Like so many people in their 40s, I’m in a phase of life where long-standing marriages and less formal couplings seem to be evaporating all around. The previous decades, wherein my friends and similarly-aged family members were getting engaged, or married, or having kids, have absolutely flown by.
I can’t recall which of my friends, also in the process of a divorce, called it “The Big Sadness”, but it summed up the mood of the moment and stuck in my mind during a conversation about just this topic: commiserating together on the awful, overwhelming sense of grief over the loss of the nuclear family and its inherent, naively-assumed, shared future. And it’s always there, because it is grief. It’s in the photos, the books, the crayon artwork on the fridge, the flashbulb memory of driving to adopt a kitten with my daughter on her fourth birthday, the soon-to-be outgrown shoes of my son lying near the door.
Now I feel compelled to give my standard disclaimer: What I’m describing is real grief, possibly PTSD, but things could be far worse. I’m not mourning the actual death of a loved one, nor seeing those I love fading to illness or fleeing from bombed out homes. I am lucky, I am alive, breathing in and out; my joints all bend, my teeth all chew, most of my hair grows; the sun still shines, the rain (sometimes) still falls; I’m still employed, I have health insurance, I can still feed and shelter my kids. Overall, I’m plenty healthy enough to keep expending energy complaining and wallowing in my current situation.
But I am no longer invited to weddings, or baby showers, or first birthdays or really even impromptu barbecues or concerts, and I no longer live close enough to casually hang out on evenings or weekends with friends from my early adulthood. So, I exist amid all of the natural collateral from the typical priorities around family life and career favored by many folks during their 20s and 30s.
The sadness isn’t necessarily visible. On the outside, I appear to be a “normal”, damn-near middle-aged guy, who should have somewhere to be and someone to be with; or at least a household errand to pursue: groceries to buy, kids to shuttle to activities, honey-do lists to address by puttering around the hardware store.
And I was that guy, for many years; but now that’s all over for me. I still have kids who are minors and need food and rides and sports teams coached, but now it feels more like survival mode, during the half-time I get with them, than anything like the all-consuming, cozy family routine it once was.
Or, was it? I must admit, in those young family days, the 24 hour responsibilities were, admittedly, exhausting. I wondered if I’d ever have time to work out, be creative, travel, start an exciting company, relax and do nothing for a day with friends, and so on. And I may be the exception in this sepia-toned recollection, but I do also remember loving all of it — tired toddlers screaming in the checkout line or the car seat, sleep-deprived wife not wanting to talk or do much else after 6pm, workload forcing late nights, house remodeling forcing late weekends — I loved every minute of my family, and that’s probably the molten core of my pain and reluctance to just let it go and move on now.
No, these days, I’m more likely the guy who lingers way longer than expected at the café or beer garden, “working” on his laptop. Now, if you’re there and you notice me, or my ilk, we probably (possibly) are working, we just really have nowhere else to be. No one to meet for drinks. Nobody besides the dog (who is napping responsibly now and no longer a puppy) waiting at home, as it’s probably our day/week without the kids.
Yes, this latest trend, where usually one, and less often, both partners in a marriage or partnership decide to end things and move on, is a fucking doozy. In dealing with my former wife’s decision last year to end our family, split lives, finances and custody, and start off fresh (though not necessarily in that order) with her new, dreamy, meant-to-be partner, I had been initially struggling just to keep my head above water, air in my lungs; reeling from the tidal wave of loss specific to me and my kids and our household. And many months in, despite the persistent ebb and flow of those same shockwaves, I have to accept that there will always be a mountain of regrets and bitterness, and in those moments where my mind slips back into the old patterns of the former life, genuine despair and even existential panic. Remember to breathe, man.
Some things — most of them chemically unhealthy and not maintainable for the long-term — dull the sharpest parts, but temporarily. Nothing erases it.
Still, the more I read, and share (and yes, whine incessantly about [see my other posts if you’re overly happy today and need a downer]) my experience and pain with friends old, reconnected, and new, the more I realize I am not alone in all of this. I’m finding out just how much my family and friends have to relate in the way of similar, painful life-lessons. Some sad stories of broken families, like those of my mother’s and step-father’s first marriages, happened long ago, though their effects are never completely over. Many others are concurrent with my own “slow-motion train wreck”, as a good friend aptly described it.
I’ve been approaching this from what I believe is the steeper, more jagged, receiving end of the climb: I did not have a choice in the timing or any related decisions that led to this destruction of the world I once inhabited. Yet, even from the opposite sides of a separation, among both break-ers and break-ees, there seems to be a consensus on the weight of all this gloom. I have discussed the same general, Big Sadness with friends who were themselves, the initiators of their breakups or divorces. Despite a sense of relief at having ended something they couldn’t sustain, even the choosers, the leavers, the “winners” tend to feel shell-shocked by what they have wrought.
I am petty and reactionary here, so my sympathy for those who actively cause this kind of rift in their lives and those of their families is frequently mitigated by feeling like a victim myself. It’s something I need to fold into forgiveness. It doesn’t come naturally, but there’s some progress. Outside the sting of my own self-centered struggle, I can see these are also people with aching memories of once-shared lives and comforts and dreams, and they are also hurting; I can rationalize the philosophy of exploding a life in the pursuit of everyone’s being healthier apart, rather than grinding along together.
Most of us are wounded somehow, and reaching out and empathizing are good things. Or at least they form a foundation. It is lucky and good to have friends, or at a bare minimum, to recognize fellow castaways on a life raft. Beyond the care and concern others have shown me, a check-in text, or kind words over a beer or three, just the knowledge that these are shared wounds is somehow comforting. At this point in life, and far earlier for some, everybody is dealing with something difficult. I don’t see any complete remedy, but it’s why I keep writing about it, why I want to share any bits that help. I wouldn’t wish this experience on anybody, but I have to appreciate the sad camaraderie.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: snowmelt (author)