Tears of a Clown
Ah yes, let’s start this off with a too-grandiose title, like the Livejournal updates of yesteryear. I’d ask Ramsay if he approves, but he wasn’t born then, and he’s in a strop with me right now anyways. It wasn’t my idea to put him in the cone of shame for an entire week without a break, but I will get all the scorn. Parenthood, sigh.
(As an aside, I really should read a self-help book about how to parent through a divorce. I know it sounds far-fetched, but there really are behavioral changes that mirror how human kids deal with divorce. I’m the custodial parent, the non-custodial one wants nothing to do with me and will therefore never see him again, the Abandoned Child is sulky and moody and holding me tight in turns.)
I’m not much of a clown, but I’m crying a lot tonight, and it’s rather early to blame it on PMS. I keep re-living a memory from the most painful and wonderful summer of my life so far, my capital-S Summer of Separation, 2019. I was really at the end, finally ready to admit I had no way of staying in Providence, let alone the gorgeous house with the working fireplace and the amazing plant room/pot-smoking indoor porch. My last gasp, my last chance to buy myself more time to get my income-streams flowing fast enough, was to ask a friend for money.
I knew this particular friend had money in the amounts I needed: perhaps, maybe even had enough that the amounts I needed were trifling and very easy to just give away. But he wasn’t a super close friend and I asked him as the beaten-down, used-to-no creature I was then. “I know you’ll say no, but . . .” Didn’t even ask him in person, so I knew there was no chance but something made me try anyways.
He responded gently, explaining that it was a month with unexpected expenses and he didn’t even have a few hundred to lend friends in need, much less the vast sum I needed to keep my head above water for another month. And that his money was frozen in giant blocks, as is everybody’s who is more than just scraping by. I finally understood that even if it wasn’t in those frozen chunks, why should he- or anybody- give it to me? He had a core group of people he would keep afloat, and I was not one of them.
My life with Coyote had isolated me- not really maliciously, neither of us are those horrid abusers that try to cut all ties to family and friends outside the relationship, but the combination of lacking car, lacking Lyft money, and he not interested in attending almost any social outing we were both invited to was fairly deadly for me maintaining close ties with anyone, unless I was playing with them online almost every day or the like.
Anyway, I fully expected that friend to turn me down, but then he emailed me a job posting for a graphic designer.
I burst into tears. I was touched, a little hurt by the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps attitude that other friends had already expressed (but not surprised, it was so common in Puritanical New England), but mostly I so desperately wanted to be the version of me that my friend saw. A person who could get and maintain a high paying corporate whore job and use that to establish herself in a sensible, normal post-Separation life. A person who could, in time, afford an apartment with no maddening roommates and an actual real road-worthy car.
I’d like to peer into the alternative dimension where I could’ve done that- but, of course, I would’ve had to have started the real job search in April or May of ‘19, and somehow found the sanity to keep whatever I got. While being a giant pothead and in the longest period of pure mania in my life so far. Phew, that’d be a big ask, but who knows? There probably is an alternative dimension where I double-majored in Philosophy and Psychology, and then picked one and got a PhD in it- damn, my Dad would’ve loved that go-getter me!
And maybe she would’ve kept going, driven as hell. Who knows, maybe she wouldn’t really see the point of holding a big chunk of her heart for someone on the other side of the world, and broken it off in exchange for someone in the PhD program that made her laugh and rage and sigh in countless 3am discussions about group projects or papers or whatever.
I also want to look at the alternative dimension where Coyote doesn’t take me to that awesome sexy sculpture garden that was practically in his backyard and I just dump his ass right then and there. I deserved better. I will probably always fantasize about being the dumper, I know from experience it’s infinitely better than being the dumpee, but that would’ve been a fine moment to choose.
But yeah, Dr. Me would’ve continued to kick ass and probably would be a published author by now. Maybe a college professor too, having gotten in when tenure was still a thing. I wonder.