In the middle of this new validation, and after twenty-three years of marriage, my wife wants a divorce. This devastates me as I am now feeling a renewed sense to make our marriage work. Again, I am too late and me trying so hard scares Judy. She just doesn’t care anymore.
I am certainly not proud of all the things I do and see, and hear, out of my sheer desperation and hurt. I feel compelled to relive things of the past. While doing things I should not do to erase those hurts I have words in my mind that linger. I try time after time to forget those words. However, in spite of my efforts, the words follow me as if a cold air on my neck. “Jesus paid it all. He paid it all for me.” I even try to disdain those words. Finally, unable to erase them, they become sweet once again.
My physiologist whom I start going to at this time tells me one reason for self-destructive behaviors springs from the past when I had absolutely no control over what happened to me. It became a mirrored life of the past, he says. I don’t know if my therapist would agree, but I get the idea to actually reenact what happened in earlier life. This time, I would have the control. I would have the power. In my half-hardhearted efforts to pay for what I do after the divorce I go out at night to play the hero. I do probably save the lives of three women, and, quite by accident, a young man. It is not as hard to do as one might think; most bullies are cowards. It is simply a matter of being there and at the right time. It is kind of like when I save a little boy from drowning in Clear Creek Lake in Duncan, my hometown, while visiting a small inlet on the east side of the lake. I am only sixteen at that time.
I guess life is always what happens as I plan for it. It all unfolds so fast, like a runaway locomotive. I barely have time to plan for any sense of what is happening. In many ways, I do go through life like a reindeer, just like my dad’s favorite admonishment to me as a kid.
I am certainly not proud of all the things I do and see, and hear, out of my sheer desperation and hurt. I feel compelled to relive things of the past. While doing things I should not do to erase those hurts I have words in my mind that linger. I try time after time to forget those words. However, in spite of my efforts, the words follow me as if a cold air on my neck. “Jesus paid it all. He paid it all for me.” I even try to disdain those words. Finally, unable to erase them, they become sweet once again.
My physiologist whom I start going to at this time tells me one reason for self-destructive behaviors springs from the past when I had absolutely no control over what happened to me. It became a mirrored life of the past, he says. I don’t know if my therapist would agree, but I get the idea to actually reenact what happened in earlier life. This time, I would have the control. I would have the power. In my half-hardhearted efforts to pay for what I do after the divorce I go out at night to play the hero. I do probably save the lives of three women, and, quite by accident, a young man. It is not as hard to do as one might think; most bullies are cowards. It is simply a matter of being there and at the right time. It is kind of like when I save a little boy from drowning in Clear Creek Lake in Duncan, my hometown, while visiting a small inlet on the east side of the lake. I am only sixteen at that time.
I guess life is always what happens as I plan for it. It all unfolds so fast, like a runaway locomotive. I barely have time to plan for any sense of what is happening. In many ways, I do go through life like a reindeer, just like my dad’s favorite admonishment to me as a kid.
