The best part of me is happy about it. He’s moving on. Maybe he’s forging something honest and real and true with his wife. This is good. This is what I want for him.

The worst part of me is furious.

His e-mails to me number 4,355, according to my gmail, but it’s much more than that, as I used a secret e-mail account for a while too. I have no idea what my e-mails to him number. Probably about the same, placing the grand total somewhere around ten thousand. Ten thousand missives of which I am now the sole curator.

The thing about secret love affairs is that you don’t have any proof. You actually spend all your time erasing the proof. Covering your tracks. Deleting your call history, your browser history. Shredding receipts. Using cash. Emptying your cache. No pictures. No public announcements or declarations. No Facebook posts. No movie ticket stubs. You were always somewhere else when you were together. No blip on a radar. No mention in a eulogy. No call from a deathbed.

We exchanged some books. I forget now which ones on my shelves came from him. The other day I pulled down all of my Billy Collinses to search for a poem about a dog. I enlisted Boyfriend to help. He stopped helping when he found a note from CL.

But maybe CL’s rid himself of those too. Franny and Zooey. Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Anna Karenina. The Virgin Suicides. I was never any good at subtlety.

I will never meet his family. He will never meet mine. We were never really real. We were always underground. All we have now are the memories from a handful of days together, which I’ve begun to question the reality of as well.

And all those goddamn e-mails.

Gmail has a feature that allows users to label their e-mails. A different way to sort and file than folders. I chose “Exit 62″ for ours. Something to do with our favorite numbers–mine 6 and his 2. I don’t know. It made sense back then. Everything is synchronous when you’re falling in love.

We met up for the first time in the spring of 2007, at a bar he chose. It was in his area, not mine, so he gave me directions there. I was to take exit 62 from the highway.

This was at the very beginning. He was already lying. I wasn’t yet. He knew something I didn’t. I hadn’t been married a year. We sat on barstools and watched the Kentucky Derby and whispered. He drank beer. I drank whiskey. He got tipsy. I was dizzy, but not from the whiskey. I gave him a mix CD. He made me blush. Then we sat on a bench in the sun. He touched a small scar on my face. I fell and fell and fell. I wore a polka-dotted dress. He wore a blue shirt, the color I chose for the “Exit 62″ label. We hugged goodbye. His hand lingered on my bare back. I returned to CH. He’d waited for hours. We were late for dinner with his family. I started lying after that.

The odd thing is, the directions CL gave me that day were wrong. The correct exit  that led to the bar from the highway was 61.

Exit 62, as it turned out, was nothing but a dead end.

As I became aware I was dreaming, I decided I would try to do some awesome dream shit. I was dreaming! I could do whatever I wanted and it would be entirely inconsequential!

Obviously, I decided I would try to fly. I ran down a deserted sidewalk in a nameless city and spread my arms out. Nothing happened. I ran faster, my legs a blurry xylophone beneath me. Still nothing. I leaped for the sky. My vertical was no higher than usual.

I gave up. Running’s never been my strong suit, anyway. Why should I expect flying to be any different?

Then I decided to try to see him. It’s been almost two years. I miss him. I conjured him in a church. Where else? I turned a corner, and he was there. He saw me and said “oh, you’re here.” And he walked away.

He was never my strong suit, anyway. Why should I expect him to be any different?

If you read the other blog, an update is probably unnecessary. But then again, these are things I’ve never written about before. This is the only home for these things.

I moved back in with Cautionary Husband in October of 2009, right after I shut down this blog. That month, I saw Cautionary Lover again for the first time in almost a year and a half. We had sex. It was, as usual, mind-blowing. When I returned home, I finally admitted to myself that I never had sex like that with CH, I never would, and I couldn’t live the rest of my life like that. What it came down to, simply, is that I realized I never was sexually attracted to CH. I was a virgin when I married him. I didn’t even know what sexual attraction felt like. But I did by October of 2009, and I was certain it was never there with CH and never would be. Everything else we could fix with some hard work, but I knew we couldn’t fix that, regardless of how much we wanted to.

I told a good friend about seeing CL again, and she immediately dissolved our friendship. She said she couldn’t trust me as a person. She asked what was to keep me from fucking her boyfriend, since I was fucking another woman’s husband? The idea of pointing out to her the absurdity of her fears, the myriad differences between the situations, was just too tiresome. I decided I was better off without her as a friend. My friend count in this city dwindled further, to two or so. It’s still about there, in fact.

At the end of October, I took a walk through our neighborhood, called on some available apartments, saw one a day later, and moved in on November 1. CH and I spent Halloween night, our last night living together, watching the original Halloween on TV, surrounded by boxes. I cried because I sympathized with Michael Myers, a psychopathic murderer. I was moving for the third time in less than a year.

I spent November and December dating boys I didn’t really like. I hated being alone, so I took any excuse I could to get out, to be anywhere but home with myself. There was a guy who played keyboard in a band whose mouth became unbearably acidic when we made out. There was a guy from my high school youth group I’d always had a crush on; he took me on a date, got me drunk, fucked me, and then offered me cocaine off his granite countertop (I declined). There was a guy who was shorter than me whose O face still makes my stomach turn to remember it. There was a guy I met at the dog park who was out of my league, looks-wise, whose ex-girlfriend was on the current cover of a local magazine; he seemed to regard me as more of a little sister than a viable dating partner. There was a guy who worked on my floor and who bailed as soon as I told him about the affair; about CL, he said, simply, “that guy sucks.”

I had unprotected sex with both Cocaine Guy and O-Face Guy. I now have high-risk HPV and mild dysplasia (precancer) of the cervix, and I’m certain I contracted it from one of them. My money’s on Cocaine Guy. I’ve been tested for all the other STDs, and I thank God every day that I’m otherwise clean, though I will probably always have a nagging fear about HIV, since it’s known to hide from tests.

After Christmas, CL and I spent a night together in my apartment, the only night we’ve ever spent together, before or since. This was the last time I saw him. We made love all night and barely got a few hours’ sleep. He brought me a live bamboo as an apartment-warming gift. When he handed it to me, I said, “these are unlucky if you kill them.” He said, “well, don’t kill it.” It’s almost completely dead now, only one of the five stalks still green. The others are rotted and hollow. I have no idea how it died–they’re supposed to be very easy to keep alive. It just seemed determined.

As I lay in his arms post-coitus, he told me he was thinking of leaving his family. I didn’t ask any questions at the time. I didn’t want to assume he wanted to leave them to be with me. He didn’t say either way. A couple days later, on the eve of 2010, I found the courage to ask. He said he did want to be with me, but his exit strategy would take a while. A year or two. He told me not to wait for him; there were no guarantees. I asked him to please not to talk to me about it again until there were guarantees. There would never be guarantees.

That night I went to a party and met Boyfriend. Everything changed. I began to fall in love. CL couldn’t take it, so we stopped communicating. Boyfriend lives three hours away from me. All of 2010 is a blur of traveling there and back every other weekend, of him coming to see me the weekends in between. I got a new job. I stopped taking antidepressants. I was happy.

I think that about brings us up to speed. I take it as a good sign that an entire year passed, and the only thing I really have to say about it is that I was happy.

CH and I filed for divorce in October, and we’re still waiting for it to be finalized. Should be in the next month or so. It’s taken a while.

I was iffy on whether or  not to return here. I don’t feel like Cautionary Girl anymore. I don’t particularly want to reassume that title. I don’t want to associate myself with that life, those decisions. But it felt right, to resurrect this place from lockdown. To free all those posts that had required passwords at CH’s request.

Cautionary Girl is still a part of me. I’m still her. I’ve still got things I need to work through, which I’d like to write about here. I’m nowhere near perfect. Just happy now.

More later.

Two weeks ago ago today I sat down to write about that experience here on my Cautionary Blog. But about halfway through the entry I realized that here also, after seven months, I had shared everything I wanted to share, examined everything I wanted to examine. However, instead of saying goodbye, I simply saved the entry as a draft and didn’t come back. I wasn’t ready.

But I’m ready now.

My Basic Economics professor in college taught me that once you’ve made your final payment on your car, you should continue to pay yourself what you would’ve paid the bank, and that way when the car needs repairs, you’ve got the cash on hand to cover them, as well as, when the time comes, to purchase a new one outright. In that spirit, I’ve decided to use my now-free hour every Tuesday night to sit and think about my feelings, and I’m going to use the time during the week I’ve spent blogging for writing (with a little extra tacked on for good measure). The car might be purchased, but I want to make sure it’s maintained very well. And yes, I realize that I’m spending a large bulk of my final entry comparing myself to a used car. But it seems to be a metaphor befitting of a Cautionary Girl.

I can’t adequately express how much your encouragement has helped me get through this tumultuous time in my life. I don’t really want to try. Just know that I’m not sure how I would’ve made it through without all of you there cheering me on. Support of this sort isn’t something I’ve known a lot of in my life, and it continues to astonish me, how truly fortifying it is. The kind, gentle words of strangers and semi-strangers and acquaintances and friends.

If you’re ever curious to check in on me, please feel free to e-mail me. I’d love to hear from you, and I’d love to learn a little more about you. As always, you can find me at acautionaryblog (at) gmail (dot) com.

I’m not sure where I go from here. But I’m ready to find out.

Much, much love,

CG

We could be wrong, of course, and we don’t really care, because we still think we’re hilarious.

You can check us out at partners in perfection.

And there’s also a link over there to the right ——>

At the age of seven, I went to sleep. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly the where and why of it, and maybe also the who and the what and the when and the how, but I’ve come to suspect it had something to do with my parents’ separation. When I was in second grade, my dad sat my family down at the kitchen table, maybe our first “family meeting” ever, and explained to my three siblings and me that he was moving out. None of us spoke or asked questions. We didn’t meet each other’s eyes. Only my little brother, who was four, cried.

My dad left and we didn’t see him very often, but I told myself it was okay, because we never really saw him that often when he lived with us, either. My mom read us books with titles like Why Doesn’t Daddy Live Here Anymore? and asked us about our feelings. My little brother would cry some more. I would tell her I didn’t want to talk, and to stop making such a big deal about it.

I have many memories from ages 2-6, and more memories than I know what to do with from age 13 on, but there’s a wide gap between the ages of 7-13. Some spotty memories, but not many. My next-door-neighbor friends asking me in the third grade where my dad was. Twirling in my driveway singing “A Whole New World” in the fourth grade. My fifth grade teacher asking me why I was crying after art class. The popular girls who sat by me in sixth grade wearing their Elizabeth Arden Sunflowers perfume and digging around in their Clinique makeup bags gossiping about various Spencers and Scotts. I quit ballet, which I loved, because I simply didn’t want to go to practice. I played softball, which I HATED, for years because my friend Courtney played it. I accepted Christianity because my mom believed it. I didn’t try out for cheerleading in fifth grade because I was too afraid.

Some of my clearest memories from this time come from the books I was reading. I was always reading, living through other people’s words and experiences. I tried to write a little too. In fifth grade I wrote a short story about a girl named Molly Thatcher who gets to fulfill her dream of meeting Jackie Kennedy Onassis. I self-published it by gluing cardboard to the front and back pages and stapling the whole thing together. I illustrated it myself and gave it to my reading teacher, who had told me once that she loved the Kennedys. I’m not sure if she ever read it–she used to sleep during class and tell us she was resting her eyes.

At the age of 13 boys seemed to develop an interest in me, there were suddenly boys and their boy eyes everywhere, and my eyes opened to theirs. I woke up slightly. My first vivid memory after the six-year blackout period is of me riding my bike around my old elementary school the summer after seventh grade and hearing Tony, a boy I went to elementary school with, who was skateboarding there with some of his friends, say, “That’s [CG]? Wow.” Quickly cascading after that were those first few tentative games of Truth or Dare, my love of the movie That Thing You Do!, and my first French kiss. I began to care about the brand of clothes I wore and the way I styled my hair. I began shaving my legs and reading my sister’s old issues of Seventeen that were stacked in piles in our garage, studying how to apply makeup and how to flirt. I began to live for the affection of the opposite sex because that’s what made me feel awake.

But I stayed asleep for the most part. I jumped from boy to boy, dating guys not because I was interested in them but because they were interested in me. I broke a few hearts and didn’t really care. When I was fifteen, a boy told me he loved me, and I didn’t reciprocate until a year later, but by then he was too hurt by my apparently hard heart and didn’t want anything to do with me. I kept on dating other boys but for some reason I thought I would marry him. But then he married someone else the summer after my sophomore year of college, so I began dating someone who I thought would want to marry me. And, eventually, he did.

It worked for a little while because we were both asleep. My New Year’s resolution a few years in a row was inspired by Henry David Thoreau; I resolved year after year to live deliberately. And every year I failed and never really knew why. But then someone came along who I was very much interested in, had been interested in for years, and he seemed interested in me too. He showed me beautiful things about myself. He listened to me and asked me about my feelings. He understood the things I said. Both the love I felt for him and the resulting pain that he wasn’t mine were too keen. I couldn’t stay asleep any longer.

I woke up and only then did I realize I had been sleeping all that time.

The affair didn’t wake me up all the way, of course, or I wouldn’t've had it. It would’ve been too painful, and I would’ve seen the situation for what it was: that Cautionary Lover did not want to be with me. After I ended the affair and told Cautionary Husband about it, I’d go back to sleep for a few weeks again and then jerk myself awake again. Over time I’d catch myself before I fell asleep and would struggle to keep my eyes open like a child fighting sleep at bedtime. Only recently am I realizing how truly difficult it is– to be awake, alive, conscious, aware, and to stay that way. It can be painful, which is why, I suspect, I went to sleep in the first place. But the alternative isn’t really much of an alternative at all. Certain books I’ve read recently, Brave New World and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, have affirmed this.

A good friend of mine asked me on Saturday how long I think I’ve been consistently awake now. It’s hard to say, but I know it’s been about a month or so. When I made the decision to move back in with CH, I realized that I couldn’t force myself to do it–I was too afraid that I would go back to sleep, indefinitely this time. I took this to mean we should get a divorce, and I told him as much a week ago. But then something incredible happened–he seemed to wake up also with the painful shock of facing a divorce, and last Wednesday we had what felt like our first honest, authentic conversation ever.

I’m beginning to understand that perhaps CL and I can’t be together for a reason. Perhaps he was supposed to wake me up because it was always through romantic love that I felt the most awake. And, if I were with him, it would be easy for me to expect him to keep me awake. But maybe I’m supposed to learn how to keep myself awake. Or maybe CH and I are supposed to learn it from each other.

To this end, I decided to get a tattoo to remind me to never, ever, under any circumstances, let myself go to sleep again.

It’s a lotus flower. According to wikpedia, “Its unfolding petals suggest the expansion of the soul. The growth of its pure beauty from the mud of its origin holds a benign spiritual promise.”

God, there has been a lot of mud in my life, especially lately. When I read Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood in May, I was furious that she awoke so effortlessly, at such a young age, and managed to maintain her consciousness. Why couldn’t I do that? Why couldn’t it be that way for me? But I acknowledge that out of all of this mud has grown something of incredible, unblemished beauty. Just this past week I read Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, which I quoted at the top of this entry, in which the author says he didn’t wake up until much, much later in his life, after a traumatic car accident. I suppose people just wake up when they’re ready, and I’m later than some and earlier than others. Maybe earlier than most, who knows.

But I do know that I will not be going back to sleep.

As the orgasmic euphoria wore off, I realized that he was going to leave me. He was going to pull himself from my arms. He was going to put on his clothes. He was going to bring me mine. He was going to hug me and kiss me and say goodbye to me. And the next day he was going to get in his car and drive back home. To his children. To his wife. To his life, which he had decided to go on living apart from me.

I had just given him all of me, and now he was leaving me.

My breath caught in my throat with the pain of this realization. My shoulders shook, and I began to sob.  And with every sob, I gave even more of myself away to him. More of my inner life that no one had before seen was his. I hated him for this, and I loved him for this. I hated myself for giving it to him, and I loved myself for giving it to him.

Neither of us spoke. There was no need. He tried to pull away, but I said, “No,” and clung more tightly to him. I watched my tears get tangled in his chest hairs.

When the worst of it was over, he lay back, and I settled in beside him, my left arm draped over his stomach. I rested my right cheek on his chest and timed my breaths with his.

He said, “Usually, when my daughters cry, when they hurt themselves or feel scared, I tell them, ‘Oh, it’s not as bad as all that.’”

I looked up at him.

He continued, “But this really is as bad as all that.”

I agreed that it really was.

And then he really did leave.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

This book had been on my book list since 2004 or so, but I bought it and read it completely coincidentally last September.  I say “coincidentally” because this book centers around the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks without being, I dunno, overtly racist or patriotic or political.  It’s the fictional tale of a boy whose father died in the World Trade Center, and it artfully intertwines the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima in its narrative, examining the weighty concepts of love and war through a child’s eyes.  Stream-of-consciousness usually drives me crazy, but it works here, since the narrator is a child.  This book changed the way I write.  It broke my heart, over and over, with every page, and it taught me what true vulnerability is, not only in writing, but also in reading.  And in living.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

In my comment on Mighty Girl’s post, I actually listed Traveling Mercies instead of Bird by Bird, and both have changed things for me, but in very different ways.  It’s difficult to say which one has played a more significant role in my life, since these are both books that I read over and over for different reasons.  I read TM when I need to be fed spiritually, when I need to be reminded of what a truly authentic faith is, and I read BBB when I need to be reminded that I can actually be a writer if I want to, and how to go about that.  I highly recommend both to everyone.  But BBB edges TM out slightly because it is the book that made me finally admit to myself that, yes, I want to be a writer, and, yes, I can make that happen if I want to.  And that’s changed everything for me.

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

I read FAZ for the first time in college, and I’ve since read it several times.  It’s a very quick read, but it has so much incredible insight packed in so few pages.  In short, this book taught me that I’m serving God by doing exactly what I was created to do, even if I’m not overtly serving God by being a missionary or working for a church.  It’s given me the courage I need to be the fullest expression of myself, to lead the life I was created to live, rather than someone else’s preconceived notions of how a Christian should live (something I obviously struggle with a lot).

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

Although these are two very different books, I think they actually have very similar themes.  I just finished reading BNW for the second time, and I read LCL a few months ago for the first time.  Both of these novels examine what a life unconsciously lived looks like.  LCL’s Connie Chatterley is oppressed by societal expectations and the responsibilities that come with being a Lady, and BNW’s Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne are oppressed by a supposedly Utopian society, where fake “happiness,” induced through conditioning and consistent medication, is the ultimate goal.  Both describe what happens when one decides to break free of these oppressions and live an authentic life.  And both of these novels changed the way I view my life and my purpose for existence.

Key passage from BNW:

“It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes–make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.”

Key passage from LCL (specifically, Lawrence’s essay “A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover“):

“Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own. Sentimentality and counterfeit feeling have become a sort of game, everybody trying to outdo his neighbour. The radio and the film are more counterfeit emotion all the time, the current press and literature the same. People wallow in emotion: counterfeit emotion. They lap it up: they live in it and on it. They ooze with it.

And at times, they seem to get on very well with it all. And then, more and more, they break down. They go to pieces. You can fool yourself for a long time about your own feelings. But not forever. The body itself hits back at you, and hits back remorselessly, in the end.

As for other people–you can fool most people all the time, and all people most of the time, but not all people all the time, with false feelings. A young couple fall in counterfeit love, and fool themselves and each other completely. But alas, counterfeit love is good cake but bad bread. It produces a fearful emotional indigestion. Then you get a modern marriage, and a still more modern separation.”

Love Without Conditions by Paul Ferrini

Cautionary Therapist lent me this book about a year ago, and I had no idea at the time I read it that it would impact my worldview the way it has.  But it’s stuck with me, and these concepts have come to mind again and again over the last year.  It taught me that each of us deserves love regardless of our behavior, what we do, right or wrong.  And that people will come into our lives who love us.  Sometimes they can stay forever, but, most often, they can’t stay for as long as we’d like them to, and the way we can best love them is by letting them go.  The way we can each live the life we were created to live is by doing the three things Jesus told us to do: love God, love ourselves, and love others.  And leave the rest up to him.

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What books have changed things for you?