The Thinking Other Woman

Well, the person this blog is about finally broke a record. He hasn't been absent here for more than two months in ... seven years? I think so.

But, now he's done it. Interesting that his last visit here that I can prove was December 30th. (I did get something weird on Valentine's Day, but who knows?)

So, I think it's pretty clear that after four months of daydreaming and eight years of not being able to let go, this is absolutely all over. I have to ask myself now, what the rest of my life is going to look like.

I'm tired, fat, and old. Thanks to injuries, depression, and not having the use of a working kitchen for the better part of six months, I now weigh 260 lbs. That's more than I have ever weighed my whole life and more than most men.

However, I know I can't make some Grand Goal that I Will Weigh X Pounds or Look Like So-and-So. The living instant I do that and it doesn't go that way, I get more and more draconian, hate myself more and more, and the next thing I know I quit exercising and start bingeing because I absolutely fucking hate my life and it didn't make me weigh X or look like Y anyway.

At this age, all I can do is perform behavior that is healthy most of the time and hope I don't get injured yet again. My body is going to weigh whatever and look horrible. You don't weigh 260 lbs, with legs that look like lipedema, and ever look slender or beautiful again.

Which brings up the point: My body is ugly. Even if I take off weight, my body will always be ugly forever more. If I don't take off weight, I am fat, and if I do take off weight, I will be left with ripples and dimples and sagging, ugly skin. This pretty much takes me off the dating market, as the only thing that matters in a woman is that her body gives him an instant erection. If that doesn't happen she is worthless. So, I guess I'm in the trash can from now on. Old, ugly, fat, and thrown away. Fuck knows I don't want to date with all the ageism and the lookism out there. Why would anyone want me, when, like my late husband, they could date 20 years younger, tighter, leaner, sexier, and prettier? Sixteen years ago, I was the younger woman my late husband was chasing. It's only fair. I had my day, and now my day is over.


I can't imagine ever finding another man like the ones I've dated, anyway. Where would I even meet a person like that? I've been with some of the sexiest, smartest, funniest, cutest, most adorable, educated, kindest, simply WONDERFUL men that exist. Where the fuck would I ever find anyone like that again??? I'm SPOILED. And, you know, considering the childhood I had, I was very lucky to have had the short run I did. (When you don't have your first boyfriend until age 32 and you're widowed at forty-five, that isn't very long at all.) But I could have attracted alcoholics, abusers, narcissists, drug addicts ... I didn't. I got the pick of the litter. (As long as I was young enough.)

So, there won't be any more men. And no, no online dating. The first thing they want to see is a picture. No thanks. I look hideous in a picture.


And we all know, the one thing that defines worth in a woman is what she looks like in a picture.

So much for that. I will be spending the rest of my life alone.


My condo is literally in a shambles. Turns out the problem was rotten pipes under the building, which should have been detected and fixed last fucking summer. At least now that problem is finally fixed. Unfortunately, my kitchen floor and bathroom floor were all plowed up. Everything in those rooms is now packed here and there all around, wherever I could find to put it. It literally looks like a bomb blew up. After making some starts on a healthy diet and exercise, I have been trucking around hotel rooms and my stepson's new trailer like a nomad, because one day I have a toilet in there and the next day I don't.


The good news is, now I have a new bathroom floor, and, after twenty years of hating that slowly disintegraging old kitchen from the 60's, I will have a new kitchen and laundry room floor--Shaw vinyl plank that looks like marble! I can hardly wait! 


I have put off home renovations long enough. For the twenty years I have lived there, I have been terrified to borrow any more money. Fuck knows I still owe so much in student loans and hospital bills it looks as if I may not live to pay it all off. Forget having a savings or retirement. But all that moving of the things has not been nearly as easy as it would have been ten years ago, and I wonder, if I wait until I am in my sixties to do things like paint, if I might not fall off of a ladder or something and get hurt.


Besides, if I wait until I pay off all my debts and then try to save and have it done, I will be 74 before it ever happens. I want to paint the cabinets and have a new backsplash and nice quartz countertops. I would like to have these things to enjoy for twenty years, not wait twenty years gasping and panting and struggling for the money and then die the day after it's all finally installed.


So, one way or another, I am finishing the home renovations I want now. Turns out someone at work has a sister who does wallpaper and interior design, so I may be able to do something with the dining room, too.


I always thought I would have to have a husband to ever be able to live in a decent home there. Well, I'm going to do it myself, and if I die in debt or poor, so be it. Financial stability was never going to happen for me anyway. I'm going to have a home I enjoy, goddamn it, and I am going to have it this year.


And then I am going to enjoy it! 

After that ... I guess I need to figure out what my old age will look like. Since, when you weigh 260 lbs and you don't get around so well anymore, let's face it, you are already old.


I have given up childish notions of ever "being a writer" or having some great and remunerative publishing career. I do okay on Medium writing about infidelity, and that is the best I will do in this life. 


But, that's all over now and I am running out of things to say about it. I am not a therapist with a string of degrees, and I don't know that I want to sit for astrology exams. All that will be left for me to do is get up and drag myself to work every day, try to keep the house clean assuming I can ever get it that way again, and try to eat healthy and get at least some exercise. Beyond that, I guess I can go back to the novel I was writing that everyone else hated--the one that was based on this--and entertain myself with it, if I get bored watching movies and reading other people on Medium.


I don't have any fantasies anymore that it will blow up like After or Fifty Shades of Gray and make my life meaningful and solve all my financial worries. I have Saturn squaring everything in my godforsaken chart. This is not a lucky life. I will be lucky if ten people on Wattpad even notice it.


All I am supposed to do is entertain myself with it. So I will do that, as I get humped over and old and gray and wait for diabetes, cancer, strokes, a heart attack, or dementia to send me to a state nursing home on Medicaid to die alone.


At least I survived all this and maybe I can make a home I can be proud of before I go.


It's about all I can ask for. My plan is to hope for this, and make myself happy with it. 

Some people can ask for the moon in this life and actually get it. I can't. I've had to fight and scrap so hard for things most people are born with, there's no way I can even so much as hope for anything more than what I've set down here, and I'd be lucky to have that. I live someplace where I can have a fireplace and swim in a beautiful pool every summer for $500 a month and still own. Who else can say that??


My job is to take the crumbs I've been able to wrestle out of this life and make them be enough. I will not have any close loved ones ever again, but I will have some nice things, a nice home, a few acquaintances to go eat dinner with once in a while, and some silly stupid thing to write down if I'm bored. 


It will be good enough.