The first thing you might wonder – a man going through a divorce who happens to be writing about it all on the Internet for public consumption – is: Is this man a narcissist or what?
I can answer that for you. of course me!
I mean, why should I lie at this point? The truth is, despite all the pain and suffering, regardless of the storms of confusion and mountains of anger or sadness I’ve dealt with since my marriage officially started falling apart a little over a year ago, there’s still a part of me that loves reading a good story.
Especially if I’m the author.
Over the past year, while trying to come to terms with the fact that my marriage had shattered into a trillion little pieces of once-promising glass, I also stumbled upon the best writing experience I’ve ever had. Many of you may cringe at the mere idea of sharing — or even oversharing — and I understand that. But not me. I don’t mind that at all. I went down on him.
Real-time life interests me deeply. And when my life falls on me like a hot summer rain, I as a writer need to recognize when the story actually reaches me rather than having to smell it. This is what I realized about a year ago when I sat at my mother’s house.
As a 42-year-old father of three, I moved back in with her (and my stepfather) in a desperate attempt to survive something I honestly thought would be much easier.
Fools often become the best writers because they are the ones who never realize how real they are until it’s too late. Once it’s too late, there’s not much you can do; All you have to do is stand there, look at the mess at your feet, the mess you’ve caused (or helped create) and figure out how to deal with it.
You can’t walk away from chaos, so this leaves you with pretty much only one option: you have to deal. And how you deal with something, especially something as difficult as ending a marriage with young children when you’re not sure that you still love the other person yet, well, that says a lot about your character so far as your heart and soul go.
Related: I Thought My BFF Was Fun & Bossy — But She Was A Secret Narcissist
I didn’t know where to turn. It took me some time. I started exercising vigorously and losing weight. I thought maybe I could be skinny. This might make me happy again. That’s how much heartbreak you get. You start thinking about stupid things like that.
Then I was living at my mom’s house and trying to recover, watching “Naked And Afraid” one night in the early spring, and drinking her can of Merlot when it came to me, believe it or not. I knew then and there:
I just need to write my life.
Entire. As much as I can get away with it. The real stuff, the roughness, the open sores. No pointing fingers. There are no things for children. I knew immediately, within seconds of the thought, exactly what was going to happen. I was going to write about my impending divorce because it was going down.
People would read it and some of them would hate it because they didn’t like to feel uncomfortable. But they’re still going to read it anyway because they can’t help themselves; They love being disturbed.
Other people would find my stuff and get it right away. These are people who have been through some heartbreak in their time.
They are the ones who reach out to me and tell me everything will be okay, which is honestly what I’ve been striving for all along. I just wanted strangers to tell me I would be okay. Who the hell wouldn’t want that? right?
I’ll sit there and read something I wrote maybe once in the few seconds after I just wrote it, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t spend a lot of time with the pieces I write; To do so would be unfair to me and the reader.
I think my best chance of finding out who I am and what my thoughts are at any given juncture is much the same as taking my ex-wife and I (and our previously united lives) and tearing them apart again until they are tearing each other apart like scabs and skin. B
But once you do that, you can’t keep sticking the scab on the bleeding wound, you know? You have to stand there and look at what you just did and try to process what you are feeling in this moment.
