Happiness

The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present.

I have this quote on my Facebook page right now. It is a lesson I have learned in a most painful way. For so long after my divorce, I carried around a lot of anger. I was angry at my ex for abandoning me after 10 years of loving bliss. I was angry at my chosen career, which I blamed for turning me into an unfeeling, uncaring, unloving automatron. I was mad with my family and friends for their perceived lack of understanding or caring.
In the end, I was just angry with myself. No one was to blame for the failure of my marriage except me. Certainly, there were other factors, and my ex shouldered some of the blame herself. But I was not responsible for her happiness and I was not responsible for her failings. I was responsible for me.


I neglected my ex. I had heard from others in my career field that my job would do this sometimes. I never believed it. It can’t possibly happen to me. But it did. To make a very long and complicated story short, I shut myself off from her. I saw unbelievable things at my job. Things I had never been exposed to before. Things the average civilian does not see every day. I did not know how to express my feelings. I did not know how to talk about it. My cynicism and bitterness were difficult to express. In retrospect, I know it would have been better if I had.


I forgot to tell her the things she needed to hear. I love you became rarer and rarer when it used to be repeated like a mantra. I did not get close, did not hold her, did not kiss her. Making love became less and less appealing. The environment I exposed myself to on a daily basis killed what used to be a healthy, active libido. Then I forgot Valentines Day. Nothing. Not so much as a card to her, from me or my daughters. No flowers, no candy, no nothing.


When she finally told me it was the end, it was like hitting a brick wall at 60 MPH. I was crushed. I was torn to bits. I entered a long, dark night of the soul from which I have only recently emerged. But she has gone on.


She is engaged again, and is contemplating another baby soon. She has rebuilt her life and is happy.
Now I must be happy also. I must leave my anger at my failings in the past. I would like at some point to be in another relationship and make up for all the things I didn’t do in my last. I would like to get involved in things that hold my interest in more than a superficial way. I would like to promote to upper management at work, even if this means moving far from my home. I would like to keep being the kind of father to my girls that makes them run to me with a yelp of joy, like they do now. A lot of introspection, and the healthy way I leave work at work at the end of each day, has led me to take an inventory of who I am as a person and what it is I want, to know what it is that makes me truly happy.


At 37, I finally have an idea.