No One to Kiss

I wrote the following post seven years ago but never published it. I guess it felt too raw, too maudlin, too self-indulgent. Maybe I didn't want my recently moved-on husband to know how much I was hurting - like he read my blog! 

A year earlier I'd coined the term and launched the website "Hellish Holidays." The irony of my own fresh hellishness was not lost on me.

These days, I've not only embraced life's complexities, I can laugh at them again. I even performed a one-woman show a couple of months back about my years of online dating: "All the Wrong Men." Hell, if I can laugh at 73 "one and dones," being single on New Year's Eve is a mere chuckle.

Here's where I was on New Year's Eve 2007. I'd like to think I've come a long, long way. Thank you, friends, therapy, cabernet and Tinder!

It's just past midnight and I have no one to kiss. My husband is with a woman 25 years younger than he is and my son is staying over at a friend's house. I went to a party where I knew very few people and no one I wanted to kiss except the hostess, which wasn't a thrill, even though she's hot. I just don't swing that way.

My son is a freshman in high school and I had planned not to get divorced until he was a freshman in college. What's that they say about the best-laid plans? I guess the operative word is laid. My husband moved on and now I guess it's my turn. Trouble is, I don't know how. There are lots of books about getting divorced but nothing that acknowledges that your divorce feels completely different because it involves you.


I don't quite know what happens next. It feels like a lot of time has passed, yet I know I still have decades ahead and I don't want to spend them alone. On the other hand, I appreciate my time by myself. That's divorce for you: It's a ping ponging of emotions. I love my freedom. I miss being a family. On the one hand, I have no other hand to hold.

It feels good to have moved past this place of pain and confusion. Not that I'm always happy and have everything figured out, because if that were the case...well, is that the case with anyone? As the late Gilda Radner used to say, "If it's not one thing, it's another." We must learn to survive that rapid succession of "things." Looking back, survival looks a lot like progress. 

Even if I still have no one to kiss on New Year's Eve 2014.