Loser

"She's a two-time loser," is the phrase he used to describe a twice-divorced member of his extended family. I was having a beer with a friend from high school, someone I hadn't seen in the intervening 1,000 years since graduation. That phrase hung in the air for a couple of seconds, as I deliberated over whether I should take it personally or not. I wondered if he -- happily married for many years -- automatically thought of *every* divorced person as a loser, me in particular.

We were having a nice easy time reconnecting, sharing both the good and bad bullet points of our adult lives. He knew I was divorced, and I had even shared with him some of the "why" details of the breakdown of my marriage. He certainly didn't treat me as if he thinks of me as a loser, hopelessly tainted by the stink of marital failure. I think "two-time loser" is something he just routinely says when asked about the marital status of this particular person, whose two divorces frankly seem like the least of her troubles.

But that phrase stuck in my craw (wherever the hell that is), and I have now regurgitated it up for your consumption. That phrase seems like it's a kind of shorthand I've heard used by other people -- notably all married. Instead of detailing *all* the f*ckups in someone's life to prove that this "loser" is fairly exiled in Loserville, one can long-story-short-it by just bringing up the fact that he/she is divorced. And the higher the divorce count, the easier it is to write someone off.

Even though I can see how my behavior contributed to my shitty marriage and that I stayed far, far too long in it, I don't think of myself as a loser. Unlucky? Perhaps. Emotionally unenlightened? Certainly. But a loser? Emphatically no. While my ex may not have valued any of my good qualities, I do. And I know others who do too.

Every divorce has its own story. Some are as simple and trite as The Bridges of Madison County, others as tragic as Sophie's Choice. Then there are the ones like mine, blacker than Catch-22.

Junking the Junk Food

A couple weeks ago I came across my list of goals for 2013. I found it underneath my dresser, where it must have fallen months ago, since it was blanketed by a mortifyingly thick layer of dust. I laughed when I noticed my number two goal for the year: become more organized. I assume I'm automatically disqualified from that goal, since I couldn't even be bothered to keep track of the index card listing my goals.

Although I didn't reach all my goals, I was happy to realize that I've met *some* of them. One of the biggest goals I met was avoiding junk food. I ate a lot of kale this year. A lot. In fact, if I were to suddenly snap and do something unfathomable or criminal, I think I'd have a good shot at dodging the consequences with "the kale defense," essentially the opposite of the Twinkie defense, which blamed some asshole's criminal behavior on his over-consumption of the poster child of junk food -- the Twinkie. I contend eating nothing except the highly nutritious, but slightly bitter, kale is enough to drive anyone to do desperate, crazy things. But I'm not a hardcore purist. I take my kale deliciously adulterated with lemon, apples, almonds, and parmesan cheese, in a modified version of the Waldorf salad.

Avoiding junk food wasn't just about improving my already pretty good eating habits. My bigger goal was harder: avoiding *emotional* junk food. In my case, emotional junk food is dating men who are inappropriate for me. Dating a guy who is too young is the equivalent of eating a deep-fried Twinkie. Sure, it might be momentarily appealing, but 15 minutes later, the nausea sets in. For me, dating a guy who's not looking for a long-term relationship is like eating french fries and pizza for dinner every night. I can't do that anymore. It makes me feel shitty.

Remember Bugles -- that tasteless corn-based snack in the shape of a horn? When I was a kid, I would eat one Bugle after another in a junk-food-zombie trance, even though I never really liked them! Kid logic compelled me to pick the shitty junk food I didn't even really like over apples or other healthy snack options. Dating Carny was like mindlessly eating a box of Bugles.    

Thanks to kale and Frenchy, I largely avoided junk food this year. Even if I didn't have the kale salad of relationships that I do, I feel capable of recognizing emotional junk food, which helps me take it out of my cart and put it back on the shelf before I buy it. My new goal -- besides getting more organized -- is to be able to automatically walk past the all junk food without even putting it in my cart.

50 and Unfiltered

A few weeks ago, I went to a new movie by a director whose previous films I've liked. I expected to like this movie too, but it spent a lot of time begging me to fall in love with it, which naturally is a recipe for me to hate it. Overall I found it "cringingly precious," as if this director had fallen and hit his head, and had instantly become an unlikely adoring fan of those horrible Thomas Kincaide paintings, the visual equivalent of eating a dozen heavily frosted cupcakes. As the credits were rolling, I turned to my friend and said something I normally would have left unspoken, reigned in by my filter of self consciousness. "She sure has a lot of moles," I said loudly in reference to the lead actress. It's the kind of thing I can only imagine a crotchety old lady would say after sitting through a movie she didn't really like.

This isn't the only time I've knowingly ignored my filter and just blurted out what I was thinking. But it's something I've been doing more frequently. I know the type of thing I *should* say, but I end up choosing to say the unfiltered thought instead, not just to be funny, but because it's the truth -- unvarnished, but honest. 

Like nudists and swingers, people without a filter are both fascinating and horrifying to me. Most of the filterless people I've known have been older women (think Kathie Lee Gifford), although I've known young people without filters too. For American women, middle age is often the first time we practice taking off the filter on a regular basis. Maybe all that practice without a filter in middle age is what leads to all the old women who've permanently lost theirs.

The older I get, the less tolerance I have for bullshit, which is why I've become so weary of politics and why I grew so weary of my marriage. Filtering oneself -- if you end up not saying what you really want to say -- is just another form of bullshit. Now having hit 50, I'm venturing into the second half of my life armed with a very limited capacity for bullshit and my big mouth.

Buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy ride.