Bad Date

This is an essay about a time in my life (almost 20 years ago now) of great personal, spiritual growth and transition. And the worst date of my life.

At forty-two and nearing the empty nest portion of my life, I decided to go back to school. During a critique of the first short story I wrote for class, my instructor, though encouraging, said, “I just don’t think you’ve found your voice yet.”  He was right, but not just about my writing. I had not asserted my voice in life. I cried all the way home, not because I couldn’t handle criticism but because of what his words said to me metaphorically. My attempted short story, instead of fiction, was nothing more than a true account told by an unreliable narrator, me. What I had believed was a bizarre but laughable scene disturbed the other (much younger) students. They didn’t like some of the characters, called one a jerk, thought one was emotionally abusive. This was news to me. In literature, the narrator is the speaker (in fiction, this is different than the author) who tells the story. If it is an unreliable narrator, the reader can see what is presented is not what it seems. In other words, the narrator doesn’t know what the reader can clearly see. If done well and on purpose, this is a good literary device. You can see how this might pose a problem for someone writing about their own life, passing it off as fiction. Thus, the unreliable narrator.

For the record, inexperienced writers often depict stories in the wrong light simply because they lack knowledge about the elements of literature. What is intended doesn’t always come across correctly. What seems like abuse, might not be if the writer unintentionally leaves certain facts out. I was definitely an inexperienced writer. I was also definitely an unreliable narrator to my own life. Writing was the vehicle that showed me the truth. 

 Just two years prior to taking the writing course, when I turned forty, I bragged to my childhood best friend that the milestone birthday did not faze me. I finally had life figured out. I was confident. I knew what I believed spiritually. My sense of self-worth was validated by my roles as mother and step-mother of two healthy, intelligent children and wife of a public politician. If depicted on a tarot card, I would have been the support beam beneath an ivory tower that was crumbling. Having seemingly conquered the world, I was about to embark once again on the Fool’s Journey. I’ve written volumes about this time period and coined the phrase, “Volcano of the Soul” to describe how it felt.

            A friend suggested I read The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, a twelve-week course intended to help you get in touch with your creative side.  In the first weeks of the course it is suggested the reader take themselves on a date at least once a week for a minimum of two hours. The only rules are: what you do must be for you and you alone.  No one can go with you.  It is an attempt to let your creative side (inner child) come out to play without the peering eyes and expectations of onlookers, aka family. At this point every outing I had taken had someone else’s intentions behind it.  If I went shopping by myself it was to buy something for a member of my family. Even this was against the rules. I decided to give this date thing a shot.

At forty-two, having been married twenty-four years, I went on the worst date of my life.  Even worse than when I was fifteen and asked one of my brother’s best friends to escort me to a dance. I was a sophomore in high school.  He was a freshman in college. He was the only one of my brother’s friends who had been genuinely nice to me without the agenda of getting close to my hotter best friend. I had been in love with him for years and it took all the bravado I had to ask him out. He agreed and picked me up in the black mustang I had stalked all over town. He was the kind of guy who opened doors for his date! And also turned out to be the best dancer at the party. At the end of the evening, he walked me to my door but wasn’t interested in kissing me goodnight. He and his husband are very happy today.

            No, this date was even worse than when I was sixteen and the guy honked the horn in the driveway because he was thirty minutes late already and didn’t want to miss the previews of the movie we’d chosen.  He farted on the way to the movies and blamed it on me, then told me I “owed” him something for the price of the movie ticket and the gas (the car’s, not his) and stuck his tongue so far down my throat I thought I’d have to swallow a whole bottle of Listerine to get rid of the memory of him.

            I gave up on dating and married the next guy who asked me out. Well, it’s not exactly that simple but truth is like a rolling vein, every time I take a stab at it, it moves. Anyway, I’m not sure if my marriage was a mistake, because…karma and all, but take my advice and don’t get married until you know who you are. It saves everyone involved a lot of heartache.

As it turned out, having been married for decades and raising children did not make me any better at going on dates, even when I was by myself. I simply didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d never slept in a bed alone. I hadn’t been to the bathroom without interruption in over twenty years, not to mention a silent bath or a good book. How was I supposed to know what to do? I headed toward Lexington, Kentucky, the nearest real city in fifty miles of my rural hometown. Richmond was closer, but smaller and I was there all the time. Once I hit the interstate, it occurred to me how much I disliked trips to Lexington. The traffic was horrible and it took as long to get from one end of town to the other as it did to travel the whole fifty miles from home. I thought about which Lexington exit I might take and what I would find there, a shopping center, a mall, some restaurants. The only reason I ever went there was to buy my daughter’s clothes. I hated shopping and the book said I wasn’t allowed to buy for someone else on this trip, so why Lexington? I pulled over on the interstate to decide on a new destination. Nothing. Nada. Couldn’t think of a thing I wanted or needed to do except get away from the noise of the house and take myself on a date as instructed. I wasn’t hungry so no need for a restaurant. I didn’t need any clothes. I bought all mine at the Catholic Church basement sales because it didn’t yet feel okay to spend real money on myself. (Did someone say self-esteem issues😊) I sat on the northbound side of I-75, tears streaming, because I couldn’t even take myself on a stupid date.

I took the next exit and headed back toward Richmond. I drove around thinking of things I had once enjoyed doing and thought of Peddler’s Mall, a flea market opened daily and filled with booths of consigned items. Treasure hunting is what my husband and I did for pastime. I pulled in and walked around but it all looked like junk now, not treasures. It dawned on me how full of junk our house and lives were. Then, I realized it was my husband who loved this place, he who bought all the eclectic detritus that had become our abode. Once upon a time, his grandmother came to our house and when she walked in the door, she said, “Well, I see everything here but money.”  Another time, early in our relationship, a friend of my husband’s came in the house with someone who had never been there before. There was a dental stand in the living room we used as a planter, a full-sized stop light lit up for mood lighting in the corner and the dash board of a 1957 Chevy on the end table. There were bicycles hanging on every wall instead of photos or pictures. “Everything you see here is all Ralph,” the woman said. At first it hurt my feelings because I lived there too, but then I realized she was right. Nothing in our house said I lived there. I didn’t collect anything. I didn’t have a “taste” in furniture. I’d never even bought furniture. I used whatever was available, whatever he’d had before I got there. I lived in my husband’s house.

            In the back corner of Peddler’s Mall was a booth with nothing but books. I wandered in there and fumbled through the titles. In the Kentucky section were books by Wendell Berry and Janice Holt Giles. Having just been introduced to good literature through my class, I bought one of each. Reading had once only been an escape for me while I waited for my daughter to get out of dance practice. It was the only time of day I allowed myself the pleasure of reading because the waiting hour had already been built into my day as non-productive. I don’t know where I got the idea that reading was a waste of time. It is not! As a writer, I’ve learned that one must read more than they write as part of learning the craft. I took my books and went home.

            The next week, I drove straight to a used book store and sat at a table for my two-hour date, reading. After that I found other book stores and visited them each week on my “date.” In one of them was a poster on the door advertising belly dance lessons. I thought I might need some exercise, so why not? It was a two-hour lesson each week which filled my time slot. During that first session, other women dressed the part of a belly dancer. We’ve all seen on television what this looks like for a performance with all the jingles and sparkles. But for practice, this amounts to a long flowing skirt, any kind of stretchy top and lots of scarves. It’s fun to dress the part. If you really want to play, you can wrap scarves into your hair, add the hip scarf with the dangling discs and even wear a bindi, the beautiful forehead jewelry worn by Indian women. My hair was almost waist length so I could braid and wrap with beads as well. This really did fit the bill for letting out my creative inner child. (Halloween was one of my favorite holidays, after all). As soon as they got wind of what I was doing, both my daughter and my daughter-in-law wanted to join the class. It was great fun and I hated for them to miss out so it became a family thing, a woman thing I was reluctant but also happy to share. It was back to the drawing board to find a date for and by myself.

My search for enjoyable outings was a good step in learning about myself. I truly enjoyed the dance, the dress-up, the ritual. Belly dancing is an empowering act for a woman. I had previously thought of belly dancing as a seductive performance for men’s pleasure but it turned out for me to be a bonding feminist Goddess experience of sharing with other women. The seduction, for me, was to allow myself to fully engage in play. Our instructor taught a fusion style of dance, meaning that the moves were borrowed from different cultures. She said that historically, the ability to belly dance (it takes extreme fitness and tones every muscle in the body) was significant for readying oneself for childbirth. The slightly darker side of that tradition is that women danced for prospective mothers-in-law to prove their ability to carry on the family name and be chosen as a wife for their son. I have mixed emotions about this part of the tradition but I realize we borrowed this beautiful dance from a different culture and a different time. Still, it was a powerful dance performed by women, for women.

We began each belly dance class encircled, in a movement meditation which also served to stretch our muscles. The instructor asked a probing inward-looking question for each of us to consider. Each person had an opportunity to share their answer. I know they worried about my sanity and stability. It was a raw time, painful to go through, beautiful to look back on.

Because I had asked for personal growth, the Universe opened doors for me to walk through and learn. I was aligning with my true authentic self and all the events of my life seemed synchronized to that end. Tears were always just below the surface. At this time, my father-in-law was a board member for the Kentucky River Authority. He talked about the locks and dams and how the gates had been welded shut when water traffic had stopped. He checked the locks regularly by boat to see if they were holding, it was sometimes one of our family outings. I felt like nobody had been checking mine because the dam had broken loose and there was no stopping the floods that came without notice. Anything set me off. I believe it was grief for the part of me I’d given away so many years before.

            I decided I could use counseling. I looked in neighboring communities for the sake of anonymity and found a good therapist in Berea, a forty-five-minute drive across back country roads. I always liked Berea. The college there brings a concentration of creative endeavors and the downtown has a good vibe. I liked that I had no cell service on the drive so I would not be disturbed. I liked the way it felt to go to the coffee shop before my appointment, to sit among college students and hippies, and to the fair-trade store afterward. I loved everything in that store. Most of the women in my belly dance class lived in Berea and I usually saw a few friends on the downtown square. My counseling appointments became a new part of my date. They were arguably all about me, after all.

            I have written volumes of complicated pages about events that occurred in the decade of my life that began on my 42nd birthday and upturned everything I had ever known. In a simplified nutshell, it went something like this: I buried both my in-laws, two of my siblings and both of my parents, ended my 30-year marriage, my daughter moved 2500 miles away, I learned to live alone (in Berea and then my inherited family’s farm). I learned that no matter how much I loved being a mother, the role did not completely define me. I learned to take myself on dates. I acquired a Master’s degree. I met my people in the form of other writers. I learned that if I was going to collect anything, it would be books. I learned that I’d still rather buy used clothing than new, not because of self-esteem but because I hate waste. (There are so many good clothes in consignment stores.) I’d rather be in the woods than a mall. I learned new and deeper ways to listen, feel and to see God’s presence all around me. I found feathers, stones, and driftwood to decorate my house. And for a while, whenever I invited friends over to my home, every one of them said, “Wow, this looks just like you.”

Twenty years later, I am more settled and content. I know who I am but I know better than to think I’ve arrived. As a spiritual being having a human experience, I know I am not finished learning and hopefully not finished growing. In this third and final phase of my life’s work, I’m actually hoping for some of that crone wisdom. In the meantime, I again have too much junk in my house and plenty to do to keep me busy.