We Can Do (Dumb) Things

Yesterday while I was killing time at work in the morning, I did a monumentally stupid thing. I looked at an ex’s facebook page. I know. I should know better. I had unblocked him sometime in the past year because while he is the only man I ever dated and thought I want to marry this man (and as such I avoided the pain of contact of any kind for years), I had enough distance that I was simply curious to see what he’d been up to. I looked many months back, saw he had a girlfriend, thought “that’s nice” and moved on.

Until yesterday when I clicked back and discovered he has married said girlfriend sometime since I’d last looked.

I do not wish him ill will, I do not feel happy for him. As Libby says, I don’t anything him. Curiously my reaction was to feel happy for her. Not because she’d married him necessarily, though he is a catch, but because she’s in her forties and has two kids of her own and I feel like finding someone is completely impossible for women our age. So, good for her!

Still, seeing it happen for other people in their forties and feeling like I can’t seem to figure it out myself does all the things – reminds me I am alone, makes me feel lonelier, less-than, flawed, unwanted romantically, etc.

So yesterday between making pie dough and chilling the dough then rolling the dough then chilling it again then pre-baking it then cooling it then making the filling then baking it again, I made a mural I’ve been thinking about for a while.

This phrase “You can do hard things” is something I picked up somewhere – TikTok probably – and I really like it. It’s just a good mantra. But the “we” brings a more together we conquer feel than “You can do hard things” which implies you’re all on your own.

We Can Do Dumb Things, like look-up our exes. We Can Do Hard Things. Like brush off the fact that an ex (who is an ex for a reason) is living happily ever after.