A shout-out to my hero

I tell other people all the time about my friend, who's also my hero. I tell her too sometimes, though probably not enough.

This is a woman who got her degree, the degree I wished I'd gotten, and moved to NYC, the city that matches my heartbeat and makes me feel alive. She was living my dream, and I was so proud of her.

Then she realized that her shitty writing job wasn't cutting it, and quit to become a full time professional dog-walker and pet-sitter. I've never seen her so happy, healthy, and fulfilled.

She is a fearless, radiant example of everything I hope to be, and I consider myself truly blessed to have her in my life.

This is a woman who can make the mundane seem fantastical through a beautifully crafted Facebook status or blog post. Someone who takes the lemons hurled at her by life, and crushes them with her bare hands, conjuring up spices, herbs and vodka and turning them into the most badass cocktail known to humanity. It's called the Hilary. It's not for the faint of heart.

Even during what can only be described as a hellish month, her online presence makes me laugh - huge, loud belly laughs - through the tears and my furrowed brow of fear and concern.

Thank you for somehow managing to make each life you touch happier and lighter. I hate to end this on such a cheesy note, but let's imagine it's the most delicious baked camembert or sharp cheddar or something else exquisite: Thank you for being you.

Hilary, you are spectacular.

xoxo

Two Weeks

It's been a strange two weeks.

Ten days ago, I was excitedly getting ready for a first date, with a cute guy I'd met online. I felt nervous, a little nauseous even, but I'd been feeling under the weather all week. I brushed it off as pre-date jitters and got on my bike to meet him in the city. We met in the park, and left our bikes outside a cafe as we strolled around, talking music, movies, work, and about our friends and families. The time flew by, and as I raced home on my bike, I couldn't wait to see him again. I couldn't stop smiling, and, for the first time in almost a year, I had butterflies.

* * *

Later, as I sat in my home office typing an email, I started to suspect the butterflies had given way to PMS. As I fidgeted in my chair trying to find a comfortable position, I thought back to my earlier nausea, and how I'd been feeling a little off all week. Was I coming down with something? Or was it just the monthly trials of womanhood? My period should be starting any day now, right? I glanced at the calendar, counting back the weeks. I counted again.

I'm late.

* * *

It's 4 p.m. The pharmacy doesn't close until 7 p.m., but I have a team meeting via video conference at 5 p.m. For the next hour I sit there, a slow panic rising, as I try to trace back over the last four, five, six weeks.

    Before my vacation. That guy I'd been seeing. The condom that broke.

    But he'd realized right away; he didn't finish inside me. I know the chances of being pregnant are slim to none, but my periods have always come like clockwork. If I am pregnant, that's when it happened.

    I log in to the video conferencing suite, smiling at my colleagues. Working remotely, we rarely all see each other, and under normal circumstances I'd welcome the chance to see everyone's faces. But all I can think about is peeing on a stick.

* * *

I've always been a list-maker. To-do lists, shopping lists, packing lists . . . living a life as unpredictable as mine equipped me with not only the desire for order, but the ability to soothe any anxieties or upheaval with lists.

    My eyes are glazing over as my colleagues nod along to what our boss is saying. I pull my notebook towards me, the same notebook I'm writing this in now, and flip it open, drawing a line down the middle of the blank page. At the top of the left column, I write PROS, on the right, CONS. 

    Forever linked to a guy I don't want to date, I wrote in the right-hand column. I knew from my brief time in childcare how hard co-parenting was when you loved someone, and how impossible it could be when you didn't share any of the common values and beliefs child development depends on. I knew I didn't want to raise a baby with someone I didn't want to be with.

    In the left column, without thinking about why, I write But it's a baby, reminding myself of the famous List in Friends, when Ross realizes that though Julie was a great woman, she wasn't the right woman for him, because she wasn't Rachel (or, you know. Rachem. Oh, typos and the trouble they cause!)

    Costs a lot of money, under CONS. Then, under PROS, but I make a lot of money. A new category is drawn up at the bottom of the page: QUESTIONS.

    How would work and having a baby . . . work? I ask myself. Back up to the CONS: mom isn't here, and I don't want to raise children in the UK. Another PRO: My friends here are wonderful mothers, and would be an incredible support system. Also: I can make really good baby food, a nod, I think, to my general sense of feeling better prepared for family life after my time in childcare. I have no illusions about knowing everything I need to, but I know I have a better idea than many single women my age.

    Last question: How would having a baby affect my application for immigration to the US?

* * *

 

Finally, my team meeting is over. I grab my phone, keys and jacket, pull my shoes on, and race downstairs, pushing my bike out the door. I weave through the dark streets to the pharmacy and pull up outside. Deep breath.

    Silently cursing the condoms as I walk past them, I scan the shelves, looking at the many options in front of me. Some boxes have three tests, others only two. Some come with ovulation tests, or tell you how far along you are. I figure this isn't the time for thriftiness, and grab the box of three, the most highly recommended - and most expensive - brand, and turn in the direction of the check-outs. Waiting in line, I see a basket of caramel-filled chocolate eggs, and (thinking they'd probably help no matter what the results of the test are) I grab three.

    The young guy at the register picks up the box, turning it over in his hands.

    "These don't have security tags, do they? Don't want them setting off the alarms."

    "No," I say evenly. "Because that would be embarrassing."

    He looks up, mortified, and I smirk at him, letting him know I'm just busting his chops. I don't want to be a cliché, I want to be the woman who can buy a pregnancy test as if it's no big deal, a big joke.

    He bags the test and chocolate and I walk out, stuffing one of the eggs in my mouth whole. If I'm about to give up drinking, my body's going to have to get used to me mainlining chocolate as a coping mechanism.

* * *

I'd heard people say those three minutes can be some of the longest minutes we experience as women. I plugged my iPod into my stereo and hit play. At the end of this song, I'll go back into the bathroom and check, I tell myself. Another chocolate egg disappears.

* * *

There it is, then.

    Not Pregnant.

    The instructions say to take another test in three days if I still haven't gotten my period. I tidy the box away, throw out the stick, wash my hands. I make a cup of tea, and take it upstairs with the last chocolate egg, sitting back down at my desk, where my PROS and CONS list still sits.

    I smile, breathe, flip the page, and start a new list for tomorrow. FRIDAY TO-DO LIST....

* * *

 3 days later and still nothing.

    It's Sunday morning. I've pretty much forgotten Thursday's events; I'd been on another date with the cutie from the park, seen a great live concert, made plans for a weeknight dinner date. I'm getting dressed for a long walk on the beach, packing a picnic, pulling my walking boots on. I'm enjoying the weekend, with last week's drama far from my mind.

    As the pebbles crunch and shift beneath my feet and the wind whips my scarf about my head, my thoughts drift back to the moment I walked back into the bathroom. In that moment, I knew which outcome would disappoint me, and it was right there, glaring at me from the sink.

    All the logic and reasoning I had couldn't take away the sadness that softly washed over me when I saw the single blue line. Not even a hint of that second line that would have turned my life upside down. No lists could tell me how I felt better than that fleeting, painfully authentic moment.

    I was relieved, of course I was. I was glad I didn't have to think about the money, whether I'd need to move, the conversation I'd need to have with the guy. I was glad I didn't have to call him and turn his life upside down too, or figure out how to raise a child with someone I didn't want to be with.

    But when I looked inside myself, I saw how much I'd wanted the test to read positive. And now . . . now I had to find a way to un-see it.

    By the time I get home that evening, my period has started. Again, expecting relief, I am hit with another wave of sadness. No excitement, no thanking God for my freedom. Just a gaping 'what if?' in my apparently empty womb.

* * *

I spend the next week focusing on other things. I work, I flirt with the guy, go on two more dates. I start to really like him. We share so many core values, appreciate similar things in life, want the same things out of life. He has a great smile, and although there are no big fireworks, I am definitely attracted to him. I've learned to value the fireworks much less in recent years, and our compatibility speaks to me much louder than sexual chemistry. There's definitely something between us, though I know he's not in a place where he wants a serious relationship, so I try to move slowly, hoping I don't scare him off.

    It doesn't make a difference. After only ten days, he tells me as I'm walking through the park where we first met that he doesn't feel the necessary spark, or perhaps just isn't ready to date at all. "Still broken" he says. Either way, it's over. I cry, just a handful of tears that were as surprised to find themselves on my cheeks as I was to feel them there.

    I look out at the river, gazing at the blue skies, thankful for such a beautiful day when the forecast said rain. I wrap my scarf around my neck a little tighter, dig my hands deeper into my pockets, and walk away.

We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve

Though this was originally written as my annual Facebook note reflecting on the year, I thought this would be a good place to share it too.

What a year.

My mind struggles to grasp the year in its entirety: there has been so much change and growth that it's hard for me to step back and really see what this year has brought.

Let's think about where I was at the end of 2012: in Amsterdam, reaching for my independent self as I prepared to transition yet again, from Italy to London, one au pair job to another. In the months leading up to that trip, I had been dumped, discovered the power of Don Miguel Ruiz and, through his words, found my own power and sense of self, which I had freely given to those I had loved for too many years.

I made commitments to myself for 2013, the content of which were not as important, I found, as the act of committing to myself instead of others. I found comfort and strength in my promises, not because I kept them in the ways I'd initially set out to, but because of their greater underlying principle: that 2013 was going to be the year I put myself first, and stopped diminishing who I was through compromises made in, and for, relationships that did not serve me in the same ways I was willing to serve them.

No more would I, Jade Forester, serial monogamist and Queen of the Rebound, get myself into a codependent, dysfunctional relationship. No more would I choose saving others above saving myself.

2013 has been the year I learned how to save me - from myself, mostly, but also from those who would seek to de-rail the progress I'd made at the end of 2012. By the end of last year, I'd thought the thoughts and was talking the talk. In 2013 I walked the walk.

As with every path I've started down in my life, it didn't go quite according to plan - I didn't completely swear off dating, or sex, and whether that was the right choice is of course moot at this point. The goal was the find out who I am when I'm not being defined by my relationships with men. Not only to find out who I am, but to figure out if I even liked that person - and if not, take positive steps towards becoming the woman I want to be, a woman I can respect and love more than I loved being in love or planning my future. I had to start living in the present and be happy doing so.

Though I wouldn't be so arrogant as to sit back at this point and say "I'm done," as if a person's growth is something that is ever complete, I can say that I achieved my goals for 2013. I found out who I am when I'm not busy being a girlfriend. I found out that I'm pretty awesome on my own, and that I have the most amazing family around me - and I mean not only those that I'm related to, but those who came into my life along the way, and stayed. I found out that I don't need to go looking for love; I am surrounded by so much I can hardly breathe, I am so overwhelmed with gratitude at the blessings I have been given.

I realized I didn't know myself well enough in the past to have patience with those who fell short of my high expectations, or the clarity to realize the depth and breadth of the ways I contributed to others' unhappiness. I am working towards being more self-aware and to change old habits and assumptions, and am quietly optimistic about the future.

I have never been so humbled by any year as I have this one, though I'm sure many of my closest can think of others that my have been more outwardly momentous. But the journey from child to adult isn't always greatest in the milestone moments: the distance between student and graduate, or Maine and the UK, was not so great as the miles I travelled within myself this year, as I searched to discover and redefine who I am and what I want.

I am exhausted, yes, but exhilarated. I have never felt so ready to take on whatever life throws at me. Never have I had so much to be thankful for, or as many reasons to smile throughout my day. Never have I felt so fully my capacity for good, or my strength for change, or my ability to achieve my goals.

I don't have any resolutions as I move into 2014 beyond this: keep it up, Jade. Remind yourself of how far you've come, and what you are capable of when you open your eyes, your mind, your heart, to what you need.

Show yourself every day that are worthy of love - and that means loving yourself. Remember Stephen Chbosky's words from The Perks of Being a Wallflower: 'We accept the love we think we deserve.'

Show those who support you how much they mean to you whenever you have the opportunity to do so. Remember how much they've done for you, and don't forget it or take them for granted. Remember how it felt when you withdrew yourself from them, and don't let it happen again!

Open yourself up to falling in love again, even if it doesn't look or feel like it used to. If you don't want the next relationship to end like all the others, you probably don't want it starting like all the others. Take your time. Breathe. Hold on to yourself without holding yourself back.

Remember the four agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don't take anything personally
3. Don't make assumptions
4. Always do your best

The Perils of Taking Online Dating Offline

*This is not an exploration of the pros and cons of online dating - nor offline dating, for that matter. This is just a story about a Friday night. Or more accurately, it's a story about a Saturday morning.

This was too perfect...

I woke up on Saturday at 1:24 p.m. - which is about four hours later than I ever sleep in. I rubbed my eyes, my head, wondering if the previous night was just a bizarre dream. I check Facebook - the most reliable and uncompromising record of recent history in most of our lives.

Status update from the early hours of Saturday morning: OH. MY. GOD. NO.

I wish I could just leave it there. I wish a lot of things with regard to Friday night. However - in the interest of processing what happened, and hopefully preventing someone else making the same mistakes - I will share my experience with you, albeit with a bit of reluctance.

The picture: I'm sitting in my gorgeous apartment on Friday night, having finished work late. I'd eaten a delicious dinner, read my book, and had settled down with Netflix and a glass of red for the evening. At a few minutes past midnight, my evening bliss was broken by the buzz of my phone ringing.

It was the guy I'd been talking to online for a few days, with whom I'd made plans for Saturday afternoon. We'd talked about going for a walk through Bute Park, which runs alongside the River Taff in the centre of Cardiff, then maybe finding a pub for a quiet drink. I hadn't felt butterflies, but he seemed nice enough, cute enough, just enough for a Saturday afternoon.

I assumed he was calling to talk about our plans, or possibly to cancel. It was late, and I was tired, but I picked up the call, curious to hear his voice before meeting in person.

As soon as I picked up the phone, I could tell he was having a good night. He laughed a lot, I could hear the smile in his voice and it was infectious. He cajoled me into agreeing to meet him for a drink, and I dragged my butt off the couch and got dressed - nothing too impressive, I didn't want anyone to think I was prepared to put in effort for a last-minute meeting after midnight.

As I walked toward the buzz of Cardiff Bay, I couldn't keep myself from yawning and hoped the guy wouldn't be too put off by my obvious exhaustion. Turns out, I needn't have worried about what he was going to think - about me or about anything else. He was already wasted, with the sole intention of getting even more so, and no interest in getting to know me at all.

As we walked into a bar, we ran into three boys - I can't call them anything else, they looked like they were about 14 - and ended up chatting with them for a while. One was tall with Bieber-sweep hair, and formed an instant drunken bond with my date. One wasn't drinking, and was kind of cute (for a man-child.) The third one . . . well, he at least had some interest in getting to know me. Over lunch, the next day.

I politely declined, at first out of respect to my date and the plans for the following day, which I could tell I was probably going to cancel at this point, especially after he went outside with his new little bro to smoke a cigarette. Dating smokers just isn't my thing.

Before they went outside, Bieber asked me what I wanted to drink and then bought me some sickly pink cocktail that I couldn't drink. I pretended to be sorry, he pretended to be offended. Or perhaps he was truly offended. Either way, I ordered three shots of tequila and said thanks for the drink, while his two friends, and my date, looked at me with bewildered admiration.

Manchild #3 asked me again if he could meet up the next day for lunch. I asked him how old he was.

"I'll be 22 in nine days." I couldn't help myself, I burst out laughing. I almost told him I was 24-and-three-quarters, but caught myself.

He was persistent, showing his age as he began to beg - beg! - me to let him take me to lunch, or coffee, or anything. At a couple points, he leaned in to kiss me, and my own laughter wasn't enough to stop him, though pushing him away to arms' length was.

He told me he was mature for his age, in spite of my efforts to explain that a mature man knows what "No" means without continuing to beg for what he's already been denied. I continued to decline his offers, less politely, for a myriad reasons, some more legitimate than others - but none of them were enough.

Weary from trying to explain why I didn't want to go to lunch and trying to inflate the kid's self-esteem, and feeling tired from the booze, though unfortunately nothing else, I watched Bieber stroll in with my date and announce he had to leave. Who knows what happened out there, but suddenly I was left with a swaying, slurring guy who kept calling me dude (which I kind of like) and accidentally hitting my boobs every other emphatically gesticulated sentence (which I didn't like.)

Now he was sufficiently shit-faced, the topic of conversation (read: monologue) turned to getting high and coming back to my place to hang out. He leaned in to kiss me, his tongue rapidly going from right to left as it approached my face. He didn't even register my look of disgust or my laughter as I pushed him away and told him I'd be going home alone.

Regardless of any "stranger danger" element here - the guy was clearly harmless, just someone who'd had a bad week and gotten too drunk to do anything but drink and rant about work - there was no way in hell I was bringing anyone home with me. I told him as much. I didn't want to help him walk anywhere, I didn't want to help him up four flights of stairs, I didn't want him crashing at my place, I didn't want to deal with him in the morning, I didn't want to meet up in the park.

I. Don't. Want. You.

I wasn't sending mixed signals, I was being completely unequivocal. I was done here.

Well, almost done. He'd lost his sense of direction, and I knew he had to get to the other side of the city, probably two miles from where he currently stood, leaning on me for support. I hailed him a cab, took out the cash I'd withdrawn to pay for drinks, and gave it to the driver, telling him to take my date to wherever he could unlock the door.

Waving them off, I turned, shuddered, and walked home, where I finished the bottle of wine I'd started earlier, and looked at the clock. Almost 3 a.m., I though, shaking my head. What a weird night.

After finishing the wine, the movie I was watching on Netflix, and skyping with my best friend to regale her with my crazy night, I collapsed into bed at around 4 a.m., struck by the surreality of the night, and laughed gently to myself as I drifted off to sleep.

Now, I realise I shouldn't have gone out for a drink with a guy who calls at midnight. But when he said, "Why not?" I literally didn't have (or perhaps want) a reason why not. I just moved to a city where I don't know anyone, and was getting pretty tired of sitting on my own in the evenings. I wanted the spontaneity of deciding to go out at midnight, having a wonderful time with a guy I'd just met, and coming home again. The potential was there. Unfortunately, the guy was not.

I think I'll keep my spontaneous meetups to the daylight hours from now on.

Lost in Transition

When I was offered my first well-paid job outside childcare after a year and a half of being broke as a live-in au pair, my first response was: Oh my god – I'll be able to afford my own apartment. I can walk around naked whenever I want to. And drink. And play loud music. I can be drunk, naked, and dancing whenever I want to! Huzzah!

That makes my post-childcare life sound like one big naked party, and it isn't – after all, I still have to work at my new job to get paid. But there's nothing like live-in childcare to make you truly appreciate being in your mid-twenties – even if it's only at the weekends. And occasionally on Tuesdays.

Being an au pair taught me some of the best – and worst – things, about children and families, about the relationships between mothers and nannies, about education and child development, and about myself. The biggest and most important thing I learned is that I will never take another live-in childcare job again in my life. I may even move out of my house when I have my own children. Well, that might be an exaggeration, maybe, but my 18 months as an au pair for three different families put my feelings about starting my own family into perspective.

I used to be one of those girls who would melt at the sight of babies, cooing and fussing over the small children I saw on the bus or in the supermarket. I have one other friend who is like this, and she once said her uterus would ache at the sight of a baby – that's what I felt once, too. The uterine ache of longing for babies.

Then I started getting paid to look after children.

As much as I love children, I never planned to go into childcare after college – it was close to last on my list of post-graduate jobs I would be willing to take – but after moving back to the UK from the States and discovering that care jobs were the only ones available in abundance, my choices were narrowed down to one question: old people or children?

I chose childcare because I thought I'd be good at it – or at least, better than I knew I'd be in eldercare. I'm ashamed to admit that old people who need care – especially personal care – gross me out and frankly scare me. I met plently of eldercare workers who said the same of children, so I guess they're in the right job, and that's what I was afraid of the most. I didn't want to be in a job looking after old people when I knew I'd be the wrong person for the job. They didn't deserve to have me looking after them.

I quickly learned that I wasn't exactly the right person for childcare, either.

My first 'job' as an au pair was in Wales, living with a close family friend, someone I've known since I was nine years and have always considered a big sister to me. When I moved back to the UK, I needed a place to live, and Lucie needed some help with the kids and the house. We were eager to reconnect and grateful that we were able to help each other out; we both felt like we were each getting the better end of the deal, me room and board plus as much pocket money as she could afford to pay me, her a clean(er) house and childcare that allowed her to establish and develop her new business as a grower of fresh produce and herbs as well as herbal bodycare products.

Another upside? Buying birthday / Christmas / baby shower gifts are a snap!

Looking after her two children didn't feel much like a job, but it was definitely hard work. Thankfully, their mother and I, despite seven years without seeing each other and rarely writing, seemed to have near-identical childcare philosophies. Food and nutrition, playtime, schooling, discipline: whatever was happening, we gave the children consistent messages, which I didn't know at the time was a rare and precious thing. When the children were with their fathers, or away at sleepovers, we would get all the mums together and go out dancing, or stay in and cook delicious meals that were uninterrupted by children, and these women became my friends, my support system. Having to move back to the UK, away from my mom and my college friends, could get lonely sometimes, but they were always there for me. I felt completely at home with them, and loved all their children too. We were one big happy [crazy] family.

Lucie and me on a to-scale bouncy Stonehenge. The kids complained about it being too wet. We had a blast.

My next two jobs were far from Wales, with families I didn't know, and I'm not sure whether I truly had less personal space during my time with these families or if I was simply more aware of the fact my space was being invaded by strangers instead of people I considered my family. I was still lonely, more so than when I'd first moved, but I was never alone. Close by there was always the noise, and the needs, of others.

To cut a long story short – though I've got plenty of stories from those families that I'm sure I'll share in other blog posts – my third au pair job ended abruptly in May just as I was being approached by someone from the Mozilla Foundation to work on their Open Badges team, and I was suddenly back in Wales, looking at potential apartments online, and getting set up with my new position at Mozilla. Within two months, I had a new laptop, I'd been flown back to Maine for the team retreat, and my bank account was in shock, having reached a figure it hadn't seen since I was in high school.

This summer has been one of transition. I try to use “transition” instead of “limbo” to describe my life, because being in limbo feels static, and out of my control. Transition means change, and I like change. It's been a long summer, with many steps forward and almost as many steps back – but I saw somewhere that optimism is seeing one step forward and one step back as a cha-cha. I like that.

On Monday, I'm supposed to be moving into my new apartment – which, after weeks of delays and staying with friends and in hotels, has been a long time coming. I will have my grown-up job, my all-to-myself apartment, and my friends will be living nearby. Bring out the wine and turn up the music, for I will no longer be in transition, no longer in limbo.

I will be on my own, but I won't be lonely. I'll be dancing.