…Hope… (Photo credit: ĐāżŦ {mostly absent})
I don’t normally write this type of post, I usually try to have a point before I write. Some of these come right out of me while others take days even weeks before I am happy with them. But the past few weeks have been so strange, painful and weird I felt I had to share.
As most of my regular readers know I have worked on a book for the past few months, a memoir about being married to a gay clown. The project has been so overwhelming that I have avoided socializing, looking for a permanent job and even cut back on performances. The book has completely kicked my ass. I am not going to go into too many details for a number of reasons, but a couple of weeks ago I got some bad news about my book. So I have taken a mental hiatus from it to give myself a break, and to eventually re-group. Needless to say it was difficult news to get and a huge blow, as the book and my writing are one of the few things giving me hope lately.
And also in the past month a few things reminded me how terrible I still am at dealing with the opposite sex and dating. To protect the privacy of others I won’t get to too many details but its been a rough few weeks. In one incident I was fairly humiliated and mortified but I immediately picked myself back up, dusted myself off and refused to show any sign of being hurt.
Since my divorce, I have lost a lot of confidence when it comes to dating. I tend to over think everything and misread pretty much every signal out there. I just keep falling flat on my face, and it isn’t a lot of fun. To add to my bad mojo, earlier this week some random person posted a fairly nasty, personal, direct attack towards me on this blog. Ironically he picked my most popular post of the week and said something along the following.
No one cares what you have to say, you are a narcissist, get over yourself, you are still a nerd this blog is crap.
I am pretty sure I know who wrote it, but I won’t go into any more detail because why fuel that fire? But calling me a narcissist is an easy shot as I am a performer who usually gets on stage with nothing more than a microphone. It does take a certain type of personality to do that kind of work. I also have a website, a youtube channel and this blog, all named after myself. I just thought it would be better branding to keep everything the same, there was no more thought put into that decision. So guilty as charged I guess, but a true narcissist can never admit they are wrong, and I admit I screw up all the time. So that is a bit off, and I also tend to hide out in my bat cave doing nothing but writing this blog, or working on my book. The whole transition from performer to writer has made me far more introverted. I am not exactly walking around screaming “look at me!” when I don’t leave my apartment for days on end. As far as “getting over myself” the person in question has no idea what he is talking about. The following is all true and I openly admit it about my life
- I make next to no money, I scrape by every single month.
- I live in a horrible neighborhood and I have to rent out my living room as a second bedroom to afford rent.
- I don’t really have much of a performing career – I perform around NYC but for very little money, and despite repeated attempts I can’t seem to land an agent.
- I have trust and bonding issues so dating has been next to impossible.
- Even though I worked in my ex-husband’s profession for about nine years, the entertainment agents who used to hire me – stopped hiring me after the split
- I work as a human prop – background extra in film and television – a mostly dead-end job that is completely unreliable.
- I tried to get a “real” job for months and registered with about 10 employment agencies and got exactly one interview, which I couldn’t make, and it was for a temp job.
- I am from a working class background – Many things from paying for college to pursuing a career in the arts have been much more difficult for me as a result.
That is my reality. I am hardly kidding myself. But since I have had so much success with my writing, my hope is that it will pull me out of this mess. In fact I know it will, I am just not sure exactly how it is going to work out. And to the person who has nothing better to do with his life than to troll the internet and make direct personal attacks against me…well…I don’t even think I need to comment…it is fairly pathetic, especially when the person remains anonymous. We all have enemies, but I usually just try to avoid mine.
So given all of that I should have been down…and a few years ago I would have sunk into a depressed state…and I did have a couple of bad days. But since I discovered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) I decided I wasn’t going down that road. I told myself that all of this was a sign from the universe that something completely positive was about to happen. I just keep focusing on the positive, and then the strangest thing happened.
I check my blog every single day, just to see how it is doing and at around 9 am, it showed that I had already had about 200 readers. For my blog those are crazy numbers so I went to investigate where it was coming from. Someone on the Straight Spouse Network had decided to post one of my older articles, On Being a Straight Spouse – Broken Memories and it was exploding. As the day went on more and more people were reading it, and the positive comments started pouring in. As I read through them I started to cry, because they were all so heart-felt and it proved to me that there is a purpose to this blog and to my life.
Meanwhile I posted another article to the Huffington Post, I didn’t think it would get picked up as the Chick-Fil-A story is a few days old but to my amazement they printed it and it is doing extremely well. So on top of the glowing comments I got on my old blog piece, I was getting a ton of crazy twitter and facebook attacks on my “Chick-Fil-A Do you really want to run your company on Biblical Values?” article. And I have long since gotten used to attacks from strangers, I don’t even remotely sweat it, but it did make my day quite interesting to say the least. When the dust settled I had a total of 806 readers on this blog for the entire day, my second highest day to date. And it still isn’t completely over as I already have over 200 for today and it is still climbing.
The negative energy was somehow turned positive and everything lined up to remind me that there is a point to what I am doing here. Even though I have performed since I was 11 years old, at no time in my performance career have I gotten this type of feedback. The universe is telling me something…still not sure how I am going to steer my life back on a better path but I am headed in the right direction. Thank you. I am truly humbled by the wonderful comments I get, and to any straight spouse reading this blog…HANG IN THERE…YOU ARE NOT ALONE! Much love.
Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/JulietJeske
Add me on Facebook Juliet Jeske Facebook Fan Page
Sending you positive vibes and good writing mojo…
I dont understand why people feel the need to post hateful remarks…I can only imagine that haters are so unhappy with their lives that they have enjoy spewing their hate and pessimism onto others.
It is someone I know, a person from my distant past, and he is gay. I think he is angry with me because I dare to blame a gay man for my problems, and in his world gay men are always the victim and there is no way a blonde haired blue eyed female like myself could possibly have it so bad. Just my hunch, but he isn’t a person I ever knew well or was that close to, so I am not sure why I get so much venom from him. I can tell it is this person because he tends to say the same things…it is fairly obvious. But if that is how he wants to spend his time…that is his choice. Seems rather counter-productive especially since it doesn’t slow me down a bit.
I don’t understand why people feel the need to post such hateful remarks…i can only imagine that these haters are so miserable with their own lives that they feel the need to spew their hate and pessimism onto others.
I once dated a man man like that, he found personal satisfaction in hating others, and he found it satisfying to deliberatly destroy others.
The universe is telling you that you are a good person, that you write from the heart, with honesty and that as a consequence, many people gain comfort, wisdom and insight from your words. You come across as somebody very likeable, in your writing. My only advice would be to ignore the haters and keep going. The great things that you truly deserve will come to you, somehow, some day, some way.
I assume you have a negative opinion of me and that is just not what I wanted you to get of me. I am going to show you another side of me. When it comes God and Bible we have to agree to disagree and put that talk aside. I want you to know who I am despite our differences.
I did tell you before I thought you were a good writer and I mean it. Just keep plugging along and this thing will take off for you.
I want to share this link that may help you make money. It has helped me some so surely you can find something for you too.
http://www.focus.com/fyi/101-ways-monetize-your-blog-without-irritating-your-readers/
I have had to take a long break from blogging for different reasons and it did get harder to get back to it. So do not quit even for a minute. Publish even the small stuff. You will be amazed at how many people will follow.
So keep going I know it takes more courage to get up in front of people with a mic than it does to talk it out like this. So I am sure you are going to be great.
Yeah no worries I have plenty of friends of various faiths mostly Jewish and Christian but even some Hindus and few Buddists. People think I censor people who don’t agree with me but you are an obvious proof that I don’t do it. I don’t allow abusive comments though and most people don’t know how to disagree without getting personal and abusive. And we will never get to any understanding with that kind of communication. Thanks for the link I can’t check it out right now as I am getting my hair cut but definitely later.
Hi Juliet,
I belong to a lively, warm online support group of women who were married to gay/bi men or who are in the divorce process. You’re more than welcome to join us. I’ll try and leave the link below at the website space.
Hi juliet. I’m a recently separated straight spouse. Thank you for your blog. I just thought I’d mention a book called ‘Velvet Rage.’ Have you read it? It explains perfectly why gay men are filled with such rage and can fly of the handle like they do. These comments are totally about HIM, his insecurities, his shame, his fears, and nothing atall to do with you. You don’t have to defend yourself. Anyone can see that you’re amazing.
Thank you Juliet – there are lots of us in your situation and I, for one, am pleased that you are making our plight public
Thank you so much for eloquintly expressing the hurting we feel after a betrayal! The cut is deeper once we find out how unatural the lgbgt person really is from ourself! It is the LOATHSOME SEX THAT IS SO OFFENSIVE. Truely self haters I think.
Juliet, being called a narcissist by a narcissist is sad, but not unusual. I’ve walked the str8 walk for fifteen years. Being told to “get over it” is twisting the knife by those professing to be well-intentioned. The reality of being more impoverished than one could imagine is the sad reality for far too many str8 spouses. Granted, it isn’t unique to Divorce World, but it seems to be quite lopsided. “Velvet Rage” is an interesting read. I would also recommend “My Ex is Having Sex with Rex”, “Dancing With Crazy” and Carol Greever’s books for anyone in this situation. Hooray to those gay spouses who eventually tell the truth. It helps explain the not-rightness. It does little to heal the shattered self-esteem. The good news in all of this is that knowing it had nothing to do with US gives us our freedom. This is the best-worst thing that can happen to someone in a marriage. As for those who never can understand this: consider the source.
It has got something to do with me though! I ignored other red flags (and the weren’t gay red flags) over the years. My husband’s secret gay life was the straw that broke the camel’s back and in some ways I’m thankful for it. I left my gay h 3 years ago and met a new, definitely hetero man a year later. Last month I broke up with him. Reason: many of the same red flags were making me more and more uncomfortable in that relationship although ‘on the outside’ the man was charming, intelligent, kind and successful.
Sandra L. Brown’s book “How to Spot a Dangerous Man” (before you get involved) is extremely enlightening.
http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/org.oclc.lac.ui.DialABookServlet?oclcnum=60786200
Expect to be barraged by love again, because someone posted it in the Str8 Spouse forum that I belong to, and it’s getting mad accolades! I found my way to your blog, and I’ve been reading it all afternoon–instead of writing, which is my job. I love it.
Pingback: To Reality Stars and Sandwich Ladies – Marriage Ain’t all that | julietjeske
Pingback: How to survive the Holiday Season – For the Newly Divorced | julietjeske