Coffee with Aaron
February 28th, 2024

Grateful log for Wed, 28 Feb 2024

  1. Being able to put into words what and how I am feeling.
  2. Rain and Thunder.
  3. Dinner with my parents last night.

Being able to put into words what and how I am feeling.

When first separated in January 2021 I was angry with her. When I moved into my apartment in June of that year I experienced loneliness that I did not know was possible. My identity as a husband, and to an extent as a father, was in a tailspin. I didn’t know who I was, what was happening, why it was happening, how I was going to handle anything. Work was needed in all of these areas. Time and money. She served me with “papers” in Spring or so of 2022, everything being signed in October that year. The Destruction complete I felt a sense of relief and dread. Relief that there was a path of sorts ahead of me, dread about what that meant: starting over.

I have never said I will never marry again, but I am definitely undecided about the entire enterprise. My first experience was mostly negative. I know that not all marriages, relationships, people are created equal and that just because the first was so negative does not mean a subsequent will be the same. I would approach it with many more years of life under my belt, hopefully a bit wiser and selective. But, that said, I’m still unsure.

Related, I also never viewed my life as one of solitude. I certainly like being alone, the quiet, the simplicity, but to always be alone is, well, quite lonely and I am beginning to experience feelings that I have not felt in years, maybe two or so decades: desire for companionship. I have always wanted to experience life with someone by my side.

And so here I am. Feeling these feelings for the first time in what seems like forever and being completely unsure of how to handle them. The gratitude is that I am feeling again and that I am able to identify what the feelings are. Progress is still progress, even when it leads to more of the unknown.

Day at a time :-) 
~ Aaron