Yesterday was kind of a tough day…

Yesterday was kind of a tough day. Well the Saints lost to Baltimore and are at 10-4 for the season. But probably my greater sense of loss was that I was married on Dember 19,1987 and in those 23 years my record is 7 with my wife and 16 alone (or at least single) since then.
Yesterday was kind of a tough day because I had a heated discussion I am sick of having and do not ever want to have in the place I live. But probably more because my wife and I lived in a rental house, two borrowed family houses, a leased town house and three apartments and although I once owned a farm I have never owned the house where I live. Except for about two years in places I rented — most of the last fourteen years since my divorce I have lived in houses that belonged to other married couples in my family.

Yesterday was a tough day because a lot of my life is tough, bad, annoying and not worth it being what is but more because like millions of divorced people I can remember a day when I was hoping for something different. In my case that was my wedding to Michelle on December 19,1987.

Like every Christmas season I remember the anniversary uncelebrated and her birthday on December 31 as holes in my schedule for the year. That more than the many reason for it to be a tough day made it a tough day.

I never regret marrying Michelle. I never regret not trying make it work out once it was hopeless. I never regret the time I spent with some other wonderful women since, whom I would not have ever known as I d did without that divorce. I never regret believing in the truth and trying to find a way in life that I could see as real and decent. However, life is mostly not so great and the future is mostly dark and bleak and it has mostly always been that way for me. I hate so much of everything that makes the world run as it does. When I look back and think of a time when I had the most hope and optimism and joy it would have to be December 19,1987.

Michelle, if by some freakish circumstance you ever read this (we have never seen each other since we split up), I love you. I don’t want you back and you are more like a fictional character to me after so long than a real person but I honor who you were when we were together and who I was when we were really a couple (however long that was). I do not think we are friends and we may not even be allies but the person you are as I remember you will always shine bright in my mind.

So that is my little lament. More troubles will distract me and things may well get worse but yesterday my troubles had more to do with something from the past than with my many present miseries.