So, what have I been doing for 8 years?
There’s no way I’ll be able to cover 8 years in one post, and in fact, I hope specifically that the activities of my last several years, including my feelings on those years, will come out every day over time, through each post. But I thought, reader, since you and I are both newly back to The LITMO Life, at least an attempt at a quick catch-up to situate both of us in my current life is worth it.
(Side note: one weird thing about this for me is that if you’re reading this and met me in the last years, you are, in fact, brand new not only to The LITMO Life, but to the fact that I’m a writer and have written for major publications over many years. You’re new to the fact that I feel like writing is one of my soul’s callings. And you’re TOTALLY new to my life before I was married – which is WILD and a pertinent place to start our story.)
When I last left The LITMO Life (which I still regret so much), I was newly married after 8 weeks of dating to the (human) love of my life. Still am. And he’s still the best man I’ve ever known.
We have done a lot of traditional and non-traditional things over the past 8 years. We bought a house. We settled down in it after moving states a couple of times, trying to figure out where we would be happiest. We built our dream gym in that house. And I had my perfect work setup, my perfect handbalancing setup, my perfect reading room in that house. We made friends, we lost friends (more on that later). We adopted some new fur babies, beyond our two that we had (Holly, my pup, and Sonny, his cat). We lost Sonny, then Holly. Then we lost our other fur babies: Douglas, Alexander, Betty, and Skye. We foster-failed two rabbits, Florentina and Camilla, who are now our only babies. We want to a lot of music festivals. We traveled a lot. We changed jobs a few times.
I got back to a lot of things I loved when I was young. Like playing piano and flute. I also added some new loves, like contortion. I become trilingual instead of bilingual. I did a lot of traveling on my own, besides the traveling we did together.
And then, I fell apart.
I know falling apart is something that happens in life. I know it likely happens to everyone. It’s happened to me in fantastic fashion a couple of times before. I can confidently say, though, that this time falling apart is the worst falling apart I’ve ever done in my life.
I lost my best friend, soulmate, the love of my life, my other half, my twin flame – I lost Holly. In September of 2023. And life was never the same and will never be the same.
And the falling apart is an ongoing process, rather than a thing that happened once and is done. The falling apart is still happening to this day, every day. And she’s been gone 2 years.
Before I go on, dear reader, I should pause to note to you that I’ve always been a strongly intuitive and spiritual person. I’ve always been a little bit psychic when it comes to myself and a LOT psychic when it comes to other people. I have clear visions of things. I have a “just knowing” about things that always, without fail, without error, come true. Maybe it’s one of those things that I haven’t spoken about before because of judgement and wanting to keep some things close to the vest. Now though I’m almost 40 – I’ve ALWAYS been myself and I’m proud to say that. But somehow, midlife changes things. You become more yourself than you’ve ever been and your tolerance for the world’s bullshit goes down. Anyway, point is, I’ve always been very intuitive about what’s coming for me, at least.
So I always knew when she left that I would explode my life. I ALWAYS knew. I even told my ex-human best friend (more on him later too) that I knew that. I knew that I would fall apart emotionally sure, but I also knew that whatever was left without her, I would burn to the ground. Jobs, relationships, friendships, you name it.
I knew it would be bad, but I didn’t know the depths of it.
So she left. And I spent a year and a half absolutely hiding inside my husband and my home, never leaving, becoming more of an introvert, and trying to figure out how to live life without her.
And I didn’t figure it out. Instead, I did what I knew was coming – I blew up my life.
I cleared out our house in Orlando. Put it up for rent (sell? in THIS economy? lol) and set about building a life for myself, and only myself, where I could be authentically me and if not happy (because happy isn’t possible without her) at peace in every moment knowing that this shit isn’t a dress rehearsal and I need to create something I love before I leave to go meet Holly whenever that may be.
And that life – dear reader, if you’ve been here before or know me at all or have met me even ONCE, this shouldn’t be a surprise – is the most non-traditional life I could have imagined.
I left the States. Finally. Moreso, I removed my ROOTS from the States. I started traveling full-time again. Alone. I take my down time at my second house in Costa Rica rather than my first house in Orlando. I speak Spanish now. I don’t worry about traditional wife-ing (definitely more on that later), though I still adore my husband more than I ever thought possible. I hang with my parents a LOT more. I spend a lot of time alone. I am somewhat unmoored, both positively and negatively. I spent six weeks first in Tulum. Now I’m in Buenos Aires. To my house in Costa Rica next. Peru. Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, in that order. After that, nothing planned other than not returning to the States.
And I’m back to writing. And back to one of my very first loves, The LITMO Life.
This was the reader’s digest version of the past 8 years and especially the last 6 months but as I say, I hope to uncover more and more as The LITMO Life comes back together.
I’m *considering* getting back on social just because I’ve come to think really differently about art, and how art should be shared, and what the defensible uses of social (are there any?) are. Just considering for now because I’ve been really, really deliriously happy without social for the past year and I still think it’s a scourge on society. But I digress.
I’m happy to be back and happy you’re here.
My last note is a reader caution: I know my writing right now is wind-y, stream-of-consciousness, and hard to follow. And luckily, I don’t care. (Maybe part of the midlife thing I was talking about earlier.) It’s going to be this way for a while because this isn’t the New York Times. This is my art. My pure, unadulterated, unedited feelings on (the 2025 version of) paper. I hope you stay, but I’ll understand if you just can’t with my bullshit. 😛
See you tomorrow.