It's a statement that always seems to be in the future tense, some nebulous point down the road where I no longer carry the title of "husband". It's arduous, and tiresome, and perpetually frustrating, and I think all of it is on purpose. It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to wear you down, in the hopes that one of the many obstacles will cause you to throw up your hands and surrender.
To say that I haven't given up is not a victory, of any kind. Despite divorce being "my idea", I won't make any claims that overcoming some difficulty in the process is rewarding. Louis CK once said that no good marriage ends in divorce. That's probably true, but there's no such thing as a "good divorce". The ones in novels and movies, where two people realize that their marriage is ruining their friendship, that being married was a mistake, and they pleasantly go their separate ways...that doesn't happen. The only thing more motivating than hate is love; and the two, combined into some twisted, pulsating mass of high, intense emotion, is destructive. It's catastrophic. Time will not heal all the wounds. Time can only hope to allow the two of us to face each other, on occasion, and not say something terrible. Any sort of progression beyond that stage is a goddamn bonus, which I will always welcome with open arms, but I cannot expect, or even hope.
Two questions that inevitably pop up in conversation, whenever I reveal this separation to others:
Would you ever get married again?
Absolutely. I absolutely would. I'm not jaded against the concept of marriage. I don't think applying the status of "husband and wife" (or "husband and husband"...or "wife and wife") to two people with a firm understanding of their relationship, and a consensus on what they each find important to themselves, to each other, and in life, would affect that relationship. I don't think there is just one person out there for each of us, and I don't say that with an air of desperate hope or foolish optimism.
I also don't think that there is any perfection, any two people absolutely ideal for each other, with the polar opposite disclaimer that such a statement isn't reflective of my last marriage...or any of my past relationships. I believe that there is some combination of shared interests, passion, compassion, and empathy that one person values on differing levels, and they hope to find one person that comes pretty damn close to those same levels, without any significant character flaws (KKK member, alien, intense hatred of baseball, etc.).
I would, naturally, approach that concept with a strong dose of "stepping on eggshells". I hoped that my last marriage was for the rest of my life, and I would hope for the same, should that possibility arise again.
Do you regret getting married?
The short answer is no. But this is a blog, and I'm full of caffeine and a self-reflective, spouty demeanor, so you get to be treated to the long answer.
I regret hundreds of things that I've done in my marriage. Lots of them can probably fall into the bucket of "forgive and forget", but a few of them, obviously, could not. The one thing I regret the most is that I lost her trust, and that I deserved to have that taken away. Maybe I needed to have it taken away, so I could realize just how important honesty is in a relationship...in life, for that matter.
It's pithy and shallow to chalk up my marriage as a "life experience"...because that greatly diminishes what marriage and, in turn, divorce, meant to both of us. Lessons were learned. Walls were solidified or busted down, depending on what they were protecting. We're both different people now than we were years ago, and it's not up to me to categorize our differences as better or worse, but I know that who I am, now, was not capable of repairing the damage. Call that a weakness, or a white flag, or a character flaw, or even just mentally scarred. I'm not comfortable with myself, for reaching that conclusion. It is, easily, the one thing I truly hate about myself...that I was not strong enough.
I don't regret it, still. The person I was in 2008 wanted to be married to the person I married in 2008. I expected rough patches, and some bruising, because relationships are relationships are relationships. There's no constant progression or regression. It's chaos. The person I am, now, does not hate the person I was five years ago, at least not because he fell in love with someone and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. I'm sure I'd love to give a few pointers, but I wouldn't rush to the wedding and tackle the justice or anything like that.
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If you haven't seen the Kevin Costner/Sam Raimi vehicle "For the Love of the Game"...you aren't missing anything. It's a love story masked as a sports movie, a comment that reminds me of my father. Any time we would watch some clear-cut action/thriller movie, and a scene comes on where the character ends up sleeping with some woman in distress, he'd roll his eyes and say "awww, it was really a love story!" I look forward to the day when my daughter repeats stories about me in the same vein. "Dad always says X whenever Y happens."
A recent Tim Kurkijan article on ESPN centered around the sounds of the game, and at least three or four of the players interviewed brought up that Costner movie, particularly his character's mantra of "clearing the mechanism". Saying it dulled all the cheering, booing, blurred all the signs, the fans, and the entire stadium. I guess Costner's character considered the "mechanism" as the advantage. Playing on the road ensured 20,000 people cheering specifically for you to fail, and removing those factors gave a fair playing field. I don't know, that's a pretty tenuous assumption, but it's the best I could come up with in the two or three times I've watched that film.
Being separated carries a lot of time...time that I've tried to fill. While divorce is a process, separation has a pretty clean break, like stopping on a dime. And I realize how much of my day, my week, was spent "in" marriage. How I was motivated to leave work early to get home and have dinner. How I took the earliest flight home from a business trip so I could still pick up my daughter from school. How I would turn down a happy hour just to kick off the weekend with the family a few hours sooner. I don't speak of them as obligations, because that word comes with a sense of resistance. These are things I wanted to do.
But I can't do them, now. My job is technically over at 5:00, and most days I don't have anything to look forward to, so I stay until 6 or 7. I cover weekday baseball games now, because I'm not sure what else I would be doing in the evening. I only have to make concrete plans, with anyone, for three days a week, at the most. What do I do for the other four?
I fix.
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Earlier in the year, along with millions of other people in the world, I made a list of resolutions. That list is long gone now, with scraps of it left behind on this blog. This is what happens when your laptop decides it doesn't want to reboot, and you have to reformat. The intent of the list is still fresh in my mind: what do you miss about yourself?
Lots of things, as it turns out.
Growing up and growing old does not have to narrow the scope of what embodies your sense of self-worth, but that seems to be what happens. And I suppose it makes sense. Responsibilities increase, time decreases, and we have to make choices on what's important to us, and that usually means ditching something that may be less important at the time.
But we place those limits on ourselves, don't we? We assume that those choices have to be made. And, guess what? They don't. Not always. I can't sit down and write a novel, or even a poem, or a song, every single night. I can't go out and hit baseballs, or practice singing, or act in a play. But I can try a few hours a week. And it all may be shit, but it's my shit. It's an accomplishment, and not something I would have believed I have "time" for. But I do. We all do.
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"All I ask of living is to have no chains on me." - Blood, Sweat, and Tears.
"...Last light
rims the blue mountain
and I almost glimpse
what I was born to,
not so much in the sunlight
or the plum tree
as in the pulse
that forms these lines." - Robert Hass, "Measure"
"River, river, carry me on,
To the place where I come from." - Peter Gabriel
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