Yes, yes, I've been MIA, I'm completely aware. I'm also completely aware that not many people out there care, and that, readers of my blog, is why I think it's time for me to maybe call this blog quits. Well, that coupled with the fact that this year has taken so much out of me that I don't want to do anything at all tripled with the fact that this blog, like the black jeans I wriggled into earlier this week for lunch and couldn't wait to get home to take off, no longer perfectly fits.
When I first started writing this blog, Life's Waiting to Begin, I was 36. I'd been married for thirteen years and had a 12 and a 10-year-old son. I was in, I think, my tenth year of teaching. Although the notion that life is waiting to begin when one is at that stage of life seems silly, it really felt like it was, and looking back, it feels that way retrospectively still. My ex-husband and I had just gotten back together for the I-don't-know-how-manyth time, Griffin and Keifer, between school tuition, soccer, musical instruments, and just general child-cost-of-living expenses, cost us enough money that we couldn't, as encouraged by Auntie Mame, live, live, live, and grad school did the same. I felt like I was lying in wait, sitting on standby; life, my real life, the exciting or at least the interesting or if not the interesting then the fulfilling life I was meant to live was close. Soon Griffin would be out of private school, and I'd be able to afford this; Keifer would be done with soccer, and I could afford that; Glenn and I would be in a good place, and we'd do X. It was all there, almost accessible. I just had to reach out my hand, and there it would be. Life. It was waiting to begin.
Fast forward--but not too fast or you'll pass it--and there I was in 2014, 39, separated from my soon-to-be-ex-husband, mostly raising 15- and 13-year-old-boys alone (fun fact. From the time he moved out of the house in 2015, there has never been a time when my ex-husband has simultaneously been in both of my sons' lives). I turned 40 and spent the following summer driving and running up and down the East Coast with my sons who weren't just my sons but also pretty much my best friends and with my two canine angelitos, and when I got back, I was in a pseudo relationship with Clinton (formerly known to you readers as C), and it would be an understatement to say I was having the time of my life. I was thin, I was independent, my sons were old enough to hold down the fort when I wanted to not be in it, and Clinton was back. Life had begun, and it was the best life anyone could have.
Whoops.
Well--
Summer ended and so did that version of my life. Clinton disappeared for the I-don't-know-how-manyth time, Griffin and Keifer became decidedly not my best friends, and the thrill of my freedom began to wane. By November, I was so over my new life, I decided to become somebody else, a transformation you can read about in the following excerpt from "One Maniac at a Time," published on November 23, 2015:
I spent last weekend in Gainesville chaperoning a field trip for debate. On Saturday, while out to lunch with some students, one of the kids I was with asked what name he should give when ordering his food. You're gonna give a fake name? I asked. Saying that he was, we started discussing the possibilities. Never once did I consider giving a fake name instead of mine, yet when I went up to the counter, ordered my food, and gave my name, Kelly is not what came out, nor is it what came out, unplanned, the next day at Starbucks, and when I sat down I made a decision: it was time to start again. To be stupid, mopey Kelly, the girl who devoted her life to the pursuit of one boy no more, the girl who let people who don't even matter, matter way too much, no more.
It was time to be reborn.
It was time to choose who I would become, and since I so ardently believe that fate and destiny have played, and continue to play, such a weighty role in my life, becoming Kismet was one of the easiest decisions of my life...Throughout the month, I have to force myself to do things I normally wouldn't because comfort zones? They're for Kels.
And Kismet is not a Kel.
And you know what? I meant it. After that point, I all but officially changed my name. Not only did I change the name on all my social media to Kismet, it's how I started introducing myself, the name I gave everywhere I went that asked for a name, the name I used when I started dating someone, and the name that appears on my last two publications. I even started thinking about myself as Kismet instead of Kelly or Kel. By the time quarantine rolled around last year, Kismet was pretty much who I was.
And then--I know, story of my life--I met a boy. At first that boy, like everyone else I'd met on Bumble or Tinder or, at that point, even in real life--remember that schmuck who had an entire girlfriend behind my back the whole time we were seeing each other? He had no idea Kismet wasn't my real name--called me Kismet. For a few months, he thought that was my real name. Even though he never asked if it was, I felt dishonest and eventually gave him the spiel I always gave whenever people did: My real name is Kelly, but I go by Kismet. You can call me Kismet or Kel. Either is fine.
He went with none of the above opting to call me Kelly instead.
At first it was pretty weird, not because nobody called me Kelly but because nobody new in my life did and definitely no new boys and also because at that point, while I sort of felt like I was two people, my old self--the self I wanted to forget, the self who was often Kelly but to a lot of people Kel (or Kelz)--and my new self--the self I'd created and embraced much like the Jay Gatsby that sprang from the mind of James Gatz--I felt much more Kismet than Kelly or Kel. I fully intended to continue going by Kismet with everyone other than him. As time went on, though, maybe about six months into our relationship, I realized that my Virgo calling me Kelly wasn't just about a name.
Let me try to explain.
Not because he called me Kelly, but because he thought of me as Kelly, I started to think of myself as Kelly, too. Because he loved Kelly so much, not Kismet, I realized being Kelly wasn't so bad, or at least not this new version of her. A few months after I realized that, I had a similar realization about sex, and then a few days ago, I realized that the sex thing and the name thing were entwined.
Do you remember that time when that guy spanked me without consent and I got mad? Like, mad mad because we'd talked about it previously, and I'd told him how not into sex like that I was? Well, after that guy, that totally changed. With subsequent men that I was with, the more sex wasn't typically pleasant, the more impersonal it was, the more I liked it, and, as a result because we all know how tied to feelings good sex is for me, the more I liked the guy I was having the typically-not-pleasant, impersonal sex with. When at first I was with my Virgo, it was the same with him. When it wasn't that typically-not-pleasant, impersonal sex, I'm not gonna lie, I would sometimes not be as happy or fulfilled as I could be. He knows I like this, I'd think, and then I'd think of things that I'm not going to disclose (because believe it or not, there is a line. Mine is just much further than most). But then one day after he did do the things I specifically wanted him to do, I realized I didn't want that. Not from him. Just love me, I looked up at him and said, and looking back now, I think that's when the transformation from Kismet to Kelly was complete. I'm no psychologist, but in my unprofessional opinion, it's pretty clear to me that the name thing and the sex thing were two similarly constructed things meant to do one thing and one thing only, and that's keep people away from me. The real me. The Kelly me. But my Virgo made me do the opposite of that. He made it so I don't need to be someone else. He made it so I'm no longer afraid.
It's been a year now that I've been with my Virgo. A year ago yesterday to be exact, and although there are things I'm still waiting for--him to officially move in, finish school, and start his permanent career, me to go back to school, finish teaching, and start a new career, and both of us to get out of Florida and find our future home--and life isn't exactly filled to the brim with nothing but good--in the last few months, I lost the aunt who practically raised me; I was traumatized by a rat living in the walls of my house; I had to put my dog, my daughter, my Old Lady Jazz to sleep; and I found out my mom has breast cancer--and although unlike Auntie Mame I--we--don't live, live, live, I'm finally at a point where I can say, instead of life's waiting to begin, my life has absolutely begun.
