Finally Angry

My divorce was final on July 7, 2005. The day the bombs in London blew up. My divorce happened much the same way the bombs happened to the people in London. Unsuspecting. I thought my now ex-wife was going to file the papers. I didn't realize she was actually going to the court to make it final! I thought it ironic that after regretfully leaving London that my divorce coincided with the explosions. British irony?

As I progress thru the stages of grief, I find myself moving into the next stage of anger. It is an uncomfortably familiar place. Much like the road I took when my parents died but somehow much more painful. The finality of death is interestingly more satisfying than the purgatory of divorce. Death seems to have a definite path you must take. Divorce leaves you in the labrynth of emotions with no hope of completion. Sadly each twist and turn comes with the same sting as the last. Hoping that it will change and the inevitable reality that there is no hope. It's maddening.

The thing that angers me most is to watch how it writes things on my children that I cannot fix. This is there reality. This is there definition. This is what will make them who they are in spite of my manipulation and guilt and anger and hurt. They are like sponges soaking in the venom. Sometimes it's too much to look into their little eyes and see what our choices are doing to them. It's like trying to relate to an Alzhimer victim. It's like they know something is happening but they aren't quite sure what. The frustration of that is incredible.

So I am finally angry. I am finally seeing how my ex-wife's wounds were so incredibly selfish. How selfish it was that she wasn't willing to deal with them. How all of her survival mechanisms from being a pedophile victim were so selfish. What I thought was so controling was actually incredibly selfish.

I am sure that will change. My anger, not her selfishness. Last winter in the lull between the battles, I told my wife that I knew how all of this would play out. We would become one of those happy divorced families that everybody envied because we got along so much better divorced than we did married. I can't even describe how sad that makes me. I don't want to be a happy divorced family or do I? Could I go back to what could be? Do I have it in me or am I too selfish now? I'm sure I will answer these questions as time progresses.