Reconciliation

After times of great tumult, what we're left with is the often difficult task of making sense of what happened. How many tomes have been written about the world wars or the Great Depression or other significant upheavals? Well, I may not have been through a war or the Great Depression, but I feel like I've had my own skirmishes and have endured a significant amount of depression the past few years. 

Starting about a year ago, I've been chronicling my emotional landscape. The major themes are: the end of a 20-plus-year relationship, falling in love with a different woman, and subsequent heartache as that relationship failed also. I've spent a considerable amount of time on the latter two, mostly because I have already dealt with the former for the last five years. We expect our progression to be linear and oftentimes we are surprised when we go backward or laterally in relation to where we'd like to go. What we may see as a setback, however, is probably just emotional housekeeping taking place, like, "Hey, bud, you missed a spot."

It's common to experience periods of grief that relate in no way to where you'd like to go. I think this has to do with the way our brains network our relationships. The feelings related to a person we've lost are often triggered by songs, movies, places, events, things familiar, and things seemingly not related. We can look around our homes, possessions, jobs, even our children, and see that person in endless things that surround us. We can't jettison all of those things any more than we can the feelings that seize us when we contemplate our loss. For some, losing that significant person is to lose themselves. They never recover. And the way we each grieve is so unique, like a fingerprint, yet there are themes common to all of us.

I've done a significant amount of emotional housekeeping over the years, but I was not prepared for the avalanche of muck that was waiting for me after I moved back to my boyhood Black Hills. Out of the dark corners of my mind, dormant synapses woke, leaving me with much more work to do. During this time, I've had to reconcile my past lives with the man who stood before me in the mirror. Did I really experience those things? What did I do with all of that pain? All of that glory? It was much easier for me to believe someone else lived my life, as I had little connection to the many iterations of myself who walked in my shoes, said the things they said and did the things they did. Even my way of expressing myself has changed. How can one person change so much in some ways and be so stunted in so many more? 

Let's get specific. The last two years I've watched myself go down a very strange path, a path I knew I had to go down, but a troubling one nonetheless. It was the path to divorce. It was the severing of ties with someone I had put my heart and soul into, which seemed to me a sort of suicide. Reconciling how a man can kill something he sought to nourish for so many years is hard, yet doable. I've chronicled my reasons over the last year. Moving on.

The second relationship is much harder to reconcile, however, as I found myself doing things I NEVER thought I'd do. Let's face it, I began this relationship while still married (yet separated). Technically, that's an affair. I'm not talking about such a thing in a lawyer's eyes. I'm talking about laying myself open to the Judge of us all. This is something I cannot reconcile. The Joshua I knew would have waited to have any sort of relationship until he was in the clear, meaning completely divorced and living on his own. It was ugly and messy to contemplate starting a relationship, and a part of me was more than satisfied when the woman I was in love with severed ties with me. It was a fitting end to that debacle and the terrible position I put us in. If I felt any guilt about having that relationship so soon after separation, I feel I've withstood a fair amount of punishment for my actions. A part of me died with each relationship, and I am not the person I once was. 

There have been times when I looked at myself in the mirror and the person there was unrecognizable. Such has been the need for reconciliation. Yes, it's true I encountered feelings of a magnitude with which I had no familiarity. I was caught up in a torrent of love (or lust?), much like someone caught in a flood. Luckily, I did not drown. To some of my readers, this may be a point of contention. 

 
After I read the book Crazy Time: Surviving Divorce and Building a New Life, everything made sense. I had effectively used the woman I loved as a battering ram to destroy what was left of my marriage. It was lazy and messy and grotesque, but at the same time, it was common. Allowing myself that bit of knowledge — that I was truly no better than millions of people who had done similar things in their divorce processes — was healing. I had done something awful. But it was not something special. In the end, perhaps that's what upset me the most. I was thoroughly invested, completely blinded, and completely in love. Yet there was nothing special about any of that. My love was not unique. And the fact that my last relationship ended abruptly is also not unique. Divorce — common, falling in love during separation — common, quick start and end of new relationship (coup de foudre) — common. For all of my uniqueness, I had stumbled through three very common, yet painful, processes. Guess what, folks. I did something really stupid. Just like so many of you. And there are more lining up behind me. 

This is what hurts. I treated a rare creature — the woman I am in love with — as a tool to extract myself from my marriage. Awful, I know. I don't know how to forgive myself for that. Also awful is how I treated the woman I loved for most of my life, my ex-wife. This, too, I don't know how to forgive myself for. I am not normally such a messy person, and this is what I need to reconcile. Clearly, something went wrong. I was not my measured, methodical self. I was a clusterfuck, a shitstorm, a selfish motherfucker making an ass of himself. But an entirely common ass. 

All this time I thought my love was unique. My situation was rare. My pain unbearably cruel and warrantless. Now I see all of that is bunk. I effed up. I paid the price. Normally I wouldn't barge into situations, overconfident as all get out. I smartly observe and decide on a logical course of action. To my credit, I did perceive the danger early on and decided to stop having a relationship with the woman I was in love with, only to realize it was easy to say such a thing and very difficult to actually do. Finally, the choice was made for me, as she decided our conversations were going nowhere, were painful, were not enjoyable, and she had no interest in talking to me anymore if that was going to be the case. 

It takes a while to stop feeling sorry for yourself once you realize you fell into a common pit, a pit writhing with souls made up of the same thing as you. How long it takes you to let yourself off the hook probably has to do with your moral code, your upbringing, your previous mistakes, etc. I have a feeling it's going to take me a while. I didn't just eff up. I effed up big. 

I will never say it's okay I did all of those things. I see the far-reaching consequences of my stupidity. The fact that I was caught up in a current of strong and unfamiliar emotions does not negate my culpability. I wanted what I wanted and I didn't get what I wanted, so wah. I won't feel sorry for myself anymore. I am 100 percent to blame for my actions. If I fall in love with a woman in the future, it will look different from the effed up mess I left in my wake the last time. Live and learn, I guess. 

If I want to sum up my lesson, it's something like "act in haste, repent at leisure." I hurt too many people. I did things the wrong way. I didn't act like myself, which is the most sobering thing. Would I do it all again? Yes, I'd like to redo my divorce, and this time the right way. Yes, I'd love to fall in love with that girl the right way. She deserves far better than the hackneyed attempt I gave her. I wouldn't take back the feeling of falling in love. It was truly life-changing. The love I have for her has burned a hole in me, a hole everyone can see. It's beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful thing I've seen resting behind my ribs. It is by far the best feeling I've known in my life. But, here's the great question. Would I give up that feeling — that undying love for a woman — to put everyone's lives back the way they were before all of this happened (minus my divorce)? Yes, I would. 

 Maybe I'm not such a bad guy after all.