Yesterday was the first day of school. It is my thirteenth, as a teacher. One would think first day would have become commonplace by now, but it still makes me fluttery and nervous and excited. It's still, after all this time, The First Day.

It's also an anniversary, of sorts: The first day of school is what finally made me ask for something to change in our marriage.

Jake used to take me out to dinner the night before the first day. As a teacher, this is one of my Big Days: The First Day, Graduation, Opening Night. Having someone at my side, recognizing their importance, meant something.

Jake had been spending more and more time in China. Eventually, he missed one of my productions. He started missing my birthday. I realized he hadn't been to a graduation in years.

Two years ago, when he told me, despite a month of reassurances to the contrary, that he wouldn't be back before school started, I fell apart. It was just one miss too many. "I need something to change," I said. It was the first time I'd said it in five years. They were five years of being told, "I can't work on this relationship now. Next year will be different. It won't be like this next year."

"You keep saying it will be different soon," I said. "Tell me — is it really ever going to be different?"

"No," he said.

"Then I can't do this anymore," I said. And then he told me he was going to stay in China. That this is what he wanted, more than he wanted me.

This is my second year starting school with no one else to mark the occasion with me. Third, if we count the year we made that decision.

I had a lovely day and made myself a lovely little dinner, but, still, having someone that I can share that with, someone who knows this day's importance to me and recognizes it — I really miss that. 

Tonight is hard.

Everything is wrong this week. Students have been difficult. I'm fighting with Jake over e-mail. I'm overthinking things with The Boy like I haven't in a while. I haven't slept. I feel empty and exhausted and alone and utterly miserable.

So I'm sitting here in this chair and crying in my empty living room, and what feels the worst is that I am here alone. It's just me. There's no one to hug me, or make me a cup of tea, or just be a presence in the vast and echoing void that is this Friday.

What makes it worse is that, at the same time that it's horrible to be alone, I don't want the alternative. I don't want what I had with Jake back — he was lousy with the hugs and the tea-making anyway. And I'm reasonably certain I don't want anyone else here: I know, for sure, that I don't want to live with anyone. I don't want a roommate. I don't want a partner to move in. I don't even know that I'm ready to be in a same-city relationship.

So how do I reconcile this horrifying loneliness, this feeling of, I am here, in this chair, and there is no one here with me, this wishing someone shared this space and was with me, with all of that I feel in less exhausted and weepy moments?

I would like to sit here and cry without the additional cognitive dissonance.

When I told him about First Wives World, the conversation went like this:

Me: Dad — I've got sort of a writing job. I'm going to be posting on a website.

Dad: That's great! Hold on, let me get Jean on the phone — she's watching Doppler. Jean!

[pause]

Stepmom: Hi!

Dad: She's going to be writing for...what's it for?

Me: A website. It's a site for divorced women.

Stepmom: Really? So what are you going to write about?

Me: Well, you know — getting divorced. Trying to date after getting divorced.

Dad: [throat clearing] So ... if you're writing about dating, that means, er — that means there is dating?

Stepmom: What's the site?

Me: Oh, no. You can't read it.

Dad: But we want to!

Me: No. I'm totally not comfortable with that.

Stepmom: C'mom! We can handle it! We're not old fuddy-duddies!

Me: The fact that you just said that...no way.

Dad: But we want to read your work!

Me in my head: Dad. Jean. I'm going to write about dating. And sex. That means you will be reading about my one-night-stand and how I'm trying to figure out pubic hair grooming expectations. Do you really want to know about that?

Me on the phone: I don't think I'd be able to...speak freely about — certain things — if I knew you were reading.

Dad: [silence]

Stepmom: ...maybe it's for the best that we don't.

Dad: We're proud of you anyway, honey.