After my Ingrid Michaelson song post, someone commented, "It's just a song people."

I loved the responses to that, but I especially loved this one:

"And a poem is just a poem? And a painting is just pigment on a canvas and (so the song goes) life is just to die? Sorry, I don't buy that. I think it's good, great, wonderful to look to art, music, architecture, nature — all these things — to try to find or understand our connections to one another and to find some meaning to go with our experiences."

I spend more time doing this these days — finding new meanings in pieces I've already known. Songs, especially — whether they're about splitting up, or, more recently, being in a relationship that makes me happy — songs I've known forever I hear again and suddenly understand, suddenly feel like they're connected to me.

Suddenly, there are songs that mean something. Books that suddenly make sense. Poems that make me feel like I know where I'm going.

Because I like that — that feeling of connection — and because I want to irritate the commenter who thinks songs mean nothing but a paycheck to the songwriter, I'd like to spend a little time this week on those connections.

That's the thing about major life shifts: There's new meaning to find, and there are others trying to find the same meanings. Sometimes they say it better than we do.

I remember the exact moment I realized that things might not work out with my husband.

We had been married a couple of years. His job had moved us away from our family and friends, but we were back in town for his friend's wedding. The trip corresponded with my birthday and I was excited to celebrate it with all our old pals.

My husband and I had an agreement that he would get to spend a bunch of time with his friends and I would spend a bunch of time with mine. His friends preferred video games and drinking beer while my friends liked going out dancing and enjoying the nightlife. It's not that our friends didn't intermingle, but it was definitely a situation where the guys hung out with the guys, and the girls hung out with the girls.

The morning of my birthday my husband took off with his friends. He was gone all day long. I didn't have anyone to spend time with during the day because all my friends were at work so when I asked him to carve some time out of his day for me, he got really defensive.

"You said I could hang out with my friends as much as I wanted!" he argued.

Yes, I had encouraged him to spend time with his friends during the vacation, but I guess I figured that maybe my birthday might be cause for some time together. I didn't even care if he had invited me along with whatever they were all doing that day. I just didn't want to sit alone on my birthday.

Silly me.

Late that night he came back to the hotel with his friends and a cake from a grocery store bakery. They all stood around me and sang "Happy Birthday" in a way that tipped me off that all these guys knew I was mad at my husband, and they all thought I was a typical hysterical female. Have you ever heard "Happy Birthday" sung by five very unenthusiastic men who wanted to be somewhere else? It's not pretty.

I've been listening to Ingrid Michaelson all week. One particular CD — it's like she's crawled into my head and is digging about it in, only in a catchy/lovely/song lyrical kind of way. My past two years are there in their entirety, neatly, in 10 tracks or so.

This one song — "Corner of Your Heart" — I can't stop listening to it. I can't stop because it upsets me so much, like a bruise you can't stop pressing. It's beautiful and haunting and infinitely disturbing. I can't turn it off.

"There's a corner of your heart just for me," it goes. "I will pack my bags just to stay in the corner of your heart. Just to sleep underneath your bed. Just to occupy one minute of your day."

Now, I don't know if this intended to be a love song. Maybe it is. Maybe to other people there is romance in it.

But to me, it's horrifying. It's everything that was wrong about my relationship: me just wanting something, something, anything that would tell me I was loved back. It's me being offered only a corner, being willing to take that. Being happy with that. Giving up so much in hopes of that one minute.

I can't stop listening to it because I want to know if that's what it's meant to mean. Because I recognize myself in it. And because I'm so far away from that place now and don't want to go anywhere near it again.

Also, it's a really pretty song.

Lindsay knows exactly what to do when a friend is getting divorced. She doesn't press. She doesn't pester with questions. She doesn't fill the space with reassurances or aspersions - she allows silence. She allows time. She knows that what's needed is normality.

At the same time, she'll let you that, anytime you need, it, you can call her and she'll drive out and spend the day with you, or the afternoon, or the hour. She'll take you to lunch, she'll go to a movie, she'll just sit with you so you're not alone.

When you move to a new place, she's the one that will spend the first night with you so you're not alone, making the weekend into a party instead of a chore, keeping any of it from being sad. She'll unpack boxes. She'll organize your closet and your kitchen.  

She is, in short, an invaluable friend. 

The other reason to look to Lindsay is that she has a marriage that makes me rethink my certainty that relationships can't last. Years in, she and her husband are still in love, still happy, still right for each other. They make room for each other's lives while still sharing them. They compromise. They talk. They are each other's best friends, and they still make out.  

There are people like this in the world. There are relationships like that out there. This is good to remember. 

After Hurricane Katrina blew my life apart, but gave me the opportunity to escape my prison sentence with Stinky, I was in what some people call a bit of a state of shock. I was traumatized. Yep, that storm blew my house, my children's school, and my office away, and Stinky had knocked me clean stupid.

So, though it's been two and a half years, sometimes I long for those first months (okay, it was actually a year) of being so confused and unhappy and scared that I couldn't hold down a full time job and was afraid to really do anything more than get up, get the kids to school, and brush my teeth.

That's when I found my new friends: Crown Royal and Mimosa. Mmmm. I had no money, but I actually bought the complete collection of all six seasons of Sex In the City and after the kids were in school, I would come home and I would put in the next DVD open a bottle of Frexinet Brut or Extra Dry, mix a mimosa and sit down to plunge into complete oblivion watching four hip chicks living their lives in the Big Apple.

Ahhh. Those were the days. By noon, the champagne was gone along with a king sized bar of Hershey's dark chocolate, I would lay down and sleep for two hours, awake refreshed, brush my teeth, again, and go get the kids.

Then after baths and homework and giggles and stories of their day, and once they were both snuggled in for the night, I would shower, slip into my bed and put in the next DVD and hit play. I would also begin drinking the four Crown Royal highballs that would lull me into a deep sleep, so deep that I would not have the nightmares that had plagued me the first few weeks after my departure from the coast of Mississippi.

I am excited by the thought of life on the other side: 9-5 jobs, no homework, time for a social life.

A social life? Really? The horror...

This unnerves me more than just a little, for it has been a long time since I have had one of these — a real one. For the last four years, my life has revolved around school. My friends were people I met through school, and most of what I talked about — you guessed it — school.

I find myself thinking about the time immediately after leaving the military - another large part of my life, which, much like college, has a way of defining who you think you are. When it's all said and done, and you have to assimilate back into mainstream culture, it is quite possible to feel a bit gun-shy.

Already being a bit socially awkward (I'm a geek, what can I say? We're all awkward), this is something that I am more than a bit concerned with. Will I be able to become a social chameleon, rolling with the punches and make the transition with ease?

Or will I live in a tiny universe, filled with books, empty Cheetos bags, and overgrown houseplants? Okay, so that may be overstating things a bit, but the fear — and the possibility is still there. I can't say for sure what things are going to look like, but I am sure it will make for some interesting times.

Funny thing about not having time to think about the rest of your life: that's usually when you can't keep those thoughts from invading your brain.

I am sitting in my peapod of an apartment, trying feverishly to finish all of my assignments, and feeling quite giddy about the fact that next weekend seems rather non-committal. By the end of the week, the thesis will be no more, and there will be just one more paper and two finals to go.

For the most part, this week is all that stands between me and guilt-free napping and cable television. Problem is, my ADD won't let me focus on getting my work done.

My mind is plagued with thoughts of life on the other side. What does one do with gratuitous amount of free time? I know for a fact that I don't handle copious amounts of unscheduled time well. Most of the silly things I have done in life have come because I had more free time than I knew what to do with.

Ironically, I can't wait to see what kind of trouble I can get myself into. Humans make mistakes, after all, and this school business has left me with very little time to be human. I am ready for a change of pace...

Counting "divorced" as one of my personal adjectives is a bizarre thing. Like it or not, this is now a huge part of who I am. I don't like this as an identifier, but there's no getting around how much this has shaped me. You don't spend 15 years with someone and lose them without it becoming a part of you. But still — I'm tall. I'm a teacher. I'm divorced. This is a descriptor. This is uncomfortable.

I was about to meet Mike's parents, and realized this was how they know me — I'm someone from college. I'm someone from California. I'm someone who's divorced. Worse, actually, I'm someone who is getting divorced.

I had no idea how to bring this up when I started dating. When do you tell someone? You bring it up too early, it's, "Whoah, hey, that's a lot of information for someone I just met." Too late, "How could you not tell me this earlier?" The problem is, of course, compounded by the fact that the thing isn't final. I tried casually slipping it into conversation: "We used to do so and so — oh that was back when I was married," but was never able to pull it off successfully.

What was nice about Mike was that he has known me since college, so there was no news to break. There was, though, that horrible moment way at the beginning, when he said, "So, when did your divorce become final?" And having to answer, "Well, it's not."

Eventually, this will be so far in the past that it will cease to be a top-three descriptor. Eventually, everything will have been finalized for so long that I won't have thought about it in ages. Eventually, I'll stop worrying about what parents and new friends and colleagues think. This day, honestly, can't come soon enough.

They say the mirror has two faces, and I think that's true. I don't think that one is simply a reflection of the other, though.

My second ex always had two faces: one that he'd present to everyone else in the world and one that he'd show to me.

People would always smile when they saw my ex. They liked him. He was friendly and personable. He would joke and laugh. He could be very helpful and forthcoming when he saw others were in a bind.

It didn't surprise me that people were shocked when we announced our separation. "But he's such a great guy," they'd say, aghast I'd consider leaving my partner.

Yes. He is a great guy. Just not with me.

I often asked my ex, "Why can't you be like that all the time? Why can't you be like that with me?" He couldn't see the difference. To him, he was being the very same with me, only more open and honest. I found him blunt and disrespectful.

My mother used to call me when the 6 o'clock news reported a man killing his girlfriend or a spouse beating up his partner. I can still hear the contempt in her voice. "Did you hear what they said about the guy? He was such a great guy."

I think that people who live together learn very quickly to take each other for granted. They relax their guard and assume that because they're a couple, they can be themselves. They don't have to maintain appearances in the comfort of their own home.

Now, when my ex and I talk about other couples, we're a little smarter and a whole lot wiser. When we hear of someone who sounds dissatisfied, we give each other a knowing glance. Appearances must be upheld in public; behind closed doors, it's a different story.

I've also learned how to answer people who mention how my ex is such a great guy. "Yes, he is," I smile. "Just not with me."

My husband wants to go to a marriage retreat. It's for a full weekend, so we would have to leave the kids with someone else and then make the drive five hours to the retreat location. I don't like the idea of leaving my kids with someone else — especially since we don't have any family nearby — but as I keep saying, I'm willing to do whatever I need to in an attempt to save the marriage.

He's inquiring about availability now. I've talked to some couples who have gone to this same retreat and they all sing praises about the program. Apparently this particular program has saved many a marriage and lit sparks under others that weren't troubled but were bordering on stale. Could this be the thing that saves our marriage?

To be honest with you, the very first thought that entered my head when he brought up the idea was, "Damn it, he's going to want to have sex with me." I can see it now...we're away from the kids, away from work, and we're staying in a hotel room. He will think this translates into romance, while I automatically think about how great it will be to sleep without keeping one ear poised to listen for the kids. Ask me if a weekend in a hotel with my husband appeals to me right now, and I'll admit to you that no, it doesn't, not really.

Yes, we still have sex here at home, but it's usually him doing his business while I lay there and wait for him to finish. Take this to a hotel and he'll be expecting me to be all into the act, having a great time and really whooping it up.

It seems to me that a change in environment won't change the things that are stopping me from being truly intimate with my husband, but I know I'll feel compelled to oblige him with at least some physical intimacy.

Wouldn't it be great if these retreats offered separate rooms until other issues were resolved? I'd go to that one for sure.