When I first started my blog at www.happilyunmarriedeverafter.com, I knew it was going to change my life, but I just could not have guessed in which ways. It has become an invaluable tool in filtering the good and the bad in or out of my life. The responses, or lack thereof, to its powerful message - life is more about a journey than the actual destinations of love, peace and happiness - have helped me to understand my friends, my family and even possible suitors, deeply and completely. But I always find ideas and abstracts quite boring when others write, so I'll be more precise and give examples. There was Menopause Barbie, my friend in her late fifties, so named because of her repeated visits to the plastic surgeon. She had boobs done, faces lifted, cheekbones implanted and botox injected on almost a weekly basis. She claimed her still single status was the result of her own personal choices. She just didn't want to be married. Well, then, she was the PERFECT reader to my blog and should have been excited beyond words when I first started. Instead, she made it a point to avoid any comments on the endeavor, which is always even worse than a few words of criticism. She has since been quietly filtered out of my life, and I have to admit, I don't miss her at all. Truth.
Then there was the Gay Divorcee, so named after her marriage to a quite openly gay man fell apart, and she appeared to me a little too interested in starting another romance with a decidedly gay co-worker - of the male persuasion. Anyway, she appeared at first truly excited about my blog, mostly commenting on the great graphics, which I had very little to do with since I hired a professional designer - Inguna Trepsa - whom I will bless forever! OK, I overlooked that and her various comments about how many friends I would make through this blog, which was never my reasonings for writing it anyway. But the breaking point of this ten year or longer "friendship" was when I casually suggested I accompany her to our old boss' opening party for a hip new furnishing store in the Hamptons. Would you believe it that I never heard from Gay Divorcee again? And again, believe me when I say I don't miss her emails with phrases like "I am so envious of you traveling right now" and "it makes me so jealous to know that you can go wherever you want whenever you want"... As Maya Angelou so poignantly writes "when someone tells you who they are, believe them!" I have no place for envy and jealousy in my life.
Just as people have shown me their true, dark colors, some of the world's most wonderful people have touched my heart during these last six months. My BFF "A" has stuck by my side and has truly shown me how much she believes in me. Her words of encouragement and her suggestions for marketing the site have not gone unnoticed. My Hindisphere friends, "O", "Y" and "V" have been exceptionally cool and their comments have been priceless. Then there is "V" AKA as "W" - that's our own inside joke! - who posted my site repeatedly on other blogs and I cannot thank her enough. That meant the world to me, especially at the beginning of something that was truly important to my soul.
The various individuals who have written something for the site are also high up there in my thoughts and heart. As are those persons whose lives seem to have been touched by my words, enough to write in and thank me. Even just writing about it now makes the little hairs on my arms stand on ends.
But finally, there is that dude I met at an airport, traveling back from a lovely time with my BFF. His obvious romantic hopes for me will be shattered when he realizes that not checking out my blog even five days after meeting me, telling me that the title "sounds very bitter, from a marketing standpoint" and admitting that he doesn't like to read so much but would rather watch "football" on TV, makes for bad bedfellows. No chance guy!