If All the World's a Stage, Then Who's Been Using My Dressing Room?
The toughest thing I've ever been asked to do was tell someone about myself.
I once bought camping gear and a cute outfit to go with it.
I hate camping.
Before ChatGPT, I looked up stats for Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson.
I hate NASCAR.
I once bought a Brad Paisley ticket at the last minute because none of my friends thought I would want to go. They were right, but I went anyway.
There was a time I'd commit to anything if it meant someone might like me more for it.
Not the first impression I want to make now, but the point is, wanting to be liked makes you do some really stupid shit, doesn't it?
I've been told a vivid imagination and a decent sense of humor can both be coping mechanisms, which explains a lot.
I'm not saying a crappy childhood made me Robin Williams. First off, it wasn't completely awful, and second, I'll never be that talented.
The simplest explanation is probably a terrible father, which sounds like a cheap, throwaway comment.
But it’s my story, so here we go.
He came at me with his belt when I was three, so I’m told. My earliest memories of him include him lying on the couch in his tighty-whities calling for me or my mother to change the channel or bring him food and drink.
“More ale, wench!”
Ok, he didn’t say those words exactly, but you get the vibe.
If I were eating dinner at the table, he’d casually stroll in, take a chicken leg off my plate (he knew they were my favorite), and walk away with a smirk before biting into it.
So you see where I was considered in his hierarchy.
My mother had gone back to college to pursue a degree, so when she wasn’t home, she’d have me keep peanut butter and saltines under my bed in case my father decided not to feed me that night.
He didn't like Mom going to school, so he'd get angry and deliberately eat the food she'd made for me. Then he'd tell me my mother didn't care enough about me to feed me.
He'd tell her what a terrible, neglectful mother she was for leaving her daughter and going off to school.
He accused her of cheating while he kept losing jobs because of his shit attitude.
I was a good girl, though.
A very good girl, who knew to be quiet, polite, obedient. "Don't make trouble, and don't make anyone angry."
By the time I was eight or nine, my father became scary for reasons much worse than his shit attitude.
I won't waste time lamenting the father I had instead of the father I needed; abusers and pedophiles don’t deserve that space here.
They took up too much space in my head for far too long, as it was.
But thanks to him, I learned to space out and pretend I was somewhere else - be somebody else.
And I got real good at it.
It was easy enough to do; my mother, whether she’ll admit it or not, had a bit of a stage mom in her.
She loved dressing me up, which, given it was the mid-‘70s, was not unusual (and I loved dressing up). I was also in dance lessons practically as soon as I could walk and was competing in beauty pageants in elementary school.
I don’t remember asking to do either, but I don’t remember objecting, either. In fact, I ended up loving to dance.
There exist photos of me in costumes from a ballet kitten (whatever the hell that is) to a flapper, little Orphan Annie, and Spicy Flame (again, whatever the hell that is).
After I got to high school, it was quintessential 90s: Madonna (without the pointy bra), Paula Abdul, and Michael Jackson (which, on the chunky white girl I was, was a sight to behold).
And I liked performing; I really did. It came naturally to me: give me a role, and I'll know what to do.
I went through those photos recently, and I couldn’t help but notice the timeline: this skinny little girl before my parents' divorce, and the teenager I became after.
Because in those early years, dear Daddy’s pet name for me was “Jelly Belly.”
I wasn’t even close to fat.
Not when he was deliberately starving me and eating my damn chicken legs.
In the real world, I was an introverted extrovert. I loved to be on stage to dance or play music, but I could barely talk to people outside my closest friends.
In my head, I would dream up these elaborate scenarios and would be the tragic heroine, the ultra-cool spy hero, the kickass rockstar, the fearless adventurer, the effortlessly funny comedian.
Like Sybil, but recreational.
In those stories, I wasn't painfully shy or scared. Nobody was picking on me, and I sure as hell wasn't worried about what anyone thought of me.
That Heather had balls.
The actual Heather barely looked anyone in the eye.
My mother remarried quickly when I was around 11 or 12, and instantly I went from only child to having a younger brother (with a lot of psychological issues) and an older sister.
My stepfather had serious anger issues. He could (and did) yell about nothing for hours, and at one point that anger nearly cost him his job. My stepsister and I used to beg my mother to leave him. She stayed.
He came at me physically once during one of his yelling jags. When I was 17, he tried to come at me in a different but still very inappropriate manner.
I told my mother.
She ripped his ass a new one, she said.
But nothing else really came of it, so once again, I adjusted the best way I knew how.
I will add that before he knew his life was coming to an unexpected end, he spent it apologizing for who he had been in those days, and all he'd put us through.
Of course, all was forgiven, but everything he said and did after that day had been tainted for me, so it was never forgotten.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
My teen years were spent mostly either in my bedroom or in our grimy garage, rehearsing dance routines, recording flute practice, or lip-syncing power ballads into my yellow-and-white Ambassador curling iron.
No drama from my brother, no screaming from stepdad; I could be what I wanted, where I wanted.
I was also a movie nut, especially musicals. I wanted so much to be Finola Hughes in Stayin' Alive. That beautiful accent, that figure, that luscious hair...
Yeah, I had none of that going for me.
My accent sounds like a banjo in comparison, my figure is the bane of my existence, and my hair has always rejected my attempts at being stylish.
But at fourteen, I auditioned for and was accepted into our state's top performing arts high school. By senior year, I was attending the same school as a future Pussycat Doll.
Not that I knew her. I barely spoke to the people sitting right next to me. My desire to perform in front of strangers did not supersede my social awkwardness.
But I loved being there. I wasn't in a garage that smelled like gas and mold, and I was surrounded by genuinely talented people who were going places.
And I thought I might, too.
I had plans, big plans. Acting, dancing, definitely Broadway, I told myself.
But come senior year, I’d lost my nerve.
While some of my classmates went on to LA, Juilliard, or abroad, I stayed right where I was.
I came up with plenty of practical reasons; my Depression-era grandparents were already constantly warning me of the insanity of making a living as a performer. I needed to find a job in the local school system, a safe, reliable job, they told me.
So I used that as my excuse.
Obviously, I was afraid I'd fail. I was terrified I'd learn that I wasn't nearly as talented as I thought I was.
Something I still live with, actually.
I got married at 22, right after getting my A.S. degree. I regret everything about that marriage except the daughter it gave me, but at the time, I thought I knew what I was doing.
I was an adult, or so I kept informing everyone who tried to warn me about the difference between a man and a manchild.
My first husband was losing his sight and needed a lot of help adjusting to what was happening to him. I was empathetic, and I liked being useful.
The more he needed, the more there was for me to do.
Obviously, this was not the meet-cute I once thought it was.
But I was his girl Friday, I thought. I read to him, put touch dots on appliances so he could use them, and learned how to properly guide him with and without a cane. I tried to convince him to learn Braille, but he resisted.
And the more he resisted, the more I adapted our life for him: I managed our house, daughter, dog, appointments, meds, moods, and whatever fresh hell came our way.
I wanted to be the Superwoman who could handle everything without breaking a sweat. Meanwhile, he made sure I knew my best was never quite good enough.
My dumb ass thought it was because we needed more money, even though we both worked full-time. So I decided to go back to college, convinced I could fix it all with a better-paying job.
"You're just going to school to find someone better and leave me," he accused.
Never mind that I barely had time to breathe, let alone enjoy some torrid affair that lived in his head.
We argued a lot. Almost every time, he threatened to kill himself if I left, which worked on me every time.
I asked him to come to couples counseling, and he always refused. "Going to therapy means admitting we have a problem," he informed me.
Uh...yeah, no shit, Sherlock.
For years, I remained under the delusion that marriage was supposed to be this hard. If I could just be more patient and understanding, things would get better.
You ever wish you could go back in time and just...smack the stupid right out of yourself?
Seven years into the marriage, I started to have an inkling that maybe things weren't ever going to get any better.
At year nine, I woke up.
I remember I was sitting in traffic, a thousand things in my head, my daughter dozing in the back seat, and my phone buzzing with another "check-in" call (God forbid I have five whole minutes to myself).
And for whatever reason, all of a sudden, it just hit me: this is it.
This is my life. And unless I did something, I would still be living this way at fifty.
It felt so inevitable that I felt sick to my stomach.
A few days later, at a business lunch, someone asked, "So, tell me about Heather."
And...I sat there, stumped.
I couldn't think of a single interesting thing to say about myself. Not one.
As the awkward pause stretched between us and I wiped my sweaty palms on my lap, I realized I'd spent so long being an orbiting entity that I had no idea who the hell I was when no one was looking.
And that scared the hell out of me.
That afternoon, on the drive home, I shut down. I was finally done with the arguments, the guilt, the tears, and especially my need to be understood.
He could beg, threaten, and blame me all he wanted, but I needed more from life, and I finally accepted that meant letting go and not caring about what it would do to him.
It took less than a few hours before he came to me crying that I didn't love him anymore (before we'd even had the conversation, I might add).
But he was right. I didn't love him anymore; I resented him. I resented him and then felt guilty for resenting a "helpless" blind man...except he wasn't nearly as helpless as he wanted everyone to think.
And I will concede that maybe he was struggling in ways I didn't understand or he didn't address. All I know is that for too long, I was doing for him what he could have done for himself.
"I don't want to be in this marriage anymore," I told him, my voice flat.
I couldn't even pretend to be sad about it.
That's when he suggested therapy.
Of course, I refused; that ship had sailed and was somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. So he asked, "Is there someone else?" as if he couldn't fathom he might be the reason, but no- I'm not a cheater.
So then he threatened to kill himself, which just pissed me right off, and I was so done that I actually called his bluff.
Don't worry, he's still very much alive.
Probably still waiting on that Oscar.
I felt better about my decision when I later learned his father's first question after picking him up was, "What the hell did you do?"
But leaving him wasn't the magic pill I thought it would be. His mother and aunt left me voicemails calling me selfish and asking what he was supposed to do now.
Who's going to take care of baby boy?
It took less than a week for them to feel the strain of what I'd managed for ten years.
There was a lot more going on than I knew back then. Less than a month after we started the divorce, he came out, which explained so much. He later married a man.
It didn't explain our nonexistent sex life, which had died years ago. I didn't care; I didn't want to sleep with him, either.
He was selfish in bed, and even more selfish out of it.
It did make me realize I never had a chance at a good life with him.
Well, that, and the sheer number of people who responded with "Finally" and "Thank God" when they learned I had left him.
I thought back on all those people who'd warned me, and how long I'd stayed with him anyway, which was...not exactly unheard of in my family.
But I can't sit here and congratulate myself for finally breaking generational habits; truth was, I was frickin' miserable. And I definitely didn't want my little girl growing up thinking that's what marriage was supposed to look like.
I was miserable enough to leave and let the chips fall where they would.
Not exactly inspiring, but also...yeah, kind of.
The time that followed didn't have me in a funky apartment drinking mimosas with girlfriends or waking up with a sexy neighbor every other Sunday morning.
I wish.
I lost over a hundred pounds.
I was sexually assaulted.
I developed an eating disorder, starving, overexercising, binging, and purging while telling everyone I had control over everything.
But for everything going wrong, I was trying so hard to make things right for my daughter; she and I had a lot of time to make up for.
I wanted to do things and take her places. I wanted to give her experiences I hadn't had and show her there was so much more out there.
At the same time, I was also trying to figure out who the hell I even was now.
I went horseback riding and ziplining. I had time to read books at night again.
I made friends and threw myself into volunteer work.
Sometimes I tried ridiculous things like karaoke or inflatable sumo wrestling.
I tried a lot of things just because, for once, I could.
Most of all, I began picturing what I wanted out of life before I even knew how I'd ever get it.
Just having those possibilities felt almost surreal.
I also began dating, and it was...well, it was kind of a shitshow, to be honest.
I went from marrying the first man I ever slept with to thinking I'd found THE unicorn. Successful. Ridiculously attractive.
Ladies, I mean unicorn.
But I thought I was dating someone, and he thought we were in no way exclusive. I didn't even know that was a thing.
That one might need its own story.
Again, I was still more concerned about what someone else wanted instead of what made me happy.
Over time, I stopped putting so much pressure on every new endeavor. Nothing had to magically guide me to My One True Love.
In other words, I grew up enough to take myself out of the dating pool.
Hallelujah.
I'm very family-oriented, always have been. My immediate family got me through some rough times growing up, and again after my divorce.
My grandparents had always been the "guardian angels of our family", and it never occurred to me that someday they wouldn't be with us anymore.
It wasn't that I took them for granted, but the prospect of them not being in our lives was just something I chose not to think about.
In September of 2011, my grandmother became terminally ill with a brain tumor. She and I were close, and she was one of the few who truly understood me.
As she was dying, she asked me to do what needed to be done and make whatever decisions needed to be made for her.
I became the matriarch, whether I wanted to be or not.
But I adapted; it's what I do.
I wrote about that period, about her death less than three months later, and all the family shit that came out with it.
I remember how strange it felt to all of a sudden be the one signing papers and making judgment calls. In a situation that felt completely out of control, it became how I found some sort of control.
In that process, it also became part of who I am now. Sounds incredibly self-aggrandizing, but I promise I'm not breaking my arm patting myself on the back here.
I never said I was exceptionally good at it.
I stayed single for years after my divorce. I dated, but never really found anyone serious.
And after years of single-parent life, deep down, I missed having a family. But I was also convinced that kind of love wasn't meant for me.
I wanted it, but I also knew I'd be okay if it didn't happen. I used to joke that it was gonna take a hell of a man to beat no man at all.
Then I met my second husband - The Balkan Storm.
The unicorn. The real deal.
He got me, like, instantly.
Me, not country-girl me, backpacking me, NASCAR me...
Me.
We clicked so naturally it felt too good to be true.
I'm a lot, if you haven't figured that out about me yet.
Never scared him away, mainly because he's even more "a lot" than I am.
Hence the nickname. I call him that partly because his family name was Americanized from Popović, but mostly because he's a (restrained) Tasmanian devil.
Once he gets his teeth on something, he won't let go until he fixes it or he wins.
So of course I saw all that and thought, game on, buddy.
We've been married for eleven years now, and I've told our story before.
We've been through many ups and downs, things I used to think were only on Jerry Springer, and more than a few years when "taking care of things" felt more like "barely holding shit together".
That brings us to today, where you, dear reader, get a first-hand account of whatever happens next.
For lack of a better metaphor, I kicked everyone out of the dressing room so I could see myself in the mirror.
My father, who never wanted to know me. Haven't spoken to him in almost 30 years. He could be dead for all I know.
My ex-husband, the fake friends, and the flaky dates.
I had be able to look my own self in the eye and not cringe at the stupid shit I did in the name of validation.
I talk about all of that here, as well as what happened along the way, and what's still going on, much to the chagrin of my loved ones and my not-so-loved ones.
May they never meet. Cheers!
And if they do, hey! More content!
