Nothing But The Truth

First let me say that exposing my life to the harsh criticisms that you all are going to hurl at me is just not my style. Some might say that blogging about the truth, when the truth is not pretty, is a sickness. Who would open their admittedly screwed-up life to the caprices and abuses of strangers?

Yet, the need for containment about how I trashed my life, in the hope it would step up a notch, has been blocking me as a writer. Becoming a published writer was all I wanted. I am not young. I am, if I judge my prospective longevity on my mother's age at death, 85, more than halfway through. More incentive then, to do what I, a respectable, well-brought up Irish Catholic girl, a high school teacher in a huge city, would never have done. I never had kids. I didn't marry till ten years ago. I wanted more. And I'm never going to get it till I start telling the truth to strangers. After all, isn't that what writing is?

Let me start with the unpretty. In the past year, I quit my pensioned, permanent, comfy position as a high school English and Drama teacher in a large city. I lived in a kid-friendly uncool suburb, like the character, Sarah, in Tom Perrotta's book, "Little Children." I was bored to death. My best friend was downtown so to see her I would leave the burbs and spend overnight in her cool loft, having intense, hilarious, wonderful conversations, sometimes dancing, while drinking wine and smoking pot. She is a writer, too. We'd read poetry to one another, and recount our stories, cracking up one another. Then I'd drive back home to the burbs and go about the miseries that constituted my day to day life.

I started a small women's writing group after I took an intensive writers' course with famous, fabulous writers at a college in the city. I kept getting feedback from these women that I was an awesome writer. Talented, they said. "Quit that teaching job and write!" This was something I wanted. But how to make a living?

About the time the seven-year-itch hit my marriage, I cheated on my husband. I had a year-long affair that provided the greatest sex, and the most agonizing drama, I had ever had. I cracked open, started smoking again, stopped teaching, left my husband, moved back to the town I grew up in, a smaller city, and moved into a high rise apartment in the area of town my early friends lived in.

In the past year, I have been fired from three jobs, quit another, crashed my credit rating, and reunited with my husband. He still doesn't live with me full time. We still haven't had sex in the past year. It's been about two years since I've had sex.

We bought a small, cozy, 1000 square-foot house with the first wood-burning fireplace I'd owned as an adult. I live here with my dogs, two huge buggers, and two ancient cats. My husband spends weekends selling our suburban semi-detached.

Also, in the past year, I started supply teaching, and set up my own doggie day care. I've had two wonderful clients for a year, taught two classes of dog obedience one client hooked me up with, and was arrested for aggravated assault on the friend I was hanging with. The last item I will get to in my next post.

For now, let me say, if you have read this far, I thank you. I read Julie Powell's two books last weekend, and decided, based on her courage, that if she could open her life up for public consumption, in order to be a writer, that was what I had to do also. After all, if you always do what you've always done, you always get what you always got!