Karyn Spencer

Build your inner strength quietly.

If not, you haven’t found your perfect job yet. Keep looking. Finding it is just like finding the perfect love, you feel lucky to have them, and they feel lucky to have you.

He looked like a stylishly gay and possibly homeless Santa Claus. He told me that he was a recovering alcoholic, and that the wine glass he waved around while he talked was full of Pepsi.

I asked my girl friends to recall some of their sexual escapades and rate them on the gold standard of all scales, 1-10, because, if you can’t be nosy about your friends’ sex lives and share their stories with the world, well then, you can’t be me.

I’ve been reading my old journals lately. It started when my best friend disputed my recollection of something from our twenties.

I blamed your girlfriend wish list for including “opinionated,” because that encouraged me to say what was on my mind.

You introduced me to every person in your life without hesitation. They would casually lean in and tell me they’d never seen you so happy before. They thanked me for coming into your life. I beamed and felt honored to be your girlfriend.

Fantastic freaking freedom! The lights flooded back on. Good or bad days, they were all mine. I was the only driver of this party bus.

Kids ask me all the time what’s wrong with my face. Children lack social awareness, which makes them simultaneously horrible and awesome. Just when I want to turn around in my airplane seat and rip a kid’s feet off for kicking the back of my chair, he asks his mom in a loud voice why that old man is smelly.

I never imagined while playing house as a child that I’d find myself divorced after ten years of a marriage in which my role was one of the primary earner. That my wedded bliss would in reality be a liability that left me emotionally and financially drained.

Fran Lebowitz said it best: “If you’re a New Yorker and you run into another New Yorker in Times Square, it’s like running into someone at a gay bar in the 70s – you make up excuses about why you’re there.” I wasn’t a New Yorker. So off we went.

For many years, when the topic of regret came up, I would confidently say, “if I had any regrets, that would mean that I wish this very moment was different, because every second in my life has led me to where I am right now, and I’m great right now, so nope, no regrets!”