Walking the Dirt Road

Life is a highway…or at least that’s how the song goes.

I, however, prefer to use the metaphor of a train…probably because much of my life has followed a plan of sorts.  Indeed, most of us do our best as children and adolescents to live up to the expectations of our families.  We go to school, work hard to get into a good college, fall in love, get married, and have kids.  Or at least that was what my parents — and their parents — always preached.

The train tracks of my future were laid out by those who loved me for as far as the eye could see; all I had to do was get on board when the time came.  Everything seemed possible then…I was going to lead a happy and successful life…or at least what I pictured as successful.  Graduating high school in 1998, I was ready to go.

ALL ABOARD!!

My train has certainly seen its fair share of action.  It’s scaled the mountains of academic success, passing along the great Ivy League’s Cornell University.  It’s thundered its way through several rocky relationships and around the challenges that early adulthood has presented.  As my friends and I reached our late 20’s, one by one we began to get engaged…and eventually married.  We forged pathways to our dream jobs, and finally we could find our own way in the world.  Sure I started a little late compared to some of my friends (Mary and I were married one week after my 30th birthday), but I couldn’t have been happier to keep my seat on the train.

Little did I know that my days aboard the Perfect Express were numbered…three years worth of days to be exact!

It’s been several months now since finding myself bloodied and bruised by the side of the tracks.  Mary’s wish to get divorced effectively hurled me from the train ride that has been my life, while my closest friends and family remain on-board, furiously racing to their final destination.  I still wake up every morning broken-hearted and praying for a way back onto the train that has simply left me behind, but deep down I know that I can never go back.

So here I have remained since April…stranded in the middle of nowhere…with nothing but tracks as far as the eye can see.

But this morning I had an epiphany.  I finally found the courage to look away from the train tracks, and there I saw it:  a small, dirt road meandering its way over the nearby hills.  The mystery of what lies beyond is nerve racking yet irresistible — difficult to fathom yet impossible to ignore.

Today I find myself wondering what awaits on the other side…how much more is there beyond the tracks I’ve been riding for so long?

Maybe…just maybe…I’ve been going about things the wrong way.  Maybe there’s more to life than the train.

Good or bad…for better or for worse…I’m going to walk my way down the dirt road.

How the F^#* Did I Get Here??

How the fuck did I get here?

For those of you unaccustomed to profanity, please allow me to offer my sincerest apologies.  You’ll find that this blog rarely contains wording unsuited for prime-time television (or for a night at home with the kids).

But seriously…WTF!

It’s been three weeks since moving back into my apartment (sans ex-wife and ex-dog) on the upper east side in NYC, seven weeks since moving out to accommodate my ex-wife’s commute (until the start of her new apartment lease), and about four months since being told by Mary (name changed for privacy reasons) that she “wants out of our marriage.”  Yet nowhere in that nest of time frames and numbers of weeks, months, and days is there any solution to the pain and utter loneliness that fills my mornings and nights.

The hurt is just as raw as it was last week…and the week before…the sad realization that my life — at least my life as I have known it — is forever changed.  The family that I had sacrificed my time, money, and parts of myself for has gone.  And what do I have in its place?  Time…time…and more time.  I spend my days keeping busy and being around my friends and family, but inevitably I find myself back where I started: in a half-empty apartment haunted by the echoes of Mary’s laugh and Bradley’s bark.

This blog will certainly have more than its fair share of depressing sentences, paragraphs, and even entries, but before you choose to click away, I offer the following clip from Love Actually to help put things in perspective with regard to the man I am, where I’m coming from, and where I plan to go: