Stirring the pot
The post below about the turning point of the divorce was prompted by a conversation with a dear friend who is going through a moment like this herseld- though she’s been hammered by the asshole she was with.
I have buckets of those memories, and I have built walls to protect myself from them- I feel things powerfully and if I was assaulted by all my emotions at once it would make me insane. Er.
So I have those memories, most of them, locked away, safely, ready to access but never in the foreground. And once in a while someone reminds me of one of them. I take it out of it’s box, sit it on the desk, sniff it, feel it, remember. Sometimes I smile. Actually, in retrospect, I smile most of the time. Smetimes it wrecks me. And then I put them back in the box and put them back away.
When I can stand it, I share them here. And maybe I’ll put them in a book, someday.
Why do people do this to themselves?
I met my sweetheart in high school, we got married and stuck together through thick and thin. You can’t hurt one of us without hurting both of us. The concept of divorce is way past my comprehension.
How do people that are wrong for each other manage to get married and have kids before realizing it?
I am not trying to be an asshole or anything, I’m just asking. I can see it if a woman is getting slapped around by an abusive POS or a gal is cheating on her man or something like that.
I am old fashioned I suppose. I hope I die first because life without my wife won’t be worth it.
Ah, the thoughts so provoked. I would think of this process as somewhat of a catharsis. At least I think that is how you spell it.
In any event some things are best left forgotten. Some things need to be reviewed, and some memories can be savored.
Some times things are what they are. I’ve been with my current wife more that 20 years and while I would not like to contemplate life with out her, I could live. It would be different, but life is constant change.
It must me raining at Og’s place, here it is clear and cold and I think I will go practice so I can get a turkey in a couple of months.
Good questions Rusty, but I can’t answer them even though I made some of those mistakes many years back.
Kelly though…
Couldn’t imagine life without her.
Ah, but you have someone who has not abandoned you (physically or emotionally), who DOES stick with you “through thick and thin.”
I know many people who lie down every night next to strangers, people who don’t love them and maybe don’t even like them much but they’ll be damned if they’ll be divorced. Or they’re together through inertia — it would be too much trouble to get divorced and split the sheets. Or even economics — I know one woman who has a cheating alcoholic husband and she stays with him because “if I threw him out, where would he go? He has no family, he has no friends, he has no place to go, he can’t afford to take care of himself.” So he stays there. They despise one another.
Some people are capable of saying “I don’t love you any more.” There’s men who want a swap a 40 for two 20s, there’s women who think the guy they married is a load and they’re tired of toting it. Lots of reasons to go, and for some, not enough to stay.
And to answer your question, Rusty, you hope that people grow together but all too often they grow apart. I’ll have to leave it to smarter people to figure out why that happens.
There’s an ad running on TV these days that bemoans the current trend “When something breaks, you throw it away.” Maybe there’s truth to that. I’m not saying it’s good, I’m just saying it happens.
Jenny
“It’s a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.”–Ulysses Everett McGill
Og,
My memories work much like that also. I also have the same process, usually provoked by a stimulus of some kind, like Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer”.
Rusty,
In this case Forrest was right. You got lucky the first time. Congrats too you two!
Steve