In a very basic sense, I am broken. I am not the man I was as I have allowed the acidic world to seep in through my supposedly tough exterior and eat me alive. What’s left often feels like a husk being manipulated by the last vestiges of give a fuck in the hopes that at a point in the future I’ll go Wolverine on life and respond, respawn, reinvigorate myself with the world. But maybe I’m just Logan. I’m getting ahead of myself. I should start at the beginning.
At some point in my marriage, my personal levee broke. I was raised by a mother who looked at me as an obstacle to her personal life on one hand and a shiny thing to show off on the other. When we were at home I was the obstacle. I could do no right. I could not be smart enough or driven enough. Often I engaged in the wrong type of thinking–I wanted to be a writer. This was not seen as a profitable enterprise and thus held no value. The real value was in job security and hard work. Eventually she saw me as capable of very little in so far as intellectual work. When I was handed a National Merit Scholarship by my school, I was handed a job application to become a sanitation worker by my mom. She later upgraded her hopes to Fireman. There was prestige and job security in that so, if I could pass that test I’d really have a chance to be someone. I took the test for her. I aced the test for me. Then I walked away from her and that NY life. The water had reached my levee line.
More life happened until one day I married a girl ‘from’ Iowa. I did not at the time see her as anything like my mother. She was the right girl at the right time and someone who I thought would be a life partner I could rely on and would care for me as I cared for her. Unfortunately, the things that mattered to me were not part of the deal. The ‘me’ she cared for was the idea of me that she had and the shape of me that she wanted, which had little to do with who I was as a person. We had a few really strong years and then we limped through many bad ones. Late in the marriage I realized that she didn’t see me as a particularly smart or relevant person and not-so-secretly wished she could take advantage of me “like everyone else does.” The water rose and the levee failed. All that made me who I was began to sink into the soft earth of my past. The only thing that grew in the new marsh was self loathing and failure.
I was broken.
Later, I found myself. I began to dry out that water logged earth. I started to rebuild. I found a measure of support in friendships. I found family in my children. I found love in my new partner. It isn’t perfect. It isn’t always even good, but I am trying. I am building. I am learning to be a man who wants things and believes himself both capable and deserving of those wants. The levee is patched, though the water is high and roiling with the force of waiting disappointment and the uncertainty that comes from falling in love and not knowing if it even has a chance to work.
Still, I’m trying. I’m broken, but I’m not done yet.