Why mince words?
Maybe because smaller pieces are easier to digest.
In the spirit of experiment, I offer you one hundred facts about me,
in handy bite-size form.
roo tapas. Or something to that effect.
1. I’m scared to be keeping a blog again.
2. It’s been ten months since the night I copied all my posts on to CDs and canceled my Typepad subscription.
3. I was in a panic.
4. I worked too quickly. I forgot to copy the comments on my posts.
5. Years of friendship, encouragement, insight-- gone.
6. Better get used to it, I thought.
7. I loaded every entry into one huge Word file, like I was dumping socks and shoes and underwear into a duffle bag, trying to skip town before I got caught.
8. A year before, I’d written frankly about problems in my marriage.
9. The writing helped me think my way through a problem I didn’t know how to solve.
10. I work at a large opera company, where expectations are high and politics are complicated— intense and sometimes dirty.
11. Friendships can form quickly when you work together for twelve hours a day in that kind of environment.
12. Sometimes friendships form too quickly.
13. And sometimes I think my response to extreme stress is to fall in love with people.
14. I don’t just mean in a romantic way. Though that was an issue.
15. I fall in love with my friends, too.
16. When I was in high school, I played Titania in our production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
17. I wore flowers in my hair and an electric blue spandex bodysuit.
18. I was hot. In a Waiting For Guffman kind of way.
19. I’m thinking of Helena’s speech from Act I : Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings, and no eyes figure unheedy haste…
20. Well, wings and no eyes, there’s that.
And regularly smoking it up with my coworkers after hours probably didn’t help matters.
21. What’s an antonym for circumspect?
22. Sometimes I think I only learn things the hard way.
23. I shared my blog with a friend I loved.
24. I was her supervisor.
25. It may not surprise you to learn that I was new to supervising.
26. She used what she learned about me there to manipulate my emotions.
27. For a long time, I talked myself out of seeing her clearly.
28. Sometimes, life lessons sweep in like locusts, plagues upon plagues of Why haven’t you learned this yet?
29. Disillusionment was sudden and painful.
30. It hit on several fronts at once.
31. It overwhelmed me. I wish I’d handled it better.
32. In the end, I didn’t lose my job. We worked things out. I learned how to be a professional. I got my projects finished, and made it to the end of the season doing work I was proud of.
33. Being a grown-up can really suck. It’s thankless, exhausting, and if you do it wrong you could die penniless and alone.
34. The summer layoff saved my life. Or at least it feels that way.
35. I don’t know how I managed to get to this stage of my adulthood understanding so little about social politics.
36. Or the virtues of keeping my own counsel.
37. My husband helped me survive the season. He listened. He strategized. He left text messages telling me:
You are strong.
You are beautiful.
I love you.
38. He told me things like that so often I started to believe them.
39. We talked about the things I’d written about in my blog. About the problems in our marriage. About love. About my colleagues.
40. The only people I spend time with are the ones I work with. I’m at work all the time. Where else am I supposed to make friends?
41. You can be friendly with them. You just don’t need to share your private life with them.
42. But how can I consider someone my friend if we can’t talk to each other about what’s really going on with us?
43. Can’t you see a middle ground? You can talk about your life—just don’t share anything you’d be uncomfortable with them knowing.
44. Why is this so foreign to me?
45. What? Professional reserve?
46. All of this. Basic political know-how.
47. I don’t know. You need me to guide you in my WASPish ways.
48. I want to trust people. And I can’t trust anyone, except you. It hurts not to be able to trust anyone. I’m so lonely. I’m so lonely at work.
49. I know. It’s hard, but if you can look at this the right way it could really help you in the long run.
50. What do you mean?
51. I mean not letting people hurt you like this. In my whole life, I’ve never met anyone as willing to offer up her heart to get kicked around.
52. He taught me some self-defense. Literally and figuratively.
53. He lent me his copy of “The Way of the Warrior.” I read it, and thought about practice. And ass-kicking.
54. He helped me to be strong.
55. In my old blog, I wrote a love letter to a married colleague.
56. It was the sharpest weapon in the arsenal I offered up to my false friend.
57. My husband knew it all. I know that knowing hurt him. But when the crisis finally hit, his support was unquestioning.
58. There’s an upside to seeing clearly.
59. I can see that I’m a very lucky woman.
60. Still, the cosmos wanted to make sure I learned my lesson.
61. Last winter, my husband got sick.
62. He started to feel bad one Monday. He thought he might have eaten something a little off.
63. By Wednesday, he was hurting enough he had to come home from work early. He called to ask me to bring home some supplies from the drugstore on my way from work.
64. When I got home, he was clutching his midsection and moaning. His skin looked gray. Beads of sweat pearled across his forehead.
65. I said we should go to the emergency room.
66. He insisted it was just gas. Then he started blowing out puffs of air like an expectant mother practicing lamaze.
67. I ran a warm bath for him, with the idea it might help him relax and ease the pain.
68. He lay in the water and panted.
69. We should go to the hospital.
70. I’m fine, really… pant, pant… I think it’s getting better…
71. His eyes looked glassy.
72. Honey, what if it’s appendicitis?
73. It’s not... pant, pant… If it were appendicitis, the pain would be down here. But it keeps… pant, pant… moving around.
74. I still think we should get it checked out.
75. I’m fine… pant, pant… really.
76. Well, what’s the cutoff point? The time when, if you’re still feeling like this, I can take you to the hospital?
77. Tomorrow morning.
78. I was scared. I didn’t want to wait. But I didn’t see how I could force him to go to the hospital if he didn’t want to go.
79. I didn’t sleep. I lay in bed, and listened to him moaning quietly in the tub, and read the first chapter of a book I’d picked up in a secondhand shop.
80. It was The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion.
81. I highly recommend this book. Months later, when I’d steeled myself to read the rest of it, I found her account of coping with the grief of losing her husband to be deeply moving and articulate.
82. But I can’t think of a worse choice of reading material for that night.
83. The next morning, he wasn’t better. But he still didn’t want to go to the hospital. He asked me to get some more supplies from the pharmacy. I called work to let them know I’d be late.
84. I was angry and scared. I felt powerless.
By noon, he’d convinced me I should go in to work. He said the medicine I’d bought was working, that he was feeling better.
85. I’d been at work for about an hour when I called to check on him.
86. He was looking for the emergency room at Columbia Presbyterian.
It’s harder to find from the street than you’d think. One of my coworkers helped with directions.
87. Apparently, as soon as he’d shuffled me out of the house, he began to wonder: What if it really is appendicitis?
He hobbled over to the computer, looked it up on WebMD. Lo and behold…
88. So, wait. You waited all morning, talked me into going in to work, then went to the emergency room all by yourself the minute I left? How did you get there?
89. …pant, pant… I took the bus.
90. You took the BUS?
What is the MATTER with you?
91. I didn’t think I could manage the stairs to the subway…
92. A CAB, honey!
You could’ve called a freaking CAB!
93. It was appendicitis. And since he’d been playing macho for half a week, his appendix had already ruptured.
You must have an enormous tolerance for pain, the nurse said. Don’t encourage him, I thought.
94. The appendectomy went well, though the surgery left him with a six-inch scar right through the bellybutton. A few days later, he was packing the incision with gauze.
He remarked that he looked like a salted pork.
95. They kept him in the hospital for six days after surgery, to treat him with antibiotics and generally guard against sepsis.
The doctors and nurses were competent and kind, and let me sit with him into the night.
96. My husband is very sweet when he’s on morphine.
97. Four days into his stay, when they cut off his supply, he looked around in astonishment.
Wait .
You mean I’ve been HERE for the last four days?
The young intern looked concerned. And a little wary.
Yes, sir… Where did you think you’ve been?
98. Apparently, he remembered sitting with me and having long, rambling conversations.
But in his memory, we were sitting in a dimly lit Edwardian salon, with burgundy leather armchairs and deep ruby velvet-flocked walls.
99. It’s not my usual style, he said. But it was a very pleasant environment.
Very soothing.
100. I wish I could have seen it. Maybe someday you’ll design a house for us, and you can have them build a red room for us to sit in.
Jesus.
Roo, I'm glad you're back. And I'm glad you and your husband are together and well.
Posted by: mothergoosemouse | July 27, 2008 at 04:05 PM
Oh, how often I have thought of you! I can't even put in to words how glad and relieved and excited and happy and thrilled I am that you are back, writing again.
YAY.
Posted by: mamatulip | July 27, 2008 at 04:28 PM
Oh wow. Oh, wow.
I am so glad to see you writing again, but sounds like you've had a hell of a time.
Can't wait to read more.
xo
Posted by: Nancy | July 27, 2008 at 08:08 PM
You've been missed.
xo
Posted by: Motherhood Uncensored | July 27, 2008 at 09:16 PM
I am so happy you're back. I've wondered, and worried.
My teeny little 6-year-old is recovering from a burst appendix as we speak. It's awful!
Posted by: mayberry | July 27, 2008 at 09:46 PM
OMG.
You're back!
I was so worried about you.
I'm really glad you've returned. We missed you :)
Posted by: Izzy | July 27, 2008 at 11:29 PM
Woah - what a year. Glad you're back. Yuu've been missed.
Posted by: jen from boston | July 28, 2008 at 09:36 AM
Oh my God. What a year! I'm glad you're back and still in love, and still married, and by that, I mean not widowed by your absolute mule of a husband...and I say that lovingly, because Dad was forced to walk tours with appendicitis while at the Citadel (horrid school) as his superiors thought he was shirking. He CRAWLED to a hospital. Men, PAH!
But I'm awfully glad you both worked things through and are stronger than ever, it seems. And it's great news that work is more successful and that you're learning about what is friendship and what saps your trust and energy. It's tough to figure out, and I think we have to learn and relearn that lesson all the years of our lives. That's hard. And yes, #33 sucks. So true.
Posted by: Jemima | July 28, 2008 at 10:42 AM
My love. Welcome back.
Posted by: Dawn | July 28, 2008 at 10:47 AM
Roo's back! Yay! I'm so happy I could pee my pants. But I won't. Because that's just what the kids are waiting for to in order to stick me in an old folks' home.
Still, though. Very happy you're back Roo!
Posted by: Contrary | July 28, 2008 at 11:49 AM
oh. my. god.
should i *be* this glad you're back?
no matter.
i am.
Posted by: deb | July 28, 2008 at 12:41 PM
I'm glad you and your hubby weathered your many storms. You're lucky to have a strong partnership and each other.
Posted by: savia | July 28, 2008 at 12:53 PM
Welcome back. A lot can happen in a year, as I've learned myself in the last 12 months or so. I'm so glad you've found your voice again Roo, it's a unique and beautiful one.
Posted by: TB | August 02, 2008 at 10:41 AM