For Everything There is a Season

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Thoughts on Friendship

August 9, 2011 / / 3 Comments

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” ~ Tennessee Williams





I have spent way too much time over the past two days trying to write a very poetic essay about the things I have learned about the topic of friendship. And then I realized it sucked. I am guessing it was because I was trying too hard. This is my revised essay because well, it’s better than not writing anything…

Ten years ago, my life revolved around my partner. Now my life revolves around my friends, family, AND my partner…

When it comes to friendship, always chose quality or quantity…

I remember the day I went to court to finalize my divorce, Nicole left her two young children with her mother and made the almost three hour round trip to meet me after court so I wouldn’t be alone…

It’s awesome to have friends that you are so close to that you can call then in the middle of the night about anything. But it’s also nice to have acquaintance friends. You know, the ones that with whom the deepest topic you delve into is about your concern over how your dog’s poop looks…

Becoming friends with someone is risky business. You’re putting yourself out there after all. Have a little faith and let down your guard…

We are not meant to go through this life alone…

Friendships nurture us. They can double your fun and halve your grief. I am not even sure that is grammatically correct, but you get the idea…

I remember Jen coming to my apartment and stocking my refrigerator as well as turning on my air conditioner in preparation for me returning from a very difficult hospital stay…

To truly be a good friend requires stepping outside of yourself even when it is not convenient for you. Even when all you want to do is take a hot shower and get into bed…

I remember when in the same weekend, my marriage began a rapid decline and my grandmother died, Steve drove two hours each way to come to my grandmother’s wake. He was the light in a very dark tunnel…

Social media is a wonderful tool for staying connected with friends. But nothing beats sitting across from an old friend at a table with a glass of wine and laughing about the good old days….like that time you wet yourself because you were drunk and trying to go to the bathroom in the woods. Not that I know anyone who did that…

I remember the evening that Tina and Lauren ran over from their dorm at UMASS after I called them hysterically crying because my dad told me my forty-four year old mother had ovarian cancer…

Don’t make toxic friends (please refer to previous blog entry: Warning: Toxic!). I know this can sometimes be tricky to figure out early on, but be on the lookout. If every single conversation reverts back to them or they constantly suck the life out of you, time to run for the hills…

Being a good friend is much more important than just having one. Thank god I have a few who taught me how to do it right…

In honor of those who hold our hand, dry our tears, refill our beer glasses, and drive us home to keep us from acquiring an arrest record, please consider taking a moment to share a memory of something special or significant a friend did for you.

Love Knows No Age, Or Does it?

August 3, 2011 / / 13 Comments
    Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” ~ Mark Twain
I somehow got myself involved in a conversation about age differences in relationships earlier this week. Well, not really involved because I felt, let’s say, slightly uncomfortable. The scenario was that I was in a social situation and this couple (we will call them Mr. and Mrs. X to protect the innocent) was talking about their daughter’s new boyfriend who is about seven or eight years younger than the daughter. Her mother expressed some concerns over that, which in turn, led to a larger brief discussion about age differences in couples. I was quite surprised to hear the father of the daughter voice his opinion about how a large age difference is not good in a relationship, especially when the couple is older. I am not sure what his rationale was and he didn’t elaborate on that particular statement because his wife chimed in about how she agrees with him and then subsequently voiced her own opinion about the issue until all of a sudden she stopped herself and changed the topic. I don’t know this for a fact, but I am guessing that the conversation ended abruptly because maybe she remembered the fact that once I told her that my boyfriend is fourteen years older than me. And I was standing right there. And he was within earshot’s distance of the conversation. Or maybe I was just being paranoid.
Regardless, I adore this couple and wanted to participate in the conversation with my two cents about how love knows no age because look at my boyfriend and I, we are making it work. I didn’t say anything though for one reason and one reason only. I am still in the stage of this relationship of figuring out what topics are sensitive and which ones are acceptable to spout off about in public. I didn’t really think it would be an issue to discuss this topic with friends, but I have been known to make incorrect presumptions in this past, so I figured better safe than sorry.
So now I and you the reader as well, are left with the question: does age matter when it comes to love and relationships? The reason that I was surprised about this friend’s comment about age mattering as you get older was because usually, many people only take issue with an age difference in relationships when it comes to younger couples, such as with his twenty-three year old daughter. For example, an eighteen year old girl dating a thirty year old year old man. Or a twenty-one year old man dating a forty year old woman. I have had discussions with friends throughout the years and the common theme that comes up is that the people in these relationships are at different life stages, which could be a problem for the relationship in the future.
Being the romantic that I am, I never gave too much weight to the whole “different life stage” issue.  Before I used to think that if you’re in love, you’re in love. As long as it is legal. There are much bigger potential issues in relationships to deal with than a large age difference. Alcoholism, abuse, infidelity, the list goes on and on. I have close friends who are twelve years younger than me and I have close friends who are thirty years older than me. Why should my best friend (also known as my partner) be defined by the boundaries of their age?
Now that I am seriously involved with someone who is quite a bit older than me, I have been able to see the flip side of the coin. Age can make a difference in a romantic relationship. I want to sit here, dig my heels in, and say it doesn’t matter. Love conquers all! But the reality is, you can’t bury your head in the sand. You have to be realistic. A significant age difference in a relationship can and does result in many obstacles or issues. Goals can be different. A fifty-two year old woman may be planning on how she can retire early while her thirty-seven year old partner is at the height of his career. For many people, health issues start to arise as they get older and the chances of being a caretaker for an ailing partner is dramatically increased with a significant age difference. There is also the issue of children. One partner may be thinking of starting a family while the other, who may already have adult children, has already been there and done that. Maybe these are the kind of issues that my friend Mr. X was referring to.
I guess like many other debates in this world, there is no right or wrong answer to the big age debate. I cannot tell a lie; I have thought about the age difference between my boyfriend and myself, mostly because it has brought up some questions for us to answer. Questions that many other couples who do not have a big age difference also have to grapple with. The thing is though, I think that a big part of having a healthy and loving relationship is just that. Facing issues, talking through them, and compromising when necessary. That is not to say that facing and dealing with all those issues will always result in a happily ever after story. But living in denial is certainly not the answer either. Sometimes in the end, these conversations can even make your relationship that much stronger.
The conclusion I have come to is that if you are lucky enough to find true love, you have to grab it and embrace it. Work through the tough questions if they come up. Don’t define love by the number of years between you, but rather by the truly important qualities such as friendship, communication, respect, goals, and dreams. Because in the end, those aspects of your love will be the ones to get you through your journey and quite possibly, to your happily ever after.

Unplanned Journey

July 28, 2011 / / 10 Comments
“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” ~ John Steinbeck

I am a planner. I have been my whole life and to be honest, sometimes I border on the mildly obsessive side when it come to planning things. There are huge advantages to knowing what you are going to do and when you are going to do it, or so I have always thought. For me, being a planner has meant having control and therefore avoiding all the potential disasters that can occur. Take a trip or vacation for example. Make your reservations, get your route all mapped out, figure out what events are going to be included in your trip. Nothing can go wrong then. Yeah, right. Reservations get lost. Road construction delays your driving trip by hours. And horrors of all horrors, it rains the whole time you are on your well planned trip!

Now, my partner in life, love, and adventure (AKA boyfriend Chuck) is the antithesis of a planner. For years, I have wanted to be able to relax and not have to plan every single second of every single day and over the past two years or so, I have become more laid back. When we started dating though, I thought for sure his fly by the seat of his pants approach to many things would cause quite a stir in our relationship because of the fact that I just didn’t feel comfortable going through life like that on a regular basis. See, oftentimes he can plan for really important events such as say, Christmas or my birthday, but otherwise, not so much. He approaches it more like the fact that tomorrow is not here yet so most planning does not have to be done far in advance. For example, we had a large Fourth of July cookout this month. I started making lists and organizing about two months beforehand. Extreme? Maybe. If it was up to just him, planning would have begun the day (or maybe a few days) before. And you know what? The cookout probably would have been just as successful either way. However for me, it alleviated a lot of the stress and anxiety to start planning far in advance.

However since we are both in this relationship for the long haul, compromise has to be made. He has worked on doing some planning ahead when the situation warrants it, compared to his pre-Christine days; which of course I think is never a bad thing! In return, I have been trying hard as hell to be more spontaneous. Not an easy feat, I must say! It has been quite a learning process and one that I think is helping me to grow as a person.

I realized how far I have come along in regards to this issue recently when we were planning a three day weekend to the beach in Maine. It did require a bit of forethought as we have a dog that we need to find a sitter for while we are away. So we picked out a weekend according to Chuck’s work schedule and the dog sitter’s schedule. We decided we were going to Old Orchard Beach in Maine. We talked about a few ideas of what each of us would like to do while we were there, but that was really only because we were so excited to go. And…that was all the planning that was done.

I suggested making a hotel reservation since it was the middle of the summer in a beach town and on a weekend to boot. Ohhh no. Chuck said he always just drives up there and finds a place to stay. I thought he’d been smoking some crack earlier that day.

“You can’t do that!” I told him.

 “What if we don’t find a vacancy?”

He reassured me that we would indeed find a place and the reality was, I trusted him. Something would work out. If it didn’t, then I could say I told him so. Just kidding; alright maybe not. Then I started thinking about how exciting it would be to go up to Maine without having any idea of where or what kind of place we were going to stay at. We had taken a trip up to Vermont a few months ago and although we DID have reservations for that trip, we ended up making stops on the trip there that we hadn’t planned on and oh, how many great things did we see! Worst case scenario would be that we would stay further on the outskirts of town or end up in New Hampshire. I could do this!

Off to Maine we went with no reservations and no day by day itinerary set. We would just go and do what the mood struck us to do. I have to say, it was one of the most relaxing and enjoyable weekends I have ever had. Shocking for me considering the complete lack of planning that went into it; according to my standards anyways. Not only did we find a vacancy on our second attempt after driving into town but we found a quaint and picturesque inn, called The Gull Inn, located right on the beach at a somewhat decent rate. We went on the beach when we wanted. We ate as early or as late as we wanted. I found myself not really caring what time it was. I realized by the end of our journey that despite not scheduling a single thing, we still got to do what each of us wanted to do which was basically be on the beach, take photographs, read, play arcade games, eat, shop, and go to an amusement park.

Because we did not plan our weekend and did some exploring, we also got to experience things that we didn’t anticipate. Besides finding our great little inn, we went to a larger amusement park on the trip home. We found a wonderful discount bookstore in town. I, Ms. “It Takes Me Two Straight Weeks Every Seven Years to Find a New Bathing Suit”, found a wonderfully flattering bathing suit at a store. I wasn’t even PLANNING on looking for a suit that weekend.

There were also other things that I did not anticipate discovering while we were flying by the seat of our pants that weekend. Such as, I don’t have to try and be in control of the universe, or even myself, twenty-four hours a day. Moments are best experienced when you are fully in those moments and not thinking beyond them. I discovered that even if we had difficulty finding a place to stay, I have enough faith in Chuck and in the two of us as a couple to know that we will be alright no matter where we end up, whether it be on a trip to the beach or in the journey that we call our life together.

The kicker of the weekend came when we were driving back from Maine and decided to stop at that amusement park, Canobie Lake Park, in New Hampshire. I had not been to an amusement park in at least twelve or thirteen years. I was excited and couldn’t wait to experience everything. We parked our car and got in line to buy tickets. We handed the tickets to the person working at the front gate and as we walked through through the turn sty, I picked up one of their free park maps to figure out what was there and where we wanted to go since it was my first time. Then a lightning bolt thought struck me. Looking at the map would take away from the adventure and surprise of it all. Within literally ten seconds of picking up the map, I had thrown it into a trash can, almost like it was on fire. I am not sure who was more shocked, Chuck or me. And then with a smile on my face, we took off walking aimlessly through the park, never knowing what adventure was going to be around the next corner.

Photos Courtesy of Chuck Myers

In Sickness and In Health

July 20, 2011 / / 13 Comments

This week’s big revelation for me: it is easier to be sick when you live alone than when you live with another person. Disagree? Many people would. They would retort that it must be a lot easier to have the support of someone living with you when the going gets tough in the medical department. I cannot really disagree with that on some levels but on others, I feel like this week I can; even when you live with the most compassionate, patient, and nurturing man God has ever put on this face of the earth.

So why would I complain? Well, I am not complaining, just stating some facts. I am also not implying that I would ever want to change my living situation, so no rumors please! When you have a chronic illness, you live in a state of constant unpredictability. As I talked about a bit in a recent blog entry entitled False Assumptions, there can be days and even weeks where life just goes along relatively smoothly. You take your medications, keep your routine appointments, and manage your chronic symptoms as best as you can. However then there are days or weeks (maybe even months) where it is one constant battle after another.

Since about May or so, I have had one new issue after another to deal with in regards to my autoimmune illness. Hearing loss, dizziness and headaches started off this episode and now I have developed issues with my salivary glands which have resulted in pain, difficulty eating, more horrendous headaches, and just general discomfort. Add in a new round of steroids which are messing with my weight and to a small extent my mood, as well as some concerns about swelling near my lymph nodes (I am also a lymphoma survivor) and it is the perfect recipe for stress and exhaustion. I am mentioning all this not as a request for a pity party from my readers, but to lay the foundation to explain why it is sometimes easier to live alone. This is the most complicated my health has been since moving in with my boyfriend six months ago. I don’t just have myself to think about anymore when the going gets tough.

And that is what scares me. See, when you live with someone and are as connected to that person as I am to him, you can’t hide your little medical crises that well. I know, I know, you shouldn’t want to downplay that kind of thing from your significant other anyways. I can’t help but think that it would be so much easier though if I could. Why would I want to? Because I don’t want to bring him down. It can be exhausting to live someone who is physically struggling day after day for any period of time. Even despite my best efforts, the medical business can consume my day and our conversations. I guess it is good that I can step out of myself long enough to realize that. I know he is an adult and can take care of himself, but because I love him, I want to protect him; even if that sometimes means protecting him from me. Because when the autoimmune monster rears its ugly head, I just don’t have much to offer anyone and my boyfriend deserves to have someone who is emotionally and physically available.

The other point is that when you live alone and are dealing with an onslaught of medical issues, you can hide. Just pull up the covers and let yourself wallow in self-pity. Shut down from the world. To be honest, I don’t do that too often but when I do, I go all out. I put a special blanket on the bed for the dog so we can snuggle, grab my books, laptop, and TV remote to make sure they are not more than an arm reach away. I don’t answer the phone. It usually only lasts for a day or so, but I think that it can be necessary to give in and let myself emotionally (and physically) recharge. That day or so is actually a self-imposed time limit whether I am ready to face the world again or not. I know from firsthand experience that falling into a depression is only a few extra self-pity days away.

Here’s the thing though. I don’t want somebody else to actually witness me doing that! Oh no; I am a strong and courageous autoimmune-fighting warrior. I cannot let someone see me vulnerable! I have to protect the world! Yes, I do realize what bullshit that is now but like with everything else, figuring this out is a work in progress. More accurately, US figuring it out is a work in progress. We talked about all of this quite recently and here is what I (we) figured out:

~ It is not always my job to protect people that I love when I can barely take care of myself.

~ Trying to down play how lousy I am feeling or how scared I am with the person I live with serves only to alienate him, therefore making me kind of an idiot. We are only as strong as our communication with each other.

~ I am not sick three hundred and sixty five days a year. My turn will come to be there for him if I haven’t done so already. Now that I think about it, I have; he’s not always good at doing dishes before going to bed!

~He has some pretty strong views about not letting me wallow in any form of self-pity for ANY period of time. I think that is a very good thing in many aspects but I also sometimes think it’s necessary as I explained above. We will have to find middle ground on that one unless I make myself limit it to the span of his workday…ha!

I would love some input on this issue from those of you with medical issues who cohabitate with someone or live with someone who has their own medical issues. Be honest because chances are, you are not alone…

The Value of a Name

July 17, 2011 / / 9 Comments
“My name may have buoyancy enough to float upon the sea of time.”
~ Richard Watson Gilder



My name is Christine Molloy.


A basic yet powerful statement.
One that I have been thinking a lot about lately.
It is my identity.
It is my connection with this world.
It is my legacy.



I was watching an ABC news special one evening last week about Jaycee Dugard. She was the eleven year old girl who was abducted in 1991 at a bus stop by Philip Craig Garrido and held captive for eighteen years. She suffered an unimaginable amount of physical, mental, sexual and emotional abuse by this deranged member of our society. During the interview, she recounted many of the horrific events that happened to her in those eighteen years of captivity, but one thing struck me most significantly. She was forbidden by Garrido to ever speak her name for the eighteen years he held her captive. On August 26, 2009, when law enforcement officials interviewed her (not knowing that she was an abduction victim), one of the first things she did was claim her real name back. She had to write it down for the law enforcement officials as she had not uttered her name in eighteen years. It was the point that she reclaimed herself, both to herself and to the world.




Our names are usually not something we choose for ourselves yet through the years, they start to define who we are, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. Oftentimes, we take them for granted as we go through our day to day lives and it is not until we change our name or it is taken away from us, that we realize its importance. We use our names to identify ourselves as professionals. We use them to demonstrate how we are connected to our spouses, children, and other family members. We use them to make our mark in the world.



When I got engaged and subsequently married in 2000, I had a very difficult time deciding about whether to change my last name or not. I loved being a Molloy. On the one hand, I felt that by changing my name to my future husband’s name, it would unite us as a family, especially with the prospect of having children someday. However I loved my name; it was who I was for twenty-nine years at that point. Why would I want to change how I identified myself?  I did have the option to hyphenate my maiden name with my new husband’s name. Problem was though, I was signing my name anywhere up to about twenty-five times a day on the shifts that I worked as a nurse. Hyphenating it would just make that process that much more tedious. In the end, I did decide to change my name, mostly because the argument about starting a family under one last name seemed to win out. I have to say, it just never felt quite right. 





Nine years later, when I was in the process of divorcing from my now ex-husband, there were so many issues to work out. Between selling the house, lawyer appointments, and figuring out how to start my life all over, there were more things to contend with than I could keep track of. Despite that, there was one issue that I needed to get resolved right away. I would hassle the attorney, the very nice lady at the courthouse office, and all the powers that be. About what? I wanted to know exactly when I was going to get my maiden name back; the one that I felt I probably should have kept all along. Was it going to be the date we went to court, the thirty days after when the judge signed off on it, or the four months later that it became final? I needed to know exactly when I could legally be Christine Molloy again. I missed her. Somehow in the process of those nine years, she became a lesser version of herself and now that she was back on the road to discovering herself again, she needed her name back to feel true to that process. On December 27, 2009, in the eyes of the law, she came back. It was about damn time.




In no uncertain circumstances am I against women changing their names when they get married, most women I know have done it. That being said, there is one thing I am certain of in this entire world and that is, I will never ever change my name again. Not because I had a failed marriage, but because I want to go through this life as Christine Molloy, with all of her successes, failures, aspirations, and dreams…and trust me, there is plenty of all of the above!




I would be curious to hear my reader’s opinions about changing their name; the pros, cons, and everything in between. Please feel free to leave your comments below….







Photo Courtesy of Google images
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