home my husband and I had built - literally - with our own hands.  They had been deposited in a little rental that, although bright and clean, smelled foreign.  A not-my-home smell.

I sat there amidst the boxes, the piles of books, the furniture that looked strange in this tiny apartment so close yet so far from home.  I thought about my husband and the dog I’d left to comfort him.  Would they be enough for each other?  Would they be okay?  Would I be okay?  I did not sleep.  I turned a single thought over and over in my mind:

If I’d left because staying was killing me, why did it feel like leaving would kill me too?

In the morning, I hardly knew where to begin.  I pulled on yoga clothes and went to Jude’s home studio.  The bright, buttercream space, the warm wood of the bamboo floor and the yoga wall - they welcomed me.  I said hello and little more.  I tucked in, glad for the focus.  At the end of our practice, Jude did a reading - something about strength or self - and I had to swallow hard at the lump rising in my throat.  I left quickly, before anyone could see the tears in my eyes.

But I came back.

I unpacked boxes, hung curtains and pictures, marveled at how such a homey space still wasn’t my home.  I cried more than was healthy; the dog and cat agreed and tried to make the waterworks stop.  They employed various methods, from sympathetic pawing and purring to passive-aggressive expulsion of bodily fluids onto home textiles.  I cleaned up, hunkered down, avoided friends, sought out work.

But I kept going, every so often, to Jude’s yoga studio.  

I kept finding comfort and strength.  I shed a tear or two during the readings Jude sometimes offered at the close of class.  I found hope when what I wanted to do, frankly, was check out.  Stick a fork in me, I was done.

Except that I wasn’t.

I’m not.

It’s a funny thing, life.  It wants us even when we don’t want it.  I thought about that as Jude and I talked recently.  Something in me feels her loss trumps mine.  Jude’s husband, I am sure, would have given anything to stay with her.  Mine would do nothing to stay with me.  She lost true love.  I lost…what?  A happily-ever-after only I had believed in, maybe.  Vows made by two but felt by just one.  That’s different, right?  It should be easier to lose something that wasn’t real, shouldn’t it?

The feelings aren’t different, though.

The grief isn’t.  The sense of loss.  The relentless “if only.”

On a recent chilly late spring day, Jude and I sat in a local park and talked.  Sometimes the sun came out.  Sometimes raindrops fell.  Children ventured over to ask if they could pet my dog, Kimba.  Kimba chewed grass until I scolded him, then he sat contentedly on my lap.

This is life, I thought.

A park on an iffy-weather day.  A loyal little dog.  A friend who’s been through unfathomable suffering and come out on the other side.  A moment in time where my own pain flies away, even as we talk about it.  The knowledge that it all will return, but that somehow each of us will still be okay.

The other day, Jude emailed me this quote: “Just because the past didn’t turn out like you wanted it to doesn’t mean your future can’t be better than you ever imagined.”

And I smiled.

{South County friends, I would love to see you in one of Jude’s intimate yoga classes - and if you haven’t experienced the yoga wall, you will LOVE it!  Click here for more info. Namaste.}

www.kcwilder50ways.com

The Harder You Work

Amy Rice can do anything.

She’s a triathlete who’s won two world championships at the Olympic distance and achieved 4th Overall Master in the 2007 Hawaiian Ironman - you know, in addition to placing in an impressive number of the 300+ triathlons she’s completed and having been ranked 1st by the United States Triathlon Federation - so I think that’s a reasonable statement.

But damn, she’s got her work cut out for her with me.

As my lovely regular readers know, I’m on a mission to get my shit together this year.  You know - in response to my shit having fallen splendidly apart in seemingly all areas of my life simultaneously.  I want this to be an opportunity.  I want to become the best person I can be in all respects, and (to borrow tackily from Oprah) live my best life.  Amy Rice is part of what I think of with quiet egotism as Team Karen, the widely-varied group of professionals currently helping me make the most of my remaining time here on this planet.

So it was that I arrived at the Studio at NBX early one recent Friday morning for an arms and abs session with Amy.

Having had three hours’ sleep and quite possibly still slightly drunk from the night prior.

"I hope it was fun," Amy said, appraising my condition.

I shook my head.  It had not been fun at all.  The night before, I’d learned that finalizing my divorce might not be the amicable matter I’d hoped.  So I’d done the responsible thing and consumed massive quantities of chardonnay, cried until my eyes looked roughly like those of a Muppet, and sang along with Linda Ronstadt until both the cat and the dog pointedly shunned me.

But here’s the thing: Amy understood.  She showed me no mercy, mind you, but she understood.  She’s a divorced single mother.  She’s been through the wringer a time or two (or ten).  She helped me sweat through a whole lot of heartache.  And for about 90 minutes, I forgot all my troubles.  (Well, the ones that didn’t involve my abs, anyway.)  I laughed with and learned from Amy, savoring the work of getting stronger.

Amy knows all about that work.  She knows that very little in life comes from luck.  “The harder you work, the luckier you get,” she says.

Amen.

A Montessori teacher by trade, it makes sense that Amy is a natural at teaching fitness.  When working with preschoolers, “If it takes them twenty minutes to get their coat on, you let it take twenty minutes,” she explains.  “How else will they learn?”

That ability to assess people and work with them at their own pace translates well into the personal training business.  I first approached Amy with the disclaimer, “I am not going to be your star pupil.  I’m clumsy and I’m thrilled if I run a 9:30 mile.  Also, I’m terrified of being clipped into my bike.”

She laughed, shrugged, said, “Okay,” and we went from there.

Pretty quickly, I learned that Amy feels blessed to be doing work she loves, to be able to take her own athletic successes and life-affirming experiences and pay it forward.  She juggled work and parenting a small child while maintaining the grueling routine of a world-class triathlete.  She loves spreading the word about how personal goals and parenthood really can mesh.

Want to see Amy’s soft side?  Ask her about seeing her daughter, Kirstyn, cheering her on at her races.  There’s pure joy in her voice when she describes hearing Kirstyn cry, “Go, Momma!  Momma’s a champion!”  And I can’t help but think: what an absolutely awesome way to model for her daughter how to be a healthy, happy, strong woman in this world.  What Amy does for herself, she does for her daughter as well.

So sure, if you try to weasel out of a thirty-second plank at the twenty-seven-second mark, Amy will call you out on it.  But who doesn’t need that push now and then?  I sure do.

Just as I need the truths Amy affirms for all her clients - the very same things she’s always told Kirstyn:

You can be anything you want to be.

You can do anything you want to do.

You just need to decide on it.

Work your tail off.

And never, ever, EVER give up.

Amy Rice can do anything.

So can you and I.

{FYI, RI peeps: Amy works with everyone from folks looking to get off the couch to world-class athletes seeking to improve their performance.  She is helping me get super-fit, and her training programs are very affordable - a must because my income lately is leaner than I’d like my middle to be.  Check her out and find your strength!}

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Part of Me

"Do we need an intervention?"

This was the Facebook comment from a longtime friend after I posted a Katy Perry video.

Probably the second or third Katy Perry video I’d posted in a month.

Here’s the thing: I’ve never been a big fan of pop music.  I have greatly-varied musical tastes, but tend to lean toward “alternative.”  Rock.  Some blues and country and bluegrass and folk.

Not a whole lotta Katy Perry.

But - as I think is now pretty much common knowledge to regular followers of my blog - I’ve been going through a divorce.  It’s been a rough year, and I’ve found support and strength in the most unexpected places.  Pop music may be the most unexpected of the bunch, but let me tell you - there is quite a crop of badass young women out there unwilling to settle or deal with BS or let the learning opportunity that comes with a breakup pass them by.  And they aren’t afraid to sing about it.

Kelly Clarkson.  The Band Perry.  Christina Aguileira.  Iggy Azalea & Ariana Grande.  Adele.  P!nk.  Katy Perry.  And - of course - the reigning Queen of Breakup Songs and my summer neighbor here in Rhode Island, Taylor Swift.

Stop snickering.  Hell yes, I’ve been singing along with T. Swift.  Sometimes a girl needs to knock off the wistful replays of Sarah McLachlan’s U Want Me 2 and affirm that We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together.  Even if said girl is 40-ish and not quite ready to bounce around in jammies and hipster eyeglasses while singing along.  Sometimes it’s just plain good to (1) chuck the Kleenex, (2) remember that you did all you could but hey, it takes two people to have a relationship, and (3) sing a pop song about feeling tougher than you really do.

If you sing loudly enough, you might accidentally feel better.

Stronger.

More hopeful.

Ready to leave the past where it belongs: in the past.

You might also feel grateful not to have Russell Brand as your ex - damn, he did a number on Katy! - but I digress…

Check out the links below.  Sing at the top of your lungs.  I’ve got a whole slew of new BFFs, and these girls have got my back.  Yours too, if you need ‘em.

(Just please don’t tell David Bowie.  He’d be so disappointed in me.)

www.kcwilder50ways.com