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bits and pieces.

What an odd week.

The past four days have been spent in a carnival of carnality and chaos, culminating in confusion as I wonder about the implications of making my private life public. Personal revelation and transformation has been the slack's theme for the past nine years, and I'd hate to stop now. There's something ultimately freeing about putting it out there. Hurt, disappointment, and depression all lose their sting when spread out amongst a thousand different people. Success and joy are much more sweet when shared with the same audience.

However, a girl has to have a few secrets.

I have to be selective as to who's privy to them.

Consider this a placeholder for now.





....

Over the past week I've had an un-date and a sort-of-date and a whole mess of personal and private success that has rocked the foundations of who I am and what I want. Over the past four months my life has been consumed by The Break-Up. My public face hid the private hurt as I spent my evenings in bed, scribbling in my paper journal and wondering in a Harlequin-Romance way why love doesn't conquer all. I'd tenderly poke at that uncoupled feeling, wondering if he was wondering about it too.

After a particularly bad weekend, I picked myself up and dusted myself off and decided that I could multi-task, so even though I still Felt Bad, I would have to Move On.

This in itself is a gargantuan feat of strength.

Historically, I have never been able to Move On. While those who I've dated jump back into the deep blue sea of relationships, I sit with a book at the kiddie pool, just in case they come back around. The woman who doesn't wait by the phone for him to call at the beginning of a relationship waits patiently for the scraps he's willing to toss me at the end.

Because, you know, he might come back.

It's not a pleasant thing to realize about yourself, this sorry and willing creature who reserves someone the finest table in the restaurant of my brain, on the off-chance that he might choose to dine there again.

I believe the term downright pathetic applies.

But it's the ever-present oxymoron of the smart woman thinking foolish things. If I move on, then he'll move on. If I'm going on a date, that means he's going on a date. If I'm having sex, then he certainly is, too.

Of course he's doing all of these things. BECAUSE WE ARE NO LONGER TOGETHER. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT.

I've written in these pages before about the strange feeling of being in someone's life and then being snatched out in some grand deus ex machina gesture. While you're no longer part of the play, the production continues. In previous storylines, all it took was my character to be re-cast, to give it a Happy Ending. Of course, this current play has just begun, so there's no telling in how it will end.

Over the past two weeks, I've come to the point where I'm starting to come out of the Break-Up Coma. Instead of sitting slumped at the computer thinking he's so cute and he's so funny and he's got it all of course eight million women are lining up to see him, I've been thinking about me: wow, I'm so cute and I'm so funny and I've really got it all. Eight million men will be lining up to see me.

It's not just my independence I've found, but that unique sense of power that's been missing for the past three years. I guess you could classify it as the cliched caterwaul of I-am-woman-hear-me-roar, but I prefer to think of it as the mistress is now ready to lash the Universe to her bedpost and crush it beneath her shiny bootheel.

So girls? Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

And boys? Take a number. Your ride might be even bumpier. ;)