Reunite THIS

As I have mentioned (possibly obsessively), my twenty-year high school reunion is coming up. In fact, it's next week. Deciding not to attend any of the 'official' events took a lot of pressure off of me, but now I'm all wound up about the one party that I was looking forward to.

I will once again be co-hosting the so-called Anti-Reunion Party. The official event name is The Reunion After-Party, but I'll be the one there early to welcome any stragglers who skip or defect from the actual reunion. Like I said - I was excited about it... until last night. Last night, I met up with my cohorts to make our preliminary plan for the party (um, we're gonna unlock the door and have a keg...) and decide on our 'safe words' to get each other out of uncomfortable conversations - I can't reveal our secret code words here, but if you happen to see me acting like a chicken (an actual chicken), then PLEASE come save me from whoever has cornered me.

All of that was fine. It wasn't until my accomplices started giggling over their 'People That I Hope Show Up So I Can Flirt Shamelessly With Them' lists that I got a little bit sad. Not only do I not have one of those lists, but I'm pretty sure that the extra weight I'm carrying and the sadness in my eyes will ensure that I'm not on anybody else's list. As they clicked through facebook profiles and flipped through old yearbooks, I felt worse and worse.

I'm not looking to hook up with anybody that I went to high school with. I'm not looking to hook up with anybody at all right now... but it would be nice to be flirted with. It would be nice to be desired. It would be big fun to hear 'I had the biggest crush on you back then'... but I wasn't that girl then. I was smart and nice and fun. Everybody's friend. Nobody's crush... and I'm not that girl now. Newly separated, horribly wounded, stay-at-home mother of a toddler doesn't exactly scream 'glamour' or 'fun'...

But I will suck it up and put on a sparkly top, some decent jeans and a killer pair of heels. I will smile and nod and giggle over old photos. I will not feel sorry for myself for not having a Flirt List... o.k., I'll feel a little bit sorry, but not for long. I will be fine. I'll be better than fine. I'll be me.

*Big Sigh*, *Little Shrug*

I'm still here. I'm still making it through every day. The minute-to-minute of my days isn't bad. In fact, right now it's pretty good. The Child and I seem to have found our groove again, and aside from fairly frequent two-year-old Drama Queen incidents, we are once again moving along together pretty happily.

The hardest part is the evenings. The Man and I are still 'separated'. For us, that means that after he puts The Child to bed, we sometimes watch a few minutes of t.v. - sometimes we don't - but every night we head into separate beds. Oh, and weekends are hard, too. We're in this weird limbo of wanting The Child to have good days, so we try to all hang out together. It falls flat. After our outing today, my stomach was in knots and I felt sick. Not because anything awful had happened, but because it was hard to spend time with him.

When I made my big pronouncement, I wondered if it would be a trial separation that would end in reconciliation. Now that we're a few weeks in, it just seems to be more and more clear that we're simply going our separate ways. He's made no changes to his behaviors. In fact, he's smoking more, acting a bit surly and going to fewer meetings. He's made no move to communicate any sort of feeling or emotion to me. Our general communication has pretty much broken down, and we're left throwing information over our shoulders as we walk out the door.

I had a husband and a partner and a best friend. Now I have a roommate. A roommate who's not particularly eager to spend any time with me...