Look Kids, Big Ben!!

If the scenery starts looking a little too familiar, you might be going in circles.

The Professor and I have been spending a lot of time together for two people who are getting divorced.  It started shortly after the new year.  First, he came by every week to grab some things he needed from the house.  Then he asked me to help him with some minor surgery.  He was snowed in here for a few days.  March rolled around, and with it the first anniversary of his father’s death.  It was a tough time for him.  I wanted to be supportive (and, frankly, I was afraid of the consequences of acting otherwise), and so I made myself, and the house and doggies, available.  I told my therapist that, after March, I was sure he’d stop wanting to come around.  I was wrong.  As the weather improved, the back yard became an appealing hangout, I got a job and the Professor started coming over more frequently, sometimes to help out with the dogs, sometimes just to hang out.  Lately, there hasn’t been a weekend we’ve both been in town that we haven’t spent a day together.  After a recent week in Germany, the Professor called from a cab at the airport to ask if he could come over.  

You might ask, as many people have, why I would want to spend time with the person who left me, who stood in the doorway and said our marriage was a mistake he could fix.  The answer is ironically simple:  it's complicated.  Isn’t everything?

I have enjoyed spending time with the Professor.  Strangely, I'm sure even he would agree that we always had fun together -- when we weren't fighting, that is.  And I’m glad we’re on good terms.  I'm proud of myself for that, because it's required a lot of self-control on my part -- which is something I needed to practice.  I'm proud to be learning that skill.  And I’m glad that the end of our relationship hasn't been a sudden rending, leaving a ragged abyss between what was and what is, but instead a slow withdrawal.  For me, at least.  It's the way I wanted to do things, if they had to be done.

We go to lunch, cook dinner, talk about work, law, research, food, the doggies, and life in general.  Sometimes we even talk about the divorce.  But we never talk about anything too real.  No emotions.  There is no validation of anything, at least not for me.  No acknowledgement of what he’s done in leaving me, of what it’s done to me, of what it’s been like.  No suggestion that we still love each other.  (Or, rather, that he still loves me.  I may not always like, or even think very much of, the Professor, but my love for him nonetheless abides.)  In that sense, it leaves me feeling kind of empty.  And so it's also been very difficult – an ongoing emotional upheaval of sorts.  It’s been confusing, particularly because I haven't felt like I was allowed to ask any pointed questions, raise any serious issues, be real. As a result, there are many things I simply don't know or understand.  And there are many things I feel or think that just go unsaid and unacknowledged.  I've accepted that.  I had no choice.  But I cannot continue to do so.  It's just not working for me anymore.

For months, my wise mind (as opposed to my emotional mind) has been asking me how long this will go on.  How long it possibly can go on.  I have felt (or known?) that it could not go on forever, that at some point the Professor and I would have to stop moving forward on close parallel paths, and move apart.  More recently, I have felt frustrated and somewhat stagnated by the state of our 'relationship' -- although I have been reluctant to draw any conclusions, make any decisions, or take any action to change things.  I haven't been ready, and I haven't been sure.  It is a sad, and lonely, and scary thing to decide.  

But I have finally come to the conclusion (or had the realization) that I'm not going anywhere.  I've moved as far forward as I can on this particular path.  I've journeyed a long way -- but now I'm seeing familiar landmarks.  I've traveled over these mountains and through these valleys in years (and months) past, and I'm ready for new scenery.  I'm also tired, worn out, exhausted by the familiar.  I am completely spent.  And the gas stations along the way that used to fill my tank seem to have gone out of business.    

So I'm consulting my map and heading off in a new direction.  I'm afraid of flat tires, endless stretches of road with no one to talk to, radio stations that don't come in, and losing my way.  But I'm hopeful about what new wonders I might discover -- both along the way and wherever I end up.