The First Day of the Rest of My Life

or

Should the Cheese Stand Alone

The idea of a blog came to me after the break up. Mr. Wrong and I had not been seeing eye to eye for quite some time. But after I threw him out, things did not get much better.  Don’t get me wrong; the freedom I felt after I closed the door on his lying, despicable face was indescribable. It’s just that I can’t seem to settle into a comfortable place no matter what I do. I keep judging myself, I have constant internal monologues, and I have trouble sleeping. My mind is a hopeless tangle of what-ifs and I-should-haves. As a temporary solution, I decided to follow the advice I often give my students and use writing for the clichéd catharsis and self-discovery that it produces. So, my dear readers, you will be receiving weekly reports (more frequent, if I can manage) of my journey out of what I am beginning to suspect may be a depression.

So that you may have a glimpse of what goes on in my life, and in order to ensure that everything I write reflect reality, I have installed a video camera in strategic places in my home. Hopefully by the end of this blog, the cloud will have lifted, and I will become myself again.

In the video above, you can see an example of what I do when I come home from work. I lie in bed, drink tea, read, (yes, I sometimes read without looking at the pages), take long baths, and generally sulk.

I don’t think I’ll be able to write much about Mr. Wrong right now, except to say that I should have seen the signs. Here are two of the most salient:

• What grown man over thirty does not have a bank account or a credit card?
• Who calls their cousin at ten o’clock every night “just to touch base”?

Anyway, I packed the rest of his belongings in a box, and took them down to the office of my apartment complex for him to pick up because I told him that I’d rather not have any contact with him as I didn’t want to be responsible if I SNAP at the sight of miserable face.  The idea of removing from my home every single item he owns appealed to me immensely, and I relished packing them in the box: some clothes (including his favorite sweater), some books, his Spiderman thermos, and of course, his precious cheese. Yes, Mr. Wrong is a connoisseur of cheese. The riper the better.

So here is the dilemma: I hate soft cheese, almost as much as I hate Mr. Wrong, but I also hate waste.  I decided not to throw the cheese out. It is a brand new, very expensive Camembert. The thing is, I had only one box, and so it was packed quite tightly, very close to the favorite sweater, as I remember. It was only later that I found out that he wouldn’t be able to pick up his items for two days. And I had already taped up the box and left it with Grendel, the Keeper of the Gate, whose idea of a response to “Good morning” is “Unrghh!”

I have done the research. I know the cheese will survive at room temperature for a couple days, but what about the clothes? Will they survive? Should I have double-wrapped the cheese in plastic? But wouldn’t that make it sweat?

On the other hand, am I putting too much effort into accommodating the needs of this vermin with whom I wasted two of my precious child-bearing years and who contributed only to my awareness of evil and my ability to withstand adversity?

Readers, I place the fate of the cheese in your hands. If in the next two days I get one request, just one, to walk down to the office and separate the cheese, I’ll do it.

I definitely did not foresee this dilemma.

As I write this I see that I may be a little obsessive.

See? Already this blog is working. Fantastic.