I knew there would one day be a time where I would have to think about this: What would I say in my last posting to the FWW community? I have pondered this question often enough, to no avail. So true to the form of life itself, I am going to have to wing it.

I will say this: During the 14 months I have spent as an active voice among the community, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the conundrums of life. Sometimes, I feel as if I have spent too much time thinking — obsessing, if you will — about the snafus of life, instead of actually doing anything to change its course.

To this end, I must say that I am happy to be moving on, as this will give me an opportunity to take a more active role in my life — to be the captain of this vessel, as opposed to a mere crew member.

This is perhaps one of the most monumental points of my life, and I will allow nothing to get in the way of my future success: lingering unemployment, lack of my own private space, etc. None of these things will stand in the way of my future achievements, for they are not worthy.

And I advise you to do the same. Do not let anything stand in the way of being the stellar individuals you are capable of being. And should you find yourself falling short of your projected selves, take the time to look inward and find out what it is that is not allowing you to move forward. Once you've identified it, cut it loose and move on.

I promise, you will be better in the end.

And so I leave you now, with these words and my best wishes, as I go in search of my phenomenal self.

My best to you all,

Akillah

I just read another dopey article claiming that married people have the best sex lives. How it's so great knowing all the person's buttons, the freedom in having just one partner, yada, yada yada.

I beg to differ. I speak from a long lack of experiences during my marriage and unless my friends — both men and women — are all lying to me, we were all to some extent in the same boat.

Take my beleagured friend D, who had the ill-fated date with me that stormy November night (check out my first post). He returned to home and hearth, willing to give his marriage another go.

"There is peace in the family and I have buried the hatchet, swallowed my miseries and decided to hang in there," he wrote me. "After looking at all the alternatives and the reaction of the brood to my breakout suggestions, I've just hunkered down. If I were in France, I would probably have found myself a mistress and lead a double life. But I'm in Norway, so I live a quiet Calvinistic life of middle class mediocrity."

Yikes.

Compare that with my randy neighbor, S, who left her husband and our quiet rural suburb and moved to a condo complex in a nearby town that had a rep of attracting lots of new divorcees. After a few months she confided, "In our neighborhood if you heard screaming, you assumed people are fighting. But here, when you hear screaming, you assume people are having really great sex." 

Or my friend P, who reunited quite literally with a former squeeze after years languishing in a sexless marriage. "It was like finding the magic lamp and getting my three wishes: sex, sex, and more sex!"

One person's sanctuary is another's asylum. 

I returned to upstate New York last Thursday after six weeks of the NYC job search scene — a grueling, merciless, yet necessary torture.

While I did cut commuting costs, the lack of space to breathe and recoup at day's end in the city surely did nothing to prepare me to get up and go it all over again the next day.

So what does that mean for me now? Where do I go from here?

I am halfway through my fourth month of unemployment — with less answers than I had in the first. Having followed every bit of direction and bartering every pearl of wisdom given to me, it seems that I have come full circle, with no alternative but to go the cycle again.

Remember Sisyphus?

At this point, perseverance and insanity have but one thin, heavily smudged line betwixt the pair, and I find myself on most days doing a very peculiar dance: one that involves great endurance. At this point, I've got enough energy to keep up the fight — for now, at least.

I know that I must can't give up — even when the odds are not in my favor.

What keeps me going? I remind myself of how great that victory dance is going to be. 

Apparently, my ex, Levi, caught wind of my lunch date with his sister, Erica. He called last night, said he wanted to have a "civil conversation." (I really must remember to send the man a dictionary with the word "civil" highlighted.)

Then he rambled on and on about how he "isn't going to do anything for Adrian just yet" and how he will "never go through me to have a relationship with Adrian, that he must wait until Adrian is old enough to formulate a relationship with him himself." Same old, same old.

Then he switched gears and told me that he is going to "come take him from me." More of the same. Listening to him now, I can't believe that I ever got myself so upset over his bullshit.

This time I simply told him, "Thank you for the update" and added, "It was nice catching up with you." Done.

Then I met Erica in the city for lunch yesterday. We met at the cafe outside of the zoo, ate, and then wandered around the animal exhibits. She tried to engage Adrian a few times, but he was way more interested in the monkeys and sea lions than in her.

It was only at the end of our day that she brought up Levi, and...their mother. (I still can't decide which one of them I loathe more.) Apparently, the mom wants to see Adrian but she doesn't want to see me. Levi has told his family that he is okay with them "filling in for him" — holding a place for him, until he is ready to be a parent. I told her that it wasn't the right time to talk about it.

But seriously, what can I do but shake my head in disbelief at the utter dysfunction that is their family?

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. 

How do I know if I'm on the right track? Sometimes there's a sneaking suspicion that I may be going off the deep end. As I pack my bags for one last solo getaway, all I can think about is my old life, even though I know how important it is to keep moving forward.

I am totally committed to coming out of all this on the other side.

Probably the best thing I did this month was to commit to another six sessions of therapy. My therapist has been an on-and-off integral part of my life for more than 30 years.

Now, in the post-marriage phase of life, I'm looking for signs, talking to angels, seeing a therapist, journaling, going to Buddhist retreats, and saving time on Sundays for church.

Oh, and I make time for lighting candles, drinking champagne, reading, and celibacy.

All bases covered?

Yikes! Especially since, when I first moved out on my own, I didn't even know where electricity came from. I don't mean which electrical company. I mean where the circuit breakers were, or even what they did.

That's how long I'd been married, pregnant, nursing, and ill.

Ok, get a grip, Joy.

I keep telling my friends, "I am going to be the last 50s housewife."

Not sure exactly what that means, except there's no excuse for disempowerment.

Practicing deep breathing, calming the mind, "ommmm-ing" for peace, I'm treating this weekend as a launching point.

The new school year is going to herald big changes. The kids will get out of bed with no hassles. They may even have my morning caffeine ready. I will find myself, minus the dot on my forehead, and without curry.

Ooops. Wait. This is a reality blog, and my kids don't even know where the stove is.

That's it for now. More thoughts after the retreat and, hopefully, ensuing clarity!

After all of this back and forth nonsense with my ex's family, I've made a lunch date with Erica, Levi's sister. I came to this decision when I was discussing the dilemma with my best friend. She has dealt with a similar situation with her ex-in-laws, so she is my "go to" girl on these issues.

She told me that she had decided to embrace the ex-in-laws and, "treat them the way I would have liked them to treat me," and that it had really worked out well for her.

Heck, all of this arguing isn't working — so I figured, why not give it a try.

Besides, Erica isn't as bad as the rest of them. In fact, she's an absolute dream compared to the rest of them.

I decided that it would be best if we have a quick bite to eat in the park (as Adrian is somewhat of a monster in restaurants), and afterwards go take a walk through the Central Park Zoo.

Adrian, like all kids, loves the zoo. He runs around and says "hi" to everyone and everything. Like, "Hi, monkey!" and "Hi, man." It's absolutely adorable.  With that kind of distraction I don't think that there is any way that Erica and I can get into an argument.

Of course then I have all of these paranoid notions that she will see how perfect, cute, handsome, charming, and just absolutely amazing my son is and try to take him. To that my mom says, "You've got to stop thinking that everybody wants to steal your baby. Nobody in their right mind would steal a child." And she's right.

But we are talking about Levis' family here, remember?

I almost got bombed by bird poo early this afternoon. In some cultures, this is considered to be good luck. I can only hope this proves to be true. It seems nowadays, it's going to take a bit of luck to get things to pan out, as hard work, perseverance, merit, and networking don't seem to be flushing anything out.

Talk about turning a negative into a positive.

As comical and bizarre as it is, I can't help but wonder why it is that people are able to take bird excrement in your hair and turn it into something positive, but things that are less disgusting — like a break up, or job loss et al. are seemingly insurmountable and always perceived as negative.

The answer seems quite simple: Bird poo washes out. I'll take it one step deeper — it's a quick fix and can never be misconstrued as a personal assault like the other things in life.

The things in life that leave us in a vulnerable emotional state are the things we work the hardest to protect ourselves from. Conversely, when something or someone actually penetrates the barricades we've set up, usually because we've allowed them to have access, it's always more difficult to recover. 

And when we do start to rebuild, the fortress is constricted with thicker walls. This is not a healthy way to go about life, I'm sure, but it is the human condition.

So what does that mean for the state of humanity?

I knew from the get-go that Rebound Man was just that; not Mr. Right, but a perfect Mr. Right Now. A gentle reintroduction to the self I lost in marriage. You have to start somewhere.

The first kiss was just a gentle brushing of lips, the slightest embrace. But oh so nice.

“Could I have another one, please,” I asked.

A slow smile. The mutual acquiescence.

“If we keep this up, I won’t be able to walk out of here,” he said.

“What? It was just a kiss.”

“A kiss with intent to seduce. That constitutes sex in the first degree.”

Oh My Lord! Here I’d thought I’d lost my libido — turns out I was just looking for it in the wrong place!

In the beginning, being with Rebound Man was like opening a gift and finding exactly what I had hoped for. I loved regressing back to that state of inarticulate adolescence, nearly swooning from the sheer delight of fresh infatuation. Which is always my favorite part, before the hard work of a relationship.

But the rebound relationship is meant to be light, insubstantial, fun — like cotton candy. It has no nutritional value, and is fine in limited amounts, just enough to leave that sweet taste on your lips. It’s when you overindulge or try to take it seriously that you get into trouble: dip in, dip out, move on, be happy.

Not that I practice what I preach — even new habits can be hard to break. So I hung onto my rebound way past its expiration date, finally accepting that this relationship was just as lacking as my marriage had been. He too, could only offer just one piece of the puzzle, nothing more. Time to find a new game.

But it sure was fun while it lasted.

What do you do when your best isn't good enough?

I have asked everyone in my Rolodex of life whom I suspected might be capable of giving me an insightful answer. They all replied, "You keep going."

No shit, Sherlock — but how?

No one seems to be able to tell me how I'm supposed to go about this. In theory, I understand this rationale completely, but in practice, this proves to be much more difficult.

Of course, the cynic in me also has to wonder whether these people would be able to persevere themselves, should they happen to lose their entire foundation while having to complete a 180-degree life change.

They're all in very comfortable niches in one form or another. Many of them have admitted to never facing a set of circumstances as dire as mine. It's not every day that one's entire life changes virtually overnight.

I never thought that this would happen for me, but I am beginning to lose faith. Unfortunately for me, that's about all I have left.