"Good-Bye to You"!

Has everyone recovered from my broken heart? Did you at least get some laughs and tips from my pain? The experience was peppered with moments of down-right sobbing followed closely by moments of hysterical laughter. I probably was in dire need of meds. However, when I would sit down to write and just get it all out there, I’d most times begin in the midst of an ugly cry and end feeling victorious! My keyboard, my publisher, my editors and my confidantes are all angelic and served as the best medicine I could not afford. Plus, there was all that Big-A$$ Shiraz!

When panicked friends began calling, wondering if the cliff I wrote about was real or imagined and whether or not I was on the edge of it, I decided I needed to back off writing about my woes for awhile. Even Richard called and said he was sad that I had put his real name on the blog…R U kidding me? HE was sad??? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. And was looking to me for help??? And THAT folks is why we call ‘em Richard!

Truth be told, I’ve been doing rather well. All those articles that took several weeks to get in print took all of about two days to write! Great music, poetry, art, etc. sometimes comes from great tragedy; especially when over the top, drama queens are the ones in the midst of the tragedy!

Richard and I parted ways and as the old saying goes, when the devil slams one door shut in your face, God opens another…or something like that. So in the summer I met a nice man and, when I finally let go, completely let go all the way I SAW the nice man. Listen, when I say let go all the way I mean I deleted the emails, the txt msgs, the saved emails, the saved txt msgs, I deleted the email address, the phone numbers and I mailed the box of “stuff” - without going through it and saving a “piece of him”. Actually, I had one of my employees mail the box; no sense wasting good energy on a bad memory, snicker. And, most importantly, I quit saying to myself and all my friends “But he said” and I started paying attention to what he did. And what he did was wrong.

Basically, I took my own advice and advice from The Bit*h books and the many other books I read between bottles of BAS and therapy sessions with AC and Deb. At some point we HAVE to let go, for the sake of our friends/family. Laura, Jacqueline, Sue, Tina, my endless stream of customers who are friends and even the squirrels outside were life savers. But after several months of wallowing in self-pity, I was afraid they were going to have to start self-medicating! And that scared me b/c what if their drug of choice was BAS??? What if the supply ran low??? Crap. New game plan…Anyway, you can’t have your friends teetering on the edge when you are on the edge, there’s not enough room. The edge is thin. But, even people with the intestinal fortitude of the Hulk can only handle so much of YOUR pain! It can only be all about you for so long. Sorry. We must share the cliff.

Getting back on the proverbial horse after it’s pitched you over the cliff and slung you in the mud (I’m a self-proclaimed drama queen, just enjoy the craftiness) and dragged you through the forest is scary. I mean scary as in Jason is staring at you through the window that is not locked and YOU left your gun in the truck kind of scary. (If you’re old, Jason is the scary dude in all the Friday the 13th Halloween movies.) But I just reached in my grab bag and pulled out the book Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway.

Greg was the first casualty in my post-Richard dating experience. He was tall, good-looking and nice enough. He did bring the restaurant a Christmas tree. I was going to ignore Christmas. Poor customers. Greg also didn’t call to tell me he was going to be really late for one of our dates. He didn’t know I had a really low tolerance for Richards. I never answered anymore of his calls. And yes, he’s still calling. Poor Greg.

There were a few other men I spoke with a couple of times but there was only one man who seemed to ignore conversations with me dripping in sarcasm and bitterness. For some reason, known only to the romance gods, this man kept coming back to see me - weekend after weekend after weekend. He saw through the pain and anger. And one day, after he got to know me a little and was pretty sure I wasn’t really, all the way crazy, he asked me out on a real date. So there I was, just like that, on a real date with a really great man. I was taking the ends, bending the line, re-connecting the ends and starting all over.

There’s more to come about this man and the healing process. For now I’ll tell all of you in heart-break land that there is life after Richard or Sophia. And, that life is probably much better than the one that has you self-medicating. So, I’ve put down the Big A** Shiraz bottle and replaced it with a much better wine. I’ve put down the betrayal of Richard and replaced it with hope and love and a much better man, my forever man.