I mentioned in one of my early posts since rebooting this blog that a very long post would be coming.  This is that post.

This is a very personal story.  Obviously, if I weren’t ok with all of it being common knowledge I wouldn’t post it here.  As with most things here, it is mainly for the benefit of my own reflection, but I hope that it might help you in some way.  Also, it represents one side of a story, I’m sure there are differences on the other side.  Probably only a handful of people know the story in its entirety, but here it will be very complete.

5 years ago, life was very different for me.  I lived in Maryland.  I worked as an integration technician for a government contractor.  Oh yes, and I was married to a girl (yes, I think girl is an apt description) named Holly.  I was generally quite content with life.  Then something happened.  That’s kind of the setup for most stories.  We have our hero, and all is well in his world, until one day, something happens that threatens the wellness of his world.  Not that I’m a hero, but, well, screw it, I’ll be a hero in my version of this story.

As was the norm, I woke up and got ready for work.  The night before Holly had seemed a bit down.  I approached her about it and she told me she was just tired, so I had decided to let her sleep, and left the bedroom so as not to disturb her.  However, that morning was not particularly memorable.  I’m not a morning person, so I’m sure that has a bit to do with it as well.  I do remember that we drove separately that day.  Oh yeah, we worked at the same place.  She was the receptionist in the building.  No, we didn’t meet there, I had helped her to get that job when I learned it would be opening, but that’s not important to the story.  Anyway, driving separately didn’t seem that significant, sometimes either she or I would be running late and rather than both of us being late, we’d just do that.  So, that day she seemed to be running late.  Fair enough.

At some point during the day, she told me that she wanted to meet and talk somewhere after work, and we decided to go to Baker Park. I arrived there first, and sat on a bench by the road and waited for her to arrive.  After several minutes, she drove up and walked over, sitting on the other side of the bench.  She told me that she wasn’t happy, and that she needed some time apart to think about things.  She also handed me a page from her journal that she had written the night before.

“I can’t sleep.  This is the first time I can remember something bothering me so bad I can’t sleep.  I keep thinking… about the countless nights I go to sleep alone.  About how far apart we truly are.  We still have our pet names and hold hands and kiss, but it’s all just habit.  For the past 7 months I think both of us have tried more than ever.  To understand, to love each other as man and wife.  My patience is waning.  How much longer should we try and hope against hope?  How much more can we put ourselves through?  What are we missing in the meantime?

The last time I had this gut feeling was 10-14-2005

It’s not very fair to either of us to go on like this.  How much happier would he be with someone who likes LOTRO and games and movie theaters and his friends?  How much longer can I tell myself “No you fit in.  It’s all in your head.”  Do I want to let my pride win by saying “I don’t care the cost, I’m going to stick it out.”  Even if it costs both our happiness.  I’m going to prove to everyone we’re going to stay together.  Even if we would both be happier with no one at all.

When we first started dating we said if we ever split up, it would be mutual.  I wonder if he still feels this way?

Also, if this would really be better for both of us… why do I feel that knot in my throat?  Why do I feel more pain now than when I left home?  Is it because I’m overreacting in PMS or is it because I’m facing a truth I’ve known about and ignored for years?”

At some point in the conversation she talked about how she had left the room after I came down to bed, because she hadn’t been able to sleep.  She said she hoped I would realize she had gone, and come up and talk to her, almost as though the fact that I didn’t was a sign of some kind.  For my part, I don’t recall her leaving the bed, and so I can only assume I was already asleep by the time she did so.

Oh yeah, an explanation is due concerning that date she wrote.  That refers to when she left her home in Texas to come and live with my family in Maryland.  She had… not the best home life, which no doubt contributed to this situation.  Anyway…

I can’t remember what I did say, but I do know that I was taken completely off guard, and needed to gather my thoughts.  After all, just maybe a month before for Easter she had given me a card in which she wrote “I love you more than ever.”  And generally by all appearances things seemed to be getting better between us, and not worse.  Regardless, we agreed to meet up the next day to talk.

That night was pretty rough.  I don’t think I slept much, and I thought a lot about what I wanted to say to her, and really what I could do to make things better.  I was determined to make things better.

The next day arrived.  It was a workday.  Being that I was miserable, I called in to say I couldn’t make it.  I can’t recall what I did that day, but I do know that when I tried to get Holly to meet me, she said that she wasn’t ready, and so, we didn’t meet that day.

Here is where I’m going to interject a bit of history.  This is a part that I don’t talk about really ever, mainly because even if the fact that I was married comes up in conversation (which is pretty rare), this part certainly doesn’t.  Very shortly after we got married, I found out that she was talking to some guy online, which included “cybersex” and the like.  This bothered me, and I confronted her about it, and it stopped.  It then went into the past.  Ultimately, it was only an online thing and she didn’t really know this person, so it wasn’t quite “real”.  I don’t recall exactly how much later, perhaps a year, maybe a bit less, and I again find out she is talking to someone online, doing similar things.  This time with a guy that was from her hometown.  I can’t recall exactly how I initially stumbled upon it, I think I was using her computer for something , but at any rate I saw something and then started digging and found several damning conversations.  The thing that actually bothered me more than anything about it was how hateful and mean a lot of what the guy said about me to her was, and that she didn’t defend me at all.   But, to make it as short as possible, this time there was a bit of a bigger blowout, but it ultimately resolved again.  Then there was the third time, just a few months later, but this time not online.  I still don’t know for sure how far things progressed, but it involved intimate talk and at least some physicality for sure (this is to say, I don’t believe they went so far as to actually have sex, but I have no way of knowing for sure).  This was with a person at work, who I worked with.  This time I was pretty enraged by the whole thing.  It’s hard to remember all the details, and summing it up it sounds pretty simple, but, after some time it sort of got patched up, with an understanding that it just simply couldn’t happen again.

Obviously, in hindsight, it seems odd that this would happen with any regularity and I would be caught off guard that something was wrong some 7 months later.  However, it is those 6 months in which I genuinely felt that things were getting better and better.  As she had said in her letter, we had both been working on it harder than ever, and to me it seemed to be working.  Evidently not to her, though she never told me about that prior to this letter.

Ok, so back to the part where it’s basically the worst day of my life and she’s telling me she’s not ready to meet up the day after she gave me the letter.  During this time, I later found out, she was in fact with a guy that she had been talking to and hanging out with (not secretly, I knew she was friends with the guy, and aside from one day when she was just gone an exorbitant amount of time I was perfectly OK with it).  Turns out, she had decided she might want to be more than friends with him.  So, that day she was spending with him.

We both went to work the next day.  Walking past reception was more than a little awkward.  Being in the back room with the guys was also uncomfortable, as I was fairly certain they knew something was up.  Over instant messages, I asked if we could talk at lunch, and she agreed.

We met in the cemetery  (fitting, I suppose) where she liked to walk around sometimes.  As a reminder, this is less than 48 hours from when she said she wanted to spend some time apart.  Apparently that day with the other guy was all that she needed to figure out that she didn’t just want time apart, she wanted to be divorced, and there was no room for any discussion on the matter whatsoever.  It was quite a departure from what I had been led to believe from our previous encounter.  We were going to talk about things, and from the sound of it try to work through some issues with some distance between us.  In fact, she had referenced our agreement to end things amicably if we had ever parted ways.  I realize that might seem a bit odd, because I don’t think most people make such agreements, but, it was something that I took pretty seriously.

The actual wording of what we agreed was that if we broke up, we would do so by mutual agreement.  Here is what the agreement meant: You can’t just get pissed and bail, or for any reason just leave without sort of giving the other person a chance to convince you otherwise.  The whole point was to convince the other person that it was for the best.  That she referenced it, and then made no attempt to abide by it was a bit shocking to me.  She basically told me what she had decided on her own before talking to me, essentially told me that she didn’t love me, and, in fact, had never loved me, and gave my back her ring.  Then, she left.

It’s difficult to describe exactly how I felt.  I wanted to be somewhere  that felt hopeful, and so I started to drive to the spot that I proposed to her.  It’s not a difficult spot to find, and I went there often enough, but my mind was such a flurry that I  kind of got lost, it took me quite a bit to get there.  I don’t recall much of what I did once there, but then I went to a mutual friends place to tell them what was going on. To that point, no one had known anything about the separation at all.

That night was, I believe, the most torturous night of my life.  I’m positive that I didn’t sleep at all.  There has never been a moment of more intensive self-examination in my life before or since.  I knew that it was possible that I had fucked up in some way without realizing it, but I was going to fix it, no matter what that meant.

Then a few days later, my cousin received a phone call and learned that Holly was in an accident.  As it turns out, Holly was so shaken by it that she accidentally called the wrong person (my cousin shares the same first name as the person she intended to call).    I was on my way to work, and I in fact got all the way there, but then, conflicted about whether or not I should go to the hospital, just went, because I decided that was what I really wanted to do.  It was at this point she was a bit shaken up, and she seemed to loosen on her apparent resolve to end things.  We had a pretty good conversation there.  I don’t recall the specifics of most of it, but the phrase she said that I remember taking away from this was that “you’re still my best friend”.  If that was true though, she had a funny way of treating her best friend.

We talked a few more times, with my primary goal being to understand the situation, because it just didn’t make any sense to me.  Her ultimate statement was that she needed to find herself.  She wanted to know who she was as a person on her own.  Due to her past infidelities, I had some suspicions about this being over some other guy.  I in fact specifically asked about this at that point, and she told me that she was not seeing anyone, and she didn’t want to see anyone.  She wanted to be alone.  I accepted that for that moment.

Shortly after this she informed me that she wanted me to basically not talk to her for a month.  Given what she had said before, I reluctantly agreed to it.  During the course of this month however, I learned from mutual friends that while she was telling me that, she was telling them that she didn’t want to speak to me ever again.  The reason for that was entirely unclear, and ultimately lead to our mutual friends no longer being her friends, because the reasons were unclear to them as well.

Also in the course of this month of not talking to her I discovered that she was in fact seeing that aforementioned guy.  I did not take that very well. I recall sending some very angry text messages her way because she didn’t answer the phone.  I also recall that her first response to me telling her that I knew was “Oh, so I guess we don’t need to do counseling then.”   (I guess I left that out earlier, at some point I had convinced her to reluctantly go to counseling, but it never actually happened.)

It was at this point that I took the unsavory action of informing friends and her family of exactly what her actions were, because, well, I was pissed, and I wanted people to see her for what she was.  In hindsight, it’s not the best possible action I could have taken, but, I think it was understandable and justifiable.    She was not happy about it.

I guess not much happened for a while following this.  I wrote an enormous letter which I still have a copy of on my computer…  I’m not sure whether or not she ever read it, but I am sure that she never replied.  It was sort of my last-ditch effort to show her that I genuinely cared about restoring the relationship despite everything.    It’s a little hard for me to understand why at this point.  As much as I would prefer that none of this had ever happened, as it did happen, I don’t know why I still wanted to be with that person.

After that not too much happened for close to a year, and then out of nowhere she sent me an email asking if I would be willing to meet up and talk.  Of course I was willing.  After I agreed, she sent another email asking if I could bring a copy of the marriage certificate.  I can’t remember why she said she needed it.  Anyway, I brought it and spoke with her, again I was trying to understand the situation, and again she said that she would like to be friends.  We spoke one more time, and then shortly after that conversation she sent me an email saying that she in fact did not want to be friends.  Well, OK then.

It was at about that time that she started up the divorce process and had me sign papers. At the time I was happy to sign them, because honestly I just wanted the process to be over with since it was clear that she was not going to try to make anything work.  There’s a small part of me that is a little bit vindictive and wishes I would have not signed them so she would have had to wait another year for the divorce, because as it turns out, while during that last conversation we had she told me that she just didn’t believe marriage was for her and she would never get married again, she did get married again.  Less than a year later.  Probably so that she could go to Germany with the guy that she married (he was in the military, so my understanding is, if she was not married to him, she wouldn’t be able to go with him).

Anyway, that’s the main thrust of the story.  There are lots of little bits that I do remember that I guess don’t have much bearing on story overall.

So it’s 5 years later, since we were separated, and functionally divorced, if not legally (legally divorced closer to 4 years, I don’t even know the exact date of that).  How do I feel about it now?

Well, I still feel like it is the worst experience I have ever gone through.  It was absolutely miserable and lonely and painful.  I also think it’s caused me to grow more than anything else in my life to date.  I am most certainly “over it” at this point.  I don’t long to be with her, or anything like that, but that said, I think that it still affects me in terms of how I approach relationships, and I do think it has given me some trust issues.  And there’s also still a definite part of me that wants her to get what’s coming to her.  I have no interest in trying to make that happen mind you, but I’d be lying if I said hearing that her life had fallen apart wouldn’t feel like vindication to me.  That’s probably wrong of me, but it’s also the truth.

I still miss being married, though, as I said, I don’t long to be in a relationship with her.  I do wish that she would speak to me.  It still feels like an unresolved issue in my life, and while there are people who I have grown apart from before, she is the only person where things ended pretty chaotically.

I had to fight to keep from becoming jaded toward marriage for some time…  as much as I miss being married, I think I am reluctant to pursue it again, not so much on an intentional level, but I guess on a subconscious level.

Wow that’s a long post.  If you read this entire thing you deserve some kind of award.  If you comment I’ll assume you read it all and buy you a coffee sometime.  You’re on the honor system.

That’s all I have to say about that.

It’s been awhile since I simply wrote about what’s going on in my life, so it’s about time I write about that I suppose.  Not counting this week the past couple months have been pretty busy for me in regard to work.  It was pretty great to have a steady job and regular income.  I have one more paycheck still coming, so the income hasn’t quite ceased, but there’s certainly going to be a gap there even if I start working again tomorrow, so, that’s sad.

I recently had an interview regarding a show that would have been pretty exciting, it was a multi camera show filmed on a studio lot, which would have been pretty different from anything I had worked on before.  I thought the interview went well, but I guess not well enough, as I would have been starting today if they had decided to go with me.  I will just have to wait for the next, hopefully even better, opportunity.  I don’t expect I’ll be out of work for too long at this point, so I’m still quite optimistic.

One good thing that comes from being unemployed is having more time to do things, and so I’ve taken advantage of the time off to do some of them.  Last week I went to both Six Flags Magic Mountain and Joshua Tree National Park.  Both were very good experiences, though quite different.  It was not my first time at Magic Mountain, but I finally managed to finish up getting on all the coasters that I hadn’t yet been on.  Full Throttle remains my favorite overall.  Should any of you east coasters make it out here for a visit, I think Magic Mountain should be on your list of things to do, unless you don’t like such things.

Joshua Tree on the other hand provided a lot of cool scenery and some good walks.  It’s a huge park and required a lot of driving around, I’m torn on whether or not I think it would be a good place to do a multi-day hike.  I’m sure the camping there is great, but while there’s a lot of cool scenery, it all looks pretty similar even when you’re driving… I have to imagine after several hours of walking it, it would cease to be interesting.  I guess with the right people it would still be fun though.

Other than that I’ve continued to do lots of tabletop gaming when time allows, recently playing Tsuro of the Seas, which is pretty simple and fun.  I also spent some time sort of learning how to play the A Game of Thrones board game, which I still haven’t played a REAL game of (we did sort of a “mock game” to learn it, but there were only 2 of us, the game requires 3 players minimum).  Both of the games require strategy, but A Game of Thrones is quite heavy on the strategy and is extremely complex.  The interesting thing is that there is very little chance involved in A Game of Thrones… my feeling is that the best strategist is going to win almost every time.

Other than that, I had several Easter events yesterday which were all fun.   And now that it is monday my search for new employment continues!

I hope that life is treating you all well.  More posts will surely follow this week.

Sometimes I feel the urge to write, but I don’t have a clear idea of what it is I want to actually write about.  Now is one of those times.  I have a few things floating around in my head, but I’m not sure how or if they fit together, and so…  there’s a good chance this will mostly be rambling.   We’ll see if anything worthwhile comes out I guess.

Spring, for most people, symbolizes new life, or some kind of change.  It’s not really any different for me, but, I really identify this time of year as a season of change for me, more so than any other.  This is especially true of Easter and the time period just after it.  That time period has only been particularly significant to me for about the past 5 years now.  It’s weird that it’s been that long.  But that’s not what this post is going to be about…  That’s for another post, in about a month’s time.  More recently, it was about that time I decided to try to become a bit more active, and lose some weight, which had some definite permanent effects, though I cannot claim complete success.  That journey continues, and I need to work on a plan to renew my efforts in that area.

This year, though, I find myself focusing a great deal on the spiritual.  I mentioned in a recent post that I am reading straight through the Bible.  Today I finished with the Pentateuch.  While I would say I’ve probably read about 99% of the narrative portions of the Bible at some point (that is to say, everything that isn’t lists of laws or numbers of people in armies or tribes, or genealogies, etc.), I have never done it straight through.  It’s interesting, and I find it to be challenging in different ways.  I don’t want to get into specifics here, because I want to sort of resolve things in my own mind first… but for now I will simply say that I am starting to see the Bible in a bit of a different light than I did before.  I think reading it straight through is something that would be valuable for any person… and I also think it’s valuable to try your best to cast off any of you preconceived ideas or notions about God and the Bible before doing so as well.

I used to like to go through my old Xanga blog and read posts from there.  Sadly, it seems to be gone.  I’ve always been one for nostalgia, and there were lots of things in there about what I believed at the time, and how my beliefs were changing at the time.  It’s interesting to think back on those times when my beliefs shifted in major ways, and to sort of see it happening again.  I think back to some earlier times and some of what I believed then was kind of silly.  Of course, I probably still have some kind of silly beliefs, and I’ll need to go another several years before I find a few more to root out.

It’s not without its challenges.  Especially when so much of it has to do with things that you see as mysterious that certain people who you know and trust seem to see as definitive.  It’s enough to make you doubt your own doubt about certain things.

Eventually I’ll write more about all of this, but this will have to suffice for now.

Something that I have come to learn about myself is that I am very bad at letting go of people.  I’ve been fairly fortunate for most of my life in that I had a core group of friends that extended from middle school all the way through college… really, all the way to now for some of us… it’s just that core group became smaller in the years following college.    Still, I think that’s longer than most people retain that.

Being a bit of a nerd, and having spent a large portion of my life on IRC (internet chat rooms for those of you less nerdy than myself), I, in addition to my real life friends, had internet friends.  And there’s even been some crossover from “internet friends” into the realm of “real life friends”, including the ultimate crossover, where I married one of them, which ended in spectacular failure, and just goes to prove the adage, “Don’t live where you internet, because the internet will fuck your shit up.”  That is totally an adage.

Up until pretty recently in my life, there were several people who I was at one point really good friends with that I felt like I wanted to hang on to, and knew that if I didn’t try to do so then they were going to mostly fade from my life into the realm of “Facebook acquaintances”, which is at least one step below “regular acquaintances”.  So for a long time I would try to maintain those friendships, which were mostly ones fading due to distance.  In the event that you have never tried harder to maintain a relationship than the other person…  it’s pretty trying.    Sometimes it’s not part of your nature to do something though, and you have to actively make yourself do it.  That was the case for me in letting go of these people, which happened several months ago now.  I think to some degree the prospect of the change of them not being in my lives scared me… but the truth is, they already weren’t, except for super brief appearances when I would seek them out.

So it’s true, after I stopped trying, they immediately degraded to Facebook acquaintances… which is to say, I occasionally see an update they post, and even more rarely they may comment on one of mine, or I on theirs, but there’s never any real communication.  And that’s OK, because things change, and people change.

I don’t know if there is a takeaway for you here, I mostly just wanted to reflect on that decision for myself.  Take from it what you will.