Suburban Goddess

I’ve settled quite easily into my new job. I’m now the Art Director at an athletic wear manufacturer, and my job list is somewhat obscure. It’s a very small company, so we all wear multiple hats. In the past week, I’ve been a designer, a screenprinter, a receptionist, a web developer, an IT professional, and whatever you would call the person who figures out how a massive pattern plotter works (Digitizing Technician, maybe?). Eventually, I knew my photography skills would come into play, but I didn’t expect it to come in so soon.

In an effort to make penance for my previous sins, I put in a full eight hour day. Unfortunately, when I put in a full eight hours, I find myself running out of work to do rather quickly, so I started to redesign the company catalog. For fun. Because I’m stupid.

My boss wandered by while I was playing, and decided he like the design so much that he wanted to re-shoot the entire catalog. So today, he pulled out the point and shoot and played model.

My boss is not in bad shape; he used to play softball professionally, and still reminisces about his old glory days. I’m not quite sure how he ended up in the sewing business, but he and his wife are pretty shrewd business people, and it’s a pretty cool company to work for. We have a brown lab that wanders around the shop during the day; “Buddy” keeps me company when everyone is back in the plant. But today was different, because he wanted to start with our football catalog.

The jerseys were not the problem; they photograph well. One photograph was taken head-on, while the second was a three-quarter view from the back.

The problem was the pants.

I’m sorry, but it’s just *creepy* aiming a point and shoot camera at your boss’ crotch. Seriously. And the three quarter view from the back is not any better. Don’t get me wrong, he was COMPLETELY professional… but the stupid teenager inside was grossing out with every shot. His wife did not help, making comments about the size of his “package,” & further driving up the gross-out factor.

To make matters worse, some of the uniforms were a little too small for him. One particualr jersey was so tight that he couldn’t get out of it. After a moment of struggling, he walked around the corner with a quick plea, “HELP!”  And I found myself in another awkward position, with my foot against the wall as I pulled from the inside of the jersey by the massive shoulder pads until my boss popped free.

I couldn’t help but think of the HR nightmare this day would have been at my previous job… and it makes me smile. Because it may have been awkward, but it proves that everyone can still be adults without the need for governmental supervision or ridiculous hour-long classes on sensitivity or sexual harassment training.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring. I’ve learned not to even attempt to guess.

I came home yesterday to find a set of keys in my front door. As in, the key was in the lock of the house that was just broken into…

To make matters worse, while sitting on my sofa last night, D came walking in my garage door. Since my garage door is always closed, needless to say, it startled me. A lot.

The problem is that I don’t want to live a life in fear. For 33 years, I’ve lived as if I’m indestructible; that means I’m pretty far removed from reality. Since D has come into my life, I’m starting to see a base, cruel side of humanity that I thought would never touch me (No, not him; I’m talking about his “clients”). I’ve always left doors unlocked, trusting that “it won’t happen to me.”

But it did.

So now I have to re-train myself, adjusting to life as a crime victim (There are many people who will happily attest that I love to play the victim, but honestly, in this case, not so much.) I have to lock my doors, I have to become aware of the gadgets I have (had) and keep them from plain view. I have to “make it more difficult” to become a victim.

I’ve gone through life pretending to be a bad-ass. But I’m starting to realize what a target I am.

Apparently, I have to train my mother as well, who shrugged apologetically when I handed her back her keys.

As I progress further down this road called a “relationship,” I’m becoming frighteningly aware of my lack of communication skills. Luckily for me, this man seems completely in tune with that, and doesn’t allow me to shut down. (This may backfire on him at any given moment and a frying pan may go whizzing past his head.)

There’s a reason I became so stoic and reserved in my relationships (aside from fearing an assault and battery charge). For years, I was the hopeless romantic, the passionate and expressive one. I remained that way during my first marriage, but at the time I can chalk most of that up to plain old immaturity. It wasn’t a controlled, contemplative passion…. It was a “my hormones are crazy because I’m still a kid” passion.

But marriage number two is where the passion died.

I was always the outgoing type… Actually, I was just more of an attention whore than anything else. I wore scandalous outfits, talked too loud, and became disheartened when someone didn’t like me. (Thankfully, I’m over that now. At least the “people liking me” part.) Many people saw me as confident & outgoing, while others saw straight through the game and recognized my pathetically low self esteem. Either way, I was still putting myself out there. Then came Chip.

If I’d ever met my match in the attention department, it was with this man. In the beginning, I know I was a trophy. The life of the party finally found his perfect match. I could race cars, I could stay out all night, I could hang upside down in a Jeep & drink with the best of them. I didn’t give him any crap like other girlfriends did; I trusted him and let him do his thing (I always assumed I “let” him do his own thing; it wasn’t until later that I realized he was going to do it anyway.) It was a wild ride for a while, and I had a great time. But at the end of the day, Chip had his demons, and he would not (and probably never will) allow the world to see them. Chip has to be the best, the funniest, the coolest, the center of attention. Everything was a competition, even among he & I. He has to have the biggest, the baddest, the most awesome * whatever* to feel good about himself. I don’t know what drives this need, and it drove me crazy that he’d never let me in to find out. There were no vulnerabilities; he had everything locked up tight.

And at the end of the day, I wanted a partnership, not an endless party. And certainly not a popularity contest. So I stepped back, gave him the limelight, and died slowly on the inside. I lost “Kristie,” and simply became “Chip’s wife.”

Near the end, he pulled out a photograph of our wedding day… Me in a white bikini top, smiling with a glass of wine. He held it up to me.

“This is the girl I fell in love with. What happened to her?”

I was so offended by that statement because I thought I’d given him everything he wanted. I hurled back angrily, “You killed her!”

He would constantly bitch about how awful his friends wives were, so I became everything they weren’t. But it wasn’t enough, and he became more withdrawn from me. The nights he would drink just to tolerate being with me. The endless business trips where he’d party all night (and now I know who he was with). The times he would leave me to go Jeeping or racing while I stayed home with our newborn daughter… All this rage built up…

And I never said a word.

I became cold, sarcastic, bitter. I resented him and his selfishness. But I never said a word. I was always so afraid he would leave if I said anything. Yet, he left anyway… and there’s a huge lesson to be learned from that, one that I believe D does not want me to miss.

You HAVE to communicate. Even the bad stuff. The horrible insecurities, the doubts, the fears… If you don’t, you never give the other person a chance to dispel those fears. Over time, they build up, and eventually overwhelm you. They change the way you behave, the way you think about that person.

They destroy your relationship.

I’m trying to let go of years of anger and resentment that I held towards Chip. His betrayal in the end magnified everything; his behavior since the divorce continues to chafe… Yet I’m only hurting myself with this anger. I want to forgive, I want to let go, I want to learn from the colossal failure of two marriages. I want to look forward and let go of the past.

But there’s lessons to be learned, and I really want to get this thing right this time. Because the man I love now is truly something special, something different, and nothing like anyone I’ve ever known. He is truly there for me, in every sense of the word.

I want to open my heart again, because I know he will appreciate *all* of me, not just the *fun* parts. He’s proven that, and I owe him; his only request is for me to just “be yourself.”

It’s been so long that it’s taken me a while to remember who I am.