{by Melissa from Rock and Drool}

It was August 1999. I was a 30 year old mommy of two small children. I was the wife of one really screwed up little boy stuck in the body of a 33 year old man. Yet, I was no one. Just an empty shell.

Things looked pretty from the outside. Pretty house. Pretty cars. Pretty kids.

On the inside. It was ugly. I was dead and rotting. I felt lifeless and completely without any hope.

I was teetering on reaching maximum density. I was also precariously balancing my sanity. I was beyond misery and I didn’t want company. I wanted to stab my husband in his sleep. We couldn’t have that though. Because who would raise the kids if the dad was dead and the mom was in jail? The system? Hell to the no. I hated him though. With every fiber of my being.

It was bad. Not in a violent sense. There was just nothing worth saving there. But I wasn’t ready to jump off that high dive.

Until, one afternoon in early August. I snapped awake from a short nap. He was the first thing I saw. I looked at him, sweating on the exercise bike that was in our huge bedroom. And I knew it was finally over. Whatever guilt that had been holding me captive in that house, it had lifted. My fears and my conscience screamed that I was free to go.

And I did.

I grabbed clothes and toys. Enough to keep my 1 1/2 year old and 3 1/2 year old dressed and busy for the next couple of days until I could come back to the house when he wasn’t there. I grabbed some essentials for myself. Loaded the stuff into laundry baskets and placed them in the trunk of my car.

{By Robin from PENSIEVE}

I’m sure it all started with visions of sugar plums, dancing ’round my head like Coyote’s stars after Road Runner smacks him in the head with a cast iron skillet.

At some point in Christmas Past, these were my illusions of grandeur:

Children (freshly scrubbed, neatly dressed and mannerly) joining my husband (dressed in a crew neck Christmas sweater and slacks) (yes, slacks, that’s kind of important) and me (pearls and a June Cleaver dress, bosoms unnaturally pointed and waist the size of Scarlet O’Hara’s–let’s be realistic–after giving birth to Bonnie Blue) decorating tree and home. Efficient and precise, my husband, would string the lights as the children tenderly unwrapped each ornament, taking time to recall memories or giver attached to each. Aussie, head resting on crossed paws in front of a fire’s roar, would gaze sleepily upon our merriment. I’d stop long enough to serve hot chocolate with mounds of whipped cream and offer home made cookies, each a Martha Stewart masterpiece. I’d hesitate with intention to capture the moment, wanting to catalog the scene in my heart and mind, not daring to interrupt the feng shui with camera and flash. There’d be much laughter and story telling, and one of us would eventually find our way to the piano, where we’d all join in a hearty performance of the “12 Days of Christmas”. They’d always let me sing “Fiiiive…goooolden….riiiiings!” because they know it’s my favorite.

Well, buckets of rain on my delusional Rockwell-esque Christmas parade; the Road Runner must’ve smacked ME upside the head with a skillet! When all is said and done, I’m pretty much the one who does it all.

{Originally Published on Sweetney}

When I made my list of the best 25 songs of the last 25 years a few weeks back, I burned, just for my own private listening enjoyment, a mix CD comprised of those select tracks. Since that time its been on heavy rotation during the 20 minute commute to and from M’s camp each weekday — I’m lucky enough to have a kid who’s tolerant of Mommy’s need to CRANK THAT SHIT UP — and in that time she’s absorbed all the songs and picked her favorites, notable among them the well-aged Oasis tune Wonderwall. It’s a song that for all its obvious magnetism and hookiness I’ve never fully understood. I mean, what’s a Wonderwall, anyway? And what, if anything, does it mean for a person to be that to someone else? Still, questions of signification and metaphor aside, each time the spare guitar strum of that track begins to play on our car stereo I see the joyful recognition wash over M’s face in the rear view mirror, and when the lesser of the brothers Gallagher begins to sing she does too, word for word.
. . . . .

On Sunday, we finally told her about the split.

For those of you who’ve never gone through a separation (and seriously, here’s hoping none of you ever have to), the awful, soul-rending anticipation of having to break this news to your child — the tiny, blameless person who you’ve made it your life’s mission to protect and shield from all hurts and pains — is psychological torture of a magnitude it’s difficult to fully wrap your head around. Over the course of the past few weeks I’ve said to friends, relative to the crushing dread I felt about having to do this, that I now understand why people stay together for the sake of the kids (or, rather, tell themselves that’s what they’re doing — it’s probably closer to the truth to say they’re staying together for the sake of not having to deal with the anguish and guilt of having to tell the kids). It is the worst thing I could ever imagine having to do, and believe me, I can imagine having to do a lot of pretty awful things. Like having to attend a Celine Dion concert, or watch the complete filmography of Paris Hilton, for example. YES, THIS IS EVEN WORSE THAN THAT.

So Jamie came over Sunday morning with the idea in mind that this was the day. No way out but to barrel through it together, however ineptly, and hope to god we don’t have to look back on this as The Day We Shattered Our Daughter’s Identity, Crushed Her Spirit, And Destroyed Her Self Esteem For All Time. I think some of my generalized terror about this event can be traced back to having known a few very seriously broken human beings who pointed to the cataclysm of their parents breaking up when they were a kid as the hot molten core of their volcanic screwed-up-ness. And when I say “human beings” you should read “people I dated.” This is definitely NOT how I want my daughter to turn out.

{Originally published on Diet Coke-Fueled Life.}

I was going to write about working and respecting bosses. About how sometimes they make decisions you don’t agree with, but you suck it up and play the game. About how you don’t send nasty emails to someone who’s overseeing a project you’ve been invited to work on, especially when you’re in the wrong, and the project manager is awesome (me).

That lead to the only time I’ve not sucked it up. The time I stopped playing the game and stood up for something.

In July 2002, a co-worker, Ally Zapp, left her job at US SAILING to pursue other opportunities. Two days later, she was murdered. I was the PR person at the time, so I had the horrible job of fielding reporters’ questions while in full-metal shock along with everyone else. Although a national organization with international ties, only a couple dozen people worked in our offices, so we all knew each other well. We all loved Ally; she was so darned nice. One of those people you couldn’t possibly be mad at for anything. One of those people who made a difference. I wished I could be even a tiny bit like her.

Rather than showing our love and support for her and her family on July 18, our organization offered up a platitude along the lines of wishing her family the best in a difficult time. Local media. National media. That was all I was allowed to say. And I kept saying it, apologizing at the same time for not being able to offer more. I was worried about my job.

Finally, an AP reporter I’d already spoken to half a dozen times told me a rumor was circulating around the media outlets that we weren’t saying anything more because she had done something wrong at her position–that’s why she left the job, that’s why our lips were sealed.

I put him on hold. I got up, shut my door, returned to the caller. I told him if I said something on the record, I’d lose my job. As a mom and a wife whose husband rarely worked, losing my job would have meant losing a lot more.

When I knew Ally, I was in a new and already unhappy marriage. I had a handful of good, close friends he bad-mouthed every chance he got, pulling me away from them, and away from my close-knit family. He and my son didn’t get along. On top of that, US SAILING was going through a major upper-echelon overhaul, causing mounds of unhappiness and stress. And my best friend was moving two states away. I was in a bad, bad place all around.

{Originally published on Thursday Drive}

I was in the middle of nowhere, but I felt as though I had arrived at someplace important and pivotal. A place that should show on some map of my life with the words Go here.

Heavy and golden, the moonlight sank to earth on a parachute of stars and brought everything around me out of the shadows – the hulking shapes of mountains, open space, a black ribbon of road. Far away, the light of one house.

I stood in the middle of a road in northwestern Montana, shivering with the wind that ran through me like a hundred ghosts. I had stopped to get out, to look. No other car would pass by while I stood there. The night was big. The world was big. How many times had the wind that filled my lungs traveled along the curve of the earth? I breathed in, sure it told me secrets of what my life could be, how big it could be, now that it was all mine again.

Back home in Connecticut, my job waited for me and my husband did not. Our separation was new, no older than a month. With less fuss than it took to plan our wedding, we decided to break apart the marriage, each of us taking uneven halves of the whole, pieces that had never quite fit together and always left a space between two people who tried.

I settled into a new place and then took every vacation day and every bit of cash I could, and I drove – this time, from Connecticut to the western side of Montana, 5000 miles in 12 days. It was the middle of September – now, almost to the date. This time every year, I give myself over to nostalgia for that trip and for the person I was then. Brave. Unafraid to go as far as that, alone, to see something beautiful, to be changed.

And despite the disappointment of a marriage that ended, I still thought I could see ahead and predict the future, or shape it.

The joke was on me, of course. On her, on the person I was that night, eight months before I would learn that I was pregnant with my first child. Whatever I thought was brave or scary before hitched a ride to somewhere far away.

But she learned. You want scary? I told her. Having a baby is scary. Cobbling together a life with another person, with a new life between you, takes guts. Believing that it will all work out? Harder still.