Road blocks on the road to what happened.

I've promised, many times, to report, dear 2.9 Loyal Readers, on what it was that happened back then that was so dramatic that it called for discussions of F.B.I. agents (HI, GUYS) and talk of trauma and triage.

And yet, to date, I haven't.

Even after Trapped in Rolla and I have come up with a gameplan. A way to weave the story, make it genius, get it published and end up on Oprah.

Which is, after all, the only real reason to experience any type of pain or personal growth, right?

I've been wondering about why I'm not telling you, because it's certainly not that I'm not over it.

Oh, I'm over it. I really am.

Or, well, I am more than I was, and almost.

I guess it's perhaps not until we're re-doing it, re-entering the world of grief and loss and healing over something new, that we realize how far we've come--and maybe have yet to go--over something old.

Because it does seem true, doesn't it, that heartbreak is a special kind of pain that we almost have to forget afterwards so that we can convince ourselves to love again. Because certainly, if we could remember, we'd just hole ourselves up alone forever with Ben & Jerry and call it a day.

It reminds me of my words after completing a marathon. "Do not ever let me do that again," I told my roommate, "even if I beg. Remind me that I told you that it's a really, really bad idea."

And yet the pain faded and somehow, only the memories of victory remained. And soon I was out there racing again--maybe not marathons, but respectable distances--and each time, saying, "Do not ever let me do this again" as I limped from the finish line.

And yet then the invitation would come and the promise of a weekend at the beach and a fun bag of goodies and a free t-shirt, and there I'd be again, going for it.

Pain, what pain?

Just like a race, it's funny the little markers that indicate our progress on the road from grief to healing. How some we pass feeling jubilant and victorious and strong, and others thinking that this is it, that certainly we have to give up, come crashing down and do nothing but cry and hope that someone will pick us up and get us back to safety, somehow.

These are the ones, the ones that bring us to our knees in pain and sadness that we wouldn't have to deal with, we think, if we were able to get attached without allowing someone in. The Preventative Spotless Minding Plan, that is.

If only we could be with someone without letting them touch and leave their imprint within the world that we still have to face when they're gone.

The other day, for instance, I realized that it was all the way until I was a block past it before I thought about how the building I was walking by was where the International Crime Criminal had worked.

It used to be that I wouldn't even take that bus, then that I would take it but get off a stop before, then that I would get off at the stop and have to force myself not to look up and now, that I can get off without hardly a thought, and certainly not a feeling.

A year ago, I would have found that idea impossible.

They're funny, these little markers of progress.

And they provide a certain amount of hope.

Hope that someday I'll be able to take back the Lost episodes from the friend I had to loan them to so I wouldn't seem them as a reminder of evenings spent together catching him up to me, then that I might even be able to move them from a hidden corner to a visible location, then that I might even open them and be able to watch and enjoy them again.

Hope that someday I'll be able to walk into an improv classroom without feeling like I've been punched in the stomach, to leave one doing anything but missing rides home with him, to to be in that world--which is supposed to be based on laughter--without it being laden with nothing but the slow, cloudy bubble of regret, sadness and longing.

Today, I cannot even fathom that possibility. But the bus stop gives me hope.

And so, 3.6 Loyal Readers, I have hope that someday, maybe even soon, I will be brave enough to tell you the story of what happened.

In a way that is real and honest and accurate, not only about what happened, but about my role in it and the mistakes I made.

Because in the end, accepting that side of the story is always the last road block on the bus to acceptance, isn't it?

The Chemistry Chronicles: Volunteering Edition.

Okay, first, that is a really misleading title.

If this blog were a commercial, it would be for weight loss supplements that help you lost 60 pounds in two days while eating nothing but pizza and beer.

First, because I am not going back on Chemistry.com even if I find that the only men I meet in this town are polygamist, alcoholic, gay and/or a combination of the above. I can make a habit work.

Seriously, that online business is so last year and I don't have enough flip-charts to document why we cannot go back there.

But, I figure to make it easier for my 4.5 loyal readers to follow, we'll just keep using that sub-head for dating-related exploits.

Which is the second thing misleading about this title.

I am totally not ready to date. Not even close. I thought I was, but that was a big, fat pool of deception. So right now, I'm just accepting that and being where I am even though I haven't even read Radical Acceptance yet like The Universe wants me to.

The Therapist tells me that her crystal ball says that I'm going to be 35 before I meet "him" anyway, and that I have to have 4-5 more broken hearts, so I might as well stop trying to put this one on a timeline and deal with it.

I don't really think that Therapist has a crystal ball, by the way, though given what she charges, I have no doubt she could afford one if she wanted to.

But whatever, I'm tired of fighting so I'm going to just acknowledge that I can't focus on anything because the sense of loss I'm carrying around gives me the constant urge to search for something that isn't there. This makes it hard to focus in therapy, which Therapist does not encourage.

Anyway, so I'm not ready. Glad I was able to join everyone else on the same page about that.

But, that said, for some reason, contrary to past personal responses to grief, sadness and loss, I am not as inclined to hole up in my apartment by myself, lay on the couch and drown myself in X-Files episodes.

This time, I'm feeling like I want to be out there, doing things, meeting other humans, not because they might be The One, but just because maybe they're interesting, cool people that might be cool to know for general purposes.

This is a step, people.

Anyway, so there's this thing called Single Volunteers where they dispatch an even number of single boys and girls to random sites to help the world, and also, maybe, you know, find Love.

I don't really want to find Love so much as just be out there, reminding myself that I live in a broader community than where I work and play and walk.

So I signed up to volunteer at the National Zoo to mulch and weed and things. Given that my mother just visited and we planted some basil, I felt highly qualified for this.

I also felt like some sun and being outdoors would be nice.

So they sent me a nice confirmation email telling me that I was accepted and what to expect. They also informed me that there would be nametags, but that they were optional.

This caught my attention. Optional nametags are so rare these days. At my work, they're forced upon you with the same veracity as those sidewalk people working for CARE or GreenPeace and their clipboards wanting to know if I have three minutes to save the world.

(Very unfair question framing, by the way.)

Anyway, as I read on, I learned that this is a "name-tag optional project (if you want to wear a name-tag, please bring your own) because the single best opening line to use in meeting people is: 'Hello, my name is...'"

No, really, that's in the instructions.

First, I wonder what constitutes a name-tag mandatory project. Cleaning up the grounds at the Pentagon?

Secondly, "Well good," I thought to myself. "My soulmate will be easily identifiable when he comes up to me and says with just the slightest twist of irony, "I didn't bring my usual name-tag so I could come up to you and say, 'Hello, my name...'"

"Oh God," says Wing Woman, "why does The Universe keep giving us these gifts?"

I don't know, of course.

But I do know that in exchange for the ironic twists of humor inflicted upon my "dating" life, seriously, I'd just take The Guy. Early.

But not before I'm ready, obviously.

In the meantime, as instructed, I'll bring a snack and sunblock, and wear comfortable shoes, so as to try to avoid getting hurt.

I want to be bad.

When I was young, I once told my mom that I wished I could be bad.

No, seriously.

Not only was I so well-behaved that I couldn't be bad, but I was so well-behaved that I confessed wanting to be to my mother.

This was akin to me calling home from college at 20 to confess that I'd had my first beer.

I mean, really.

But for whatever reason, I've never had bad in me. Or, I should say, that perhaps it's been in me, but it's been overruled by constantly knowing better.

Hence, my teenage angstful confession to my mother.

Because I could always think of how to be bad. I was tempted to watch R movies without telling, invite boys over with friends when we'd promised we wouldn't, go to parties without parents present.

Crazy, I know.

But I could never do it. Because while the idea was there, it was like I always had this torturous piece of me that knew better and wouldn't allow me to do it, or even if I did, to enjoy it.

It may have started when my mother said to me the first time I tried to get away with something, "You know, I can tell by your face when you're lying." (I would later learn that this ability of hers would have far more reaching implications.)

Since then, I haven't been able to even try duping her, or anyone else really, or, even myself.

Even though I'm grown up and far out of reach of the possibility of being grounded.

I'm 32, and yet yesterday I found myself telling Harvard, "You know, sometimes I wish I didn't know any better."

I've been watching a lot of Sex & and the City, you see, and how Carrie keeps going back to Big even though he's bad for her and in the end it works out, and it's okay because Carrie doesn't know any better right? She's just going with her feelings.

Sometimes, I tell Harvard, I'd like to just not know any better, and be able to go back to Ex Boyfriend or date someone mindlessly just because it's fun and it feels good.

But I know better.

And so, unlike Carrie, I can't convince myself that it's okay, I can't indulge as I'd like, I can't sacrifice long-term sanity for short-term pain relief.

"And besides," said Harvard, to prove how smart she is, "Sex and the City is so unrealistic."

I know this, too. And I know she doesn't just mean the wardrobing and bizarre fiscal realities of Carrie's job and lifestyle.

Even when I'm watching Carrie, I know that the messages being sent out to women everywhere are not good ones. That this myth that love alone and being the right woman and doing the right things can change someone's fundamental character is forced upon us over and over by movies and books and magazines and TV plotlines and is not only untrue but can be dangerous.

Because being told over and over that if we were good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, understanding enough, then maybe he'll stop being emotionally unavailable, stop cheating, stop drinking, stop yelling, stop hitting, is giving women the whole wrong sense of empowerment.

Misleading them with a fake sense of power, potential and responsibility into situations where they're sure to do nothing but lose any real power they do have, over themselves.

And that's just bad.

And deep down, when I really think about it, I think I'm grateful I know better. That it's a gift that I don't even need to see my own face to know when I'm lying to myself.

If you invite it, it will come. Maybe?

I have a friend who is all about inviting what you want into your life, and believing that The Universe will bring it to you.

We'll call her The Inviter.

I love her, but often I humor her.

When she learned that my heart was broken, she said, "You need to read Radical Acceptance."

I humored her.

Instead, I read 5,692 Web sites on how to get him back and the odds that he would come back and how to get over it in the most expedient fashion.

But in the meantime, I kept hearing her talk about how she was inviting things into her life. How she was "opening herself" to things and was finding that as a result, they were coming to her.

Okay, fine.

So I started my lists again. Before bed, three things I'm grateful for and three things I want to invite into my life.

I write them in my Zombie Escape Plan, which the Wing Woman gave me to help me survive that year, you know, when it seemed that pretty much the only thing left that hadn't already attacked was Zombies.

"It's best to be prepared," she said. And you have to listen to your Wing Woman.

So I started with my lists.

And then, I found myself saying weird things out in the world. Out loud.

Like when I was shopping for plants with my mom, and I wanted a very particular scented geranium.

"Oh, they won't have those here," she said. And my mom would know. She knows plants.

"Yes, they will," I responded. "I am inviting them into my life."

And there, at the very small nursery was one scented geranium. The right exact scent and everything. I almost missed it as it was quite hidden and out of place. But I was looking for it so I found it.

Currently, the rain is watering it on my balcony.

But first, we needed a flower pot for it and for some reason, every store in the entire city that should carry flower pots carried none. I had one last idea.

"Oh, they don't carry flower pots. They won't have them."

"Sure they will, I am inviting them into my life."

(Seriously, are you listening to me? Gag.)

And there they were. Along with some shoes and new clothes that I invited as well.

"And they're only $2.99!" my mom exclaimed. They shouldn't be less than $10. Now, how does this inviting thing work?"

The next day, the green pepper plants and the mint plant I had invited showed up at the farmer's market. We bought up the last ones, exactly the right number of each. Like they were sitting there, waiting for us.

A few days later, Harvard and I were sitting out by my building's pool and we determined that it was sad that they didn't have communal grills.

"We should invite some into our lives," I said.

The next day, a note showed up from my building saying that they were going to be setting aside some communal grills for residents.

"The Universe gives us what we need!" Harvard replied when I told her.

(Seriously, I am not making this up.)

Oh, but did I mention the big one?

My mom wanted to visit a used book store. We walked in and there, staring at me at eye level from a display where it didn't belong was a single used copy of Radical Acceptance.

"It found you, you know?," The Inviter said.

"Yeah, yeah."

Yesterday my mom emailed. "So, when you invite, how specific do you need to be? How much detail? Is there a particular format you use?"

Like I'm in charge of this.

Clearly, if there's anything we've learned, it's that I am in charge of nothing.

But that sometimes, if I admit what I want, The Universe will bring it to me. Or, at least, make it more likely that I'll stumble upon it.

Right? Maybe? Are we really starting to believe this stuff?

Well, I guess. Even if, honestly, I really don't get it.

I supposed maybe you're more able to see what you want when it's right in front of you when you can actually identify it and say it out loud?

Or, I guess maybe The Universe really does just deliver?

Well, whatever the case, let's be clear: Universe, you're on notice.

I'm ready. Bring him.

I think I'm done with love, maybe?

That Harvard, she's a funny one.

"I think I'm done with love, maybe?" she said yesterday.

We are discussing love and relationships from the two angles from which we all seem to view them: hope and fear.

What's funny is the look on her face, which places the question mark at the end of the sentence.

And it's not actually a questioning question mark. It's a request for permission.

"Oh, don't look at me," I tell her. "To give up on love is to give up on life."

Then we both laugh hysterically. God, we hate this.

"I don't think I have another heartbreak in me," she reports.

At around 30, give or take, we are quite seasoned at heartbreak. More than we care to be, anyway.

I am fairly certain I don't have another one in me, either. At least, that's my fear. I had forgotten how bad the pain was. Her memories are more recent.

Either way, we're love-shy. We want guarantees.

And so, we're stuck. We know that we want and deserve love, like the real kind, that works out and produces children and silver anniversaries and kind gestures just because and fights that always end in making up.

But we've also learned that even loving someone, like really, really loving them, doesn't guarantee that. And neither does doing everything right and avoiding the red flags and getting the approval of your mother and The Therapist and listening to your gut.

That sometimes you can love with everything you've got and still get hurt.

Without reason, without provocation, without warning, without fault.

And so we're stuck.

"My heart is ready for the good parts," she concludes. "But I'm not sure it's ready for any more bad stuff."

"Me, too."

I think then, I hate to report, that we're not quite done with love, maybe?

The ties that break, bind.

Well, now it's my turn to want to be Spotless Minded.

I sound just like her, in my inability to stop sobbing.

"Just three days," Harvard promises.

"Until it stops hurting?"

"No, just for the part where you can't breathe. Then it's just a dull pain, but the really bad part is just three days. You'll be able to breathe again after that."

At Day 1, I was sure she was wrong, gripping the phone, dying to call, to soothe the pain with his voice and end the barreling force of the loss. This will never end, I thought.

Even Harvard can't teach a person everything, right?

On Day 2 the Wing Woman called with a reminder. "Breathe," she said.

"I don't know if I can."

But by Day Four I could breathe almost all day, and now that it's Day 6, it is, indeed, a dull pain, with the occasional sharp stab.

I still ask everyone, periodically, to tell me their stories, of how they loved and then lost and survived. I need to hear them. I need to know there is another side.

Even if I have, in some form, crossed over this line before. Sort of.

Of course, this one felt more real. Because it was. This was not cons and polygamy. This was the first taste of a real partnership.

And the loss of one.

For some reason, the loss of love smacks of the myth my mother told me about child birth.

"Once they put the baby in your arms, you forget the pain," she would say. Later, she would confess that that's what mothers say so they can have grandchildren, but it's not true. That you can never forget that kind of pain.

Funny though, with heartbreak, once you move on, it seems you almost have to forget. That maybe it hurts worse than the ripping and tearing of childbirth.

Perhaps because it stings of an end, not a beginning.

And an end is, I am learning, something that we all have universal respect for. No one will cross or doubt or question the pain that leads to the desire to be Spotless Minded.

For in all of the stories and certainly in mine, this is the kind of pain that transcends enemies and frenemies and bad bosses and everything in between.

"She hugged me four times," one friend says to me of her three days, about a woman she knew who otherwise wasn't even remotely amiable.

"I was a mess for two months," another friend says. "And even my boss was understanding, and she was never understanding of anything."

There are, I am sure, going to emerge many lessons from the loss of this love. But the first, or at least the one that can emerge through the fog of the denial and the loss and seem safe to reveal as a certainty as of Day 6 is that it is, between us all, across our lives and our stories and our mistakes and our differences and our divides the loss of love that we all seem to have in common.

"It is part of the human condition," said the Russian Lit Major, as expected, before we both looked at each other and cracked up through my tears.

"Love and loss, they seem to go together," said another. "You can't really have one without the other," she espoused, wisely, before I made her get up to get me more wine.

And with every breath into this loss, I know they are right.

But much like knowing that after the pain of childbirth comes a new baby that will make it all worth it doesn't diminish the pain of delivery, this knowledge doesn't make it hurt any less either.

Not on Day 6 anyway.

Maybe tomorrow.

And in the meantime, we all just breathe.

McGrey's: Dear Mom, thanks for changing my story.

"You have to change her story," Meredith told a woman this week, since her husband was beating her and her daughter. "This cannot be her story."

And as I sat watching, I realized that it was not necessarily automatic that I am the bastion of emotional health, professional success and pithy humor that you have before you.

Or, at least, that I associate with some people who are.

With Mother's Day around the corner, I've been reflecting on lots of my mom's wisdom over the years and have come to realize the extent to which she changed my story and my sister's.

And I am grateful.

I am grateful that I wasn't raised believing that women had to stay with men who didn't treat them well, because my mother changed my story, and left.

I am grateful that I wasn't raised to believe that I had to depend financially on anyone else, because even though it was difficult and scary and uncertain, my mother changed my story, and created a life of financial independence for herself against all odds.

I am grateful that I wasn't raised to believe that asking for help was a sign of weakness, because my mother changed my story and got involved in Al-Anon and shared books and even got me my first therapist so that I could learn to change my story even beyond what she was able to do for me.

I am grateful that I never felt lonely or isolated, because my mother changed my story by teaching us that family was a broad term and could incorporate anyone, regardless of blood ties.

And I am grateful that I never felt limited by where I was or what I could do, because my mother changed my story and provided all of the encouragement and love to me that she never experienced growing up.

And all that I can hope for as I think about Mother's Day and the years to come is that in some small, small way, maybe I have helped her feel that her story has been changed, too.

Because it's true, as Abe Lincoln said, that "All I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

The other side of marriage.

On Saturday, I'm marrying two friends of mine.

To each other. Not to me. We're done with polygamy now, thank you very much.

So anyway, they asked me to get ordained online, since I introduced them and equally cross over their two worlds.

And $39.99 later, here we are, with me sending emails like, "So, for the language, who will have the rings?"

And then thinking, who am I, and what am I doing?

I must admit, I was struck by their decision.

"You do know that my recent past with marriage includes a polygamist and possibly a car smuggling ring and doesn't exactly exhibit great judgment?" I asked. "Are you sure you want me to be the one solidifying yours?"

Admittedly, I am still concerned I'm carrying around some sort of horrid relational karma.

They were nonplussed.

I guess that's what you get from a couple whose only request of the ceremony is that you not mention God and try to weave in something about validating equal marriage laws and quote Say Anything and don't take more than 15 minutes before releasing people to the open bar.

They're flexible.

And you can't really say no when someone asks you to officiate their wedding. At least, I don't think you can. And I was excited to do it.

Until I thought about it and realized that I didn't just have to stand up there and say, "I now pronounce you..." but actually write a ceremony for them, that reflected their relationship and love for one another and my perspective on marriage.

The "Officiant's Address" it is called, and you too can make one for just $39.99.

I started writing the ceremony months in advance, sure that it would take draft upon draft to release the venom and dark feelings I have about marriage and relationships before I could get to anything remotely optimistic.

And yet somehow, somehow between The Therapist and a little time and the help of friends and, who knows, maybe even The Boyfriend, there was nothing ugly to purge.

Instead, I wrote with honesty, and what resulted was an unexpected optimistic realism that I found myself wanting to impart on my friends who will be married on Saturday.

And that who knows, maybe I'm imparting on my own life, and relationships, and maybe even The Boyfriend, as I go about my business these days.

Across the page--and maybe my life--seemed to be an understanding that a solid relationship is a mix of love and work, never just one and never neither, but both.

And so that's what I'm seeing--almost exactly a year after my divorce--from the other side of marriage.

Who would have thought?

Condolences for a lost Peace Corps volunteer.

The Wing Woman called me tonight with sad news. Today, a female Peace Corps volunteer was found murdered in Benin.

I do not know her.

Her name has not been released yet. They know only that she lived a few hours north of the capital, that she was a teacher and that she was almost definitely murdered. They found her, they say, in her front yard this morning.

I do not know her, and yet I do.

For as I talk with the Wing Woman about this sad news, I am picturing her in my old front yard, picturing my colleagues from school coming to identify me, picturing what it might have felt like to be attacked on my way to the latrine one night.

Not because everything is about me, at least I hope not, but because there is something about being a Peace Corps volunteer that breeds such a strong sense of comaraderie that what happens to any of us--good or bad--happens, in some small way, to each of us.

As I talk to the Wing Woman, we bounce around from idea to idea.

How lucky we were, we think, and how much we took for granted.

Were we blind, we wonder. Did we miss things? Remember when so and so was terrified every night, we wonder.

And yet, the feeling I have is how out of character this is for Benin. I surprise even myself thinking this (along with the Wing Woman), given recent experiences. And this is how I know I've forgiven, to a great degree.

Because hearing this, it doesn't fit for me, with Benin's gentleness, its calmness, its peacefulness.

It is like a record has skipped and when it finally starts playing again, I don't know the song, or even the artist, anymore.

But mostly I am just sad. Sad for this woman and for her family, and sad for all of the other volunteers who surely must be so sad, and scared and full of grief and loss.

And sad that an experience that should have been one of the most wonderful, exciting, adventurous and formative of her life ended so tragically. That an act of altruism, kindness and open-heartedness would be met with violence.

My heart goes out to her family and all of the PCVs in Benin right now. Du courage.