My Shoulder Chip

I was working in production at The News Leader when I was in my twenties, even though I really wanted to be a reporter. That wasn't happening. I had no mentors or connections, and without that, I needed to go to some small town and get experience on a little community newspaper. I just had a hard time accepting that truth when other people in production were being promoted upstairs to the newsroom. One girl was society-connected and went to a classy private women's college. She got the wedding desk job I applied for. The other was an unwashed hippie type who slept around and sold drugs to editors, so she was given a copy desk job, which actually turns out to be a dead end of the worst kind. The third had not even finished a degree in anything, but she was taken upstairs as a reporter. She was black. There were no black reporters. I guess they needed one.

So when I was given an opportunity to write for the employee newsletter, I thought that was my chance to gain some experience and acquire a mentor. The editor of the newsletter was a former News Leader editor who had been forced upstairs to the executive offices just to get him out of the newsroom when he reached retirement age and wouldn't step down to make room for new blood. I have no idea what he did other than the employee newsletter, which he never wrote any articles for. He just supervised it. It came out infrequently.

Over time, I realized, although he let me write the occasional feature story, mostly he wanted me to sit in his office while he told stories or pretended to work. He kept his door open so executives passing by would see me sitting in his office. One time he offered to drive me to my car, which was parked several blocks away from the newspaper office, and then circled the block around the newspaper several times before actually taking me there. It began to feel very creepy, like he wanted someone to see me driving away with him. I felt like an ornament, not a contributing member of his staff. And in the year or more I contributed to his paper, he never did a thing to advance my career in any way. Finally, I told him I could no longer freelance for him. I didn't have the time.

Not long after, I applied for a job as writer/editor for the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board newsletter. That job would have changed my life. It was more money, more responsibility, and would have finally put me on the path to working in my chosen field. Without it, I spent another 15 years lanquishing in secretarial and assistant type jobs. I felt the interview had gone very well. When I didn't hear anything, I called and not only was I told I didn't get it, I was told why -- which is very unusual. Usually they just say another candidate was a better fit. One of my references said I had a "chip on my shoulder."

I was shocked, disappointed, chastised, and knew immediately which reference it was. For years, I slumped under the burden of that, and only today, three decades later, have I realized that although he meant that as a damning insult to ensure I didn't benefit from leaving him, it was actually a virture. It meant even at my young age, I felt confident in my ability. I felt I could do more and deserved to do more. I was too good to flirt with an aging old man and massage his ego. I felt I could stand on my own without a society college pedigree or trafficking in sex and drugs. I didn't need Affirmative Action to get a leg up.

But obviously I needed something, and that was the confidence to not let that man's comment rock my confidence like it did. I vowed I would go to his funeral and give him the evil eye in his casket, but it took him another 20 years to die, and by then I didn't care. Nobody did. Despite his illustrious career as an editor-terror through the 1950s and early part of the '60s, he barely got a mention in his own paper when he died.

I lived with that chip for just as long, realizing too late that it was actually the best thing about me.

Why Men Break Your Heart

There’s no glossing over it. Being abandoned by a man is a hard thing, and it’s bad for months. You can get through it, though. Sometimes you look back and see the worst of it was just a bridge that got you to a good place you never imagined you could reach. At least, that’s been my experience. But it’s a gut-wrenching trip over that bridge.

I have been thinking about this again lately because I've been close to three women in the past few years who were all abandoned with little to no advance warning and left reeling. 

This is the thing. You may think everything is fine, but it's not. The reason you don't know is because the other one is waiting, waiting for the new person to come along who will catch them so they can walk out of their old life right into the new one without a single day of feeling lost and alone. The only problem is your crying and hysterics as they go out the door. What's the problem? "We haven't been happy in a long time, and you know it."

I don’t understand this mysterious “happiness” people always think they are missing, like it’s out there someplace, but there it is. Men are really guility of this a lot. They will stay with you, eating your food, letting you pay their bills and clean all around them, until they find the new woman, and then they go. They won't leave their comfort zone until the next one is lined up and ready. 

***

This happens often around age 40. You think you only have one last chance at some elusive happiness and something snaps in your head and heart. You want to try to grab that mythical brass ring one more time. It’s not about the person you’re leaving at all, even though it’s going to be harder on them than anyone else.

***

The one who is left behind may think they desperately want to put the relationship back together, but it’s a cracked cup. Even if you get it back in the cupboard, it will always be a cracked cup. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life thinking if you don’t meet expectations, or keep him happy, he might leave again. Some women are willing to make the sacrifice, but who are you, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy? What are you getting out of this? It's not like you're keeping a cheating husband in order to maintain the title of First Lady of the Land or get maximum sympathy at a future state funeral. 

That's why the right thing to do is not to fight it. Try not to let him ever see you cry. Make it your goal to get back up and put your life back together without him. Yes, the old move-on cliche. You can do it. 

It’s hard to imagine a different life when you’re in the middle of the last one being torn asunder. But gradually, your eyes will perceive new pleasures on the horizon, and you will move steadily toward them. I go for months now without thinking about old heartbreaks. Most of the time, I can’t even remember what they looked like. It may feel really bad now – there’s no getting around that, so just focus on getting through.

***

There’s not much you can do when temptation meets up with general malaise. A man once told me: with men, it’s never the woman. It’s just the timing. There’s always other women making themselves available to your man. Sometimes they hit him at just the right moment, when he’s bored or doesn’t know where his life is going. Sometimes this other woman lets go of your man right away, and you never know anything even happened. And sometimes the other woman wraps a web around your man he can’t get out of, and now he’s stuck in a new drama. Like she’s pregnant. Or threatening suicide. Or has become a Fatal Attraction type that calls him at home or shows up at the door. You need her...and yeah, him, too, now...out of your life. This is their drama, not yours.

***

Yesterday, I was with a group of people and we were talking about our dads. Every person at the table's dad had done the same thing. Some had waited until our moms died. Some had waited until the kids were at least in high school or older, and then they met someone new. And in every single case, the new wife or girlfriend and her family totally absorbed our dads. Our dads became less invested in their own children. His money -- our inheritance -- started going out the window toward the needs of the new wife or girlfriend and her kids. And when all these dads died, all their money disappeared with them. Some people at the table were still really upset and trying to fight the new wife or girlfriend, but I can only shrug. Dads are men. They abandon their spouses, their children, for the new ones. Whatever the reason. For "chemistry." For "happiness." To feel young again. They leave behind a lot of hurt and are mystified that no one understands. It makes perfect sense to them. 

***

I can empathize with the pain. The most recent victim invested five years in her relationship, but there were signs. Neither one would give up their apartments to share one. They kept their safe houses the whole time. They went through a lot of hard times together, but still kept this wall of noncommitment. Then she came down with a routine, but communicable, ailment and they didn't see each other for just one week to avoid his catching it. That was all it took. The new woman, who magically appeared at the right place at just the right time, has Angelina Jolie-like powers -- beauty, intelligence, a direction in life. If I can comfort the abandoned one, all I can say is there's no fighting this kind of enemy, the Super Other Woman. Men are powerless against them. Your only hope is she will tire of him quickly, but then why in the world would you want him back? Better to regroup. Climb out of the rut and shake it off. I like both these people, but they both need more than they had with each other. 

Isn't It Romantic

When I decided to get married for the third time in 2001, according to statistics, it was not a popular option. More and more couples in America were opting just to live together. People advised me not to do it. Our tax refunds would take a beating. There was no real financial benefit to it. That there’s actually a penalty made me very reluctant.

But I had seen this episode of “E.R.” about two lesbians in the emergency room. One had a stroke and her partner said she didn't want extraordinary medical intervention. But her partner didn’t have a legal right to make any decisions for her. The doctors had to contact an estranged brother and get his permission, and he said to try to resuscitate her, so the poor lesbian partner had to watch while they entubated her lover until she died.

Yikes. I had an estranged brother, and I didn't want him making any decisions about me. I also had an adult son who lived in New York and I really hadn't had much contact with in a decade. I had a father living in North Carolina who I hadn't seen in 20 years. The idea that my boyfriend of four years wouldn’t be able to say, “Don’t tube her until she dies…”

Isn’t this romantic? Is this how you plan a wedding?

Why don’t you just give him power of attorney, someone suggested. Because a marriage license was $33 in Hanover County, and a legal document drawn up by a lawyer was more, that's why.

Besides, we had been together five years, and I felt like a silly Cougar woman still introducing him as my boyfriend. Women my age, with heavy Miss Clairol habits, shouldn’t have boyfriends. It sounded addled. It would be even stupider introducing him as my legal guardian.

“It’s time we thought about getting married,” I told him. “What’s the least we can do and still satisfy your family?”

He had never been married, and his family likes the weddings. The last cousin wedding we attended was at a mansion you could rent out for weddings and receptions. There was an oil painting of the bride in a room with bowls of shrimp on ice all around it. All the napkins had the couple’s names on them and the wedding date. Everyone got a miniature plastic wedding cake. When you pulled the tiny bride-and-groom top off, it was a bubble blower. You blow bubbles after the departing couple instead of throwing messy rice, which kills birds or something like that.

There was a free bar, guys in tuxes cooking made-to-order omelets on hot plates, and a deejay playing records. People got loaded and did the Macarena and the Electric Slide around a pool full of floating floral arrangements.

My 80-year-old dad, who sent me $500 when I eloped at age 20, and $500 again when I eloped again at age 22, wasn't going to pony up for a big wedding now. I’d rather have a car anyway, if he wanted to pay for something, which he did not. No one in my family has ever seen me get married, and I’d like to keep it that way. They never approve and they’re always right, so let’s not get started.

My boyfriend said his family would like to see him get married, even if I didn't want anyone to see me get married. We could go to a magistrate at the courthouse, but the immediate family and a grandmother had to be invited. The immediate family also included his father and his new wife.

Damn it. That meant I needed a dress and a ring now because people have to see something. License, magistrate’s fee, dress and a ring. Would that be enough of a show to justify their attending, but not big enough to make my family think I shafted them on the invitations? This was getting complicated, and expensive. I picked a Tuesday night in July at the historic Hanover Courthouse, which also happened to be the fifth anniversary of our first date.

Soon after the decision was made, at a bar where my boyfriend's band was playing, he stood up and said, “We have an announcement…” So now I had to invite the band and their dates. And all his friends.

Looking back, from the perspective of 11 years later, I have a lot of regrets. I regret not actually doing a better job of the wedding and inviting all my estranged family, what few friends I had, and yes, the people at work, even though most of them would not have attended. It's the thought that counts. My wedding video doesn't show anyone at all from my side, and consequently, seems all about the groom. Not that that's a bad thing. It was his first marriage, after all.

I regret the dress I picked. Finding a dress was next to impossible for my size and a late afternoon wedding in the middle of summer when you are really too old to go strapless or have bare arms, and you no longer have a waist. I didn't want to spend a lot of money. I ended up with an off-white sheath with a full-length vest over it and a white Jackie Kennedy-like hat that I decorated with plastic flowers and ribbons. My bangs were too short. You really need to spend more time than I did on the dress and the hair because you will never be photographed so much in your life unless you become a movie star. I didn't hire a photographer, but everyone there brought their camera and sent me pictures.

And then to my horror...I saw the dress again on the mother-of-the-bride in a slideshow of a redneck wedding held at a Waffle House west of Roanoke. The slideshow won some kind of journalism photography award and was in an exhibit. Every woman in the wedding party was obese.