I spent Easter week alone. Properly alone. It was good, bad, necessary.
The Good
I have not been alone for close to 20 years. It is weird to think about. It was good to be alone. For a bit. Until it became bad, but I will speak about that in the next section. The first few days were great. Full zero. Ate junk, drank all the beer, smoked all the weed, played the Witcher III from morn till morn. I watched the Truman show. War documentaries. History stuff. It was super awesome pretending to be in my twenties again.
But then I woke up and remembered. I really remembered. I chose to ruin my week off by doing a deep dive into my memories. I fully and without limits dove into all my thoughts and memories and thoroughly engaged with the collapse of my marriage. How did I get here, what do I do while I am here and where to from here? It was not fun, but it was good. It was healing. Three days of deep depression were concluded by a long walk around the city, from park to park and beer to beer. I got to see flamenco dancers in the park, I got to listen to house music on the river, I got to see statues of some dude getting murdered to death paraded around the city. Cool.
The Bad
All the loneliness got pretty ugly pretty quickly. I found myself inescapably confronted by the collapse of my marriage. It weighs heavily to say the least. To be perfectly honest, I have not fully wanted to process it or even confront it. It has been there skirting the edges of my consciousness but with a rigorous diet of alcohol and cannabis, I have avoided it. I want to get through this collapse with my sanity and dignity intact. I do not want to slide into bitterness and resentment. This has been far from easy. The nature of the end has me broken. More questions than answers plague my waking moments.
Fundamentally I want to know how she could have done everything she did. Fundamentally, I can never truly know. I will have to live with the not knowing. Right now, I don't know how to do that. Her single selfish action has poured taint and slime over every single memory I have of us. Every single fucking memory. I don't want the good times we shared to be tainted in this way. I just have no idea how to compartmentalise it all.
So in this time alone I was confronted by the loss and the collapse of a life I had built with another person. It was not pleasant nor was it fun. However, it certainly was necessary.
The Necessary
Growth. It's something I would like to have. It is also something I cannot have until I process this pain that writhes deep inside the cavities of my hollow and empty inner. I need to wrestle this beast into submission. If not submission, at the very least, some sort of mutually agreed truce. At this moment, I know the beast of depression has far too much control over my thoughts and actions.
Trust is the first thing I need to learn how to have. One area that I have focussed on is friendship. I don't have many. She was the only friend I thought I needed for such a long time. I never put any work into making new friends. But friendships are necessary. Friends help us and we help friends. The social human succeeds by the strength of their social support networks.
In my time outside of South Africa, I am unsure how many friends I have made. Not people I am friendly with, but friends that would mourn your passing. Before meeting her, I had an extensive network of friends and people I was friendly with. Now, I question all my relationships. I doubt everyone's honesty. I just assume that ill intent exists so why bother. That is not healthy and I need to flip the mental switch to healthier ways of thinking. Again, I have no clue how.
With this week of isolation, I have identified areas for work. I need to get back to the basics of the Three Ws. Work, Workout, Write. There is no space for women, whining, nor weed.
Conclusion time. I am not going to lie. I am exhausted and I want to give up, but I won't. I have too much love left to quit. Too much love for my family to quit. Too much love for the last few remaining friends to quit. Too much love for the beautiful blue planet to quit. Finally, I still have too much love for myself to quit. I just wish, for just one brief moment, for it to maybe, just maybe, get a little bit easier, or even, just a little bit more bearable. Sadly, that is unlikely to happen.
So for now and the foreseeable future, I am to carry this weight. I have to carry this weight. Yes it can be shared, but that would lead to reliance on an external force. As I have unfortunately learned, reliance on outside forces can be problematic, because when they leave your life, you are left without the ability or the knowledge of how to carry the weight.
I will instead focus on becoming stronger, without becoming harder. Becoming more flexible and adaptable, less likely to break when confronted by the inevitability of change. Becoming happier even in the face of loss. Becoming more positive regardless of the challenges that come my way.
This has been a week of pain, heartache and tears. It was also a week that ended with a walk through a world of astonishing beauty. Spring's warm embrace, spring's flower scented breath, spring's birdsong whisper. The beauty of two women dancing to flamenco softly strummed through shady walkways in green places, designed by minds focused on building a life surrounded by beauty. The winter of my heart slightly warmed by the golden sunlight of spring in Seville.
