I feel as though I should have been saving up something deeply profound to say here — something that will mark this, something that one might print out and post on one's bathroom mirror. Something deep. Something meaningful. Something universal and marvelous that will affect and impress everyone.

Yeah. I've got nothing.

When I started writing for this site, I had visions of a hilarious series chronicling my forays back into the dating world. This will be delightful, I thought. I'm in my 30s and have been married most of my life. I have never dated as an adult. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Turning the odd and the icky into a column will make the merely awkward hilarious, and what a comfort that will be. A bad first date will have some purpose. I will try many things in the name of research. I will be Carrie Bradshaw, only without the shoe thing.

It was an excellent plan. I had been dating for a bit, so had some stories saved up. I had no desire at all to do anything beyond casual. You couldn't beat me into a real relationship with a stick.

Then of course, I found myself in one, despite the kicking and screaming, despite refusing, for months, to give it a name. So this has become less about the hilarity of Watching-Alice-Try-to-Figure-Out-Dating and more the hilarity of Watching-Alice-Skid-into-Commitment. Which is constantly startling, really.

It has been a surprising help, these columns. Finding the right words for something here has often helped put things in perspective, or decide where to go, or just ease the feelings over something.

So, thank you, those of you who have been here with me, those that have commented, those who have read, and those who write along with me. I've very much appreciated your company, and look forward to bringing you along on future adventures.

You've learned to ask for help. You've leaned you don't need to do this alone. You know you don't have to sit there on your miserable little island trying to cope all by yourself.

But then you realize you don't actually know anyone you can call and say, "I am hurting. Please come over." Well, you do, but they can't. They have kids. They live in other states or across the bridge. They are no longer drop-of-a-hat people. (Reason #732 not to have kids: they prevent you from coming to the aide of your single, sad friend with Nalgene bottles of cocktails and a comforting presence, but that's beside the point.)

So, here I am, in my living room, alone, trying to remember that I've learned, in the course of things, to take care of myself. That doing this alone is, in fact, what I've preferred. Because this week I was hit with some pretty bad news. This week I'm really struggling. This week I could use someone to come and just sit with me. And there isn't anyone who can.

Here's what I recommend to all of you pondering divorce: Get yourself some single friends. Friends without babies. Friends who live within 15 minutes of you. Because there's going to come a night when you need someone, when you're in a place where you want that help, and you'll need someone in your phonebook who not only loves you and stands by you, but is actually able to come over.

I'm in a more cynical space than usual, I guess, because I wonder: What's the use of learning to ask for support when, in the end, you're still going to end up on your couch alone?

Over the past year and a half or so, I've gotten very comfortable being alone, doing things alone. Some things, I've found, are better by myself. I've come to like my own company. I've found that I prefer the quiet, prefer solitude.

Traveling, for example. That first trip alone, to Wales, was very much a ‘well, no one can stop me from doing this, so I'm going to do it to prove I can' kind of trip. It turned out, a lot of that trip was marvelous because I was alone. I like traveling alone. I like not having to worry about other people's preferences, comfort, plans. I like eating when I want, stopping when I think something is pretty, sitting on as many strategically placed benches as I want. And I am a sucker for a strategically placed bench.

How, I've been wondering, will I do traveling with someone else?

In June, we'll find out. June marks one of those relationship milestones — going on a trip together. Mike and I are going to Greece for two weeks.

After having been in a relationship for so many years with someone who did not want to go places with me — too expensive, ‘just wanted to stay home', whatever really lay beneath that — it's startling, a little, to be with someone who wants to do this with me. Startling, but wonderful.

At the same time, I wonder — how will this be? I've learned how to do this alone, how do I learn to do it not alone?

I suppose it's the same as getting into a new relationship, in many ways. You get comfortable being alone, living alone. You start to really enjoy that feeling — the being surrounded by only your own stuff, your power over your surroundings, the never needing to compromise. Figuring out, little by little, how to let someone in.

Being in a relationship again has been rather difficult. Those of you who have read this from the beginning will have noted my general inability to just let things be, my worries, my attempts at self-sabotage.

It's gotten easier as it's gone on — and I've been lucky enough to find someone who is more than willing to accept my various insecurities and let me take things at my own pace.

He sent me an email once. It said, "Everyone in your life owes you patience." I think that meant more to me than anything anyone's said in the course of the past two years. Saying that it's all right to not feel okay right away, to not feel ok still. To need time, to need space, even to backslide a little.

It's a long process, this healing thing. And maybe there's no such place as "healed" — maybe there's always scar tissue. And maybe that's okay, too.

I was getting coffee one morning at this place up the hill — a coffee place I don't go into that often. It's small and crowded, the baristas are way too hip to be friendly, and it's a little out of my way. But it has quotes painted all over the ceiling and walls. I was waiting for my latte and saw this one:

"Be not afraid of going slowly — be afraid of standing still." —Chinese proverb

I had read it before, I must have. I'd been there before. I'd read them all before. But suddenly, this one was personal.

It's okay to go slow. It's okay to take the time you need. As long as in taking that time you're not merely standing there.

What he said next in that email: "You have two choices: Grow into your future or repeat your past. If you worry too much about what happened before, you can make it happen again.

How strange it is, to have someone who was closer to you than anyone, someone who knew everything about you, and have them suddenly a stranger.

I barely talk to Jake, and when I do, it's all business — irritating business at that. He doesn't know my show opens in a week. He doesn't know I cut my hair shorter than it's been in years. He didn't know when I left the country, that one friend is having a baby, that another's cancer may be back. He doesn't know what my apartment looks like.

It's strange.

Granted, he wasn't terribly present for some time, but still — he was my partner. He was half of me. He's been part of my life since I was in 6th grade. Only now, he's not.

And people say, "Move on." And people say, "Why are you still talking about this?" How do you merely excuse yourself from what was once your life?

Ingrid Michaelson, in the CD she wrote whilst tromping about in my head, has a song called "Glass." And, of course, Ingrid always says it better:

"You could make my head swerve.

Used to know my every curve.

And now we pass and just like glass

I see through you, you see through me like I'm not there.

And now we meet on a street.

And I am blind.

I cannot find the heart I gave to you.

Sometimes what we think we really want we don't.

Sometimes what we think we love we don't."

What else is there to say, really?

I carry a notebook around with me. When I read a sentence I find particularly beautiful ("her heart a red cup of fierceness tucked among ordinary things") or when someone says something particularly hilarious ("I didn't hear you because when I walk I hear the music from Peter and the Wolf in my head"), or something that resonates in some way, I write it down. Sometimes one sentence, put together in just that way brings a little more sense into my world. I like quotes. I like bits and pieces. I like the way other people string words together.

When Jake called and told me that he didn't think he'd be back, he was in China. He said, "I've been thinking about it, and I don't know if I'll be coming home at all."

I have one of those "quote of the day" widgets on my computer. The day after that call it said: "When someone walks away from you, let them walk. Your destiny is never tied to anyone who has left."

I don't know why it is that if someone else says it, it means something more. I assume that's true for all of us. Why else do we clip newspapers? Quote songs? Read a stranger's blog on a Web site, for that matter?

Sometimes it's that someone else has found the words I can't.

Sometimes it's knowing I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Sometimes the fact that it's someone else gives the words the credibility I can't find in my own head.

After staring at it for a while, I wrote it on a Post-It and stuck to it to the wall by the door. Later, it moved to the bathroom mirror.

Money, the image that money brings, meant a lot to Jake. I couldn't get a bookshelf or a pair of shoes without checking in first - I would have gotten a look, a comment, a day of silence. A plane ticket to see a friend for the weekend, that was out of the question. We didn't have the money to spend it recklessly.

The thing was, we did have the money. And when Jake wanted something, he would get it. He was an impulse furniture buyer. He bought a $300 humidor on whim.

He thought that, because he made more than I did, financial decisions should be his. He was uncomfortable with feeling this way, he tried to pretend he didn't, but he did.

I have mixed feelings about money. If there's not a cushion in my bank account, I get nervous. My cat might need surgery again. My car might fall apart. I want to be prepared. And, for the most part, I don't spend a lot. I don't like shopping. I don't have expensive taste in anything.

But I want to see my friends, and I'm willing to throw down for a plane ticket to do so. If I have the freedom and ability to travel, I want to do so — I might not be able to later. If that means carrying some debt around for a couple of months, so be it. I don't want to be irresponsible, but I also don't want to give everything up. So I try to balance.

I definitely have less money now that I'm divorcing. I have to watch things, especially since I have to guard against the day my settlement payments stop. But I love that I can take a class if I want to and not have to justify it to anyone. I can go on vacation. I can get a bookshelf.

I used to wonder about couples that had been together for years but still kept separate bank accounts. Now, I see the appeal. I don't know how willing I'd be to get back into shared finances. This way, I know exactly where everything is, and my choices about what to do with what I have are mine alone.

Lindsay knows exactly what to do when a friend is getting divorced. She doesn't press. She doesn't pester with questions. She doesn't fill the space with reassurances or aspersions - she allows silence. She allows time. She knows that what's needed is normality.

At the same time, she'll let you that, anytime you need, it, you can call her and she'll drive out and spend the day with you, or the afternoon, or the hour. She'll take you to lunch, she'll go to a movie, she'll just sit with you so you're not alone.

When you move to a new place, she's the one that will spend the first night with you so you're not alone, making the weekend into a party instead of a chore, keeping any of it from being sad. She'll unpack boxes. She'll organize your closet and your kitchen.  

She is, in short, an invaluable friend. 

The other reason to look to Lindsay is that she has a marriage that makes me rethink my certainty that relationships can't last. Years in, she and her husband are still in love, still happy, still right for each other. They make room for each other's lives while still sharing them. They compromise. They talk. They are each other's best friends, and they still make out.  

There are people like this in the world. There are relationships like that out there. This is good to remember. 

Once, in college, my friend Danielle and I were having a bad couple of days, so we decided to count our blessings. We wrote down everything from "We have legs" to "We know how to say ‘Where is Stresa?' in Italian." It helped. I still have the list.

Getting divorced sucks all around. We all know this. But falling to the absolute bottom of the pit means that, as you climb out, you realize afresh just what you've got. As much time as I've spent over the last year and half curled up in a sad little ball on my couch, as lonely as I've gotten, as hard as it was, there's something to be said for getting that wake up call as to how lucky you are. It's easy to forget, after all.

I have colleagues who planned and organized a two-day birthday party for me, so I wouldn't be alone the weekend my husband moved out.

I have friends like Lindsay, who spent the first weekend in my new apartment with me, mixing drinks and organizing my closet.

I have a family who wants nothing more than to hear updates about how my new-apartment-traumatized cat is curled up in a tragic little ball in the bathtub.

In addition, I've learned that:

I have the ability to move in to a new apartment on a Friday and be completely unpacked by Monday. With some help, yes - but still impressive.

I am capable of negotiating public transportation in another country without getting lost.

I can be completely, unequivocally content in my own company.

My new plan: remember all these things, all the time, so the universe doesn't feel the need to snack me upside the head about it. 
 


While I like solitude, I have issues with silence. I like to have the TV on when I work. I play books on tape when I cook or clean or do dishes. I can do without, but there's an awful lot that goes on in my head and I prefer something else in the background.

In my marriage, silence meant a number of things. Early on, when things were good, silence was companionable — the quiet that came with being comfortable with each other. Later, silence meant we were running out of things to talk about. Eventually, silence meant that there was nothing left to say.

Jake was gone a lot, traveling, and he was gone for long, long periods of time. Silence during these absences came to mean a great deal. At first, we'd talk while he was away. Even if just a quick hello, or goodnight, we tried to connect, somehow, each day.

When we got to the point where days would go by without contact, that meant something. It meant we didn't want to talk. It meant it was better apart. It meant that, without proximity, we were rethinking.

The thing about having been married, you get into a lot of habits. And when that relationship is over, it's difficult not to make assumptions about a new relationship based on learned patterns. Thinking a few days of silence is a sign of trouble is a hard habit to break.

When your relationship is long distance, you don't have the daily check in of real life contact. And while I like the idea of being in a relationship that doesn't need daily assurance, that's secure with its reality, it's difficult not to second-guess when there's a several day stretch.

This is a recent revelation. One of those moments that makes me realize how very far I still have to go before I feel like I'm capable of having a relationship free of neuroses. At the same time, knowing what's behind that second-guessing makes quite a difference.

This time, this relationship, silence gets to mean something different.