Tag: TheExHusband

saudade

Dear Internet,
I have no home.
I have people who love me; places I can stay temporarily, but I have no place I can call mine when the chips are down. No place I can recoup and regather. No place that is mine and mine alone. No place for for my things.
I am tired of minimizing my stuff to the point where everything I own can be tied to two bags to be checked at airports around the country. I am tired of feeling like I’m on vacation when I’m not. I’m tired of feeling like I’m interrupting other people’s lives with my own messiness.
I am in Louisville, staying with TSTBEH for the remainder of my sojourn and then, on Wednesday, I fly back to Grand Rapids and move into my apartment.
My apartment. Mine. My things. My stuff. My garbage. My shit. My dirty laundry.
I left the east coast early because my heart was breaking. I left the east coast because I did not know when I would see TheBassist again after this trip. I left the east coast because the thought of maintaining a long distance relationship with TheBassist especially when I didn’t know I would see him again ripped at my being. We have plans, he and I, but those plans have to be on hold. I can’t fix me while maintaining a relationship of any kind, specifically a long distance relationship.  With him.
With anyone.
What I need, what I have to have, is to be alone. Live with no man. Be with no man.
I left the east coast because TheBassist is so part of its culture, its mythos, its world that that is his home. Louisville is now where TSTBEH is finding his culture, his mythos, and his world.
I came to Louisville to hope to find some peace, but find I am still an interloper. I still do not belong.
Maybe I do have a deeply rooted self-persecution complex or I am deeply, deeply, entrenched in saudade.
xoxo,
lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2014

year in review: 2014

Dear Internet,
Working at home today and getting supremely in the groove. Re-discovered that I used to do a round up, by month, of things that went on in the previous year as a year in review. This seems like a good idea to continue insofar as giving me a perspective for the year and helping me figure out what I need to improve or cut back on.
Previous years: 2000, 1997, 1996

Neil Gaiman’s New Year’s wish for 2015:

Be kind to yourself in the year ahead.

Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It’s too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand.

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them.

Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love.

It’s been a helluva a year. Here’s to 2015 being boring and slow.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014, 2013, 1999

In Case You Missed It: Top Posts for 2014

Dear Internet,
2014 was a banner year with my dog dying, my marriage busting up, finding new love, getting sued for defamation, getting back on the bipolar drugs, and losing my job. But the big question is, what did you favor on my site in 2014. Below is a breakdown of the top posts written and viewed in 2014.

  • About That Job Description In which I reveal that my position at GRCC was announced in January and my decision not to reapply. Add in the Internet getting my back for this line in the posting, “Ability to demonstrate the mental health necessary to safely engage in the librarian discipline as determined by professional standards of practice,” and you now know why I decided to move forward with my career.
  • I am the bitter fat chick who told you “no” In which I reveal an ex-high school boyfriend who kept sending me Facebook messages every couple of years in some fucked up attempt to “win me back” and his responses each time I said “no.”  Also explained my decision to change my name across various social networks only to be forced to change it back on Facebook due to “valid name” concerns.
  • For The Case of Humanity In which I reveal why I will not shut up about my feelings in regards to the $1.25M defamation lawsuit, job hunting, and other unpleasant topics.
  • About my article in American Libraries on libraries, technology, and gender  In which I reveal the background on an article I wrote for American Libraries Magazine, a publication of the American Library Association.
  • Librarian How To: Graphic Novel Collection Development in Academia In which I reveal my process on collection development, promotion, use, social media (and more) of graphic novels in community colleges.
  • into which the cosmos will collapse once again In which I reveal the break up of TSTBEH and myself.
  • #teamharpy tweet clarification In which I reveal that no, we’re not deleting online content in regards to the lawsuit.

Thanks for a wonderful year, dear readers.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2012, 2012, 2012, 2002

look, it stopped snowing

Dear Internet,
I unintentionally woke up this morning at 6AM  but it ended up working out as the early wake-up meant I could take Kristin to work. We walked outside to discover that it had snowed over night; nothing serious but it was the first time this season I’ve seen snow sticking to the ground. It snowed once when I was on the east coast, on Thanksgiving, and it was giant fluffy snow; the kind that melts as fast as it hits the ground.
caravaggio
Since I graduated from undergrad in 2005, I’ve made it my personal mission to see every Caravaggio in existence. I am so enamoured of the idea, a few years ago I made a mini-site (okay, a page really) of his known complete works and started checking them off. I haven’t updated in awhile but as of today, I’ve seen over 40 of the 90 Caravaggios open to the public and I have 18 more pieces to catalog before the page is done with the exception of me checking off new ones I have seen.
I really need to hie thee to Florence and Vienna.
The Lisa Chronicles, Vol 1: 1998
…is now up for pre-order. Delivery date is January 31, 2015.
At long last my project is starting to come to fruition. The goal is to take each year from 1998 and forward, clean it up (grammar, spelling, clarity), bundle it as an eBook and sell it on Amazon. The content has been free for  years on EPbaB, but no one reads archives anymore unless there is a direct link within the piece referencing it. There has been requests to eBookify the back content for easier reading, so I’ve done just that.
From the blurb:

In 1998, having an online diary was a bold new world. Mailing lists, communities, chat rooms, and more all sprung up over people’s favorite diarists. Now we would call them bloggers. But then, THEN was a whole ‘nother beast. Then writing online was intimate. Then it was more personalized and personal. Then writers had less shtick. Not much was expected of these online exhibitionist scribes other than the ability to tell a good tale and regularly update.
I miss those days.
I moved my diary (or journal, which was used interchangeably) around to many domains but kept the same name: The Lisa Chronicles. Who better to tell my life story other than me? I never expected to get rich or famous, but what I wanted was to be able to connect to others who were like me. The scared, the frightened, the brave, and the bold. (No relation to the terrible soap opera of the same name.) I wanted to eat the world and in 1998, what better way to do that was through the Internet?
What can you expect from the first volume? Love, conflict, obsessions with people, places, and things. Rotating cast of characters and adventures. Sprinkle of song lyrics here and there. Pop culture references galore. Sex. More sex. Profane words and a bipolar girl desperate to connect with a world she did not understand.
While this work has been edited for grammar, clarification, and the obvious typo, it remains largely unchanged from when it first appeared online nearly two decades ago.
And lastly, every word here is true.

So if you’re intrigued by the book description or want to help support me thanks to the saga of #teamharpy, I would be most grateful if you would pre-order the book.
[amazon template=image&asin=B00R2808QE]
Skaldic Press Presents
The eBook announcement reminds me of another thing I launched this past week: Skaldic Press Presents. It’s a newsletter of updates of my projects, including Exit, Pursued by a Bear, so glad is my heart, and other adventures in addition to Skaldic Press. Includes GIFs.
tl;dr I tweet and write too much, but you want to keep up with me? This newsletter is how to do it.




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where in the world is lisa going to be now?
The constant changing of addresses and locations are baffling peeps, so let me clear some things up. If you have an east coast address for me, mainly for snail mail, you can send me mail there until early January as I will be on the east coast until January 14. After then, I’m back in Michigan to finish up writing my book, continue with The Lisa Chronicles project, and finalize my divorce. I have given out a PO Box to which mail can be sent to and this PO Box is active now. So yes, technically from now until January 15, when I take possession of my apartment in Michigan, I’m homeless.
adios Throbbing Manor (for real this time)

The house closed yesterday and the stress of prepping and selling it is now gone. Finally. I’m not sure who is going to be more thrilled about this decision, me or TSTBEH, but we had a very tearful goodbye in the parking lot of the title company before parting ways. I have no idea when I’m going to see him again since he doesn’t need to be present when the divorce is finalized. He headed south for his move, I headed north to Kristin’s to crash for a few days.
And that, they say, is that. I know right now I’m grieving, again, for the loss of my marriage and I’m okay with that. Even knowing what the pain IS doesn’t make it hurt any less.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013

Moving Part Deux


Dear Internet,
Well, here we are again: I’m moving. This time Two Men and a Truck put what I pillaged from Throbbing Manor (thanks to the generosity of TSTBEH) into storage for a month while I’m out on the east coast; then they will move me into Valkyrie Estates (name may change) in mid-January. Then, THEN, work will start on my book(s).
My pillaging helps TSTBEH out as he would have had to either donate, sell, or take with him the remaining furniture he decided he did not want after the split. With the exception of a bed, I’ve almost completely furnished Valkyrie Estates. I’ve got a list of smalls I need to pick up when I get back (like laundry soap and toliet paper), but really, that is it.
This manic last two months, easier to give it a simple explanation when the explanation is really much more complicated, has been financially AND mentally expensive. Truth be told, if I wasn’t counting on the settlement from the selling of the house to pay off my debts, I may have reigned the spending in but that’s an excuse for my own folly. I must accept the responsibility of what I have done financially.
It’s now mid-Sunday afternoon and I’m camped out at a hotel. Again. This time the only thing I’m running from is sleeping on an air mattress in a house that is freezing. Between the consignment shop swopping in on Thursday and my movers on Friday, all that is left until Monday is an air mattress, a 50″ TV and related stereo equipment, dining room table and chairs, TSTBEH’s boxes, and the art deco hutch. In 3200 sqft. We attempted to sleep on the air mattress every night until the closing of the house on Tuesday but I just couldn’t do it. I gave in to my inner diva, left late Friday night for a hotel, and here I am.
And yes, I’m keeping track and earning points with all of this hoteling, flying, and other travel.
My entire life is now split between two suitcases and my messenger bag of electronics. There are a few odds and ends in my trunk but my worldly possessions are now in those two suitcases; it’s a freeing feeling and an exhausting one. Now that my mind is finally clearing and I’m starting to put things into better perspective, I want to nest. Now.
I have to learn patience, I have to learn that waiting is okay and things will still be there when I’m done waiting. Not everything is gossamer and clouds but water and dirt. Things are tangible, holdable, and lovable.  These are things I need to remember and need to not forget ever again.
So let’s move on to something other than my mental geographical quandary.
Part of ThePlan is bundling the previous years entries into an ebook volume and publishing it on Kindle and other eRetailers.
Today I finished the first draft of volume 1 and it clocks in at roughly 114 pages.
The plan is to take previous years (beginning, well, at the beginning) of The Lisa Chronicles, bundle them by year into an eBook version and see if I could shill it on Amazon (and maybe Apple) to make some passive income.
The idea was pitched to me about four years ago when a library school friend offered to go through these entries, edit for clarity and grammar, and help me format them for the Kindle. I was a bit trepidatious at first, for I often do not find myself to be that fascinating, I just happen to get into fascinating circumstances. But apparently there is a market for this type of writing and I had oodles of it already written at my disposal.
But I stalled, as I do, on the project when I was working full time; I started nibbling at the idea again when I started planning for my sabbatical. The process seemed simple enough: get the back entries of The Lisa Chronicles up online on EPbaB for completist sake. Then move the content over to Word for formatting and editing. Find a cover. Set a price. Write a forward and a description. Upload and BOOM. Book is on the Amazons.
But it wasn’t that simple, rather, it was much more complex than my simple plan. Two things were happening in parallel. First being I had to set up as a business entity to help with writing off things related to my sabbatical AND to properly handle any income coming in from the sales of the eBooks. Second, that I had to find the content (easy enough as I kept multiple copies), get it on to EPbaB so the archives were complete, then move it to Word. I knew how prolific I am, so I figured I’d break it down by year and each year would be roughly 50 pages of formatted book text.
Did I mention that year one is at 114 rough pages? And only from April to December 1998? So I was obviously wrong in my page prediction.
I consider 1998 to be the very beginning for the sheer amount of content, though I have pieces that were published much earlier. I have gotten 1998 and 1999 into the EPbaB archives, so the first two volumes of the eBook project are going to be easy to do. I’ll have to work in tandem with getting the later content up and editing the current project and writing the fiction book.
I’m going to be a very busy girl.
Getting it up on Kindle was not that difficult: I opted out of the KDP Select option which means the work would have only been sold on Kindle and I opted out of having DRM on the eBooks. I was able to, with the help of TheBassist and cmmrb, figure out the cover design (Amazon has a free cover creator). I have my EIN and LLC name (Skaldic Press), so everything on the business side was ready to go. It was just a matter of getting the content up, formatted, and edited.
So basically the hard part.
You know where you can find me for the next month.
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2012, 1999, 1998

liège waffle

Dear Internet,
Right. New plan.
It began when I was muttering to myself in the ladies at the TA in Youngstown, OH. This was pre-coffee, post-medication. Mid-late afternoon last week.
I was muttering that if only Throbbing Cabin (which TheSoonToBeExHusband is keeping) was open and available for me to go live at during the winter (TSTBEH is a generous soul) while I did my individual thing. But we closed it for winter back in September; Leelanau County received 241″ of snow last year; heating would run millions since the heating infrastructure is absolute shit and lastly, I would be miles and miles away from the nearest town. I wanted to be alone, not Jack Torrance.
(It was a very long pee.)
Then the near perfection dawned on me: Get a studio in Grand Rapids! It’s cheaper than the east coast. TheBassist would be doing his thing on the east coast, TSTBEH would start his new life in Louisville. I get my payout from the selling of the house, pay off the cards, pay off Jeeves, pay rent for a year, pay car insurance for a year and I’d only have to worry about food, phone, and interwebs and write that blasted book I’ve been banging on about forever, plus a few other writing projects.
Fucking genius.
It’s all coming together.
As soon as I got into GR that early evening, after spending a cumulative 16 hours driving, I immediately launched into my plan with TSTBEH. He had told me, and I had forgotten apparently in the Asian land war of my brain, that I was only to show up on his door if I was serious about getting back together and yet here I was standing on his front door step telling him we were most definitely not getting back together.
He accepted my decision gracefully and I think, along with TheBassist, that something about my demeanor (or the drugs were stabilizing me) was different than before as both of them seemed more receptive to this plan over any other cockamamie schemes I had come up with in recent weeks. TheBassist requested, and I provided, a PLAN as a guide of what I’ll be doing in money/job, mental health, physical health, living, and relationships. I also gave a copy of the plan to the cabal that is CMMRB and they too, whom other than the two men in my life have been holding me up every step of the way, approved of the plan.
ThePlan, is more or less a check list of things to do in the upcoming year with a review at six months. I also added in a three year and five year addendum for shits and giggles. Each topic has a list of things that must continue (for example, under Mental I have a listing of continuing to see my talking therapist, Dr. P) and need to be done (get a referral for a local medicating therapist to monitor my drugs and seem them on a regular basis). Some of it is reminders (stop eating dairy) while others are nudges (walk more).
After that I said on Facebook,
It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve been on the Lamictal/Abilify drug mix and I will say this:
Pros

  • When I get a million “to do” items in my head, I immediately create a ToDo list and work on it. Follow through on said items has been great.
  • I am prioritizing the ToDo list better.
  • Appetite is down and I’m not over eating at meals.
  • Daily tasks, like meditation, I have been diligent on.
  • I feel pretty good when I commit to a thing, I’m sticking with it.
  • The need to smoke is decreasing. Yay!

Cons:

  • Sleep is broken. I went to bed at 10:30 last night and woke up at 2, 4:30, 5:45, and finally at 7:48.
  • I cannot take SSRIs because I am one of the rare cases I’ll get suicidal thoughts though when on SSRIs, I obviously did not follow through. Now, I am getting destructive behaviour thoughts like when driving across the bridges in Pennsylvania, I wondered what would happen when I swerved into the medians. Using mediation techniques, I accept them as thoughts and let them come and then go and do not fight them. But it’s still slightly scary.
  • I am getting some relief and I don’t feel as yo-yoing as before. I have a long way to go, but I do feel like this is small steps in the right direction.

The big thing to note here is the ability to prioritize and accomplish tasks which, as someone with adhd along with the other delightful gifts, is damned near difficult to follow through. But so far, not really a problem.
That Friday I made phone calls/emails to six property management companies and referrals I found on Craig’s List. As of a week later, none of the property management companies returned my calls, but the referrals via Craig’s List did. I set up appointments, starting on Saturday, and took the first place I visited because it was absolutely perfect. Not a studio, but a 600 sqft one bedroom located in a 145 year old house that used to be a hospital after the Civil War. There are five apartments in the building, mine is a second floor walk up, and the amenities are out of the world.

  • Heat (gas) and water included. This is gold in Michigan since my last apartment I rented in an old house ran me $400-500 for heat a month during the winter, which combined with my reasonable rent, made it crazy expensive
  • Trash/recycle / snow plowing / lawn maintenance
  • Off street parking
  • Locked front door entrance
  • Pets allowed
  • All original wood floors, paneling, and molding throughout the apartments and building
  • 10′ ceilings
  • Same area as Throbbing Manor, so damned near perfect location
  • Big windows
  • Bedroom oversees the city landscape since I’m on mid-hill
  • Owner is allowing me to pay a year in advance, with 5% discount, and option that if I end up leaving before the year, monies will be returned once the apartment is re-rented (which shouldn’t be an issue)
  • Coin operated laundry in the basement

I signed the lease and gave my deposit three days later. So now I have a place, a budget, and a plan.
Right, to make sure we’re all on the same page:

  • TSTBEH and I are divorcing, finalizing probably in February
  • The house closes on 12/16
  • He’s moving to Louisville
  • I’m staying in GR to live the bachelorette life in my own pad and get my writing done
  • I have a talking therapist here (Dr. P.) and soon, a medicating therapist. My GP will be regulating my drugs until then

Three or six months or a year later, who knows. But at least now I have ThePlan to follow.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day In Lisa-Universe: 2013

I’ve got you

Dear Internet,
TheBassist and I met in December of 2004 in a community for tall people on LiveJournal. The conversation kicked off about shoes. We were so charmed by the other, we were instant LJ BFFs. Within a week or so, we couldn’t stop mooning over the other. Within a couple of months, he flew out to Grand Rapids and all of that passion online smoothly translated off. I remember sitting on my couch, he fresh from his flight, just holding the other. My face was buried in his chest and I muffled something along the lines of, “I’m dead.” He titled my face towards his and asked me to clarify. I said that if he kissed me, it would be all over. He kissed me and we barely left my apartment the entire weekend.
Several weeks after that, he dumped me.
Some months down the line, a mutual friend got in touch and said TheBassist wanted to get in touch with me again. I acquiesced. We started discussing about getting back together and within a week, he dumped me again.
Nine years go by and the fourth of July 2014, he sends me a Facebook message. He had found the signed to me copy of Terry Pratchett’s Thud! and did I want it? TheBassist had haunted me for years and in the 2013, I found he had been leaving me love notes across the Internet for years. So yes, I was a bit leery about friending him again, signed TPerry or not. But I did not hate or begrudge him and I was curious to find out what had happened, so I offered him a compromise: how about we become Facebook friends and if I felt comfortable with him, he could send me on the book. He agreed. So we did.
So what happened in 2004 was this: TheBassist and his now ex-wife were in the process of their own divorce when we met. They were both dating other people, I was not an affair, everything was above board, it was simply a matter of paperwork. I was in my final year of college and the plans then were if things continued as they were between us, I’d apply for grad schools on the east coast to be closer. He would finalize his divorce. We’d date and then who knew what the future held.
We were pretty sure that the future was looking glorious because we ticked each others boxes like crazy. There was not a thing we did not have in common, believed in, or loved. We could talk for hours, and we did. We laugh darkly now about the cost of our cell phone bills because this was in the days when minutes were counted and texting was not cheap. He was the first person I spoke to every morning and pretty damn near the last person I spoke to every night.
He was the first man to make me cum. He was the first man who knew instinctively what I needed sexually and knows my body better than anyone ever has.
I loved him like gangbusters. He was my everything. Where in the past, partners always tried to get me to reign in or modify my behavior, he encouraged everything about me. He loved me, for me and I reveled in that love. Because I reveled in that love, I loved him just as fierce.
The now ex-wife decided she wanted him back. They had a history. A family. Though she had dumped him and had made no moves in the year plus separation to win him back, now that he was with me, she wanted him back. So he took the known over the unknown and smashed my heart into a million pieces in the process.
I knew this was going to happen — I had warned him this was going to happen. He was so delightedly and blessedly in love with me that she’s going to want in on a piece of that action. It was not that he did not believe me more that he did not think this was going to happen. But it did. This is why I could not fault him for his actions because he is only human, much to his chagrin, and he had done what he thought was for the best.
Stupid decision, it is all around agreed.
He was obviously wrong. Within a few months of them getting back together, they broke up yet again. He came back to me to suss me out but knew that by staying with me the second time, he would only be manipulating me for his own end and not trying to really build a relationship. So he left. Again.
There is more to his story than what I am telling, but that part is for him to share. What I can share is that in the intervening years, I was one of his two biggest regrets.
I am apparently legion on the east coast. There is not a friend of his nor a family member who had not heard of the Michigan Girl in the last decade ad nauseam. I was the bar that was set so high, no other girl could possibly obtain even modicum of my status. I am the love of his life and he would do anything short of murder to keep me and make this work.
A week after TheSoonToBeExHusband and I split, I made an impulsive decision. “What are you doing the following weekend?” I asked TheBassist. “I’ve got a gig, but nothing else, why?” “How about I come visit?” “You don’t need to ask twice!”
So I didn’t.
A three month love affair in your youth that gets romanticized as you get older does not a relationship make. I knew this. But I needed to be with someone who wanted to be with me in all the ways and not some sort of idealized image of me. TheBassist and I were talking every day, all day, by this point. Despite the grey hairs and aging, what drew us together ten years ago was very much still there.
I needed to take a risk.
As we sat on his bed my last day in town, I booked a flight in two weeks hence, and then cried at the airport and most of the flight back. There had to be some kind of goal to obtain and I had to make some clear decisions on what I wanted to do. So the plan became this:
I could not stay in Michigan, there was nothing left for me there. I have a ton of friends up and down the east coast, I could coach surf if necessary. There were job opportunities galore. There were people desperate to be a part of my world. TheBassist wanted not only to make me in his world, but to create a world of our own. There is nothing he would not deny me and nothing he would not do to make me happy. Even though our time together has been brief the first time, there is something deeper, that could not be explained or reasoned away, that binds us together.
TheBassist’s word is his bond and he favors loyalty over anything else. He has a legion of fans up and down the eastern seaboard where the subtext of meeting the legion has been, “Do not hurt him.” I am conscious that my actions right now are suspicious and eyebrow raising – if I sound so sure of everything that has transpired, why am I holed up alone in the middle of nowhere when I ache so much for one?
The best reasoning I can give is this: I went from a world where I was in a marriage that left me not only alone, but incredibly lonely. Now I’m in a world where I do not want for loneliness and I am overwhelmed by the love and support that is being given to not only by TheBassist, but also by his friends and his family. I am panicking because I have never been in position where people have my back simply because they cared. I always had my own back, even in my marriage, I could not depend on the one person I was supposed to depend on outside of myself: my husband.
This past Friday I called TheSoonToBeExHusband and told him I wanted to come home. I wanted to right the wrongs of our marriage. When I told TheBassist I was leaving, he broke down and cried. I am tawdry harlot breaking men’s hearts everywhere I go. What the fuck was wrong with me?
I waffled as fast and furious. The last week has been emotional hell. I was all over the place and every decision felt like a lie. I told both I needed to be alone, with neither of them in my head or space, and I needed to make sure I was doing the right thing. For me.
This is how I ended up alone in a hotel in the middle of nowhere on a rainy November day, chain smoking, and baring free my soul to the internet.
It is now hours upon hours later after I started writing this. The hope was to give both sides of their stories, where I fit in, and as the days progressed this week, to suss out what I needed to do. What was right for me. But as I wrote this, all the fuzziness in my head this past week about if I was making the right decision cleared because two things I had always known with certainty: I wanted to live alone and I wanted to continue what I started with TheBassist. Our relationship first round was born out of chaos. This time was also born out of chaos. I needed to create the space of my own and see if we could really work as a couple outside of the chaos.
I need to be here.
TheSoonToBeExHusband read my post from earlier today and wrote me a long email in kind. In it he says, 

Part of me doesn’t want to pressure you; but part of me wants to fight for you, and part of me wants to track you down; put on a trench coat and hold a boombox over my head blasting Peter Gabriel.

I knew that waiting until my week was up to talk to TheSoonToBeExHusband was futile. Putting down the dissolution of my marriage, something I had done in fits and starts everywhere but never in a single location solidified the hard decisions I had made long ago when I put this plan in motion.
So I called TheSoonToBeExHusband and we talked.
For five hours.
We talked about TheBassist, what he meant to me, what he gives me, and how he makes me feel. We talked about how our marriage broke down, how his depression corroded what was good, and how I had been hanging on by a thread for months.
Both men had told me independently, and without me asking, they would wait for me if I went to the other. TheBassist said he would wait 369 days (in case I got lost coming back through Pennsylvania).
TheSoonToBeExHusband and I discussed about not getting a divorce but simply a separation while I stayed here on the east coast. I suggested to both they could time share me. Surprisingly, neither were terrible keen on the idea. TheSoonToBeExHusband and I went through every how much we very much loved the other, but our relationship had not been working for years. I was alone through most of the marriage and TheBassist offered me a life TheSoonToBeExHusband could not provide for me: TheBassist gives me all of himself. Not halves. Not bits, but wholes. I need to be with someone who wants to love the world as much as I do.
I need to be here. No more waffling.
I did not leave TheSoonToBeExHusband for TheBassist, but he told me if he had known TheBassist was waiting for me weeks ago, that I had this awesome and supportive environment protecting me as I went through this, his heart would have been a lot lighter and he could have started his closure sooner. That is my folly, one that I plainly take on.
I had hoped TheSoonToBeExHusband would not have found out TheBassist this soon because how it looks and how it is are two vastly different things. I did not want to hurt him. I do not want to be unnecessarily cruel. I did not want to give him more pain because the dissolution of our marriage had nothing to do with another man waiting in the wings. But now that he knows and everything is out in the open, this has all become decidedly French. TheSoonToBeExHusband quipped at one point in the conversation,

TheBassist sounds like a great guy – I’d date him.

(Over the course of the last few weeks, both have been quipping things that are insanely identical. It’s like they are in cahoots with the other. Did I mention they are both 6’7 and weigh exactly the same with similar builds? TheSoonToBeExHusband referred to me as his waffle; TheBassist has started calling me Belgian. It is downright eerie.)
Now the plan is this: I filed for divorce last week. TheSoonToBeExHusband will be responding to the complaint this week. We should be finalized in a few months. We had already agreed on the split of everything so it’s all very amicable. Once Throbbing Manor sells or I get a job, I get my own place. TheBassist can bring in his toothbrush. He may get a shelf. We’ll date and see how it goes. TheSoonToBeExHusband is moving to Louisville for now. He’s going to continue seeing a therapist, continue taking his meds. He and I will have phone dates every couple of weeks because he was my best friend for six years and he is part of my world, I am selfish enough to want to keep him in it. He’s making plans to do fun things like take a fjord cruise or go on a big vacation. He told me he saw a sunbeam coming through a glass and shine on an ugly clock and noted that the clock was indeed ugly. He’s beginning to feel things again and he is noting he wants to be a part of the world once more. He’s not feeling dismissive and out of place as he once did. For that I am thrilled and excited. And so supremely glad.
The story of TheSoonToBeExHusband and I is not yet over, but it is on pause. He’s got a lot of work to do on himself, he could not be with me now even if we wanted to make it work. The fear of sliding back to what it was is too great and his emotional recovery from his depression is too soon. But I told him if he ever found himself slipping into that dark world again, to call me and I’ll come. No questions asked.
TheBassist and I, well, we have our own plans. Worlds to discover here and everywhere. Love to make that will frighten the children. Adventures to be had and each other to entertain. We’re going to have so much fun. TheBassist is equipped to handle my foibles and crazy. We’re creating language to help us work through my brain. When he holds me close to him and tells me that no matter what I’m going through he’s got me, I know that I am loved, safe, and cherished.
I know I’m an extraordinarily lucky girl whose met two amazing men who would give her the world if they could. Now it’s time to finally heal.
xoxo,
Lisa

dissolution

Dear Internet,
I am frightened.
On paper my marriage was flawless.
TheSoonToBeExHusband and I had the trappings of a couple who had it all. We had a beautiful home, we had a vacation home, we were both educated and made good money. Our individual needs for space, both of us creatures of solid independence that were attractors to us both, allowed us the freedom we needed to thrive. We challenged the other and we learned from the other. Our differences is what made us strong because our worlds were so vastly different and so remarkably the same, we connected on levels that we never thought possible with another human being.
In the beginning, our relationship was glorious.
There was not a single event that said “aha! this is ending” but rather, it was a slow, agonizing death. The sex slowed to a trickle. Then stopped. The affection was debated and negotiated. He would give me the world if he had it, but he couldn’t give me himself. He told me this, many times. He could not trust me not because I had done something wrong but because he could not trust anyone. Period. His own past was a chock a block of defense mechanisms that I could not penetrate no matter how hard I rammed against them. I was so desperate for him to love me and let me love him, but I could not ever hope to win.
I remember we were laying in bed one evening watching some schlocky movie when a romantic scene came on. I remember thinking that as the male lead grasped the female lead into a passionate embrace, I would never have that feeling again. I began to cry.
In the beginning when we were dating, he would throw me up against a wall and fuck me just because he could. And now a few scant few years later, I would never have my husband grab me and kiss me as if his life depended on it ever again. Oh, he gave me affection for we cuddled all the time, but that missing bit of raw primal sexual urge was gone and I found myself making allowances for those missing needs. He protected and supported me when the crazy hit. He took excellent care of me when I was ill. He made me laugh. He grounded me when I when I got too manic. He had a lot to give me and he did, but withheld the one thing I really wanted: himself.
Bipolars are attracted to the next big thrill. Many a relationship has ended with me because the honeymoon phase wore off and reality set in. “Oh, you’re not constantly wanting to get in my pants every second of the day? Well obviously you don’t love me enough.” So I reasoned, with TheSoonToBeExHusband, the honeymoon was wearing off and we were now in the dull throes of day to day life. This is what adulting IS, correct? Love isn’t always about sex. So I consoled myself that I was being manipulated by the media into believing that if my husband wasn’t fucking me every second of the day, the relationship must be terrible when it really wasn’t.
The sex could be fixed, and I knew that, so I sat down with him numerous times and explained what I needed. What I wanted. And it wasn’t just about getting fucked so hard my toes would curl, but it was about the act of seduction and tension. I needed to be wooed on occasion. To be desired. To be thought of as sexy and worth fucking. But he no longer agreed with the meeting of our sexual needs. He said at one point he thought he was asexual. His desire for sex was not the same as mine and while he could see about meeting my needs, he was content about where he stood with his. But he would try.
But it wasn’t enough. And soon, it wasn’t just about the sex, it became about everything else. The more he withdrew, the more frustrated I became. I fought to fix this, but every discussion brought out reasoned (him) analytics about the relationship while I couldn’t make him understand or could not apparently articulate that relationships were not about logic or reason, but also about emotion and feeling. It’s also about the sharing of the worlds.
He slowly stopped wanting to be a part of my world. I was his pookie bear, and he loved me, but I became more of a household pet than a lover or even a partner. I was to be petted and adored, mainly from afar, but everything else was off the table. At times he was cruel. He would grab me and give me a toe curling kiss, my body would meld into his, my arms around his neck, begging for more. Then he would stop. He would say he was not in the mood and walk away.
No amount of editing is going to make this clean and easy to follow. Life is not easy to follow.
I knew TheSoonToBeExHusband was depressed. He knew he was depressed. I begged him to get professional help and he refused. A long history of misguided therapy in his youth tainted seeing a therapist as an adult. He offered to work on it his own way: St. John’s Wort, working out, light therapy. There would be days where he would be semblance of his old self and days when he couldn’t get out of bed. My depression, which I had mostly been free from in recent times, came back. I was drowning and I had no idea how to save myself, let alone him. Or even our marriage.
Several months later, I called my therapist and went back into therapy.
Over the last two years, I found myself negotiating everything to make it through the day, but what I found myself losing was large parts of myself in the process. I was not the woman he married, I had become a shell of myself. I no longer found the world to be a big cookie for me to eat as everything tasted of sawdust. What was the point of having financial freedom when all we did was stay locked in our house for days on end. In the three years we were living at Throbbing Manor, we never explored the neighborhood we lived in, so how were we to go out into the world and explore it as we once dreamed?
Sure relationships have problems, I get that. I know that. But how far do you put yourself out there to save it before it becomes too broken to fix? How much can love really conquer all? And at what price?
xoxo,
Lisa

life-ring enclosure

Dear Internet,
Yeah, it’s been awhile. I’m at an undisclosed location for the week to make some hard choices, something I thought I did ages and ages ago when I decided to upend my life but apparently not as clear cut as I thought.
How did I get here? (Car and credit cards, but that’s the logistics and not the reasoning.)
While I’ve been doing a fairly good job of keeping my train wreck of a life off the internets except when absolutely necessary, you lot always knew the ends of my decisions and not the process of the whys. That was perhaps the most uncharacteristic thing about this whole blasted mess is that I’ve always kept a written track of what I’m doing and why, but as I’m being dragged through the mud across the internet due to #TeamHarpy1, I thought it might be just a bit wise to not to publicly say a damn thing.
But as the weeks have gone on, the impact of that internalization is damaging not just my brain, but also my body. I get random hives. My period is showing up every two weeks. I wake up at 4AM on an almost daily basis in a complete state of panic no amount of Klonopin can seem to fix. My moods are cycling so hard that I cannot trust what I’m feeling one minute to the next. I am free falling emotionally that what seemed like a brilliant decision one moment can feel great regret the next, which alternates with almost complete stoicism with emotional shutting down. I have been in tears so much, I’m surprised I’m not a prune.
What seemed so crystal clear weeks ago is now muddled and chaotic.
In order to regain control I made a few concrete decisions: Disconnect from the internet for awhile and find some place to be alone for a few days to clear my head and do some really hard thinking. But fuck the haters, I am going to put everything out on the damned blog. Maybe seeing it in print will help with the clarity and it will keep those who are needing to know how I’m doing.
So now you know WHY I’m here, so let’s move to the WHAT.
The stories consist of three main characters: Myself, TheBassist, and TheSoonToBeExHusband. So I’ll give you the tl;dr for the moment, with a fuller explanation tomorrow: I am in love with two men.
I did not leave TheSoonToBeExHusband for TheBassist. TheBassist and I started a relationship after I separated from TheSoonToBeExHusband. My marriage had been deteriorating for the last several years and this past spring, I had a sit down with TheSoonToBeExHusband about working on our marriage. He agreed to work with me on making changes. It didn’t happen. This was not the first time I had a sit down with him but it was the last. I had originally planned on using my year long writing sabbatical to also get my life back on track and hoped TheSoonToBeExHusband would come with me on that journey. When it became clear that he had no intent, I left.
TheBassist entered after the separation. We met up to see if the spark was still there after so many years. It was not a spark, but an explosion. He offered me many things TheSoonToBeExHusband would not and it was a chance for a true partnership with someone who would and could be my lover and equal.
So I decided to take a risk.
During the period as I started getting things ready, I felt very lucid and clear about all of my decision making. I had gone through a series of internal checklists and worked with my therapist on making sure I was doing the rational thing. Yes, there was emotions involved but I needed to also make sure what I was doing was not impulsive but the right choice for me.
And it felt right. Up until the day a few weeks after that I woke up out of a dead sleep at 4AM, woke TheBassist and said in all seriousness, “Why should I stay?”
And my emotional state has been getting progressively worse ever since.
To be clear, nothing has “happened.” TheBassist and everyone here have been beyond fantastic. I’ve been treated like visiting royalty and if I am indeed having a nervous breakdown, I couldn’t ask for better group of people to love me as I went through it. Also to the clear, TheSoonToBeExHusband has done nothing wrong since I left. He’s been an utter gentleman and is completely supportive of me.
This is nothing more than a pure case of my brain eating itself with something needs to be sorted and soon before I crack.
And with that, now I slumber. Until tomorrow.
xoxo,
Lisa

1. #teamharpy: The flurry of activity after the public announcement of the case in mid-September has died down a bit, but two new recent articles in well regarded spaces (one a professional library publication and the other, a oft quoted law blog) has brought a flurry of new support AND haters to the fold. I’ve been laying low on Twitter, even more so after reading the hashtag, as it causes some massive FEELS. In addition to the slagging across Twitter, nina and I are being eviscerated across other social networks (reddit, Facebook groups, blogs, and so forth) on everything from we’re too ugly (her) or fat (me) to get harassed to questioning our mental health (mainly mine). Of course there is always the question of the legitimacy of our complaints with complete dismissal of nina and I as human beings because she’s transgendered and I’m bipolar.
After the first few dozen rounds by anonymous cowards on reddit and blog comments, my skin has grown thick, but the sheer viciousness and regularity still surprises me. What is also interesting is how much of my life is being scrapped from this site, digested, and reframed in an attempt to shame me. Which is kind of hilarious in its own right since I’ve always been brutally honest in the presentation of myself to the world. I have nothing left to lose, I’ve been saying that since the beginning, and yet not a day goes by where someone attempts to be helpful by pointing out I’m mentally unsound because of REASONS. It’s extraordinary the lengths trolls will go through to make their, albeit weak, point when it’s all been right there, in public view, for years. Trolls may be vicious, but they certainly are stupid.

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 1998

Last Post From Throbbing Manor

Dear Internet,

This is happening now.
The movers are almost done loading my shit; Jeeves was loaded this morning. After they pull out and I hand TheSoonToBeExHusband keys to the house, I’m free.
I am free.
I’ve been a little too giddy about my impending freedom, but fuck it. The amount of back and forth about the marriage degrading and who gets what leaves me with one thought: Burn it all.
I’ll be in town for a few more days to do more paperwork and other odds and ends. My co-conspirator arrives later in the week to help me drive to the east coast, with a stop over in Detroit to see the east side contingent. I should be firmly planted at my new locale by the end of the weekend.
My stuff arrives mid next-week.
Throbbing Manor will be going up for sale within a few weeks. TheSoonToBeExHusband retains ownership of Throbbing Cabin. The divorce should be finalized within sixty days.
Then what?
I sleep for weeks.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2010, 2008, 1998

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