#NerdsUnite: Confessions of an Unwed Bride

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Julie Wilson

Fear.

I’m so scared. Like panic attack scared.

When you lose your other half, when you lose a future that was promised to you, when you wore a ring that made you think the search was over and that your future is set you enter a time of confusion and brokenness. You lose your life.

You watch it crumble into little pieces and then you crumble as well.

You then lay in your bed with a blanket over your head, watch mind-numbing TV with a hoodie protecting your tear strewn face from the world, you eat all the ice cream in the pint, cry your heart out and work out until you can’t move anymore.

To recover is to pick up the pieces and put each one back together. You can easily find the pieces. But then you may find that you just aren’t sure how to put it all back together.

That’s where I am today. I no longer hysterically cry (umm, okay, maybe every once in a while, but not every day). I can make it through the day without tears streaming down my face as I hope that my (all male) co-workers don’t notice. But yet I feel as though I am carrying all of the pieces of my life in my arms, dropping a piece here and there and then picking them up and adding them back to the pile. I don’t know how to put them back together. How to feel whole again.

I have so many questions that I am asking of myself.

What would happen if you and he did get back together? Would everyone still hate him? What will they think of me?!?

Should I stay in LA? I can’t move back home to Florida. Should I move to a new state?

What am I doing?

Where am I going?

Did I just waste the last 7+ years of my life?

What do I want?
note: I have always had a strong sense of self (or thought I did?). The fact that I don’t know the answer to this is fucking shocking to me.

Now what?

I have answers for none of these.

This only adds to the noise inside my head.

Luckily, I have this amazing, amazing, amazing yoga teacher. Before every class she will talk for a few minutes about everyday life, usually tying in a piece or element of Hindi scripture. I swear this woman somehow knows exactly what I am going through. She’s spoken about changing bad habits (Samskara or “brain scars”) right when I’m realizing that I can’t hang out with my ex on a weekly basis forever. She’s told the class about the Veil of Maya (illusion) and how when we act out of character it pulls at our souls and makes us uncomfortable. “Wow, really lady? You don’t say. Light bulb!” That was right when my ex and I were trying to work things out and I did NOT trust this person and was doing things that were extremely uncharacteristic of myself: going through his personal stuff such as email, bank account, facebook, etc. It was through hearing her speak that I have made some big, positive changes in my life.

On Friday I almost had a break-down due to the above questions. THE NEXT DAY she spoke about Akhilandeshwari, The Hindu Goddess of “Never Not Broken”.

Akhilandeshwari is a Sanskrit word; Ishwari means goddess or female power and Akhilanda means never not broken. A play on words. A joke because even her name is broken since it’s a double negative.

Instead of being a weak figure as one might presume, she actually draws her power from being broken. She is free of Samskara. Being broken means you now have a CHOICE on how your future plays out. You can put your puzzle pieces back together how you want to.

My favorite attribute of this goddess is that she rides a crocodile. My teacher explained that the crocodile represents our fear. She went on to explain how crocodiles kill. After they get their prey in their jaws, they bring them into the water and spin them around a couple of times. This completely disorients them (which is exactly what fear does to a person).

Akhilandeshwari embraces her fear and uses it to navigate down the river, which like life, is always moving, always changing, always flowing.

As I sat on my yoga mat I learned that I can take time to just sit with my fear and uncertainty. Maybe I don’t have to have answers to my questions today. I don’t have to know where the river is taking me.

Be with one with your fear.

Ride it, baby.

#namaste

#NerdsUnite: Confessions of an Unwed Bride

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Julie Wilson

Since my broken engagement I look at Facebook in a whole new light. It went from a fun place to see what friends are up to and to declare the positives of my life to a site that I knew was only holding misery for me in the form of status updates. Yet, I still can’t stop myself from logging in every day.

Here’s the breakdown on my social media breakdown.

Part I: Changing Your Relationship Status

I never would have thought that changing my relationship status on fb would be as traumatic as it ended up being for me. I made it into this big production. My ex and I sat down together at our computer and removed the status of engaged from each of our profiles. After I removed it I jumped to my profile and upon seeing the change on my wall activity, freaked and promptly removed it, hoping that no one saw it in the 2 seconds it was there. Then I clicked off of my profile, freaked, and clicked back on it to double check that it was not there. I asked him to remove it from his wall activities as well. I was soo embarrassed that our relationship had failed, there was no way I was about to broadcast it. I’ll never forget how painful it was the next time I logged on and went to my profile. After years of being together, there his picture wasn’t. To no longer have his picture show up on my profile page was the social media representation of our lives no longer being connected.

I don’t have a relationship status currently; I just can’t bring myself to do it.
To say “Single”.

Part II: Stalking

Oh, certainly the most shameful of my Facebook activities. After his account was no longer linked to mine, I began the almost daily act of typing his name into the search bar to look at his page. Like religiously. I would go through his friend list to see if he had added “her” yet (he still hasn’t). I know that because I checked it today (even if you’re reading this like a month from now, I still probably checked his profile on whatever day it is). Every time he would post something I would rip it apart trying to figure out what he meant by it. Self-inflicted torture on a daily basis.
 
He’s not the only one I Facebook stalk, though. I also frequently torture myself by going to “her” page and starting at her picture. She’s so beautiful. I spend way to much time comparing myself to her and thinking, “Okay, I get why he cheated on me. She’s taller than I am, younger than I am and she doesn’t have a big nose like I have.” Her happy posts leave me livid. How can her life go on as normal when she helped destroy mine? When my ex and I were still trying to work it out I would check her page for when she was out of town so that I knew when I didn’t have to watch his every move. Now it’s just so I can see her foursquare check-ins and breathe easy knowing I won’t run into her. I fear the day I see her in LA, I want to rip her face off so badly. Like I don’t care if I go to jail badly. Ugh, not my normal state of being. I had hoped that by deleting the one mutual friend that her and I shared I would no longer be able to see her page, but no, that bitch’s page is public.

Part III: Unfriend Your Ex

This was just as painful for me as changing our relationship status and just as necessary in moving on as Part II so clearly illustrates. You both need your own private space to pout and to announce to the world when you start dating again. The day he posted, “Cleaning house and starting over” I remember knowing exaaactly what he meant. I quickly opened his friends list and saw right away what he had been referring to: he had deleted everyone in MY life. My friends, my relatives, my brother and (this got me shaking with anger) my mother. She loved him and treated him like a son. I was soo mad at him. I texted him right away. “How am I going to explain this to my mom?” I understood completely why he did it. He was the cheater and he felt like all of my friends and family were constantly judging him (which I’m sure they were). A few days later we talked about deleting each other. The NEXT DAY he deleted me before I had the chance to delete him. Of course, once again, he got a seriously angry text from me. He was so confused (“I thought we agreed on this”) but I was just a ball of emotion, shocked that he actually went through with it (and secretly pissed that I didn’t get the satisfaction or empowerment from deleting him).

Deleting your ex obviously makes stalking them a bit tricky. I feel relieved that I can no longer see his updates and I feel better knowing that his life is NOT waiting for me to read about. I thought this would solve the stalking issue but alas, I discovered new ways to stalk. I’ll go to his info page and click on our mutual friends and then proceed to go to their pages and see if he has left any comments on their pages. Not just to see what he’s up to but because I hate feeling out of the loop.

Part IV: Facebook breakdown

Like I said, the period directly after we called off our wedding was one of great embarrassment to me. When we were together I felt like I was kicking everyone’s ass in the game of life. Suddenly, I found myself in last place. When I logged onto Facebook I had nothing positive to say and people’s happiness only saddened and angered me. I wanted to scream.

It’s no wonder I feel like shit about being single again at 28. Every time I look at facebook I am harshly reminded of my singleness. Honest to god, no exaggeration, every week someone I know is getting engaged, married or having a baby.

My Facebook friends break down:

217 friends total (I only friend people that I know and like).

Take out all of the people over 35, under 18 or animals = 26

New total= 191

Engaged= 15

Married= 49

Have Children= 29

It translates to my Facebook News Feed typically being full of comments about other’s love and family lives. It’s 95 chances to see a post that I don’t fucking care to see right now.

In the one week since i have taken this data, one person is now married and another one is engaged. Sometimes I just want to scream, “Hey everyone: Please pause your lives for a moment! I need to get back on track!

I should delete my account or just simply stop logging on.
But I’m a Facebook masochist.

#truth