Divorce - The other white meat.

Strychnine makes your tummy pucker as it kills you and ice cold water will shrink your pecker every time. It's funny how divorce accomplishes it all in one bold swing. And I just can't seem to wrap my mind around it. And the very essense of me trying to wrap my mind around my pain and suffering has my friends telling me to be easy on myself. That this will all pass. And it will. I know that. Everything changes.

I've been with the same girl to woman for thirty five years. You cannot expect to ease out of that sort of history like a Hollywood revisionist changes the facts of what has happened in order to sell his story. Just can't be done. You feel what you feel. Acknowledge it. Face it. Explore it.

 We in New England can find that the Winter season is able to start long before its scheduled entry date of December 21st. When flurries begin to fly in late October, leading the meteorological onslaught of snowstorm after snowstorm the months that should be leading into that oft glorified season of Spring, finds us depressed and willing to "give up" by mid February. Sometimes the snows of Winter will lead us into cold rains lasting through April, May and June, changing our desire for Spring into a plead for the arrival of Summer. Sometimes the bad weather just drags on and on. Six months or more of weather that has you day by day just putting one foot in front of the other. You keep on keeping on. Gah!

Yeah, it will pass. But meanwhile, I still have the need for warmth and sunshine. And while the lack of sunshine lightens the pigmentation of my skin tone, divorce follows suit; albeit closer to an old fashioned blood letting. Yeah, divorce is the other white meat. It bleeds you dry emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and financially. Ah, the whiter shade of pale!

My heart feels broken.

However I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Why? Because this is where I find myself! Wherever we go, there we are. But are we? If in my present moment, my today, my thoughts are filled with desire and/or aversion to my present moment and to my today, am I really exactly where I am supposed to be? Locked into the little whiny voices in my head, those little dogs that nip at my heels, those little foxes that spoil the vine? When I begin to believe that I am my emotions, my mind fills with smoke like a room full of cigar smokers and life is lived through a neanderthal haze. What is it that John Lennon said? "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".

So when I say that my heart feels broken, I can either focus on how "I feel" like a cat following a laser pointer, or I can observe my feelings and see what they might be saying or trying to teach me. Observation and awareness is like a pair of owls who, while sitting unobserved in a tall tree, look down upon the lay of the land and when called upon act in unison with their owl natures and easily find their prey.

I am feeling extremely anxious and my heart is beating erratic today. I have been living in another person's home while I wait for my spouse to vacate the premises. And sadly, she is taking everything but the kitchen sink. And I am not too sure that she is even leaving that. Nothing about this is fair. It all seems like a bad dream. But wishing it to go away is fruitless. It is my life as it is. Real life.

And I must stop the bleeding