Day 4 of my 30 day BC - A picture of my favorite night

Day 4 - Post a picture of your favorite night


Wow this is a tough one. Who can just pick out 1 night and say  "This one is my best night ever!" I mean come on, I'm 47 years old... there's been a LOT of favorite nights! For which I will consider myself blessed. 


I don't have the pictures on hand for it but(and this guy is the only one who is safe from having his pic on my blog...for various reasons) the weekend I went to NYC in 2003 with the guy i was in love with  ranks up there. The actual night I am thinking of, we went to dinner at Joe Namath's Steakhouse, then to see Les Miserables on Broadway, -  drinks afterwards at an awesome place HIGH above NYC called The View and the bar/restaurant rotated so you were looking at a wall of windows and the city at night. Very romantic, very big city (for me... my first adult trip there) and just an all around amazing night!

The View Lounge in the Marquis Marriott - New York City

Another fantastic night was the June 20th, 2009. The night i held a beef and beer to benefit the Police Survivor's fund for the Philadelphia FOP.  Man what a great night - friends and family filled the place, 6ABC news and Fox 29 were there, give away gifts galore and food and drink. And all for a fantastic cause. The money raised went to the surviving families of police officers killed in the line of duty.

Philly Survivor Fund Beef and Beer gift tables

That was also the night I got re-acquainted with my old high school love , who came to the party. Christ, it had been over 30 years since we had seen each other , and yet when he walked in the door, I knew I was in trouble. LOL And I was soooo right.

Then there was my birthday party in 2009. Above mentioned high school man, still in my life. Again family and friends and a dining room at the Blarney full of fun. It was my first birthday, since the divorce, where I was actually dating someone and was in a happy and somewhat normal relationship...emphasis on SOMEWHAT lol...

Blarney Birthday - October 2009

It was so much fun catching up with everyone and having them meet John. It was even more fun drinking and dancing the night away... and of course my card from the man, which was all i asked for, ended up being this-

Friggin CLOWNS! Did I tell you I hate clowns?

Yes...clowns. The only person in the world who could have gotten away with this and by the way... that is my own mom in the front there w/ the red and blue on. And look at Nicole... hesitant to do it cause she knew I would freak. LOL . You can imagine my reaction...well after I came out of the bathroom, I decided it was pretty damn funny! And I let him live LOL

me deciding to appreciate the clown gesture

So there you have it. 3 of my favorite nights. And I didn't even mention Alex and Jimmy bilotta's wedding,

Me and Alex, the beautiful bride

 or the night I broke my toe and knocked myself out on a date at a strip club LOL. Oh the discoveries made that night... Or Michael Decillis's Casino themed going away party I threw when he moved to Vegas,

Michaels going away party - i think in 2000 

 and so many more...I guess it really is a wonderful life!!

Thoughts on waking up broken...& dancing alone

"And she finally stopped playing their song, when she realized she was dancing alone."


Wow this quote kind of says it all for me today. I find as I go thru my daily life that less and less time is spent thinking of the man I spent so many months with in the past year. That is a good thing, right? But then there are days, like today, where every time I close my eyes, all I see is his face. Why does this happen? It's like having a broken leg that spontaneously heals itself and every morning you hop out of bed pain free. Until that random day, when you hop out of bed & you end up on your ass in pain, because for whatever reason - you are broken...again.


Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being single, Seriously I do. I enjoy having the remote to myself, keeping hours I want to keep. I enjoy not having to answer to anyone about where I am or who I am with. Not that I ever really had to answer to John, he never really cared what I was doing or who I was doing it with. There was not a jealous bone in his body, at least when it came to me... which I guess should have been my first clue right? But you get what I am saying. 


I still find tho, with all I have going on in my life, that at the end of the day I miss telling him about it. No matter how much good natured bullshit we would give each other, when push came to shove, I knew that he was in my corner, as I was always in his. I could call him and talk about anything and know that by the time we hung up I would have been laughing and feeling better, no matter the situation. I miss the friendship we developed, and I feel the hurt of betrayal more for that loss then the loss of a bed partner. 


I pride myself on my ability to maintain friendships with my ex's. My ex-husband and I still see each other at my families gatherings and can finally joke around about "when we were married". Others, I see out and about, share a beer with, call when I am in trouble, and generally consider them friends in my life. 

Which brings me back to the quote that started this post - "And she finally stopped playing their song, when she realized she was dancing alone."  Do I think John is missing me? Thinking about me? Feeling the pain of the loss of me in his life? No. I actually think i barely cross his highly compartmentalized mind. 


No... on this I dance alone, as I often did thru-out our relationship. As I have often done thru-out my life. 


To quote writer Doug Manning (Copyright © 2010 Doug Manning. All rights reserved.) "  We can't change the past.  The healing path is found by backing up, taking a more objective perspective, and letting go of that which we can no longer change.  Lighten up.  Laugh.  Let go.  Create some distance between yourself and whatever is making you so serious.  The healing path begins when we head the opposite direction from where our emotions would like us to go.  Throughout life... we are wise to "make time to dance alone with one hand waving free." 


And so I dance...

Lessons Learned or Thank you John!

Soooo getting over the one I let go of... the struggle to move forward... almost won but filled with what if's and whys that will never be answered because we no longer speak. The ability to see things with a clearer eye and a harder heart.

It can be disconcerting to look back on the past year of my life and realize i was wrong about so many things. But at the same time use those lesson to move forward, ever wiser, vowing to never make the same mistakes again.As i move forward, ready to step over the final hurdle in the world of bruised and battered hearts, I find myself wishing i could thank him for all the lessons he taught me. The good and the bad...and so i blog it.

Knowing he'll never read it but that's ok - because some will and they will make the connection. And others will see themselves in my words and perhaps it will give them solace. But most importantly, by saying it, it makes it real, and i lay the bricks i will walk on that take me to that ever shrinking final hurdle of getting over him. I see the light on the other side and it's lovely & freeing and healthier then anything I've seen in years.

So... thank you John!

"~ Thank you for teaching me how to trust again, with my whole being, Thank you for giving me back the ability to open those doors I hadn't even known I closed. For helping me close a long useless chapter in my life and move forward.

~For showing me that friends, no matter how close, can still lie to you and stab you in the back and yet be forgiven. Thank you for forcing me to realize that regardless of history and time and feeling, some people are disposable when they have served their purpose.

~Thank you for proving that my intuition was always right - that you would leave me and go back to her once she was thru with her years of distractions and she realized you were moving on - even tho you were days away from signing the final papers.

~Thank you for making me appreciate the fact that I was strong enough and brave enough to choose a life of happiness by going thru with my divorce, instead of choosing the easy way out and staying in a marriage where i was never loved the way i deserved to be.

~Thank you for taking what we had, and what we could have had and making it into something neither of us recognized or wanted in the end. Thank you for making me feel like less of a person the last time we were together, and lying to me about it to save yourself from... well, to save yourself from yourself. And making me realize that I deserved so much more.

~Thank you for using me, to pass the time, and live a different lifestyle, while you waited for your vanilla life to come back to you. That lesson taught me that no one is really ever who they proclaim to be.

~Thank you for not having the balls to end what we had but yet getting over it so quickly, when I ended it,that 2 weeks later you were back to playing happily married house.

~~And lastly, Thank You for making me realize that some people really don't change from when they were 15 yrs old, some men really do all their thinking with their dicks and that just because someone may feel like home...they really aren't. "

Go into the light Carol Ann, it's beautiful! Ahhhh yeah, I got this & I can finally say I am over it!