The Year After “Next Year” (December 31, 2014)

Becky Sarwate1 Comment

In 2006, filmmaker Ouise Shapiro released the documentary, Wait ‘Til Next Year: The Saga of the Chicago Cubs. IMDB.com describes the movie as follows:

“Using the frame of opening day, 2006, this documentary examines the Cubs’ 100 years without a World Series title.”

The film is almost a decade old. Midnight tonight officially marks 107 years since the Cubbies last found themselves in the winner’s circle. There is no one alive who remembers that glorious day. Yet the consistent elusiveness of victory has not proven deterrent enough to dampen diehard enthusiasm. Each fall, fans exit the Wrigley Field turnstiles for the final time until spring, proudly offering, “Just wait ‘til next year.”

I’m not quite 107 years old. But maybe because I grew up in the Windy City, and was born into a family situation that was consistently defeating, “Wait ‘til next year” carried special mantra significance. No matter how tough the current moment, I survived it by mentally moving the goal post. In fifth grade, when I thought the isolation and intellectual stagnation of a botched home school experiment might kill me, I looked forward to fighting for a classroom return the following year. When I was 15 years old and tired of waiting for a persistently tardy father to collect me from school or choir rehearsal in his latest trash-filled hoopty, I anticipated 16, when I could legally acquire my own driving privileges.

No matter how bad things got, it was usually easy to formulate a vision of something better that would encourage me to grit my teeth. I wasn’t who I wanted be, didn’t have the life I desired, didn’t necessarily know how to get there, but I would dammit…maybe next year.

At the close of 2014, I find myself wrestling with an unprecedented psychological dilemma. What do you do the year after “next year” arrives? Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got plenty to anticipate in 2015 and am bursting with energy to get her started. But 2014 was seismic.

I’m pretty sure now that I know who I am and what my limitations are. I accept them. I’ve grown fond of my quirks. I’m often creative, usually a hedonist, individualist and passionate. I have a hard time sitting still. I’m not great with romantic relationships, but make a pretty solid friend/aunt/sister/colleague. I hate failure. I am stubborn, clumsy and sensitive. And I’m finally ok with not being perfect. Not that I was ever close, mind you. It’s just stopped frustrating me.

The life I always wanted? Check. I could be younger, richer and healthier. But I am free. I do exactly as I wish for the most part, with a clean apartment that has morphed from a post-divorce prison into a sanctuary of peace, kitty cuddles and Pilates. I write, which is a must. But more often than not, I get paid to do it. My words are my profession. Enough people have chosen to read them. That’s more than I ever dreamed possible.

As for how to get there. I am still traveling, but learning to enjoy the scenery and finally beginning to trust the internal compass. A solid year of slower, adrenaline-free decision making will do that.

I’m not miserable. Most days I’m pretty content. I don’t need saving. Dread and anxiety are no longer constant companions.

The only way to weather the past was to live for the future. Today I quite enjoy the present. I’ll see next year soon enough of course because time moves on. But I’m no longer urgently waiting for it as reprieve from now.

Now’s just fine.

Tindering My Dating Resignation (December 24, 2014)

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For most of 2014, I’ve lived in self-imposed romantic exile. What began as a logical recovery period from an early December 2013 breakup, became a determination to reroute the dark serial monogamy patterns that left me lurching from one co-dependent mistake to the next.

Once I grew comfortable saying “No, thank you” or “Not now,” I was mortified to discover that while the decline ratio was up, my natural tendencies hadn’t changed a whit. Left to my own devices I was still drawn to the alcoholic, the emotional cripple or the one who could never understand or appreciate me. Without fail. Apparently some psychologically diseased part of me still loved to be hated, but I made the choice to stop indulging it.

As the year progressed, I recognized that my own company, or the community of friends and family, was infinitely preferable to awkward small talk with another strange man who would surely lead to some form of ruin (based on a near perfectly disastrous 35-year record). As the painfully funny comic, writer and actor Louis C.K. once observed: “How do women still go out with guys, when you consider that there is no greater threat to women than men? We’re the number one threat to women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women.”

It’s not that I’ve been a nun. There was a short fling with an informed Libertarian who inflamed my passions with a staunch belief in marriage equality. There was a brief interlude with a co-worker’s brother. But mostly, there was just me and the merry band of misfits I call my nearest and dearest. For the first time ever, that was enough.

In November, a relatively new friend of mine in her mid-20s asked me to give online dating one final shot. I had barely processed the offer, “Let me set you up with a Tinder profile,” before I found myself numbly agreeing. After all, 2014 has been the unofficial “Year of Yes.” What’s new and scary must be sampled, especially if it means cutting another tie with a repetitively agonizing past.

But Tinder? The notorious hookup app that bills itself as “How people meet. It’s like real life, but better.” Doesn’t that just sound like bullshit? Aisha did her best to reassure me. She vouched that the extra level of vetting provided by the application’s mutual “swipe” requirements would distill a better brand of suitor. In hindsight, I think the sweet girl was so invested in seeing me coupled, she would have said anything. She has a future in marketing – and a long tenure ahead as another one of my partners-in-crime.

I lasted 24 hours on Tinder, halfheartedly ignoring the New York Times and my treasured books to “play” the game. As I’m 36 years old, I didn’t need to be told to avoid the profiles featuring shirtless douchebags, inspirational quotes from Don Draper and other obvious rif-raff. Yet those offensive maneuvers were not nearly enough. My inbox became crammed with ingenious conversation starters such as:

“Hey sexy.”

“You’re hot. You don’t have kids, do you?”

“Oh I see. You’re into hot chocolate.”

The following morning, my Tinder experiment concluded, as did any lingering idea of meeting someone this calendar year. I was hardly pining for it, busy with holiday plans, work, theater, weight loss and the unfailingly satisfying time spent with loved ones. I preferred evenings in front of the Christmas tree with a glass of champagne and Frank Sinatra carols to the chase. I was done. See you in 2015 dating world – maybe.

It’s strange how important, game changing people can walk into our lives when least expected, or even desired. I was in the middle of a loud happy hour conversation (as though I’m capable of any other kind) with my colleague Duane when I felt the tap on my shoulder in a crowded bar. I wheeled around and found myself staring into the earnest, nervous face of an adorable young man with a soft looking beard. Wearily skeptical and more than a little intoxicated, I accepted Kurt’s offer to buy me a drink, figuring I could check momentary courtship from a recent college grad off my bucket list.

Instead the last few weeks have been one surprise after another. But this time, the amazements are pleasant and welcome: a synthesis between words and actions, physical chemistry and a growing mutual disregard for the generation that separates us in age. There is nothing recognizable about the unself-conscious honesty that has recently permeated my world, and as Martha Stewart famously said, “That’s a good thing.”

Maybe I was a bit hasty concluding there’s no one kind and interesting for me. Perhaps I haven’t let all the good ones slip my notice through a firm, lifelong commitment to self-defeat. Kurt recently gifted me with a book, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. It’s the memoir of a woman who survived a complicated and tough childhood. The inscription on the inside of the jacket read:

“Becky,

I know this is a little different than your normal literature, but the book reminded me of you. Let it be an inspiration to writing your own story.”

I’d come to believe that the romantic section of my autobiography had been figuratively copy edited and typeset. But maybe it’s just getting started, because I’ve finally fixed my compass so it points toward promise and away from learned helplessness. I think I’ll hold onto that resignation a little while longer.

Holiday Conflict Resolution (November 28, 2014)

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Growing up in an unstable home, the holidays produced conflicting feelings. On the one hand, a special, universal break from the norm, the community bonding over rituals, was thoroughly enjoyable. All of the hoopla was neat, and no matter to what faith (or lack thereof) my friends and acquaintances adhered, Halloween through January first was exciting. A frenzy of candy and goodies, toy commercials, visits to the mall, pageant rehearsals and energetic speculation.

At the same time, the order and structure afforded by the school year and regular activities were a reason to be away from home, as well as a refreshing oasis of predictability in an otherwise chaotic world. In that way, the holiday season was scary. There were long breaks from routine, time that felt extended by a child’s lack of perspective. Long stretches when my sister and I were subject to the moody whims and neglectful care of our troubled parents. Tensions simmering and erupting from too much togetherness and lots of other influences I couldn’t yet understand.

The first time I ruined Christmas, I was shaken awake by my red-faced mother at 8 am on a Sunday morning. She was smoking her standard Virginia Slim Ultra Light, blowing the carcinogens in my 10 year-old face as ashes scattered on top of the newspaper piles surrounding the twin bed. My father a hoarder. My mom a chain smoker. In literal and metaphorical ways, our house was a combustion waiting to happen.

As Gloria shook my groggy form, she yelled. I cried. I’d deliberately sabotaged everyone’s holiday by informing an eight year-old Jenny that Santa Claus was just a figment. I remembered the conversation of the day before well. I’d just been sloppy. I was kind of shocked we’d made it to eight with her faith still intact. She was upset, but I consoled her and shook it off. We’d had a good run, right (it was always “we” when it came to my baby sister and I)? How could I explain? I hadn’t meant to hurt anyone.

Moments prior I’d been dead asleep, and I was 10. I didn’t have words accessible to try to for balance and calm. Instead I was hysterical and ashamed. I’d disappointed my mother and I knew over a week ahead of time that Christmas morning would be awful. No more Santa ritual and I couldn’t fix it. Constant needling about what I’d done at best, silence and knowing, angry glares at worst. Jenny would be made to know it was my fault. I had to sit in the penalty box.

I couldn’t wait to go back to school. No one seemed to know how bad and unlovable I was there. I got good grades. I had friends. I was involved in everything. I was a Lutheran parochial school star.

Seven years later, at 17 years old, neurotically preparing for an independent future, holiday isolation took a young adult turn. By this time my parents had separated, and added to a long list of supremely terrible parenting decisions by splitting custody of my sister and I. Gregg kept me. Gloria took Jenny. It wasn’t even like there was a fight about it. It was somehow understood that this is how it should be.

I got to stay in the unheated family manor, sleeping on piles of trash and getting up every morning at 4 am to go my grandmother’s for a shower before school – because my mother didn’t really want me, and I was afraid my father wouldn’t survive if I left. Meanwhile Jenny relocated to our grandmother’s apartment with mom and enjoyed the clean, privileged world of an only child. I was bitter and relieved for her at the same time. What would happen to daddy next year when I wasn’t around?

As it turned out, my anxiety was needless. Gregg wrote me off entirely that Christmas after finding out I’d lost my virginity to a long-time, super wonderful high school sweetheart. I didn’t get how, but it was clear this was an act of personal aggression against my father. I was a liar, a slut and yes once again, a crusher of holiday dreams. I remember sitting in my grandfather’s old bedroom, secluded and weeping while my estranged parents found something over which to bond in front of Nanni’s Christmas tree. Their oldest child was lost of course, but at least they had one good one left. Becky was destined to be a huge, rogue disappointment.

When you live on the edge of people’s shifting morals and expectations, the pressure and strain is internalized. You grow to hate the holidays because you feel segregated from the warmth and love of the season. You’ve heard for so long that this supposedly special time of year brings out the worst in you, that you start to believe it. By choice you tell yourself, you’ll spend holidays alone, watching movies and drinking wine. Because lonely quiet is better than roaring failure. If you don’t try, you can’t make any more mistakes.

And then finally, after years of therapy, hard internal work and healthier relationship decision making, all the ugliness falls away. You are the grown atheist woman freely dancing around a spotless apartment, in front of a lit Christmas tree. The name on the mailbox is yours. Period. There’s a glass of champagne in your hand and you’re bopping to the sounds of a Frank Sinatra Pandora holiday station. You’ve just returned from a miraculous, symbiotic Thanksgiving Day with that beautiful baby sister, the in-law that’s become a real brother, and the two nieces who fill the heart to bursting.

Those two voices of shame you used to hear in your head during the holidays, the ones that self-selected themselves out of your life, are finally silent.

The Voracity of Death (November 16, 2014)

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Early this week, a former colleague from the American Dental Association died suddenly. He went in his sleep after telling his wife in the evening that he didn’t feel well. The cause of death has not been made public, but it’s presumed to be some variation of heart attack/aneurysm/stroke. The arbitrary kind of turn that the story of life and its ending takes everyday.

Ed was in his late 50s. A few years ago, my friends and co-workers Diane and Jimmy volunteered for an Association charitable activity with me, as a change of civic pace from our usual happy hour/sushi bonding. Ed gave us all a ride in his car, which was just coated in dog hair, evidence of his pet devotion. He wasn’t the least bit concerned that we’d show up for duty at a food dispensary matted with health code violations. Ed was a weird, smart dude who loved a good debate and really didn’t worry about what people thought. I like weird, smart dudes. The world will be a little less interesting without him.

Later in the week, semi-famous reality TV star Diem Brown died at age 32 after a nine-year battle with ovarian cancer. This was on my radar in part because of a long and somewhat embarrassing love affair with MTV’s The Challenge, a competition series featuring former cast members from reality groundbreakers The Real World and Road Rules. I have a ceaseless appetite for frenemy tropes and the drunken, televised antics of my generation (and slightly younger people). It has a way of reinforcing that my own life choices are imperfectly acceptable.

There have been a bevy of seasons over the last decade with absurd “storylines,” fights and stomach churning behavior. What can I say? I traffic in highbrow and lowbrow in equal parts. But one narrative elicited no schadenfreude from viewers: the ongoing health battles of Diem Brown and her touching on again, off again relationship with ultimate sexy bad boy, CT Tamburello. Diem was always a competitor first, a conflicted lover second and a cancer patient third. CT brought out the best in Diem and never allowed her to hide her feelings or her chemo-induced baldness, even as he continued to make mistakes that drove them apart. They were an easy and beautiful pair for whom to root, and I always believed that once they finished sewing their respective wild oats, these two crazy kids would figure it out.

As of Friday, it is clear they’ll never have the opportunity. After her third battle with ovarian cancer, Diem succumbed to the disease, after devoting the best years of her young life to fighting it.

Of course all of this made me think of Jesika. Of ovarian cancer and how I might hate this killer above all others. The silent, hungry assassin sneaks up on the body, even the most carefully monitored and healthy ones, eating them slowly until it’s too late. All the while, the host feels just fine…until she doesn’t. And in too many cases, as the disease’s average age of onset continues to decline, she doesn’t get to marry the love of her life, or reach the full height of her cultivated career, or make a huge mess of it all and start over. She doesn’t get to do anything at all.

Ovarian cancer also claimed my paternal grandmother June, when she was in her 60s. I was there in her Wisconsin home-turned-hospice staging area in the summer of 1991. I was 12 years old watching her waste away, struggle to breathe. Grandma Crowley had six full-grown children and numerous grandkids. She’d been a great beauty who loved a good Manhattan. She’d lived. But that didn’t make it any easier to bear the live and needless suffering of one of the few adults who really gave a damn about my sister and I.

So much pain and death this week – for the living and those who experienced a karmic fluke or lost a war. So much futile anger and fervent wishing with no outlet. Such an inability to pull out a more profound lesson than the trite and oft-repeated warning to make every moment count.

Planning for the future is important. Some of us excel in the exercise, obsess about it. It’s a comforting illusion of control, a ritual we must repeat instead of scanning our environment fearfully or repeatedly rushing to the exam table. We will make our imprint. We will not be forgotten. We will not succumb to panic.

But the acts of living, of building, of wanting and working can, and often will be interrupted, painfully and prematurely. And there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s the truth. And it hurts.

Wedding #5 (October 31, 2014)

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Vieques, Puerto Rico; Coralville, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; Chicago, Illinois; Peoria, Illinois

At first glance, as the old Sesame Street tune goes, “One of these things is not like the others.” The freak entry in my 2014 wedding travel log is a sunny paradise full of clear waters, scenic cliffs and exotic wild animals (in this Midwesterner’s defense, frogs and iguanas qualify as otherworldly in a landscape rife with pigeons, rats and squirrels). The other four stops are…flat and full of corn.

There’s a cute new television commercial airing courtesy of Southwest Airlines. In it, a perennial wedding guest is shown rocking a succession of attractive frocks, while throwing down some infectiously committed, if spastic, dance moves. In one scene, she is forced to adjust the overeager hands of a juvenile suitor. I am not saying this happened to me at the Iowa wedding, but if I did, would you be surprised? Basically, change the protagonist’s hair color to a deep red and put a few more years on her, and this advertisement tells my story.

When the invitations started rolling in around the New Year, I had a few concerns about my ability to rise to the occasions, above and beyond the ample financial and time investment required. A jam-packed wedding season is not normally the favored prospect of a two-time divorcee. Also, as regular readers of this blog know, I limped into 2014 fresh from the latest incapacitating romantic disappointment. I was emotionally bankrupt and attending up to six personal and group therapy sessions a month when the first invite was extended.

One must be comatose to find a summons to Eden unappealing, especially when it comes from a dear friend who’s become part of the family. And when that sister’s betrothed flatters a battered ego with a request to sing the wedding song, “Besame Mucho,” only a real fool rejects such an opportunity. I wrote about the experience earlier this year as a transformative one in many ways. It left me with the ability to envision myself, for the first time, as a contented retiree. Personal vistas expanded with time and freedom to celebrate life, committed love and a raw, achingly beautiful, undeveloped part of the world I rarely experience.

I kind of assumed Puerto Rico would be an anomaly. Upon a mid-April return, I tried to fortify myself for the coming onslaught of other people’s dreams coming true, and the bitterness I expected to wear as an accessory. The level of adoration I feel for these people would take priority over self-indulgent pouting of course, but no way could I just sail through a matrimony parade feeling fine, right?

As it turns out, once I got it right in my head that I have zero interest in a third husband, and am not totally sure there’s a commitment of any type in my future (at 36, the small talk associated with a first date feels like too much labor better invested elsewhere), I became a veritable reception MACHINE. I’ve clapped along because I felt like a room without a roof. I have done the Cupid Shuffle after drinking enough champagne to believe myself a channel for Eartha Kitt levels of sexiness. I have hit the buffet, asked for cake seconds and encouraged intoxicated men to do the Worm. Because why not?

One thing I have not done? Get in line to catch the bouquet. Let the other ladies take their superstitious turn. In my 20s, I caught myself a grand total of three castoff flower bunches and guess what? Didn’t up the odds of matrimonial success one whit.

So this weekend is wedding number 5. And I’m ready to Electric Side myself back onto the dance floor. Upon reflection, the coveted, raucous guest is where I always should have left it.

Cheers!