Giving Up On Love

It is said that it's always darkest before the dawn.

The sun hasn't risen yet as I type, and it seems remarkably appropriate to reflect on this maxim just now.

I know that my fears about my marriage, the lonliness, the excruciating pain that seems all I have, the overwhelming guilt about the part I have played in the events leading up to my separation from my wife, my insecurities and doubts about the rightness of my Path and what will happen to me now, all these things and more besides, are illusions. They onlly exist if I bring them into being and feed them.

Goddess knows I am trying. She knows that each day is a new fight, to get up, to go to work, to stay healthy, to stay sane, to find a reason to keep going. So far, I am holding my own, but the edge is never far away.

I can feel, day by day, small things driving themselves between my wife and I like miniature wedges. The passing of time itself pushes us further apart. The little changes in my life, and hers, are things that we didn't do together, decisions that were taken independently, choices made in isolation. I can feel the strings breaking, one by one, gently but inexorably. And I can tell that our mutual decision to initiate this in the first place has acquired a life all it's own, turning it into something that now could not be stopped even if we tried.

I know that this process is exactly what is called for. I know that it is the best way for us to get past the past, to move forward with this life in a healthy way. I'm just heartbroken at what was promised, and what has been lost. I am forced to surrender to the inevitable, and let go of what we had in toto so that the less salutary parts can be excised. This is the thing that gets me, the inference that if some of our marriage was bad and has to be thrown out, maybe the whole thing was.

I cannot believe that.

For now, I am faced with the notion that this is going to take a long time, and I despair of ever being happy again. I am told this, too, will pass, but right now it seems that all I am is a big ball of hurt and sadness and remorse and guilt and disappointment.

It's enough to drive one to give up on the whole idea of love in the first place.

It's enough to make one give up.

But not today.