Anger has always come so naturally to me. It has always been the first reaction to disappointment and failure. Apparently it is a very unattractive quality to have in a partner. Here is the thing though: how do you put away an emotion that has been so thoroughly entrenched in your mental toolbox?
I do not have an answer to this question, nor do I even know how to go about attempting to answer it. But I am going to try to nonetheless.
I do not want to be angry anymore. And this is incredibly fucking difficult. Because I really want to be angry at her. I gave her 20 years. Twenty fucking years. And they were my best years. My 20's and my 30's. Gone. Yes, I know, your 40's are your new 30's. Only they are not. That is a silver medal for those who have crossed the 40 line.
I cannot get that time back.
And, again, yes, I have learned and grown and experienced and loved. With her. But all of those memories, experiences, good times and bad times are like old photographs that someone has spilled coffee on. The most recent have been completely ruined, but even the oldest ones have been stained. I can no longer look through my shuffled memories of the past without one very recent memory shading all the rest.
And I really want to be angry. I really want to hate her for what she did.
But I cannot. I will not. And mostly, I choose not to.
Because, it achieves nothing. To be completely fair, it was all those years of her dealing with my anger and bitterness that forced her to look elsewhere for a love that I have been unable to give her. Mainly because I knew not the language of love. I still don't really. I've never been one for romance, hand holding and sweet nothing whispering.
Rather, I am Joburg City bred. I'm more of a fists up, hackle backed guard dog, ready to bite any who may step to me and mine.
But I am not in that place nor in that mental state. I have moved on, I did move on, but my psychology and mentality stayed behind. It stunted me as I refused to grow.
What about the weed, buddy?
Oh, yes. Yes, there was also that. And a fair fucking fuck load thereof. It too certainly helped with the inability to grow. With the childish choices to stay a children rather than to mature to be an adult that my partner needed me to be, And I 100% fully own my flaws and my failings.
However, to leave me high and dry, alone, on the cusp of my 40th, because of my flaws, is a bit shitty. Just a teeny tiny bit shitty. Like a shart. What I mean by that is, we were partners, team mates, together for two decades. We were older than facebook. And to just drop me like that and move on without even having the decency to speak to me, to communicate to me for fear of my anger, does that make it justified?
Does it make me feel like the worst person on earth? A man so angry that his wife would leave him? Ask yourself this question, because I really would like to know.
So, how to progress? How to heal, how to move on?
Fuck knows.
All I know, is that anger is not the option. No matter how easy it would be to be angry, it simply is not the healthy choice.
Is fucking an option? Just go forth and fuck my way to happiness? Again, if it is, I really don't want to do that either.
The very thought of intimacy is difficult. And even more so because of where I live and the amazing people I have met since leaving my previous home that she and I had bought together, lived in together. I could fall in love a million times over, if I were a younger and less hurt man.
But I feel my age. I feel it like I felt the extra weight of being overweight. It weighs my down and makes me fear all intimacy.
So how do I fall in love again and be open to such an intimate experience? That is the question I will be pondering as I stumble forward on this potholed path away from being shit and towards being awesome instead.
