The F Word

Divorced life has taught me a lot these past three years. For instance, I’ve learned how to truly make the moments with my kids count. I’ve confirmed that what I assumed in high school is, in fact, true – dating really sucks. Also, I’ve discovered a dozen different dinners that can be made entirely during a single commercial break during an NFL game.

There is, however, one major lesson that continues to elude me. I have yet to discover how to do the F-word. No, not that one (although that one does continue to elude me as well). I’m talking about Forgiveness. And not that twhole Sunday School, blessed are the beasts and children sort of thing. Relatively speaking, finding and accepting the good in others, and moving on from the bad, is a breeze. At least compared to what I’m talking about – self-forgiveness. As in, I may have gotten divorced and turned the lives of everyone close to me upside down but gosh darn it, I’m not that bad a guy.

I am the kind of guy who will spend an entire day in a funk if I accidentally cut someone off in traffic and they honk at me. If I get a fact wrong in a story I’ve written, I don’t sleep that night. If I have a meltdown with my son when he gets a C instead of an B, I will go broke buying little gifts to make up for the overreaction. So you can imagine how hard it is to relax and accept that divorce happens and move on.

I know what the therapists have to say about the subject. Every marriage is a 50-50 undertaking. It takes two to get hitched, and two to unhitch. Both parties ultimately bear equal responsibility for what happens. Still, anyone who has gone through one knows that at least in the early days of the experience, it can feel like 100 percent spouse-0 percent you. Anger is a natural response to the divorce decision, which is about as anti-loving feelings as you can get.

However, no matter what caused the break-up or how much you’re willing to admit publicly, doubt eventually creeps in. Maybe it’s that first Thanksgiving where you have to drop the kids off at your ex’s for dinner. Or it could be that first time you accidentally run into each other alone in public. Whatever the trigger, at some point anger meets sadness, which is traveling with its friend, regret. The next thing you know, it’s you sitting in the dark with your third glass of (fill in your favorite alcoholic beverage here), confronting your own shortcomings. Was there something more you could have said to keep things together? Was there something more you could have shut up about? There are lots of questions, and very few answers.

I know I’ve spent much of my past three years living in that place, stuck in fault-finding mode rather than accepting life as it is and move along with it. I have mostly avoided anything that might actually help me feel better about things, whether it’s asking for that second date with someone I might actually like or taking a vacation on my own without the kids. If it’s doing something that’s good just for me, I’ve avoided it because it felt like rewarding me even though I’m in a situation that deserves no reward. I don’t let my kids have TV time if they’re getting bad report cards. How can I allow myself any fun if I’m divorced?

I have a feeling I’d probably still be spinning in the guilt cycle if it weren’t for an event that I’d dreaded for months – my 50th birthday. The pressure to do something really special to mark the occasion had been on for a while, both self-imposed and from anyone else to whom I’d mention that the big day was coming. Tell somebody you like to wear a coat stitched together out of live puppies and they’d be less judgmental than if you tell them you aren’t doing anything to celebrate your 50th birthday. I had no choice but to plan some sort of getaway.

Which ended up being a couple of days on my own in Sedona. With its stunning scenery and spiritual sensibilities, it seemed like the perfect place to contemplate the meaning of being half a century old. I got up on the morning of my birthday, and spent nearly three hours hiking into the red rocks of Sedona, searching for an appropriately isolate spot to start feeling 50. Eventually, I found myself perched on the edge of a small cliff, Indian petroglyphs scrawled on the wall behind me and miles of rocks and trees in front of me. Literally and figuratively, I couldn’t have been more alone.

Not to go all Deepak, but there was something about being in that moment that left me feeling both very small and very large. I could sense just how immense and overwhelming the universe really is and yet, I felt more alive and significant than I had in ages. It had probably been a good 20 years since I last went to church for something other than a marriage or a death, but I couldn’t help myself. I looked to the eye-piercing blue skies and asked for a little bit of divine intervention to convince me divorce wasn’t the end of my world and things really do get better from here.

And then…..nothing. If my life was a movie, this would have been the part where a wild bear chases Jennifer Aniston onto the cliff, I kill it with my bear hands, clouds part to reveal the sun while accompanied by ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” and my agent calls my cell to tell me this column is being optioned for a film starring, well, how about Jennifer Aniston?

Unfortunately, my life is more like a sit-com than a movie. Which explains why all I saw was a shiny, happy couple who stumbled into my secluded spot with their walking sticks, video cameras and rapid-fire chatter about what a beautiful day it was. The magical spell of the hike was broken, so I started heading back to the bottle of Chianti waiting for me back at my cabin.

Then, 10 minutes into the trek, I heard the rustling of leaves about 30 feet behind me. I turned to see a deer following me, but as soon as it saw me, it ambled off into the woods. A minute or two later, I heard pan flute music drifting through the trees even though I hadn’t seen anyone on the trial with an instrument. Then, I heard what sounded like someone going all Keith Moon with a pair of drumsticks on a boulder. And that was quickly followed by more rustling maybe a dozen yards to my left. I turned to see the deer that I’d noticed earlier alongside me again. This time, rather than running, it simply laid down. For the next several minutes, no matter how much noise I made, it just sat there staring at me.

Finally, the couple who’d interrupted me earlier tromped along again. The deer heard them, shot up and dashed away. That was my cue. I finished the hike back, got in my car and headed back to my cabin. The drive was pretty uneventful -- no pan flutes, no drums, no deer. Along the way, my son called my cell to wish me a happy birthday. We talked for a couple minutes about his math test, about his karate class, about the Red Sox’ chances in the playoffs. And that was it. Nothing special at all.

And yet, I finally had my forgiveness. I just hadn’t realized it until now. Ever since returning from the trip, I’ve been obsessing about the meaning of the music, the drums and the deer. It was all so bizarre, the timing so strange, it had to be more than a coincidence. I was asking for a sign that post-divorce life would be okay, something to give me hope that things could and would be getting better, and I got pan flutes and Bambi. But what did it all mean? I spent hours spinning this around and around like it was God’s little riddle for me, trying to figure it out to the point of scanning dream dictionaries for the meaning of deer encounters. (They’re considered “conductors of the soul,” just so you know.)

Then it hit me. I was treating this weirdness as if it was some French art film, where it was all about obscure symbolism instead of tangible facts. What’s important wasn’t a chance with wildlife. It was about my son’s phone call. Up until my birthday trip, I’d used him (and his sister) as the primary reason not to move on with my life. I devoted every possible hour to them, spurning relationships and everything else because it protected them from change. The truth is, it was really just to protect me from the hard work that comes with starting up my second life.

Then, I took the birthday trip. I did something for me and with one quick, innocuous phone call, I had proof that on my two central excuses for not moving on actually wanted me to be okay and to enjoy myself. Which, in turn, meant that I was really the only one still being so hard on myself. If this a kid who is still mad at me for not letting him eat all his French fries at Burger King a year ago is able to forgive me for messing up his world with something slightly more significant like a divorce, it’s pretty clear – maybe it’s time I forgive me too. I’m not sure what that’s like, but I’m hoping it feels at least as comforting as hanging out with a deer in the woods.

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