Danger

Something seething, cold and malevolent in the back of my mind pricked up it's ears today, even as I sincerely wished her well.  I knew it, and did my best to cut it off from whatever life support it had been clinging to, unnoticed for so long, but I failed.  It's awake now, and it knows me very well.
I've just realized that until I was married I'd never been embarrassed to tell anyone something that had happened to me.  Whether it had been my own fault, or someone else's the thought never crossed my mind to be humiliated because I was able to accept what had happened as life, and move on without reservation.  Even now I can tell all manner of crazy stories about horrible, traumatic,even tragic experiences without batting an eye, but I was always embarrassed to tell anyone about her infidelity.  I felt great pause, and a knot of guilt and fear climb into my throat whenever I had occasion to mention her many financial betrayals, or the time she deliberately stayed in harm's way on a whim and some childish excuse while I was away. 
All these things pale in comparison to the bitterness and humiliation I felt, and still feel, when I have to tell people she left me.  I know why now.  Because I've always taken pride (first mistake) in knowing people and their character and every failure of hers was a failure of mine that could have been avoided by the simple choice not to have married her at all.  I could have avoided all of that, but I didn't because I was in love, she was in love, and we were going to figure it all out together.  It wasn't even naive, I went in with my eyes wide open and the world at arms' length, but it didn't matter. 
She would have been (probably will be) THE perfect wife for someone, almost anyone else, but not for me.  The things that didn't work out were academic, but infinitely important to us on opposite ends of the spectrum and therefore irreconcileable.  Why then did it take 11 years?  Stubbornness?
Because I loved her, and because I thought God wanted me to stay (last mistake.)  At least I was wrong about that.
They're moving in together, with my children, and talking marriage in the summer.  The ONE thing I asked her for, she had to lie to me about again.  Again, she's doing exactly what I said she'd do, and I can't believe she'd ever do but I read it all in her months ago..  I'm so, so, sick of being right...and I just want to...but I won't.

Stress:  The condition resulting from the mind overriding the body's natural urge to throttle someone who desperately needs it. 

Once again my mind is blown

Sooo, I mentioned I hate being right, right?  I was right again, a bunch of times tonight.  Time to take the kids out to dinner and forget it completely for a while.  Friggin' WOW!  (shaking my head)

Routine

I've never been much for routines.  Every day I try to Skype and read a story to my kids, but every day there is something going on that only serves to underscore how unnatural and wrong it is for a father and his children to interact across unnecessary miles, and unfeeling media.  I have been deployed many times, I have been away, and I have spent holidays, birthdays, and such in misery far away from friends and family, but never for a choice that I made, or an action I could have avoided.  Never for a purpose I designed.  I am thankful for something, anything that brings me closer to them in some form, but I am starting to hate anything that reminds me that I am now relegated to secondary parent. 
I have been pushed out of my true role by the whim of my former wife and her desire to relocate.  I am resentful of having to allow it and support it, without question or consideration for my sacrifice or the example I've established as a father and a provider.  My role now is to provide the lifestyle chosen by the one who so completely destroyed my life who's taken from me the only thing I ever held more important than my honor, but perhaps that's why she's done it.  Maybe she doesn't realize that she was part of it, but I think it's more than that.. 
I am forced to contemplate this new reality as incontrovertable, yet the capricious manner in which it has been executed by the state and representatives of law gives me pause like I've never experienced before.  How obtuse to so detachedly create and enforce policy so generally toxic to families.  Why is it legal for her to just take my children from me?  Who's justice is this? 
I will have to move the world to change it.  To function as a father and role model should, I will have to rearrange the way things are done, and prove myself worthy to people whose opinion matters not at all but for the context of their position in the law.  I know my conduct and example to my children has been above reproach, but some smug bastard in an office removed from comprehension of that passes judgement with my former spouse on how often I can see them, and for how long.  By what failure of conscience and integrity does a person feel they should determine my access and interaction with my children?  What flaw in character could possibly account for this?  It galls me to no end that she assumes entitlement to determine this.  I question how I ever trusted and loved her.  What kind of a person could do this to another?
My positive influence and parental guidance must now somehow be communicated across hundreds of miles through the barest minimal contact, and over the period of a few minutes a day to my beautiful daughters, who have begun to slip farther into their own routines and habits without me.  Eventually the conflict and resentment over the very thing I so desperately cling to as a lifeline of our relationship will break.  It will be all I can do to maintain my composure to preserve our relationship, but I must.  I have seen it all play out.
This should not be.  What perversion of justice requires that I should beg for time with my beloved children?  What twisted vehicle of fate throws me out from my own home, punishes for no wrong or impropriety and steals my children from me?
I am unable to express how deeply I revile this, my new life.

Who Needs Marriage?

Today's Time Magazine Cover: "Who Needs Marriage?  Men do more than women, and it works better for richer than for poorer."

I am struck by this, and annoyed by the implications, but not for the reasons you might think.  I beleived that marriage was an institution derived from thousands of years of men trying to control what women did and how they related to the world as a selfish misogynist's approach to relationships and I was supposed to be wrong.  I was never supposed to buy-in.  When I made the committment though, it was real, and worthy, and important to me.  So much so that it broke me, and made me a stranger to my love, and myself.  It broke our love. 

The article aptly states the common stereotype.  Men fearful of commitment; then turns it on its ear with statistical data (hopefully well-founded and researched) suggesting the opposite becomes true after the committment is made.  Coincidence?

This points to a whole lot of assumption-busting information that leads me to believe, especially under present circumstances, that the whole thing is a farce.  I have believed in the institution as a personal committment and choice.  A spiritual one, never as one that should be influenced by entities outside the betrothed.  My foremost concern for the well-being and stability of the relationship had always been honor, trust, respect, honesty, and ignoring the rest of the world, but in the final analysis my hopes and dreams and beliefs were all found wanting in the face of a simple truth:  When she's done, it's done, and there's nothing anyone can do or say about it.  The farce is that we shouldn't live without it.  Shame on us all! 
Committments between lovers should remain between them and God alone.  Law, and other people be damned!  I will likely say Never again, and mean it for now, but I am a romantic after all.  I believe in the courage it takes to profess one's love for another.  To endure the hardships we create for ourselves and to grow together, choosing to do so, and not to grow apart, but I don't know if I will find that peace for myself. 
A dream interrupted, but not forgotten.   
  

Still here

I defy the world and all it's schemes and obstacles.  I am not so naive to believe I've overcome, God carried me,  yet I've not 'til today understood why I shouldn't fear anything.  I'd always felt bad before because it was defiance born of vanity and rage, therefore wrong.  I've known fear these last few years, but fell on His Grace to separate me from it and allow me to move on apart from it in spite of what I knew about the world.  I lost the fire of conviction, fell into doubt, and became misled by fear.  Fear is a lie.  I want to be reborn in that fire, and feel the truth of it in my heart, always.  To be reminded of what we should be, and have fallen so far from.  To reclaim that which is our birthright and our only purpose. 
Lord show me the way to ruin and redemption as a man should walk it.  I'll walk through any Hell that comes as long as you are with me.  I won't put my faith in man or myself any longer.  You sustained and redeemed me.  I owe nothing to man, though I will look after him as my brother. My mind and my soul are yours.  I lay my body down in sacrifice.  Make me an example for all who search for you, that we might understand that suffering in Your name is not loss. Show me your will and keep me close.  I surrender to you alone.
Grant me the strength to bare my soul again and the will to breath the bitterness of this world without burning in it.

Experiment

I've been taking notes a long, long time.  Refuting assumptions, watching, and learning.  I've reached a definitive conclusion:

I want to be human. 

There are too many things I've denied myself.  Too many paths left untrod, loves unrequited, and dreams unfulfilled.  I see where I went wrong now and I desperately want to go back and tell myself what I've learned, but it's too late.  I want to know what it's like to enjoy life and not apologize for it.   I want to know what I've missed.  I'm jumping in with both feet and If I find out I can't swim I'll finally be just like everyone else.  And I won't have any regrets.

Starting again, and again, and again.

There must be some signinficance to this day, aside from the fact that it signifies the end of my marriage.  I am reading "Letters from a skeptic," "Atlas Shrugged," and "Infinite Jest" at the same time.  I'm finding it hard to believe anything stranger could happpen spontaneously.  From the recommendations of friends to the obsessive reading that tends to characterize my encounters with really good books I'm a bit worried for my mental health.
This is complicated further by the immediate and distracting nature of my suddenly being single after 11 years of marriage (pronounced mirage) and the fact that I haven't returned home prior to 0500 in the past several days.
My mind is a bit muddled I'm afraid. 
I find myself questioning the notion of meeting a beautiful, sophisticated woman, whose goals and philosophies are not completely irreconcileable to mine and vice versa.  Questioning it not for any lack of desire to find such a woman, but for the fact that I may lack any or all of the aforementioned traits.  I must improve my mind, body and understanding before seeking her.  Seems only fair.