TLC

So it's the little things that are making me happy these days.  Somehow it feels like a million years since my pathetic New Years Eve, and even from our wacko trip to London, and thats a good thing and a bad thing.  I realized I am forgetting "him", and that is the goal, right?  But then I realized how much I don't want to forget him, or his face, and just the thought of his voice....but I am, and it is sad in its own way.

Bummed around a grey, dreary Williamsburg with my cool musician friend Sunday morning.  He and I both showed up in matching black hats, drank way too much coffee, talked music of course, and band life, and wandered around just chit-chatting and reminiscing, and stopping in stores, and thumbing through albums...  I wore my absolute favorite new Stella McCartney high waisted, bell bottom jeans, platform booties, gold embroidered paisley print Etro blouse, and wrapped my wrists in leather strips in lieu of more my more fancy bracelets and felt young and carefree and happy.

Tried to replicate the amazing cashews my dear friend Kathryn @classicsix gave us over the holidays.  The originals were long gone, and thoroughly enjoyed, but when I asked Kathryn for her recipe she said they were an Ina Garten recipe, and that you toss the cashews in butter and Cayenne pepper, brown sugar, and rosemary....

Discovered Element on Henry Street right before our trip to England, and I really feel the 90 minute massage was a turning point for me.  I've been back again, and would love to try some of their other services.

Yesterdays Pilates session was fantastic....discovered Streamline on State Street....

Enjoyed my rainy rainy night last night with my true loves.  Alice and Chase hung out with me, and we watched movies, scrambled some eggs for dinner, and tucked the curtains up and away from the leaky spots.   

London Turning Point

Having just arrived back home to New York, I am feeling a bit relieved.  London was intense, and horrible, and wonderful, and maybe cathartic.......?  Originally planned in early December with the darling S, we were going to combine a class of mine with a business trip of his....entirely his idea...and I was on board.

He has his favorite funky hip Soho hotel near his London office.  I have my beloved Claridges.  It was going to be fantastic.  Peanut butter and chocolate good.  Then Hong Kong....

We were spending the last few hours of his time in NYC together when we realized our schedules were dovetailing perfectly, and he tossed the idea out there.   It was a cold Sunday afternoon on the Upper East Side in early December, and there was frost in the air.  I was planning Alice's birthday, he was talking business.  He looked so big and tall and handsome in that khaki coat and his maroon striped scarf, his dark hair flopping over his eye ever so rakishly.  The world was beautiful.  Life was divine, walking around in that warm rosy apricot colored cocoon of bliss.  We had been wandering aimlessly, like kids, laughing, interrupting each other, two hours of coffee and talk, sushi lunch, kissing over the table, and then back inside......looking into each others eyes for hours...just looking.....and quiet......

Quietly looking into each others eyes....

Wrapping that tendril around my fingers....

I thought I had found him...I thought he was the one....

He left the country..... he fell ill......thinking something got lost for us there....thinking that was the critical juncture...

So after the fateful New Years Eve, when we sat in the car and he told me I wasn't asking the right questions....that he hadn't checked out, but that he couldn't figure out the how and the why of us, I promptly went home and cancelled my trip, then rescheduled it the next week.  I figured staying home would cause me more pain and feelings of loss, and I am so glad I went.  Taking Alice at the very last minute was a great call, and we certainly had a different kind of trip than usual....There was a lot of sitting around in the Fumoir, drinking James Bonds, and stealing coasters, and tears on my part.  Miss Alice really did a great job of propping me up, despite the ups and downs of my feelings.  It was just killing me however, knowing he was a short walk away.

The how and the why of us?  What does that even mean?  pffft!

I usually know this stuff...why not now?

So I decamped to Mayfair, and let the Art Deco glory of my environment envelope me.  It's good I went.  My light had gone out.  I even looked different.  Alice saw it too.  I took my class.  My art improved.  My thoughts adjusted.

There were sleepless nights, and manic mornings, tipsy evenings closing down the Fumoir, and hot baths in those giant marble tubs, mini bar raids in the middle of the night, and even one pathetic cab ride past his hotel.....yep, I'll own that....but in the end, I think it was ok to allow myself the wallowing and the theatrics.  I wanted to be allowed to be as mad and sad and messed up as I really felt....the match for the intensity of my feelings for him when I was happy....how could I not?  I packed my favorite clothes.  A green velvet blazer, little black dresses, floppy felt hats, four pairs of boots, and my giant cocktail rings.  I dressed to the nines every day, and doused myself in my Krigler Lovely Patchouli perfume.  I wore red lace lingerie...yep I did.....and black satin....

Wearing my tissue thin Etro chiffon dresses like gossamer fairy wings, rose gold wire hoops and bell bottom pants, I was with the band....no, hell!  I was the band....dirty hair, and puffy eyes and all....

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

If I was going to hurt, I chose to hurt in style.  I don't want to remember this tough period in my life as drab, or ordinary.  I will remember it as the most flamboyantly beautiful pain I have ever experienced, complete with fur collars, high heels, and plenty of transatlantic flirting.  Its easy to do if your heart is crazy homesick.  Its necessary, actually.

So at a certain point, I think my emotions started shifting.  I started to feel the pain detach....just the slightest bit.  The tears turned to rants, and the rants became weak.  Indifference kicked in by the time I touched down at JFK.  Thought I was cured, but I did cry just a little again this morning.  I miss those beautiful eyes.  I miss my morning text, waking with a love song to listen to on Youtube.  Sister golden hair.  You're nobody till somebody loves you.  Nothing says love like a little Deano in the morning.....

But it is passing.  It is.

My phone is ringing again though, and its not him, and I think I like it.....

Matching Pj's

Dior shoes and McQueen scarves.

Miss Alice's last minute packing.  A rare departure for the nerd who usually wraps her clothes in scented tissue paper.

Attempts

So my surreal, weird week continues.  I booked a massage at what I thought would be a good place, thinking it would be really a good turning point with stress, and helpful for me to relax and sleep, and release tension etc, but the weirdness just had to continue.  Got something that was a complete waste of time.  Forty minutes of adjusting the massage table, and a lot of kneecap massage.  !  ???  Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?  I thought knees were supposed to be left alone?  Either way, I just kept cringing.......no aching foot was ever rubbed in this process....that would have been way too nice.  Couldn't wait to get out of the room, and I just didn't have it in me to complain. 

 The best part of the morning was just sitting with Alice afterwards in the Starbucks on Montague Street, drinking lots of bitter coffee, and staring out the dirty looking window at the dead Christmas trees lined up on the sidewalk, and basically just gossiping about anyone who passed by.  I was wearing my favorite linty black ski hat, and glasses, and yoga pants, and I was remembering Christmas Eve day four years ago, when we were sitting in the very same place, and thinking how much life has changed.....

Thought I was doing better in the tears department.  Today it seemed they were done for good, thought I was really getting better, but then with no actual thought or trigger involved....BAM....a flood of them.  Uncontrollable and crazy!  Unbelievable as it sounds, on Saturday night I have a dinner date.  While I am not even remotely excited, I was asked four times, nicely, and I am supposed to get out there right?  Even in the sad heap I am currently in?  Even if he isn't my type?  Hopefully the tear machine doesn't turn on in public, in mid conversation, because that would be a little bit awkward...not to mention insulting.

Packing for London....

Took down the tree...

Bought some boots....really nice ones.  Gianvito Rossi.  Suede.  I am a bit late to the over the knee boot party, but better late than never, right?  Perhaps I'll take them to London next week.  Leaving town is always a good way to reboot and refresh the soul.  I was thinking this would be the best thing ever, but then I remembered the ex boyfriend will be there at the same time....the plot thickens..

New Year New Start

So its a new year.  I have never really been very big on New Years Eve, and all the symbolism and the resolutions.  Usually I treat it like any other day to be honest....the only thing that ever really gets to me is my birthday one day prior.  The change in calendar makes me really feel one year older.

When I started my first blog in January of 2012, I had no idea whatsoever why I wanted to blog.  As a matter of fact it was Alice who suggested it, I think partly because at that time I was heavily into reading so many wonderful blogs, some of which are now defunct, and some still going strong.

Those were somewhat dark days for me.  I had just ended my second marriage....yes, second.  It was a brief, intense five month disaster worthy of a great director....a postmodernist masterpiece....It followed many years of single motherhood, and soul searching, and growing and stretching for me, as well as watching my first husband fall in love and remarry, my estranged mother fall ill, and the stock market crash...the world felt precarious and shaky, and I really wanted to get on with my life.

I wanted my happy ending.  My second marriage.  A shoulder to lean on, and a partner to trust.

Fast forward to divorce number two.  And the quiet realization that I was much happier alone, and really really blessed to have so much in my life.  I looked around and saw the beautiful Miss Alice, my best friend, and somehow we had survived a big, weird year together....she without a scratch, and I with some severely wounded pride, and ending not with heartbreak, but with lots of embarrassment and seriously doubting my intelligence.  When I was unhappy, and wondering how to pick up the pieces, I wrote.  I focused on the tiny, pretty, little yet big pieces of a large unruly life, and I grew addicted to my newly found rose colored glasses.  It was fun to blog about my dinner parties, and vacations, and the butterflies in my garden, not to mention the joy of meeting through letters and eventually in person so many readers.  Today I am a happier, luckier person to count several very cherished friends met through this wonderful network.

Every day got happier, every month prettier, and the realization that I was essentially chronicling Alice's High School years at home with me was not lost on many.  There were times I panicked, and it was as if I could actually hear the clock ticking.....wondering what would happen upon High School graduation.  Would we disappear like a pumpkin?  I worried for nothing, but life most definitely changed, and with that the rhythm of blogging and our quiet, snug little life together.

So last year I started blogging again.  Posted a little, but I really couldn't find a rhythm or reason to post, but this year I believe I have.

Alice and I individually and together have never been both so happy and so fully engaged with life as in the past two years since Alice transferred schools....  I love that she's here in NYC.  We still visit our old Green Shuttered House a few times a year.  Our lives are still extremely close, and both of us are so fulfilled with our new endeavors and both of us loving life to the fullest.  Every day feels like a holiday, a celebration, a feast....we pinch ourselves...  we are able to giggle and cry and caper .....

So I fell in love again...and again...and again.....And bounced back without a scratch each time.

But last night was perhaps a bit of a painful one for me.

I need to know I can get past this one.  I've already got a date or two lined up with a couple of very serious swells for this week, but my heart isn't in it.  My heart is on the floor, confused and bloodied, and feeling bedraggled and worn.

Last night was a big punch in the stomach for me.  The wind was knocked right out of me.

Trying to figure out if I got played.  Don't think I was that naive....It takes two....

Just saying his name out loud always felt beautiful....I had been so excited to see him.  And I really didn't want to say goodbye....sitting in my brand new car there in Brooklyn Heights at 6:30 on New Years Eve.....I never saw it coming.....

I am hoping to figure out what happened on my own....as he couldn't find the words himself.  I focused on the cuff of my blue and purple flowered shirt....I watched his handsome face drop with frustration, his hands motion with something I couldn't quite understand, all I could think was it was a joke, that the most beautiful being sitting right next to me would say something to reverse what was happening, and we would get out of the car together, holding hands, and all I really wanted was to reach out and run my fingers through his dark wavy hair....

I held my head up high, and said goodbye.......not with bitterness or negotiation, but quietly....I instinctively turned my face when he came in for one final kiss on my cheek.....he dropped his head with frustration, got out of the car since I wasn't interested in the drama, and I realized he was no longer mine.

Carefully I pulled my brand new shiny black birthday present, bought just the day before, away from the curb where I was parked, and slowly drove away from the man I thought I could love.........