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Forty four years ago, NakedMom gave birth to me and became my mother. But 21 years before that (I'll let all of you do the math since she gets really pissed at me when I tell people how old she is) her mother, Nana, gave birth to her on this very day.
As you all know from reading this blog, NakedMom is both my biggest cheerleader and sometimes my absolute biggest critic. I suppose that comes with the title MOM.
She worries because I am her daughter that perhaps I am just a tad TOO NAKED on this blog, that I bare my soul just a bit too much, that the whole world doesn't need to know EVERYTHING that I tell them.
But I will share that it is precisely because she is my mother that I do absolutely everything that I do.
I'll let you come to your own conclusions about why.
Happy Birthday, JoJo. May you continue to live a long and very happy life.
so, i know this will come as a shock to some of you, but i actually had a very civil and loving conversation with david today. you know, seriously, there is still so much love there between the two of us.
and i'm honestly at a point where i'm not hurting so very much anymore so it is easier for me to not be triggered by him but to just talk to him. as long as his head seems to be in a good space. and, truthfully, mine as well.
today we were both in good places. at least it felt that way. and we were able to sort out a lot of stuff that has been bothering both of us. and reach very concrete agreements about a lot of things that have been just floating about in the wind for far too long.
and yes we did it without big fat mean divorce lawyers.
i honestly don't know if i'll need a big fat mean divorce lawyer. i know that sounds naive, probably. maybe even stupid. it's still possible that i will. but i just want to get this whole thing done.
and done as amicably as possible, honestly.
the truth is, i love david. i always will. do i love what happened to our marriage? no. but i also know, deep down, that i am equally responsible for it. it takes two people to make a marriage. i know that david really does love me. and that he actually loved me enough to walk away from our marriage before he did any more damage to either one of us.
and i have to love him for that, too. yes, it almost killed me in the process. because i wasn't at the same place mentally that he was when he chose to leave. but now? now i realize that we just were not meant to be married. we're great friends. but as marriage partners, we just do not work.
i could be all egotistical and say it is because he's just not cut out to be mr. nakedjen. and there is a modicum of truth to that statement. but in all truthfulness, i'm not cut out to mrs. david sals. i never was! let's remember i remained jennifer neal even after we were married.
and there in, i believe, is the answer to this conundrum.
i am nakedjen. and perhaps i am not meant to be anyone's wife. ever. i can love truly, madly, deeply. i really can. loving david taught me that above all else. but i am so fiercely independent. i actually am quite happy on my own.
but then again i'm quite happy with the attention of the architect, as well.
so who the fuck knows?
it just was nice to be able to talk to david today about so many very important things and not throw up. or even feel like throwing up. and to actually LAUGH with him.
i do miss him. not enough to move back to santa cruz and go to saturn for dinner. but i do miss him.
And this, my friends, is why Santa Cruz is Santa Cruz.
I can not possibly imagine the students at the University of Utah even contemplating a gathering like that much less having thousands show up and actually participating.
But if they did? It would certainly be a new day in Salt Lake City!
I'll admit it. I'm doing my very best to find my own little enclave of like minded folks here in Mormonland and I really do believe that I'm doing a good job of it. But the day that we all gather naked in Temple Square to say "It's 4:20, dude" and light up without fear of being hauled off to jail?
Well, that will be the day that I know that I am truly home.
However, I will share that when my plane landed here in Salt Lake late last Friday evening, I actually did let out a sigh of relief. And it was almost as if I started to actually breathe again. Like I had been holding my breath the entire time I was on my vacation. That I had forgotten how to breathe when I wasn't here with my very special healing view of the snow covered mountains.
Salt Lake, truthfully, is becoming more and more like home. But thoughts of those crazy kids at UCSC and those waves that crash below the hills of West Cliff and those redwoods of Bonny Doon and those dogs that bark and run off leash at Lighthouse will always make me smile, smile, smile.
This is not at all the blog post that I was intending to write. However, as I started to write the blog post that I was intending to write, one that was about purple glittering clitoris shaped geodes and 240 million years of careful construction, other words, other thoughts, other feelings kept getting in the way.
So you’re getting those first. The purple glittering 240 million year old clitoris will just have to wait for another day when all this emotional upheaval and what will certainly feel like silly drama has been properly released.
Shall we? Well, I think I shall, at the very least.
I received an email from David (from this day forward I shall refer to DearSweetDave as David. Why? Because that is how he has chosen to refer to himself. I never knew him as David. I have always known him as Dave or even DearSweetDave. But he is no longer DearSweetDave to me and since he really isn’t even Dave to me anymore and I don’t feel comfortable calling him Ex anything since that feels , well, so rather like he’s been wiped out with an eraser or something even worse, I’ll just refer to him as he calls himself. David.) that said he had read my blog and enjoyed the entry with the poetry.
I wrote him back and thanked him and reminded him that the poetry was very old, from my days of living in London, but that I was glad he appreciated it all the same. I also then shared with him that we had quite an adventure on the cruise today what with our tour bus breaking down on the side of a highway in Mexico and all of us having to sit in the sun waiting for another tour bus to come and rescue us! It could have been a scene from a movie it was so classic. I also shared with him that I was ready to go home. That now that I actually live near my sister, vacationing with her isn’t such a novelty. And that a cruise is never my first choice for a vacation anyway! Plus I miss my dogs.
He wrote back and said to me, “Say hi to the puppies for me.”
It was then, well, it was then that I got upset. This is also the point in the story where many of my most devoted Nakedjen readers are going to feel compelled to write to me and tell me that I need therapy. For those of you getting ready to fire up your email programs, may I please remind you that I already am in therapy. Telling me I need to go more often or switch therapists or try a new drug combination is only going to serve to upset me further. So let’s find another reason to write to me, shall we?
I will agree with most of you right now that it is probably not worth my getting upset over David saying, “Say hi to the puppies for me.”
That doesn’t change the fact that I did. Very upset.
When David left last October, he not only left me, he left the dogs, as well. He not only broke my heart, he broke their hearts, too. And while I was a human with a brain that could somehow, someway wrap itself around the fact that he no longer wanted to be a part of my life, Buddha and Stella still have no idea what on earth happened to him?
He just left. Packed everything that he believed was his and disappeared.
As much as I am their world, David was a very large part of their world, as well. I know for a fact that those dogs miss him. Terribly.
How do I know?
Because whenever they see anyone who remotely resembles him in body shape they take off to go and greet the person as if he is the prodigal son returned at last! And the look of sadness and disappointment on their faces when they reach the person and realize that it is someone other than David entirely just breaks my heart. Every time.
But they do it over and over and over again. My eternal optimists, they hold out hope in their huge puppy dog hearts that one day that man walking towards them will be their beloved David.
I don’t think David even realizes how much they truly miss him. I know he doesn’t miss them, really. I’ve asked him.
“Say hi to the puppies for me.”
I wonder how he possibly expects them to reply?
