Pancakes Taste Like Poverty: And Other Post-Divorce Revelations Read Online Free PDF Page B

buy them. I was afraid to buy them
because I knew I’d be too insecure to wear them. Wtf?
    Instead I bought some moderately interesting
yellow and gray leopard pumps – I know it sounds more interesting, but trust – they are not.
    Guess what else? I wussed out on the red
lipstick, too. I bought several, all of them frightened me. I wear a
darkish mauve-ish color on the ONE day a month that I attempt to look
older than nineteen . Lame.
    So all the balls and gusto and sparkle I think I have has apparently fizzled and I am not, at all, closer to putting
myself together than I was in Feb when I started this idealistic
attempt at reinvention.
    Buh.
    I need a RuPaul’s Drag Race drag queen
intervention.
    A Different Boy –
April 2011 My six year
old son is a different boy.

He's still snuggly but he's also
angry. He hits his little sister and he destroys things. I woke up
late at night to find him burning black holes into the carpet of his
bedroom with a lighter he'd taken while his father was visiting. He
draws all over the walls and cuts his clothes to shreds. Thankfully,
at the very least, his behavior at school is okay.
He seems to be
saving all the anger for me.
We often end the evening in
screaming matches and I dig my nails into my palms to avoid spanking
or slapping him.
A few weeks ago he asked to be called by a new
name. He picked “Jacky Jake.”
“But what's wrong
with your name?” I asked.
“I never know when someone
is talking to me. Someone calls my name and I come and it turns out
they were talking to Daddy or Papa” he answered.
He had a
point. He was named after his father and he was named after
his father and he was named after his father.
My son was
the fifth with his name as if he was part of a monarchy. I never
wanted that to be his name and his father only halfheartedly so but
we felt obligated to and obligation is the love currency in his
family so like a good daughter-in-law I obliged.
“Okay,”
I said, “but Jacky Jake is a bit complex. Can we just call you
Jack? It's a very strong name. Kind of a hero's name. Or a wily, charming kind of character in a romantic comedy.”
He
considered it and smiled to himself.
“Okay. I want to be
Jack from now on.”
He paused and looked me in the eye.
“I
really don't want anyone getting me mixed up with Daddy ever again.”

My son is a different boy.

    Mothers Day
Lamentation – May 2011

    So last week was crazy emotional for me.
Specifically, Mother’s Day was a complete mind fuck.
    This is the first Mother’s
Day I’ve experienced as a single mom. My ex-husband never cared
about Mother’s Day, so it’s not like I was missing the
attention and affection that most wives experience on Mother’s
Day. You can’t miss what you never had.
    But, my ex and I had a really tumultuous week –
lots of drama and fussin’ and all that as we adjust to our new
roles.
    Frankly, I really hated him last week. But I can
only spend so much time complaining about my ex before a part of my
brain says,
“Yeah, but YOU married him.”
    The guilt and shame and embarrassment I feel for
having wasted the last ten years – all of my twenties – trying
to make a miserable, fear-based marriage work sometimes overwhelms
me. It became especially acute as Mother’s Day approached.
    I wouldn’t be a mom had I not been
plagued with terrible self-esteem and an insatiable addiction to male
attention. That’s nothing to celebrate.
    Yes, my kids are amazing and I can look at the
last ten years and be thankful for that.
    But now that I know what I want, and I have
developed standards for what I want in a man – the man I want
may not want me —because I have three kids and I am
forever attached to the person who helped create them.
    Let me give you a clear picture of what I am
feeling right now. My marriage was something like this:
    Let’s say I'm on the beach with a friend,
and in the distance I see a really
beautiful island. In my head, I visualize myself living on