D-I-V-O-R-C-E

When I was twenty-three, my marriage sank to the bottom of Lake Despair.  Okay, it hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing for the four years that it lasted, but I had tried to make it work for the sake of the son my husband (now ex-husband) and I shared.  Tomcat was three and a half the day our divorce was finalized.

I spent the weekend I turned twenty-three moving out of the home we had created, leaving the life we had made for ourselves behind.  He refused to sign the papers accepting service at first – he didn’t want a divorce, he said.  But here’s the thing: He’d been looking for a place to move, away from me and our son and closer to the mistress he’d been seeing for four years, closer to the son he shared with her.

The day we were scheduled to appear in court for the hearing on the stipulation, he didn’t even bother to show up.

Seriously, you can’t promenade alone

For my seventeen post, I’ve got another prom story to tell.  This one is about my junior prom, which was by far the most memorable prom of them all.

Despite this being a more enlightened age, I am somewhat stuck in the past when it comes to who should ask out whom.  Probably this is because I fear rejection and failure and also because I’m a big chicken.  As a result, I waited until the last possible moment to ask someone to prom.  Of course, everyone already had dates by then, so the three people I thought to ask were taken.  Out of desperation, I asked Mr. Junior.  You may or may not remember him from such other prom-related posts as “You can’t promenade alone, can you?”

But first, some back story.

Friends

Oh, Gretchen, how we miss you!

Make new friends,
But keep the old,
One is silver
And the other gold.

I learned that song as a Brownie, I think, and I’ve loved it ever since.  The trouble is, though, that I’ve always had trouble making new friends.  All of my friends (except for you, lovely internet friends, and I love you all so very, very much ♥) are friends that I’ve had since childhood – my oldest friend and I go back…um…*counts on fingers*…23 years now. Holy crap, we go back 23 years?! That’s kind of a scary thought!