YouTube Is Part of My Master Plan

I’m bent over at the waist.

Snorting, uncontrollable, hysterical deep-belly laughter takes control of my body.

The kind of roar that makes you ache from the inside and soothes the soul simultaneously. The kind you can’t stop no matter how much you will yourself to stop. You half want it to end, but can’t anyway, and you also want your hysterical laughter to keep going as long as it can because it makes you feel alive.

It happens during those moments in life when you know you are at a life-altering fork in the road. Something big, and out of your control, is forcing you off the life path you so painstakingly plotted out for yourself and you have to either laugh or cry at the absurdness of it all. You know staying on the path you thought you wanted will kill you, knowing what you now know. When life is so split open, and you have a sense of how random and unpredictable it is, and the craziness of it makes you feel more awake than you’ve felt in a really long time, like when you were a child living moment to moment. Gut-wrenching-hysterical-laughter from the deepest part of your soul.

I feel lighter already.

The background noise of this gut-wrenching-hysterical-laughter from the deepest part of my soul is what I have been through the past several months; the lying, the therapy, the primal screaming on the beach, the guru, the countless hours worrying about my daughter, the push and pull of getting extremely close again, and then more dishonesty and broken trust. The damage and futility of our “vacation” that was to bring us closer, but instead broke us more apart.

Before the laughter overtook me, I asked my husband why he was on his computer for most of our vacation. His response, “I was working most of the time. Remember… I work really hard.”

He declares this last sentence in an accusatory tone like he is faulting me for being just a mom. I mean, how would I know…I do not work outside the home.

All of a sudden, his idea of me staying at home full-time to raise our daughter isn’t so hard or essential after all.

It amazes me that when men — okay, maybe not all men, but this sheepish one — has sex with a different woman for the first time in 15 years, the simple fact of sleeping with another woman somehow magically and drastically changes all the values and beliefs he previously held before said fucking.

With his last comment, I am no longer teetering on emotional stability…his words push me to the side of unstable.

“Really. You work really hard!?! No you don’t. You get a six-figure income working for a friend, usually from a cafe for a few hours a day, while the majority of your time is spent posting your music videos on YouTube and Facebook to promote your “music” career…and your “boss” or rather, your ex-bandmate, knowingly allows you to bill companies for hours YOU DO NOT WORK…”

Screw marital peace and understanding. I want honesty.

With this last comment, his face totally changes from antagonism to outrage. His lip curls like an animal. Now red in the face and leaning forward he shouts, “I have to be on Facebook and YouTube all day…it’s part of my F**KING Master Plan!!!

And it is this statement that triggers my gut-wrenching-hysterical-laughter from the deepest part of my soul.

I had finally had it.

I look up at my petulant short husband, standing there with his chest puffed out and shoulders back like he is ready to fight, his hands stubbornly glued to his hips. He has a confused, and at the same time scornful expression on his face while watching me bent over at the waist, unable to stop laughing.

My laughter won’t allow me to speak.

He continues to look down at me with an incredulous look on his face, not sure how to respond to me in hysterics. He is so confused. I haven’t laughed in months. Nor have I laughed this hard in years…

How could I laugh at his master plan…is what he is thinking.

The dumbfounded look on his face only makes me laugh harder.

I try to respond, but the ridiculousness and absurdness of the situation won’t allow me to stop laughing, and the fact that I can’t get that stupid Train song, "Hey, Soul Sister," out of my head — I just heard him sing it 30 times in a row, to our video camera, for his mistress to post on YouTube — makes me laugh even harder.

He has a Master Plan, and I am pretty sure it does not include me.

Still laughing, I manage to eek out, “You have a Master Plan? Your Master Plan consists of posting your videos on Facebook and YouTube…”

And covering really shitty songs, and sleepng with another mother at our daughter’s preschool…

My husband very seriously answers, “YES! My music is going to take over the world. Once I put this new stuff out into the universe, everyone will know me.”

This last declaration stops my gut-wrenching-hysterical-laughter from the deepest part of my soul dead in its tracks. Anger and adrenaline fill my body, and I say in my most serious voice, now standing fully upright, “Really…well great! I am glad YOU have a f**king Master Plan.”

My master plan; looking for an attorney as soon the sun comes up.

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Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.