First Day Off

 First day off after the divorce of wife number three...
Yes, I've been divorced three times...
What the fuck is wrong with me, right?
I admit I made some mistakes...
I wasn't a victim in any of the relationships...
And I didn't handle everything well...
External circumstance, mostly...
Acts of God, and such...
First one was basically killed by untreated menopause...
Second one, by three consecutive miscarriages, basically...
This last one? Killed by pathology...
Admittedly, on both sides...
But I would swear on a stack of bibles
That my worst behavior was in response to her behavior...
And I'm not even religious...
I was not prepared for that kind of tsunami...
I didn't do enough research into the pathology
To truly understand how to deal with it, up close and personal...
I didn't understand enough
To realize that the verbal attacks were not about me...
But they were directed at me...
I had to assume their mantle...
And sometimes I took it personally...
And I got angry...
Said things that weren't so nice...
But they were real...
They were based on objective reality...
Truth is often uncomfortable...
And, truthfully, she really fucked me up...
I'm not saying I'm totally innocent...
But she really fucked me up...
And kept doing it...
Intermittent reinforcement...
A rollercoaster of tears and blood and secretions of various sorts...
Heaven and Hell...
Yeah, the last one was more than moderately mind-bending...
The slalom of emotions...
Learning to understand it is much easier from a distance...
Understanding is easier to attain once the storm has passed,
And shelter has been fortified...
There was some minor turbulence...
A few bumps in the road, but I've always recovered...
Shit's got to get done no matter what state the heart is in...
Wandering the wasteland, or warming your feet by the fire...
Now, I live for me...
It's been too long...