The Breaking and The Healing

Today is my 28th wedding anniversary.  I have not seen nor spoken with my husband in nearly a year.

I've heard tell of marriages that end gracefully, where safe conversation supports a healthy acknowledgement of individual shortcomings that sabotage communal growth, and where each partner concedes the need to trade acute pain for chronic hope - but this was not one of those endings.  This marriage ended with angry shouts, denials of responsibility, confused motivations, and a general breakdown of communication.  Neither of us behaved elegantly.

The reasons my marriage failed are complicated and dynamic.  I suspect I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand why it didn't last and what could have been done differently (if anything) to prevent its demise.  I do not intend to discuss those reasons here, as there is no point - my position changes daily with my mood and confidence.  Cause and effect become interchangeable as I try to dissect feeling from circumstance.  I do not hold much trust in any emotion that takes up residence in my body, since I know it is soon replaced by another - sorrow, relief, guilt, shame, joy, optimism, nostalgia, anticipation, fear, fortitude.  But I don't want to discuss that because it is all very messy and personal and kind of gross and also very boring.

What is more interesting, in the most elastic definition of the word, is the external manifestations of the dissolution of an institution.  And by that, I mean the institution of 'Kevin and Audra'.  I have always known that a marriage is something larger than the mere sum of 2 individual hearts.  Man and Woman are additive and divisible back into equal parts, but Husband and Wife are multiplicative.  When you split a marriage in half, there is a rather large remainder that doesn't really belong to either integer.

When a marriage is healthy, being part of an entity that is larger than yourself is amazing.  There is a brazen sense of well being that arises from the creation of something from nothing.  There is a vitality that grows out of mutual development.  But when a marriage is unhealthy, you can feel lost in that largeness, like you are no longer even a contributor to this voracious entity that feeds ceaselessly on your own vital energy. Nonetheless, when an unhealthy marriage ends, you still feel far less than whole...far less than half...

What I failed to anticipate is just how much other people interact with the institution, as opposed to the individuals.  When I reveal the news of the break to other people - especially to other married people (happily or otherwise), I see on their faces that they are checking the details of my account against their own interactions - firstly with 'Kevin and Audra', then secondly with each of us as Kevin or as Audra.  When they are assessing the individuals, there is a degree of compassion, understanding, commiseration but when assessing the marriage as an institution, their reactions are steeped in anxiety, fear, consternation.  If we could fall - after all we have been through together -  what does it mean for them?  I sense they look at me with suspicion, as if I am a cancer that might infiltrate their own tenuous togetherness. 

2017 was a year of demolition and restoration, both emotionally and physically.  One year after being hit by a car, my leg is at about 75% of pre-break capability.  One year after breaking my vows, my heart is overflowing.  In 2018, I am looking forward to building physical strength by hiking, biking, and backpacking and to building emotional strength by doing those activities with the many warm and gracious friends who have rallied around me during this amazing and horrifying year.

Thank you, and Happy New Year. 

Turn-Back Time

I sat down this morning with the intention of finally writing publicly about my crumbling marriage, but was forced to change direction when I opened my computer to the news that a friend and classmate had died.  I don't have the details.  However, there were some posts that suggested his demise may have been self-inflicted - if not intentionally, then perhaps through carelessness...such things can never be known with certainty.

I reflected, gauged my feelings, replayed our most recent interactions.  Death is somehow creepier in a time when eternal life looms large on the Internet.  Photographs have always held the magic of  capturing time and place, but the Internet preserves conversations over years in one tidy, review-able location.  It also preserves cries for help.  Indeed, the Internet itself is my primary source of  mental assistance, but this morning, I could not find a resource to help put words to the complicated emotions I am experiencing.

A few years ago, when I was candidly sharing my struggles with alcoholism and alcoholics, my friend "reached out" to me.  I put that phrase in quotes, because it needs to be set aside for further consideration.  It is a phrase that is bandied about, perhaps carelessly.  The Internet is full of advice on when and how to reach out - and what to do when someone reaches out to you.  But I couldn't quite find any answers to my most burning question - what if someone reaches out to you and you are not able to help?

In the face of epic failure, it is difficult to hold onto the conclusion that you did the best you could, difficult to not ask if you could have done more - especially if you did nothing...or very little...or feel like you did...

The most useful essay I could find discussed the importance of helping yourself before you can help someone else.  This resonated with me because I am deeply immersed in a lot of heavy problems and my focus, particularly this last year, has been on helping myself - helping myself heal, helping myself grow, and helping myself create a future.  I do this by learning and practicing skills that allow me to cope with the challenges in my life. It takes nearly all of my time and energy, which makes it easy to support the argument for not making someone else a priority.  The hypothesis of needing to be strong to lift others up lessens the guilt of inadequacy.

But what if helping yourself means pulling away when someone reaches out?

What if self-preservation means completely turning your back?


...what if I am writing about my crumbling marriage after all?

R.I.P Keith

What were you trying to tell us all with this picture??