Ripped From The Root

Growing up in a small southern suburb, I was only exposed to a limited idea of femininity, and I didn’t relate to it. Maybe it was the era, but it seemed like “feminine” translated to “useless”; clothes for girls were tight, short, and had insufficient pockets. All of these factors became a burden on the playground. Shoes for girls were painful and narrow. Toys for girls were meant to be looked at or styled, not built for action like the toy vehicles intended to crash through walls, or toy weapons that equipped one for neighborhood dominance.

So when it was time for me to date, finding a buddy was never an issue. I averaged one “boyfriend” per year in high school, and though our time spent together in person was limited and we rarely went on what could be considered “dates”, there were enough written notes, phone conversations, and sitting next to each other in classes or religious services to establish ourselves as a proper teen couple.

I do hazily remember some heartache in those years, but it wasn’t traumatic enough to leave an emotional scar. This was my frame of mind as I entered the university as an 18-year-old: an ever so slightly rebellious yet exceedingly principled “buddy” to boys. I took my studies seriously and I didn’t drink, smoke, partake of any drugs, or have sex. I did have a bad attitude, questionable hygiene habits, way too much pride in my opinions of alternative music, and a very, very limited worldview.

When I was 18 years old and a freshman in college, I met a man. When I was 19 years old, I became engaged to him. When I was 20 years old, I married him.

The only thing I knew about marriage was that it was the only kind of love relationship God approved of, it was supposed to produce children who would also learn how to be approved by God, and it was supposed to last until one of the parties involved passes into the sweet by and by.

My relationship toolkit was basically behaviors like being nice, make dinner, be loyal, play board games together, be compliant, don’t rock the boat, be long-suffering...that was a big one. I probably did in some way think that I deserved to be loved, but I also somehow held the idea that true love is putting up with someone’s bullshit, forever.

So I got married at 20, in the belief that I would be a good wife and mother and that I was obeying the will of God.

In 10 years of marriage, we had two children. Around the time I turned 30, my children were 6 and 3, and I was riding my bicycle in the Asian country where we lived and worked. Next to me on the road was a large dump truck. Gradually I became aware that I felt compelled to throw myself under the wheels of the dump truck, to end my life. It wasn’t as if it were my own thought or anything that I had considered before, and it didn’t fit with my personality and temperament. I realized that I must be deeply, deeply sad, and that I wanted to survive, and that I needed to make a change.

The most humiliating and obvious piece of this marital breakdown puzzle is that, at the time of this moment, my spouse and I had not known each other carnally for three and a half years, literally since the conception of the second child.

At first, being consumed with incubating a baby, birthing it, and nursing it, physical intimacy was enough of a fleeting thought and a low priority that I didn’t notice. But six months of celibacy turned into a year, which turned into three and a half years, and a gap between us the size of the Grand Canyon.

“But!, you might say, “SEX isn't EVERYTHING in a MARRIAGE between two healthy people in their 20’s!”

Yes, that is true, but I began to notice that all of our interactions were purely logistical, and most of our conversations were expressly to agree on a TV show to watch or to make arrangements for the boys.

We worked at the same school, and knew all of the same people, and had the same friends, but we just weren’t connected.

He focused on varied and time-consuming interests such as rebuilding a classic car, playing golf, and working out at the gym.

When I did suggest that we should do a shared activity or spend time together electively, he would explain to me that he needed time with The Guys. This was a point of contingency for basically our entire relationship, but I naturally assumed that I was the one with a defect; what kind of wife would begrudge their spouse time with The Guys?

What my younger self didn’t think was, “What kind of husband always chooses The Guys over time with his wife?”

However, we aren’t yet there in the story.

So, what, did I just throw my marriage in the trash because my husband didn’t interact with me socially, emotionally, or sexually?

No, actually. Like any good Southern Christian woman, I assumed that all of the problems were my fault and could be overcome with the help of God.

So I sought guidance from God about how to put the spark back in the marriage and tried a myriad of things: date nights, books about strong marriages, marriage retreats, an attempt at counseling, both video and in-person, romantic getaways, some of which I arranged completely, and finally, and most desperately, I actually attempted a heart to heart conversation with my husband.

Being careful not to cast blame (thanks to my thorough research of marriage saving books and articles), I said something along the lines of, “I can’t live like this anymore, I need physical intimacy more than once every three and a half years.”

I said this with great trepidation, but with the hope that once we faced the elephant in the room, healing and growth would take place.

I thought my husband would say, “Oh, my dear love, I never knew this was so hard for you, I”m so sorry. I will do better. I love you.”

What he actually said was, “I think your problem is, you watch too many romantic shows, like The Office, and you think that is what real life is supposed to be like.”

It was at that moment that I gave up on the whole bullshit. If my husband literally did not think it was a problem to never have sex with me or hang out with me in a friendly way (I was crushingly lonely!), then there was nothing to salvage. He was perfectly happy with the way things were. The only one slowly dying of neglect was me.

For a time, I weighed my possibilities. I could “tough it out”, as the only member of the family who did not like the neglect set up. I was working full time, I liked my coworkers, I liked my home, I felt really lucky to be working at the school where my children were both students, but I was so lonely. I was surrounded by preschoolers in my work life and my home life. My soul was wilting.

As the R&B song says, “When a woman’s fed up, there ain’t nothing you can do about it.” The hopeful part of me sealed itself like a crypt, and I began to make an escape plan. I didn’t renew my contract to teach the following school year, and I started a secret savings account.

One point of contention in our marriage was that my husband controlled all of our money. We made the exact same salary, as we both had the same amount of teaching experience and the same Master’s Degree, earned on the same day, but both of our checks were automatically deposited into one bank account, which I didn’t know how to access. My husband always said, “You can have money whenever you want, just ask!”

But when I did ask, for example, for $32 to buy shoes for the kids, I had to prepare compelling reasons about WHY they needed shoes, and why they needed THOSE shoes, and on and on. This was the main reason, way before I decided to end the partnership, that I began writing reviews in exchange for kid products.

But I digress. I started a secret savings account and eventually amassed about $3,500 over a period of months with various side jobs like writing, pet sitting, and jewelry making.

I began to search for jobs in the U.S., weighing the possibilities of living in LA or NYC. I wanted to move back to the States but also live in an international city. I imagined myself getting a great job, having the boys live with me exclusively, and traveling all of the time from my international city airport hub.

When summer came, I made my annual trip “home” to Alabama, mentally prepared to end my marriage. In my research, LA seemed like a difficult choice because I would not have a vehicle, and also when I asked an LA friend for advice, they recommended I come to check it out and pay $40 to sleep in a Korean Day Spa while it was closed. That wasn’t quite the new life I was after.

I visited NYC for some conference and stayed with a friend there for a few days. I met people. I networked. That was in September. I returned “home” to Laos, determined to move to NYC. A friend recommended me for a job, which I accepted for a ridiculously low salary because I didn’t understand how NYC life worked, and I began working remotely for a time, before fully moving to NYC the following January.

I had never been apart from my children for very long, particularly my youngest, who was four years old. I had been his preschool teacher as a 3-year-old, and he had been my constant companion all summer in the states. When I left Laos, I left the boys with their father. I thought that I would stay for a brief time in a sublet room, make a ton of money at my new job, get my own apartment, totally slay all day, and bring the boys to live with me. I estimated that this would take about six months, and actually, the boys were due to come to visit me in New York in May. I had never really watched many popular NYC TV shows, so I didn’t know that I would need hundreds of thousands of dollars and fancy shoes.

Separating myself from my children was not an easy thing to do, but I felt I was doing it for the betterment of us all. I didn’t want the boys to think that our marriage was one to be emulated. I didn’t want the boys to treat their future spouses the way I was being treated by their father. I wanted them to be warm, loving, supportive, attentive, and a team player. I also wanted them to see that if you don’t like the way someone is treating you, and they aren’t willing to meet your needs, you can walk away. I didn’t want my sons to have any of the martyr traits I was starting to work to overcome in myself.

So my FIRST DAY as a digital marketer in NYC, I took the C train from Brooklyn to Fulton Street and was supposed to transfer to the 4 train until Union Square and then transfer to the 6 train to 33rd street. Except once I got on the 4 train, I saw the little dots on the green line that looked like they went to 33rd street, so I stayed on the 4, disobeying Google Maps, and wasn’t able to get off the train until 42nd street. This was overwhelming already because I had on close-toed shoes and a winter coat, not flip flops and fun times like back in Laos, I had no idea how to navigate NYC public transportation, and I was away from my kids for three days already. I was late for my first day and missed a phone meeting.

After I learned the hard way about Express and Local trains, I wasn’t late again, and I fell into a sad little routine. I would get to the office a little early, and I brought one bowl and a spoon to work. As an avid online giveaway aficionado, I had won a large number of instant oatmeal packets, which I had at my desk to eat for lunch so that I wouldn’t waste $8 and 30 minutes trying to eat fast food around the neighborhood. I did calls and digital strategy and did my best to be an excellent corporate marketer.

My salary was really low, but there was a verbal agreement that once I arrived in NYC (instead of working remotely) I would get a pay increase of about 20K per year. So on the first day, I went into the office of my manager and said, “So now that I am here, do I need to sign a new contract, to reflect the new rate of pay?”

Would you believe that witch said, “Sorry, I can’t do that now”?

Sha-what?! FURTHERMORE, would you believe that after just two weeks, the very first day I met the owner of the company in the elevator, and thanked him for hiring me, he called me in his office later and laid me off!

EVEN MORE LAME: Years later, the woman who refused to honor our pay agreement put me on her political email list to ask for donations for her political career. I VOTE NO.

But in that moment of being laid off, after just having uprooted my life in Laos, rented a temporary room with a bunch of college student artists, and had the loneliest and most frugal two weeks of my life, I felt I was at bedrock, basement level bottom. Lower than low! I went home in a haze of depressiveness.

The VERY NEXT DAY, the near-retirement-age secretary gave me a call. She said there was a package for me from DHL. Guess what that would be? MY DIVORCE PAPERS.

This is NOT karma you guys. I think maybe God really meant for me to be a stand-up comedian because he gave me SO MUCH rich material in these years.

I had to go back to the office building where I was awkwardly laid off the day before. When I got to the lobby of the building, the guards actually would not let me in. They said that it was because I had just got laid off. I didn’t have a witty reply but basically would have preferred to be doing just about anything, including medicating the anuses of monkeys with rabies, than to be in the lobby of that building crying. So I phoned back up to the secretary and had her bring it down, and also asked could she please bring my only bowl, which I had forgotten in the dish rack in the break room.

She delivered the divorce papers and the bowl in some kind of little gift bag, and she probably gave me a hug so that I wouldn’t collapse and give up. Probably if anyone had any small sliver of humanity, I was a gaping hole of emotion in dire need of empathy.

After being laid off from a job I moved over 14,000 miles to accept, I faced one of the biggest What Do I Do eras of my entire life.

I was new in town and barely dating, lonely, emotionally fragile, and jobless. I’m not going to ask you to guess what I did first, because it probably isn’t even on the list of logical possibilities. I was doing a lot of travel blogging from my time in Asia, and I had a contact with one of those “cultural pass” type of deals where you pay one price to visit multiple tourism spots in the same city. I had reached out to get a 3-day pass as a way to get to know NYC, as I had never even really explored it as a tourist. Very shortly after I received the pass, I found myself with this unexpected glut of free time.

I activated the pass and decided to go to as many of the attractions on the list in the three-day period. I knew very little about any of the attractions, so I just planned my days by proximity. I found a cluster where I could hit several museums in one afternoon and made my moves. I don’t know what I expected from The Museum of Sex, but let me emphasize that it is not a place to go, alone, while you are in the midst of deep emotional and financial turmoil. I don’t say that because of the shock-value of the exhibits, but because everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE who goes there is on a date. Literally everyone. Except me. Sitting there looking at a happy couple giggle over a Real Doll, playfully poking at the doll anatomy. If I was going to write a dark comedy about a great big loser who gets dumped and fired, I would definitely include The Museum of Sex escapade to illustrate how completely emotionally adrift one can feel in even an intriguing and entertaining place. I haven’t been back there.

The other museums I took in during that three-day span were not as notable, and primarily I wanted to tackle my scariest and most immediate problem: how to get money.

Since I was employed for such a short time, I had no unemployment benefits, severance, insurance, or any sort of cushion.

Having JUST moved to NYC from a place where a couple of hundred dollars could rent me a two-bedroom house, I was already in what I had planned to be temporary housing: I was subletting a single bedroom in an apartment with very young, college student strangers. My agreement was to sublet for four months when the original occupant would return from his study abroad.

So not only did I have to find enough money to pay the small rent on the sublet, but I also had to find a larger amount of money to soon rent my own apartment.

A unique trait that I have observed in myself is that I really thrive in crisis mode. When the world panics, I am calm. When stuff is really hitting the fan, I see the world in a zen-like slow-motion. My eyes are clear, my head is clear, and I can easily see the solution to the problem, like John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, the answer just materializes.

I don’t remember how much I decided I needed to earn, but I do remember making a list of my “assets”, everything I acquired, from gift cards to things I won at trade shows.

As an early adopter in the blogging and social media world, I had been using my “mom blog” to get free goodies since 2007. Before I moved to NYC, I had applied for a position as a VIP Blogger at a popular NYC-based drug store chain. The perks were $200 a month for one blog post, plus $200 of drug store gift cards, and other freebies like makeup and vitamins, to be determined.

I got the gig, and our first in-person meeting wasn’t until after I had already lost my job. I went to the meeting between the marketing company and the 20 VIP bloggers, ready to beg for the proverbial table scraps of extra work.

The presentation was about all of the perks that would be lavished upon us as VIP bloggers; it was very exciting and I think there were free bagels, which was a big source of excitement for me at the time. I made it a point to introduce myself to the marketing team and express my enthusiasm for being selected. The PR company was based in another state but had maybe one single NYC employee. I heard a comment along the lines of, “we are looking for someone on the ground here in New York to manage the social media channels for the drug store chain.”

I don’t remember what I said, but I’m pretty sure it was along the lines of, “I am on the ground! I am in New York!” (I said that I can easily see solutions. I did not say that I was eloquent in communicating those solutions to others) and by the end of the conversation, it was decided that I would share the responsibility (and the pay) with another person who was based in Staten Island. This was actually a good arrangement for me because I had very little experience and a lot of enthusiasm, and having a kind, seasoned social media account manager show me the ropes and collaborate with me was exactly what I needed. However, I was only guaranteed a small stipend per month, so I did not rest on my laurels.

I kept using my direct, ineloquent approach and got myself paid blogging gigs, a social media marketing gig on craigslist, and even a gig setting up and breaking down for outdoor concerts on the weekends. When I look back at this time, I am really impressed that I convinced so many people to give me a chance. Behind the scenes, I was doing my best to stay emotionally afloat. I wrote in a gratitude journal every morning, woke up early to an alarm clock (instead of letting myself sleep in and feel unemployed), and listened over and over to positivity and abundance videos on YouTube.

I woke up early each morning and wrote down 5 things for which I was grateful. At first, this was really, REALLY difficult, because I had recently experienced so much loss. I typically scribbled out something small, like the fact that I had smoked salmon at the catered event the night before, or that the weather was nice, or that I had a good phone call from a friend somewhere. Then I wrote down affirmations. I really went to town on the affirmations, because they were from lists I found online and weren’t as painful to come up with as the gratitude list. I affirmed my beauty, my ability to make money, my job, my friendships, my dreams, usually for two full journal pages each day. If I had somewhere to go and got a seat on the train, I would write out affirmations all the way to my stop. Yeah. It was that serious. Part of it was, I didn’t want to leave my brain idle to think about sad or negative things. The other part was, I was desperate to feel different and climb out of the hole I was in.

I discovered audiobooks and played them alone in my apartment for company. I only listened to funny ones; my first and most favorite was Tina Fey’s Bossypants. Even though I still cried a lot, and easily, I kept myself on a strict positivity diet when it came to media consumption.

To make friends, I tried to be social. In NYC, bloggers get invited to all kinds of PR events for all kinds of brands. I went to these almost every night and also joined an adult co-ed soccer team. Not only was this my first time alone in a new city, but this was also my first time being single as an adult, EVER. I met and married my ex-husband as a freshman in college. I had never dated in my 20’s. I had never dated as a real grown-up with no one to answer to but myself. So as a 31-year-old, I was living out a really confusing and overwhelming coming of age story, in New York City, of all places.

When May came, there were rumors that I would be getting more work, and maybe even a full-time role in the drug store PR company. I was able to get one of the bosses to write a letter that satisfied potential landlords that I would be able to afford the rent on an apartment of my own. I found a really, really large studio apartment just a few blocks from my sublet, and very near the O.D.B mural in Brooklyn. This detail isn’t significant, just an interesting tidbit. I still to this day have never gotten my photo in front of it, because I think that would be too embarrassing.

At first, I didn’t really have anything to put in my apartment. It came with a dresser and two nightstands (thanks?) I got a sofa free on Craigslist, but it was too big to fit down the hallway, a la "Friends", so I left the frame on the curb (sorry I think that might be illegal) and just brought the cushions inside. Then I got a Japanese futon on Craigslist (this was 2012 when Craigslist was still cool) but freaked out last minute before my kids were due to visit, and my blog lady friends chipped in and got me an air mattress. Once the kids arrived, my dad made a heroic journey and drove a bunch of stuff from Alabama up to NYC with one of his old military buddies. I was suddenly rich in stuff, with kitchen goodies, a kitchen cart, a desk, linens, a queen-sized bed, and two bicycles.

The first summer together in New York, my two boys and I shared the queen-sized bed.

I worked remotely doing the content and social asset management for the drug store, and while I was always on the clock, I was always home as well. As luck would have it, the person who was sharing my social media role with me decided that she needed a raise or else she would stop working there. She did not get a raise, and I was promptly given her half of the work AND the pay. Woot woot! I was good at this job.

The actual work was for me to be the “voice” of the brand. The brand had never had a social media presence before, so I also got to decide what that voice was. It was kind of like playing a role, putting on a show, and doing customer service and stand up comedy all at the same time.

I carried my computer everywhere and jumped on WiFi all over the city: in the Museum of Natural History, in Union Square Park, in libraries, in Pret A Manger cafes, at the houses where I did cat sitting...everywhere! And the account was growing, so quickly, in fact, that Twitter HQ noticed and did a case study on the brand. I wasn’t savvy enough to press for a personal acknowledgment, but I felt really accomplished, and I enjoyed the work.

As promised, I was eventually offered a full-time role at the PR firm, with health insurance and a 401K and all of the things I had never had, but heard that adults needed and enjoyed.

Gradually, I got more and more responsibilities: I became a manager, so it was someone else’s job to write the content and monitor the account, and I was her boss. Then more brands were added, and I was the boss of those people too. But also, I had a boss, and that boss had a boss, and at some point, confusion with the people who were in charge of selling my skills to clients became what I called a bizarre “spin straw into gold” situation.

My team and I were given very little resources (for example, most PR companies have art departments to design logos and supply photos and videos, ours did not, yet my boss would suggest that I go out around town with a camera taking photos for the client. This is a weird thing to do because this is a client worth millions of dollars hiring a company to do a million-dollar job that they wanted me to do for free, on top of my real responsibilities that were actually my job). I became very protective when the people I managed were asked to do things that I thought were above their pay grade: my team consisted of moms working remotely. I couldn’t be asking them to field strange requests like creating a photo of an Easter basket filled with puppies.

There are some jobs that nearly everyone feels that they could help others improve upon, despite never having had training in that vocation. One of those jobs is a teacher: I think this is because nearly everyone has been taught BY a teacher at some point, but they don’t realize the psychology behind classroom management and the importance of rubrics for evaluation and all of the other dozens of things that get covered in the four years of teacher training. I know this is true because I was a teacher, and I got plenty of terrible advice. Coincidentally, another job that many people think they could do well is social media marketing. There is an erroneous belief that posting on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram for personal use is similar to what it must be like to write strategic copy that fits in a brand identity and post it at specific times with scripted responses based on analytics and algorithms. First I had the sales team tell me what I should be delivering for the social media clients. Then the Account Executives had some cool ideas to share (hey thanks!). Then of course the Creative Director, and let's not forget the college intern! Yes, all of these people gave me advice on what sort of things I should be doing for the client, whether it was in the contract or not (extra work is so cool and fun, especially when the client doesn’t even want it!)

In the 2013 Super Bowl game, there was a brief blackout. Quick as a wink, Oreo cookies tweeted a photo of an Oreo in the dark with a spotlight on it, with the caption “You can still dunk in the dark.”

I am 100% positive that this moment was of no consequence to normal Americans, but for anyone in any kind of marketing role, it was the worst thing that could have happened to us. It was a clever ad and was executed quickly. Marketing publications declared that Oreo “won” the Super Bowl with that photo.

This started a frenzied way of thinking in the marketing universe. Every time we had any kind of weekly meeting, the higher-ups said, “We need a BIG WIN, like OREO at the Super Bowl!”

Now I believe in dreams. Heck, I am a woman from Alabama, living in New York City, writing a book. But this, the Big Win...the pursuit of the Big Win Like Oreo At The Super Bowl was too much. “What is the big deal?” one might wonder.

Nabisco had a PR team dedicated to Oreo. This team would have had a copywriter, a social media manager, possibly someone more junior doing the actual monitoring of the account and handling of customer service replies, a graphic designer, a photographer...all of these roles that I was doing for our clients BY MYSELF.

In addition to the lack of “team”, I had to submit the copy for the social media posts one week in advance for approval. So there wasn’t really room to do a spur-of-the-moment witticism based on a timely event in order to score my Big Win.

Also, Oreo is cookies. Cookies are fun. Food is fun. Drug stores are a lot less fun than cookies.

Nevertheless, the need for a Big Win was brought up multiple times each week.

The following year, the Super Bowl was held in the MetLife stadium, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, near NYC. It apparently made history as the first Super Bowl played in a cold-weather city.

Leading up to the Geographically Proximal To NYC Super Bowl, the drug store chain was even more determined to get a Big Win on social media. They were the official sponsors of the Super Bowl village, which I guess was a bunch of booths set up like a trade show giving away stuff.

In the eagerness to please this client, my boss came up with the idea that the drug store Twitter handle (aka, Me), should LIVE TWEET the Super Bowl, giving a play-by-play of the whole shebang.

I thought this was a terrible idea because no one is tuning in to a drug store for sports analysis or live coverage of basically anything.

I appreciate football but I don’t know enough about football rules to create meaningful tweets in a rapid-fire manner.

This was stupid.

I tried to gently steer the conversation away from this possibility, tactfully voicing my objections. In business meetings it is faux paux to say “your idea is really stupid,” it creates bad will that doesn’t easily dissipate. But, c’mon. This idea was really stupid.

Not only did my coworkers (who were NOT social media managers) not accept my reasons that our drug store client should not live tweet a sporting event, they decided to TATTLE on me, and also described my reluctance to accept their terrible ideas as “combative behavior”.

They even GOT THE INTERN to go ahead and WRITE about 20 tweets that they could pre-schedule to go out during the game.

At this point I was starting to feel sweaty. This was the equivalent of my dad, a radio personality, demanding to deliver an erroneous report on the 13 original American colonies in my AP American History class on my behalf. It was so outside of their realm of responsibility and expertise that it felt like a bad comedy. What was wrong with these people?

This was out of control. I was so desperate to make this professional nightmare stop that I actually reached out to the client on my own just to confirm that this was in no way how the drug store itself wanted to handle the Twitter account during the Super Bowl. We even came up with a cool way for it to get brought up on a future weekly call so that all of the Live Tweet Bandwagoners would shut the hell up about it.

The result was painful, and I didn’t feel victorious, though I did not have to live tweet about the Super Bowl. In this scenario, nobody was winning. Eight weeks later they fired me. They said it was because my main client had decided to move things to a Chicago office, but they hadn’t even asked me if I was willing to move to Chicago myself. I think they fired me because I refused to give them what they thought would be The Big Win.

I don’t know what any of those people are doing for work at this moment, but I hope, somehow, they each got The Big Win they all deserve.