Eat. Pray. Love. --- Yeah, right.

Eat. Pray. Love. The multi-gazillion copies of the book printed, translated into 40 languages, made into a motion picture starring the fabulous Julia Roberts about one woman's year long journey to Italy, India and Bali to find herself after a horrible divorce.  The already wildly successful woman who thought she was an old maid at 36.   The Home Shopping Network is pimping EPL merchandise to coincide with the movie's premier - candles that smell like Italy, India and Bali, dream journals, tacky rhine-stone encrusted bracelets. The Daily Show even did a send up in one of their "news reports" last week. Now THAT was funny... thanks, dude!.

Yeah, I read it.  Parts of it were touching, funny, poignant and frankly all too familiar, especially right now as I go through my own horrible divorce.    Face it... who wouldn't want to go globe trotting for a year to such fabulous places, without a care in the world other than well, eating, praying and/or loving? Wouldn't that be grand?  Ah well, maybe I'll just buy the candle set to remind myself that yes, I'm worth it.  I deserve it. I matter. Oh please.  Come back to real life, people.  Lessee, would the candles smell like fascism, raw sewage and genocide?

Truth be told?  I'm jealous.  I'll admit it. There have been a couple of times in my life where I would have LOVED to piss off for a year.  Frankly, I'm quite sure that anyone reading this would most likely agree. D. after she lost her daughter to cancer 2 years ago. My friend S who lost his little boy.  For me?  Lessee. When were those times.... After I survived cancer?  Yup. After my  boss/mentor/friend died after her 4 year struggle with cancer?  Yup.  After the love of my life just walked out?  Yup.  After being violently ill for 4 months with a recurrance of Lyme disease that nearly killed me?  Yup. After the one person in my family that I loved more than life itself died in less than a week? Yup.  Let me tell you, there isn't ANY candle or dream journal that's going to replace a year off in paradise after a year of hell on earth. But the fact of the matter?

I can't. My friend K. who's experiencing her own private hell, orders of magnitude larger than my own, can't. Why?  Because we have to work. We have responsibilities.  No work = no money = no food, clothing or shelter.  Because even though we're struggling through our own hellish divorces, and crises of faith, we are not privileged, wealthy, or have publishers willing to give us an advance for a book we'll write after our year of eating, praying and loving because we're already successful.  We have to carry on with our lives because any savings we had are now gone, spent in large parts supporting our husbands and trying to build lives with them.  Hers because he was an "artist." Mine because he lost his job, so I cashed out my retirement fund. I was banking on his potential.  Partnerships and lives that we thought we were helping to build, create, live... until the boys (and I'm not going to call them men) decided, for one reason or another, to leave. 

So with all my thrashing around, and crying and struggling for the last 12 months... actually the last 4 years, and frankly letting things fall apart?   Projects half done. Minor. Major. Everything in between.  I looked around and made a list.  My GSD list.

Get. Shit. Done.

Then one night last week, while on the phone with K, I spackled a small area in my kitchen that's bugged me for YEARS.  Took less than 5 minutes.  Didn't think such a small thing could be a really a big deal until I saw it the next morning when I was brewing up a pot of tea.   I looked at that spot and ... !!!  I didn't feel resentful, frustrated, ashamed, angry at myself, or my ex for leaving yet another thing half done/undone.  Instead, I felt HAPPY and PROUD OF MYSELF.  Such a small thing that turned out to be and AHA! moment. *I* did that.  *I* fixed it. No one helped me. In that moment, I decided that I want to feel like that every day by attending to the needful here at home.  Instead of looking around in despair, I want to look around and feel proud.   Hand tools! Power tools! Learning!  AWESOME!

For the next 12 months, I'm going blog my progress as meditation while I move through the divorce.  I can meditate or I can spackle. How about I meditate WHILE I spackle? Yeah!

Home Depot, here I come!