It's not often that I give credit to downloadable Apps and Games (to those of you less technologically minded I would suggest at this point you watch a few re-runs of Tommorrow's World) usually tending toward thinking they are all essentially generic time-consuming nonsense (although the majority of the Game App playing world would undoubtedly disagree). Today however, thanks to Charlotte and her insightful assessment of "Subway Surf", I concede that they do indeed teach life concepts. She was sat in the car playing away on her Ipod touch/shuffle/multiplex cinema or whatever it is and I asked her if she was winning - to which she responded "no Mum, you can't actually win at this game - the aim is simply to stay alive!".
This statement couldn't have been made at a more apt juncture. With every day that passes this is exactly my challenge. No religion could convey more deeply the sentiment that was summaried in those 13 words - the main aim of our existence- not to win, but to merely survive. To continue to inhale despite the fact that all around you has turned to chaos.
One of my greatest faults - one of the many - is that I have a rather idealistic view of life. That's not to say I am generally happy - although I may manage mostly to have a positive countenance on the outside (those that live with me know this to be a facade) within I am rarely content. However I do, or did until about 12 months ago, believe that life is generally something great which can turn out well and does not necessarily have to contain unending sadness or disappointment.
Hmmmmm.
Never one to overly exclaim about my personal misery, it's sad to confess that I am finding it continually more and more difficult to maintain said facade of pleasure with this mortality. If I am honest, with this divorce milarky, I realise I have merely traded one form of unhappiness for another......only this version is less familar, slightly more terrifying and much more emotionally charged.
Perhaps I shouldn't share this intimate information here.....but if you have followed this far you understand that essentially I have always tried to maintain an honest account of my perceived reality so it would be cheating to not now tell you how it feels to have made the decision I contemplated for so long. I know, from speaking to several of you, that you have had similar concerns with your own marriage situations. Marriage is difficult, incredibly so, but I do believe divorce is soemthing even uglier. At the end of the day if you are miserably married for 30 years people will still admire you....because most don't manage it and so appreciate the level of sacrifice required at times. You may occasionally hate the sight of each other, sleep in separate rooms, be grateful when one has to work away and pray for the day you wake to find you are in bed with only a corpse....but at least if you have stayed faithful to your vows there is a certain element of pride you can take. In Divorce there are no winners. No runners up. Just losers all round.
The worst part for me is the meaningless of it all. The realisation that a person with whom you have shared your entire life, body and soul can almost overnight become a stranger - in fact as less than that. It is the most irrational and odd experience. And yet a necessary evil to create a boundary over which neither party any longer steps. How else can you go from 100% intimacy to nothingness? To me it has been a revelation and realisation. That EVERYTHING is temporary. That nothing really lasts beyond the moment it occurs in and that eternity only exists in memories.
Am I regretting my decision? Well that would have to be a question of which one. To marry in the first place or to end it 18 years later? I am trying to regret none of it. It's been my life and has created the best parts of it along with some of the worst. What I am trying to believe is that the happiest times are not over and that the future will be brighter than the past.
For those of you wondering about your own relationship though - my advice would be, naturally, that if it can be fixed then fix it. Remember, the name of the game is not necessarily to win and coming last still counts as taking part......x x x
