Two posts ago I wrote about a friend of mine who came home from a long business trip and was greeted by his wife of some 30 years, “I’ve found someone else. I’m leaving.”
And, there wasn’t much more said. She was gone.
He was more than stunned, of course. He was blindsided.
I value him for his compassion, intelligence and commitment to expand himself and his world.
He wrote me a rather long letter (very cathartic for him) describing his days of discovery.
If you just discovered, I hope you can learn or be comforted (it’s always good to know we are not alone) from his anguish. Or, perhaps you remember those days, and can now nod and smile and glad you are no longer there. Here is Part 2:
I’m so damn lost. I’m so confused. I’m spinning untethered in the cold dark void. I’ve been transported to a place that’s uncharted and I need to find my way home. But I’m no longer certain of home. Or me. Or much of anything. I’ve gone from all together to all apart. My competencies in question.
If self-awareness begins with knowing what is happening inside, I feel my very survival is at stake. But I must force myself to focus, reflect and make my inner state an object of my awareness. I know that a part of me is afraid. Afraid of loss. Afraid of losing the thing I value most ?” my family, our team of four.
These raw, bleeding emotions, gushing, exploding, oozing, seeping and demanding. It requires great effort to assess my being and look at how I can be true to who I am in perspective, and look at these emotions and not view this vast wasteland through them. I can have these emotions, but they cannot have me.
“I’ve met somebody. I’m leaving you.?? It echoes. It haunts. It taunts. When will this nightmare end?
Space. It’s not mine to give her and she’s taking it, having it. I cannot rein or reign her behaviors, her choices, her judgments. My emotions also cannot be reined in and where the healthy line is for me to reign over them is a source of confusion. To be healthy, I probably need to give them a large pasture to run through, unbridled. Breathe.
Judgment. These bleeding edge, raw emotions are mine. Like hunger or weariness, they are mine and have no morality attached to them. They’re okay. They’re mine. But I’m judging some other’s behaviors as wrong. Just plain wrong. Moralistically wrong. Cosmically wrong. And I struggle, fight, and fear the dichotomy of my judgment of the behavior that has causes so many deaths and my need to remain the nonjudgmental witness to my own flood of emotions, thoughts and memories. I fear their ability and my surrender to control by them or being plucked up by them like a raging current into a spiral of self-destructive choices. What blend of respect and curiosity can master them and discharge them if not constructively, at minimum appropriately. I’m suddenly a child. Six years old. And must treat myself as kindly as I would that display of raw, unbridled and at times inappropriate emotion.
“I’ve met somebody. I’m leaving you.?? God damn. God Damn! You’re not supposed to meet somebody! You’re married to me. You can look. You can even stray. But leave? Fuck! Just like that? I feel tossed aside. Like the history means nothing. How could I miss that? When did requited become unrequited? We’ve always been far from perfect. But pretty damn good. God, this hurts so fuckin’ bad. It feels like a wound that will never close, always ooze, never die. Death without dying.
How, how, just how the fuck am I supposed to free the emotions and control the behaviors? Not that I have any impulses yet. I’m not even eating and alcohol and drugs scare the hell out of me right now. And even this fear of losing control scares the hell out of me right now. Damn. Maybe it’s just all fear. Fear of the dark? I’m certainly in a place with no light. Pitch. Black. Heavy. A bag on my chest. Breathe.
I feel exactly the same. After 31 years of marriage, he’s gone. I feel so alone. My best friend who I could share everything with is sharing his life with someone else. We have been together longer than she’s been alive. He has someone, and I’m alone. My life without him is nothing. I would die before hurting him as deeply as he has hurt me. We have spent over half of our lives together, and I don’t know where to go from here. 31 years of happiness and it all seems like a waste. I don’t want anyone else. He was and always will be the only man for me.