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.........