Turn to the Left

As many of you know, my only kiddo - a/k/a The Boy - leaves this week for college.  He’s psyched for it, and somehow his excitement seems to have translated into a penchant for dressing like Hunter S. Thompson:

I love it.

I love it, but I try not to say too much about it.  Parental endorsement of fashion is presumably the last thing an 18 year old kid wants.

Still, between you, me and the blogosphere, I love it just as I love seeing kids with pink or blue or green hair - and I love that there seem to be so many of them now.  I love seeing teens with fearless fashion sense and a creative, offbeat outlook on life.  I love that, at least in some corners of the world, our culture seems to be shifting in a way that allows young people to have fun expressing who they are.

As a teenager, I wanted desperately to let my freak flag fly.  My mother bought me khakis and Keds.  I bought combat boots and lace tights.  Trying to leave the house in my preferred attire was like trying to convince Sarah Palin that Hillary should be our next President.

Mom, horrified:  “You can’t leave the house like that!  You look like that crazy Madonna person.  What will your teachers think?”

Dad, stern:  “You’re ruining your life.  Do you want to be a degenerate?”

I thought this was kind of funny coming from a guy who was a fan of David Bowie and Lou Reed, but clearly what was acceptable in rock star fashion was not acceptable in suburbia.  What I didn’t get was why.  I just wanted to wear combat boots and lace tights.  Maybe occasionally use makeup to turn my massive eyebrows into something deliberately severe, a la Siouxie and the Banshees.  What did any of that have to do with my teachers?  Did I ever say anything about their horrific fashion sense?  Those polyester pant suits and orthopedic shoes seemed to me far more likely to carry one down the road to ruin than the occasional blue streak in my hair.

But damn, folks love to fixate on the superficial.

If I had a nickel for every time I was told to do the very opposite of what I wanted to do - of what felt natural to me - well, I’d have a shitload of nickels.  And for what?  I spent my youth fearful of exploring, constantly told to zip my lip, change my clothes, fix my hair, be mindful of what my teachers, my grandparents, the neighbors might think.  That limiting mindset stuck with me for far too long.  I am 40 years old and just now beginning to live the life I’ve always imagined.

It makes me gleefully happy to see so many young people encouraged to have fewer hang-ups and secrets, and more awesome, life-building experiences.

My words of wisdom?

Wear what you want to wear.

Say what you want to say.

Stop worrying about the superficial stuff and go do fabulous things.

Because our world gets better every time we stop worrying about what the neighbors might think…and just get off our asses and make the neighborhood a better place.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Now give a listen to my new favorite groove: ‘Secrets’ by Mary Lambert.  If this earworm doesn’t make you smile, check your pulse.

Demons

I was shocked and saddened to hear of Robin Williams' death, an apparent suicide.

The trouble with celebrity is that it makes us feel we know people.

Complete strangers?  Somehow we feel we know them.  The omniscience of their work makes us feel a sense of familiarity, of kinship.

And then, because they are human - and because we don’t really know them - they do something that catches us utterly off-guard.

Robin Williams was the funny man.  He was Mork from Ork.  Peter Pan.  Mrs. Doubtfire.  His stand-up routines were foul-mouthed brilliance.  In many of the darker moments in my own life, he made me laugh when I wanted to cry.

I met my friend Cathy - Cat Woman, as I called her - in 1992.  We were neighbors at first, then roommates for a while.  Cat was an artist, musician, and general three-ring circus.  We rigged up her microphone and PA system for karaoke nights in our house.  We sang even if her dog Debbie was our only audience.  We had no money, so we crashed local art openings and wine tastings as an alternative to dinners out.  Cat ruined two of my blenders making paper.  She atoned with jewelry and hair clips she handmade for me.

When my son was born, Cat became his honorary aunt.  She taught him to play piano.  She painted his friends’ faces at his birthday parties.  Cat was a spitfire, and the kids loved her.  She was the life of any party.

She battled her demons, though.  For all the years I’d known her, we’d discussed this openly.  Cat was bipolar.  I suffered from depression.  We compared our afflictions, weighed the pros and cons of different treatments.  On a little road trip in 2007 - to see Gordon Lightfoot in New York (I know; don’t hate) - she seemed especially sure she’d beaten her demons.  I was glad.  Back in our hotel room after the concert, we watched Man of the Year.  Robin Williams starred as a political satirist who wins the Presidency thanks to a computer-voting glitch.  Cat dozed off just before the end of the film.  She was laughing one minute, sleeping the next.  Just like old times at the house we’d shared years earlier.

In November of 2009, Cat and I chatted on the phone for nearly two hours.  Her demons had returned earlier that year, and she’d moved away from New England to live with family.  I missed her, but she sounded good.  Better.   She promised to send her new mailing address for my Christmas card list.

It never came.

In time, my attempts to track down Cat’s address for my Christmas mailing list became something more fraught.  Her voice mail box was full.  Then there was a recording saying the line had been disconnected.  Email went unanswered.  I tried to remember her sisters’ married names.  I called our mutual friends and learned that no one else had heard from Cat in a while.  A sinking feeling grew in the pit of my stomach.

It was spring before I learned what had happened.  A mutual friend called, and the tone of his voice alone told me that Cat was gone.  I waited for the details: she’d killed herself in December.  On some level, I wasn’t surprised, yet I was literally brought to my knees.  One of my very best friends was gone.  There was no undoing this.

I thought, then, of all the times she’d called me in despair.  She’d let me talk her down from so many ledges over the years.

Why couldn’t she have let me talk her down from just one more?

I took a pickaxe and shovels to the front of my lawn.  I hacked and dug and crawled on my hands and knees.  In a strange whirl of sadness and anger, I made a garden where there was none.  I planted flowers for Cat and waited to feel better.  Eventually, I built a Little Free Library in her memory and anchored it in the garden, thinking how she would love something so grassroots and community-minded.

You know what I really wanted, though?

I wanted my friend back.

Ultimately, I realized that what my friend wanted was simply an end to her pain.  She wanted a better life, but she couldn’t find one in the skin she was in.  Whether she found peace in the end, I will never know.

What I know is this:

Cat was a bright, shining star.  She was blessed with talent and passion and kindness.

Much as it seems the celebrity Robin Williams was.

I didn’t know him.  Most likely, neither did you.  He wore different costumes, became different characters.  Maybe he was as uncomfortable in his own skin as my friend Cat was in hers.

Now, for his family and friends and those truly who knew the man behind all the guises and humor, the pain begins.  My prayers go out to them.

Rest in peace, Mr. Williams.

{And please, if you or someone you love is battling demons of their own, seek help.  And keep seeking help.  I’ve provided a link to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention here, but there are plenty of other options.  Reach out.}

www.kcwilder50ways.com

The Big D

There’s a joke that goes something like this:

Why is divorce so expensive?

Because it’s worth it.

Ha.  Ha.  Ha.

Yesterday was the longest, strangest day of my life.

I was wearing the dress I’d intended to wear to my wedding rehearsal dinner three years prior.  You know - the dinner that was canceled because Hurricane Irene forced us to bump the whole carefully-planned event up by 36 hours?  Anyway…

Yesterday, I had to face a courtroom full of strangers and answer questions about my marriage and how it all went fabulously to shit.  I suppose that’s not exactly how my attorney phrased it, but that’s what I heard.  Immediately, my mind got stuck on the idea that I didn’t feel it all went fabulously to shit.  I felt that most of the time it was all pretty damn good - but something at the core of it went quietly, insidiously to shit.  Did I not get to explain that?  Should these voyeurs not at least be required to hear the full story?

It seemed not.

Worst of all, there was The Hubby - very, very soon to be The Ex Hubby - sitting next to his lawyer, somehow looking to me just like he did on our wedding day.  Handsome and stoic and uncomfortable.

I lost it.

In front of all those strangers, I dissolved into a shaking, blubbering mass of jelly.  I had two clear thoughts: one was a wish for instant death, the other was that I must certainly already be brain dead, having applied eye makeup that morning.  I looked like this:

"Do you need time?"  the judge asked.

A voice barked sharply:  “No.  I need this to be over.”

It was me.

Snapping at the judge.

Luckily, it seems if you are forty-ish, wearing rumpled Ann Taylor, flapping your hands like a deranged bird and sending mascara down your face in rivulets reminiscent of Courtney Love at Kurt Cobain’s funeral (or, OK, Courtney Love on a good day), you get a pass on some things, even in court.

Ultimately, the divorce was granted, and The Ex (get used to his new title with me) and I did what any newly-divorced couple would do.

We went fishing.

Yeah.  Not kidding.  I kind of feel like when it comes to the whole Conscious Uncoupling thing, I out-Gwyneth-ed Gwyneth Paltrow on this one.

We went fishing.

With no children - named after fruit or otherwise - we still decided to at least try to replace a negative experience with a positive one.  We went out on the boat (his boat, by court decree) and drank beer (his beer) and cast lines into the water.  The fish never bothered us.

At some point, it began to irritate me that we were out on the water enjoying a gorgeous summer day as we had so many, many times before.  As if we hadn’t just been granted an “absolute divorce” by one stranger in a room full of them.  Seven years together.  Seven months apart.  One hour and fifty-three minutes in family court, and it was done.  I tried talking politics, hoping for an argument that would remind me of why we separated in the first place.  But The Ex wasn’t taking the bait any more than the fish were.

So we just took the boat out into the chop outside the harbor.  I love choppy seas.  I always want to go as fast as possible, while The Ex generally prefers to take it slow.

"Go fast," I said.

The man who wouldn’t look at me in court turned to me and smiled.  It was the thinnest, saddest smile at first, but it grew.  He leaned on the throttle and aimed into the whitecaps.

And I felt the smile creep back onto my face.

In the wake of my divorce, this much I know:

• Silence is toxic to marriage.
• So is valuing the opinions of others over those of your spouse.
• The wolf allegory is true: whichever one you feed will win.
• Pop music is also true: sometimes love just ain’t enough.
• A man who didn’t understand me worked hard at providing me with the things he thought I needed to be happy.  (That’s something.)
• I did the same for him.  (I hope he feels that’s something.)
• There is no substitute for genuine understanding and communication.
• The whole “tis better to have loved and lost…” thing is true.  You only understand that when you are hollowed-out and broken.

                        But still grateful.

www.kcwilder50ways.com